Evangelistic campaign to air another multimillion-dollar ad on Super Bowl
Previous ads have drawn plenty of criticism along with all the attention
The He Gets Us campaign, which has drawn controversy during the past two years in presenting Super Bowl television views with messages about Jesus, will be back with another ad in Sunday’s game.
Although the ad hasn’t been made public as of this writing, it will be titled “What Is Greatness?,” presumably conveying the theme of the campaign’s website, which emphasizes the teachings of Jesus tying personal greatness to love of and service for others.
Last year’s ads drew fire from both the sociopolitical right and the sociopolitical left — from the former because they felt it promoted a “woke” type of Christianity that reaches out to the LGBTQ community, and from the latter because they saw the ads as hypocritical for coming from the wing of political American white evangelicalism with an agenda hostile toward marginalized people.
Of course, it’s too soon to predict what the reaction will be to the still-unseen ad, but we have been told that, in the words of The Oklahoman newspaper, the ad “will feature an individual from the LGBTQ+ community being hugged by another person, a gesture intended to embody the love of Christ.” The newspaper’s source was David Green, founder and CEO of the Hobby Lobby store chain and one of the major funders of the ad, which almost certainly cost millions of dollars to air.
As was the case last year, the He Gets Us campaign is a project of the nonprofit group Come Near. Come Near says it doesn’t represent any particular church or denomination but is interested primarily in introducing people to Jesus. Although He Gets Us is obviously an evangelistic effort in the sense that it hope to convert con-Christians to the Christian faith, its approach is fairly low-pressure. While readers of the He Gets Us website are encouraged to learn more about Jesus and ask questions about what he stood for, they need to search through the website if they hope to have any significant contact with Come Near.
Although the He Gets Us website presumably will feature the Super Bowl ad after it airs, it currently prominently features videos on the theme of greatness. “Jesus showed us what greatness really is,” the site proclaims, going on to say:
How does his version stack up with ours? Is being great, as our society defines it, really that great? Or, is greatness quite the opposite of what we think it is? Jesus defined true greatness in a very different way. He showed that the greatest thing we could be is in humble service to others.
Most of the videos on the home page are three-to-five-minute “feel good” pieces relating to the joy or comfort that people have received by either giving or receiving personal service. The only one that ventures into potentially controversial territory is mini-documentary titled “The Making of ‘Refugee,’” featuring a member of the production team who was emotionally affected by coming across refugees from multiple countries making their way through Central America, having left their homes out of love for their families.
Text accompanying the video offers a message that is starkly different from the words of today’s anti-immigration activists:
Some say that greatness demands our focus be on bettering ourselves, but Jesus prioritized the people around him. Even when his own reputation was at stake, he advocated for others, never letting fear keep him from speaking out against the hypocrisy of those in power. While those rulers may have emphasized the things that kept people divided, Jesus demonstrated a sincere love for each member of the human family — neighbors who were deserving of dignity and respect. How can we welcome those who feel shut out today?
Does that message clash with evangelicals’ support for Donald Trump? The Oklahoman asked that question of businessman Green, who explained: “We're driven more by who is more in favor of what we feel like lines up more with God's word.”
The newspaper quoted Green as saying that the ads are a way of sharing a worldview rooted in Jesus:
Why would we do that — because we're talking to people about their eternal life. Hopefully, by seeing that Scripture (John 3:16), they know he gets you and he loves you. He died for you. Hopefully, we draw people closer to him.