Wolves in sheep's clothing

All the flashy Jesus ads won't change the hate

If you watched the Super Bowl (GO, CHIEFS!), you most likely saw one of those He Gets Us ads, part of a series of feel-good Jesus-Loves-You commercials that are pretty catchy.

These ads are not the product of a collection plate. Advertising during the Super Bowl, with 100 million or so people watching, cost $7 million for a half-a-minute.

Mike sent me this cheeky meme.

The ads debuted during Super Bowl 2023, and were funded by Hobby Lobby founder David Green, of the 2014 Supreme Court decision, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., which said that closely held corporations (companies with few owners) could refuse to cover birth control for their employees.

Green’s stance was that funding birth control would allow the harlots to run amok who help you find Mod Podge in his stores. That’s a paraphrase, but it’s hard to square the radical love of Jesus with such an odd, throwback of a political stance.

So these ads are not quite what they seem. They’re more of a “He gets us, but He doesn’t trust us to make decisions about our own bodies. So it’s a conditional ‘get.’”

The He Gets Us campaign was originally owned by The Servant Foundation, which at one point was one of the biggest financial donors for the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization for which the Southern Poverty Law Center has no love, and you shouldn’t either. The Alliance, as well, wants to crawl into people’s beds and bathrooms and start issuing dictums. The Alliance — with the Servant Foundation’s money — has made it their business to go to war against members of the trans community. So there’s that.

(I am flipping through my Bible looking for those scriptures where Jesus launched a full-on campaign against a vulnerable population and I cannot find it. I’m pretty sure you won’t, either.)

The ads are now managed by a relatively new organization, Come Near, led by Ken Calwell, who spent his early corporate career rattling around Domino’s and Papa John’s. As we know, just because you say the name of Jesus is no indication that you should be saying the name of Jesus — or that you even know what you’re saying.

The ads are well done. Let’s give them that, but we’re too old and jaded to walk through a door just because the singing inside is pretty.

Jesus loves me. And you. And your gay uncle Tony. And that person in the mail room who looks like a lady but you’re not sure. Jesus doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about that kind of thing so we don’t need to concern ourselves, either. Show me an ad that says that, and you will have my undivided attention.

Mr. Two Corinthians

And thanks, Mike, for the head’s up.