Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: The Right-Wing Evangelicals Behind the Super Bowl’s ‘He Gets Us’ Multi-Million Dollar Advertisements
February 15, 2023
By Bill Berkowitz
If you tuned in to the Super Bowl, for the game, or Rihanna’s dazzling half-time show, or just for the advertisements, you may have been intrigued by the “He Gets Us” ads. Sandwiched between movie promos, and all sorts of consumer enticing ads, came something different; an ad for a campaign promoting Jesus and Christianity. You might have thought to yourself, “Why are Jesus-loving people paying millions of dollars for two ads at the Super Bowl when the money could be spent feeding the hungry and sheltering the un-housed”? While the campaign claims it is not connected to any Christian ideology, would you be surprised to learn that among its donors are evangelical Christians that have for years fought hard against reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights?
As MSNBC’s Sarah Posner pointed out, “The Jesus of the He Gets Us ads is not the Jesus of the Christian right, which advocates exclusion of marginalized people, or of the MAGA world, where Jesus is inextricably tied with Trump. But the wealthy evangelical families backing the ads come from those worlds.”The He Gets Us campaign is clearly aimed at younger people that view Christianity as divisive and toxic. While the Super Bowl ads may have been its biggest audience yet, the campaign is not new: Since it was launched last year, there has been the creation of a slick website, numerous television ads, billboards in cities across the country, and oodles of social media content.
A Christianity Today story last March headlined “$100M Ad Campaign Aims to Make Jesus the ‘Biggest Brand in Your City,” noted that “what is thought to be the biggest-ever Christian advertising campaign will go national. Television commercials, along with online ads and billboards, will target millennials and Gen Z with a carefully crafted, exhaustively researched, and market-tested message about Jesus Christ: He gets us.”
At the time, Maria Barr, reporting for Christianity Today pointed out that the campaign was being funded “by a small group of wealthy anonymous families.” Barr noted that “The ads direct viewers to HeGetsUs.com, where they can choose four ways to engage: chat live, text for “prayer and positive vibes,” sign up to join a small group with Alpha, or click through to a Bible reading plan on the YouVersion app.”
Barr also reported that “The $100 million for He Gets Us comes from The Servant Christian Foundation, a nonprofit backed by a Christian donor-advised fund called The Signatry. (Both declined to name the donors who helped envision and pay for He Gets Us, who want to remain anonymous.)”
According to the Catholic News Agency, “He Gets Us is also an initiative of the Servant Foundation, which is managed by the Kansas-based foundation and donor-advised fund The Signatry.
Founded in 2000 by Kansas philanthropic adviser Bill High, The Signatry has received over $4 billion in contributions and has helped make more than $3 billion in charitable grants, its website says.” So who are these anonymous donors sponsoring He Gets Us, in what Jason Vanderground, president of creative marketing firm HAVEN and a consultant involved with He Gets Us, told Christianity Today will be a billion dollar campaign “over the next three years?”
Now, thanks to reporting by Jacobin’s Andrew Perez and CNN’s AJ Willingham, we have some answers to that question.
According to Willingham, “The chain of influence behind “He Gets Us” can be followed through public records and information on the campaign’s own site. The campaign is a subsidiary of The Servant Foundation, also known as the Signatry.”
In an early February Jacobin story, headlined “The Far Right Is Funding Evangelical Super Bowl Sunday Ads” Andrew Perez reported that “the foundation behind [the]… Super Bowl advertising campaign to promote ‘the Jesus of radical forgiveness, compassion, and love’ has also bankrolled a conservative nonprofit leading efforts to roll back abortion rights and allow businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ customers.”
Perez noted that “Between 2018 and 2020, the Servant Foundation donated more than $50 million to the Alliance Defending Freedom — a nonprofit that’s led big policy fights over abortion and nondiscrimination laws at the Supreme Court and in states around the country. The nonprofit is designated as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center”.
According to research compiled by Jacobin, The Servant Foundation [501(c)(3) charity “has donated tens of millions to the Alliance Defending, Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group. The ADF has been involved in several legislative pushes to curtail LGBTQ rights and quash non-discrimination legislation in the Supreme Court.”
Perez reported that “He Gets Us says it wants to help people ‘understand the authentic Jesus as he’s depicted in the Bible — the Jesus of radical forgiveness, compassion, and love.’ The company … aired three different ads during the National Football League playoffs…”
“In one ad,” Perez writes, “the company says, ‘Jesus struggled to make ends meet, too.’ A family-focused video says, ‘Jesus disagreed with loved ones. But didn’t disown them.’ Another ad describes Jesus as ‘an influencer who became insanely popular’ — before he ‘was canceled.’”
Enter David Green, the multi-billionaire co-founder of the arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby, who apparently is not shy about his participation in the campaign. Hobby Lobby which has supported numerous conservative evangelical organizations and candidates over the years, supported anti-LGBTQ legislation and led “a successful years-long legal fight that eventually led to the Supreme Court allowing companies to deny medical coverage for contraception on the basis of religious beliefs,” according to CNN. Green also funded the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. MSNBC’s Sarah Posner noted that in 2017, Green gave the Biblically illiterate Trump an original 1611 King James Bible.
It is clear that He Gets Us is an attempt to create positive buzz for a kinder, gentler Christianity, moving the public away from images of Christians embracing Trump’s Big Lie, storming the U.S. Capitol, criminalizing abortion, and relentlessly hounding the LGBTQ community.