‘He got us’ Jesus Super Bowl ads spark backlash

Eagles fans aren’t the only ones expressing their post-game rage.

A Christian campaign called “He has us” aired two ads about their favorite guy during the Super Bowl on Sunday night. The ads made $20 million prices, as well as their links with David Green, founder and billionaire of Hobby Lobby, among other things, is generating negative reactions online.

Those behind “He Gets Us” told Christianity Today in March 2022 that they would dedicate $100 million to the national launch of the campaign. Still, the head of the branding company behind the campaign told the same outlet this month that the campaign plans to spend $1 billion on “He Gets Us” over three years.

The idea behind the campaign is to target millennials and Gen Z “with a carefully crafted, exhaustively researched and market-tested message about Jesus Christ: He gets us,” per Christianity Today.

But a Twitter search shows users are getting a completely different message.

“Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) tweeted Sunday night.

Other Twitter users agreed, while pointing out that the ads’ simplistic messages of kindness are funded by people with not-so-kind agendas. Others compared the ads to Kendall Jenner’s controversial Super Bowl Pepsi ad from 2017.

The two spots – which aired amid the commercials for mayonnaise, beer, and Ben Affleck’s attempt to indoctrinate more Americans into the cult of Dunkin’ – presented lessons that Americans should remember about Jesus during our time of division.

The first ad featured photos and clips of children performing acts of goodwill while being supported by Patsy Cline’s “If I Could See the World (Through the Eyes of a Child)”. It ended with a line of text that read, “Jesus didn’t want us to act like adults.

The second spot presumably featured “us” acting like adults with images of people – often of different races – engaged in conflict to emphasize a message of inclusion. This advertisement ended with the sentence: “Jesus loved the people we hate”.

Although most “He Gets Us” donors are anonymous, Green – whose craft store Hobby Lobby declined insurance coverage for contraceptives and tried to control which bathrooms employees can use – went public with his involvement in campaign finance. The campaign’s website also says it’s run by the Servant Foundation, a Kansas-based nonprofit that claims to be “not ‘left’ or ‘right’ or a political organization of any kind. whether it be”.

Again The lever reported that the Servant Foundation donated more than $50 million to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit known for fighting abortion rights and non-discrimination laws, from 2018 to 2020.

Bob Smietana, national reporter for Religion News Service, told NPR that ads target those who feel at odds with modern Christianity, such as members of the LGBTQ community, those who lean left politically, or those repulsed by current abuse scandals.

“I think spending so much money, again, is kind of an admission on their part that there is a problem,” Smietana said. “And, you know, there is a problem for organized religion in America. It’s in decline, the congregations are in decline. And these ads are also a way to scold their fellow Christians, saying, “This is what Jesus looks like, and maybe we know that, and maybe we don’t act like Jesus.”

“The problem that American evangelicals in particular face is that their political ambitions and their deeply held religious and ethical beliefs are in conflict right now,” he added. “So the things that will help them win politically will alienate people.”