Wolf in sheep’s clothing

A NEW ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN IS ATTEMPTING TO BRAND JESUS CHRIST IN THEIR OWN IMAGE.

By Robin Meyers

If those Jesus Gets Us ads look too good to be true, it’s because they are.

My progressive Christian friends have been almost giddy over their apparent emphasis on peace and justice, on immigrant rights, on a thoroughly human Jesus who knows the limits of politics, of family, and of judgmental fear mongering instead of forgiving. After all, they are beautifully produced, and if you didn’t know better you’d swear that they signal a theological shift of epic proportions. Let’s face it — none of us have ever seen religious ads like these on television, especially not during the Super Bowl. Was someone finally flipping the script on doctrinal purity while answering the question, WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) by proposing that we actually follow his example of love and sacrifice instead of hatred and division?

One thing was certain. Nobody knew who was funding the campaign, but a little digging reveals a lot, and reminds us that “buyer beware” applies to more than just widgets. A dark-money group called Signatry and its front the Servant Foundation got a huge donation from our very own Green family, who owns Hobby Lobby and built a Museum of the Bible containing religious artifacts. They sued all the way to the Supreme Court for the right not to provide contraception to their employees if it violated their personal religious beliefs.

A consulting firm was hired to find out why Christianity is dying and why young people prefer the coffee shop to the sanctuary. What they found was exactly what everyone already knew, namely that the church is imploding in the stench of its own hypocrisy, turning out people who care more about being right than about being loving. Legions of young people in this country can’t stand most organized religion and no longer want anything to do with Christianity, but they still find the life and teachings of Jesus remark- able. So let the branding begin.

Watching the ads evokes memories of how people must have first responded to a penniless rabbi from Nazareth, the Teacher of Righteousness, who comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable. One shows us that Jesus was himself a refugee (based on a literal reading of Matthew’s infancy narrative), but the people who paid for the ad are largely Christianity nationalists who use the plight of today’s refugees as political fodder. If you go to the campaign’s website, you are funneled into a right-wing media universe that includes Focus on the Family with all its homophobia and misogyny. One of my colleagues at the university, Mark Davies, said that if the HeGetsUs ads were a table, Jesus would have flipped it over. He goes on to say, “The HeGetsUs campaign comes off as a form of ‘Jesus Washing’ by a billionaire who doesn’t get us spending tens of millions of dollars telling us Jesus gets us while also spending millions of dollars to elect politicians that embrace values and implement laws and practices that are antithetical to the messages being conveyed in the campaign.”

The researchers who came up with this campaign slogan learned that the people who must be reached if Christianity is to survive want peace above all else and help coping with “toxic relationships.” They think that the institutional church does not have the answer (since it is often the source of division in families and relationships) but that the message of Jesus is the answer, because HeGetsUs. The problem is that when the ads are responded to by people who want to learn more, they reenter the same world that they left. This is not repentance by the Christian Right. It is cultural seduction. It is what one colleague called “fundamentalism in streetwear.” Using the language of social justice that conservatives love to hate, it becomes a bait-and-switch.

Not surprisingly, some evan- gelicals are not happy about the ads either because they say the message focuses too much on Jesus as a compassionate mortal instead of a divine savior. Natasha Crain, a well-known fundamental ist blogger writes, “The HeGetsUs campaign does not practice bibli cal evangelism, and it does not present the biblical Jesus.” She goes on to urge that fundamental ists reject it as watered-down ca pitulation to “culturally palatable versions of social justice.”

So, it seems as if both progres sive Christians and evangelical Christians see a different kind of Trojan horse, but there may be a silver lining in all this. By trying to appeal to the spiritual-but-notreligious crowd, Christian Nationalists like David Green may have unwittingly endorsed the progressive movement while un masking their true intentions. By being nervous about watering down the divinity of Jesus, funda mentalists may have reminded those who left the church over dogmatism in the first place that they made the right decision.

One of my colleagues in the progressive Christian movement, Jim Burklo, suggested that we flip the hidden script here. He sug gests we change it from HeGetsUs to HeGetsUsTo. He gets us welcome immigrants; He gets us to embrace other religions; He gets us to celebrate same-sex mar

Illustrations by Jerry Bennett

Republicans in the Oklahoma House of Representatives unanimously approved House Bill 2177, which effectively bans transgender health care. It will be sent to the Senate, and, if approved there, to Kevin’s desk.

“This bill will protect children and parents from being pressured into agreeing to harmful experimental transition procedures by prohibiting critical mental health care,” the bill’s author, Rep. Kevin West (R-Moore), told The Oklahoman. sion of the services … to any minor or adult. No facility that receives public funds shall allow its staff or facilities to be used to perform the services … on any minor or adult. Any violation of this section shall result in the loss of public funding to the entity, orga- concluded that more than 1.6 million people in the United States identify as transgender or nonbinary, but an Oklahoma Gazette study has found that 80 Republicans of questionable intelligence are threatening medical doctors acting within their realm of expertise and their patients’ wellbeing for political points with their base.

Sure, you can make the argument that this bill is intended to allow persons to reach legal adulthood before making life-altering, permanent decisions about their bodies while they are still developing, but the next section lays bare the actual intentions.