TITLE: 'He Gets Us' Super Bowl ad sparks debate among Christians
https://www.christianpost.com/news/he-gets-us-super-bowl-ad-criticized-by-pro-lifers-christians.html
EXCERPT: The "He Gets Us" campaign, which describes itself as an effort to remind people of "the example that Jesus set while inviting all to explore his teachings so we can all follow his example of confounding, unconditional love," aired a 60-second ad during Super Bowl LVIII Sunday.
The ad, titled "Foot Washing," featured still photographs of people washing another person's feet in various situations.
One image depicted in the ad showed an older woman washing a younger woman's feet outside a facility labeled as a "Family Planning Clinic." In the background were protesters on both sides of the abortion debate holding signs reflecting the differing positions on the hot-button issue.
Additional images in the ad featured people washing the feet of people with clearly divergent ideologies and/or social statuses. Two of the pictures illustrated protests demonstrating against police brutality and in favor of environmentalism. It concluded with an on-screen message declaring, "Jesus didn't teach hate. He washed feet. He gets us. All of us."
Andrew Walker, an ethics and public theology professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who also serves as a fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, took to X Monday to raise concerns about the implications of the ad.
"He Gets Us framed evangelism with a leftward tinge, communicating the respectability of certain sins over others in our culture (although I'm not sure the ad even communicated that the respectable sins were sins at all)," he wrote.
"It is curious that Jesus never showed up washing feet at a [Make America Great Again] rally, a truck stop porn store in Alabama, to dilapidated and drugged-out factory workers in Ohio, or a white nationalist militia meeting in Michigan," Walker added. "If Jesus really is for all sinners, we should want right-wing racists converted as well, right? How would we respond to Jesus washing the feet of someone outside the Capitol on January 6?"
Suggesting that the video displayed bias when selecting what situations to identify as opportunities for foot washing, Walker remarked that in the ad, "the socially high-status sins of the Left are the ones Christians are told to evangelize, not the low-status sins of the Deplorable Right because, it seems, they are the ones truly outside redemption's reach."
He maintained that "the conditioning effect of these commercials in framing and reaffirming the social castes of American sin" is "really something."
"The truth of the matter is that Jesus redeems sinners from both the Right and the Left, whether high-status or low-status. Everyone is equal in their need for Christ (Rom. 3:23). That could have been communicated, but wasn't," he concluded.
Pro-life advocate Ryan Bomberger reacted to the ad in an X post Sunday. He addressed its premise that "Jesus Didn't Teach Hate" by proclaiming, "Yes. And No." Asserting that Jesus "taught us to love one another as He has loved us," Bomberger stressed that "His word also teaches us to 'love what is good & hate what is evil.'" The pro-life activist identified another important lesson that "disagreement & truth ≠ hate."
Allie Beth Stuckey, conservative commentator and host of the "Relatable" podcast, responded to the argument that Christians should "just be happy Jesus's name is getting to millions of people" in an X post Sunday.
"If it's not the Biblical Jesus, then no. If you've got the money and opportunity to buy a Super Bowl ad slot, share the gospel," she wrote. "Don't waste it on some ambiguous mumbo jumbo that makes Jesus into our image rather than depicting Him as the King and Savior He is."
Podcaster Michael Knowles took to X Sunday and wondered if he was "the only conservative who didn't totally hate the 'He Gets Us' ad."
While acknowledging the concerns of critics that it "speaks 'woke-ese,'" "it's not for us; it's for secular libs" and poses "a risk it leads to heretical complacency," Knowles contended that "if it gets some lost lib to even consider Our Lord, I'm not totally opposed."
"Your green-haired lesbian cousin who hates her dad is not going to read the Summa Theologiae set you didn't buy her," he predicted. "But if she begins to feel even a slight affection for Our Lord, she *might* turn on a podcast. Maybe that podcast could be Fr. Mike Schmitz's Bible in a Year. The ad wouldn't be my first choice for evangelism. But Our Lord has used much worse things for good."
TITLE: Hobby Lobby-funded Jesus Super Bowl ads can't hide the hate that fuels the Christian right
https://www.salon.com/2024/02/13/hobby-lobby-funded-jesus-super-bowl-ads-cant-hide-the-hate-that-fuels-the-christian-right/
EXCERPT: As many journalists have carefully detailed, the "He Gets Us" campaign is funded in large part by the Green family, who owns Hobby Lobby. Their life mission, besides getting rich by selling cheap tchotchkes, is to push their brand of far-right Christianity on the country. The Green-funded group that ran the "He Gets Us" ads last year has ., into anti-LGBTQ hate groups and organizations opposing women's rights. The family has funded initiatives to put religious propaganda into public school classrooms, demanded the right to fire people for being gay, passed off forgeries as the "Dead Sea Scrolls," stole antiquities from Iraq, and, of course, refused to comply with COVID-19 pandemic restrictions for fear of losing profits. They also successfully sued to block their employees from using their own health insurance to cover contraception.
Despite their opposition to birth control, however, Hobby Lobby isn't too keen on women who have babies, either. When a Hobby Lobby employee fell pregnant in 2010, she alleges she was fired for asking for time off to have the baby. Losing your job is the Christian "compassion" the people behind the Super Bowl ads have on offer.
The Greens have been upfront about their donations to the "He Gets Us" campaign, but other donors remain anonymous. That's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the layers of deceit the campaign is using in order to lure unsuspecting people with the appealing but false promise of love and acceptance offered in the ads. The group behind the ads, for instance, is the newly formed Come Near. The far-right Servant Foundation ran it last year. This shift in management not-so-coincidentally allows the campaign to further conceal its funding and leadership because its tax documents aren't yet publicly available.
The sleaziness gets even worse if one goes to the "He Gets Us" website. On the FAQ sheet, they claim "Jesus loves gay people and Jesus loves trans people." That could lead queer people to falsely believe that they will find affirmation from this group. In reality, as the anti-LGBTQ donation record suggests, this is that game right-wing Christians play where they say "loving" queer people means telling them they are sinners who need to give up their "lifestyle."
The site also offers a chance to be "connected with someone near you who can help you learn more about Jesus and his life or get plugged into a group where you can bring your questions about life and faith." But when I clicked the link, it did not draw up a searchable list of churches or Bible study groups a person could research on their own before reaching out. Instead, the user is asked to fill out a form and told someone will reach out to them. That is a giant red flag. There's no way for a user to know who this information is going to. Instead, they're going to be contacted by a person whose affiliations and agenda are hidden and who is likely to use high-pressure sales techniques to manipulate a person who was lonely enough to click these links in the first place.
This has all the hallmarks of what psychology experts call "spiritual abuse," which is where a person's longing for faith or higher meaning is used as a weapon to control them. I've been interviewing experts on this topic for an upcoming investigative report, and repeatedly, they emphasize that high-control religions often use bait-and-switch techniques to bamboozle vulnerable people. First the person is subjected to "love bombing," where they are repeatedly told they are safe and cared for now that they've joined this community. Once they've become emotionally dependent on the church or group, however, they are bullied and degraded. If they're queer, they're told they're going to hell unless they try (and invariably fail) to change who they fundamentally are. If they're female, they're told that their duty is to give up on their ambitions and even self-esteem, in order to be a "helpmeet" for a man.
There can be little doubt that is exactly the switcheroo that is going on here, which is why there are so many layers of obfuscation around who is behind the "He Gets Us" campaign. For someone who sees the ads and isn't aware of the malicious politics of the people behind it, the packaging is quite appealing. It's easy to see how queer people, young women, or progressives could think this is the faith community for them, only to find out long after they've been recruited that, no, it's actually just the same right-wing Christianity they've been avoiding. The tactic is to get them in so deep that, by the time they figure that out, they're too afraid of losing community to leave.
Evangelicals claim to believe in the "truth and the light," and yet here they are, using duplicitous techniques borrowed from the world of con artists. But this is sadly not surprising, in an era where white evangelicals have convinced themselves they're at war with the larger culture. The framework of "holy war" creates permission to violate all sorts of moral codes. Over 60% of white evangelicals back Trump's Big Lie about the 2020 election, and nearly one-third say they believe political violence is justified to get their way. (Odds are that the real number is much higher, but there's a reluctance to admit as much to a pollster.) White evangelicals feel entitled to use lies and violence in order to gain political power. So of course they are fine with using deception to trick more people into becoming warriors for MAGA Christ.
TITLE: 'He Gets Us' Jesus Super Bowl Ad campaign welcomes criticism over polarizing ads: 'Very reassuring'
https://www.foxnews.com/media/he-gets-us-jesus-super-bowl-ad-campaign-welcomes-criticism-polarizing-ads-reassuring
EXCERPTS: The agency behind the viral Jesus advertisements that played during Sunday night's Super Bowl explained why it welcomes controversy surrounding their campaign, after the ads drew backlash from both the right and left on social media.
He Gets Us, a campaign that says it wants to help everyone "rediscover the love story of Jesus," organized two ad spots during the game Sunday; a 60-second ad called "Foot Washing," and a 15-second ad called "Who is my Neighbor?"
Spokesperson and BrandHaven president Jason Vanderground told Fox News Digital that the ads were meant to invite people intrigued by Jesus' "unconditional love, kindness and generosity" to explore his message. The campaign also sought to "disrupt" "preconceived notions" about Jesus and Christianity, he said.
Vanderground [also] said this year's ads were crafted with the election year in mind but were not intended to be political.
"We see just a lot of divisiveness, but we also see isolation and anxiety running high," he said. "As we look back, through Scripture, we were looking at what would be the unique message of Jesus into an environment like this."