There’s a hugely well-funded ad campaign going on right now, that will include one of those ridiculously expensive SuperBowl ads, that aims to clean up Jesus’ image. He’s about love, and tolerance, and all that sweetness and light stuff.
You might be wondering who is paying for this message. Americans United has you covered. They’ve been digging deep into the people funding these ads.
The Servant Foundation, also known as The Signatry, is behind the ad blitz. Over the next three years, the Servant Foundation plans to spend “about a billion dollars” toward this public relations campaign. They’ve hired a PR firm to address, in the firm’s words, the problem of “How did the world’s greatest love story in Jesus become known as a hate group?”
I know, I know! Because modern conservative Christianity is a hate group, and they’ve been relying on buddy Jesus as a front man for hatred and intolerance. Instead of false advertising, maybe they should be using that money to clean up their act.
Once you get past the tolerant veneer, you discover the Servant Foundation is washing dirty money from some of the worst, most horrible Christian cults.
Of course, they’re the cause of their own problem – not only has the Servant Foundation funded hate groups, but the PR firm, Haven, has represented them. Key Shadow Network members Focus on the Family and Alliance Defending Freedom are in their portfolio.
Look who else they’re forking cash over to:
Other recipients of the Servant Foundation’s billion dollars in assets include:
- Nearly $8 million went to Answers in Genesis, creationist Ken Ham’s fundamentalist ministry behind the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter.
- Over $1 million was designated for the anti-LGBTQ Campus Crusade for Christ (rebranded as “Cru” since 2011).
- $374,800 went to Al Hayat Ministries, an organization that seeks to “respectfully yet fearlessly unveil the deception of Islam,” and runs an Arabic-language Christian satellite TV station with the goal of converting Muslims to Christianity.
In 2020 alone, we found donations to prominent Shadow Network members American Center for Law and Justice, First Liberty Institute, and Liberty Counsel.
Also helping to fund the Super Bowl ads are the Greens, the billionaire family behind the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., and the Hobby Lobby craft store chain that got the Supreme Court to grant corporations a religious exemption to deny workers access to birth control.
Jesus isn’t political, if you don’t think right-wing Xianity is political. Jesus is for all people, except the gay ones or the trans ones. And they’re giving lots of bucks to creationism!
Good thing I won’t be watching the SuperBowl, and in particular won’t be watching the half-time ad glut, or I’d be puking into my nachos when that lying abomination came on.
And if you’re still wondering how Jesus became known as a front for hatred, just look at who is lying in his name.
I probably won’t be watching the Super Bowl anyway this year. I despise the “Chiefs” and Mahomes rubbed me the wrong way with the undefeated talk after I rooted against him in the Brady Bowl with TB. I lost money to my mom on the Eagles when they played the Raiders decades ago in a Super Bowl (still too soon!). I hope Jalen Hurts wins this one, though I’m not an Eagles fan. I was kinda into the Bills this year (and Tua with the Dolphins).
I would like to note from above OP there are already Arab Christians in the Levant. Some would become hardcore Palestinian front members. Others were far more level headed (eg- Hanan Ashrawi).
That Jesus Gets Us nonsense gets to me. Obnoxious. If he were to come back, though as Rebecca Watson puts it: “my man went out for cigarettes 2,000 years ago and hasn’t even sent a postcard”, I wish he would put a stop to Repug co-option of his brand and be left-wing Jesus.
https://skepchick.org/2023/02/whos-behind-those-jesus-ads-youre-gonna-see-during-the-big-game/
I guess I won’t be seeing the ads then either. As an FYI the Super Bowl displaced The Last of Us back to tonight (I think?). I still have last week’s episode to stress through first.
I had subscribed to NFL+ streaming this past season and watched a crap ton of football, but now I’m kinda done. I’ll definitely still watch F1. Besides Sergio Perez and a couple Canadians (?) there’s a newbie North American from the US starting out plus I think there’s 3 tracks now in the US. I’ll still root for Perez over anyone else. F1 goes to Muslim countries. Good luck pushing the Jesus gets us crap there.
Oh yeah back to the “Chiefs”. The FSU Seminoles started the war chant and tomahawk chop and it’s bad enough when they still do it. The “Chiefs” and “Braves” definitely cross the line with appropriation IMO. I’m kinda biased toward the ‘Noles, but they could dial it back a bit too.
The ‘Noles? There is a sports ball team named after anoles? I’d favor them,too.
@2- PZ
Come to think of it, if FSU ever loses their blessing from the Florida branch of Seminoles (Oklahoma is lukewarm at best), they could rebrand as Anoles. I’d support that given the large lizard population here. I’m biased toward parthenogenic geckos myself.
I see these adverts occasionally. They don’t know their bible, the don’t know history, they don’t know how to make comparisons, and they do not understand analogy.
Other than that, shitty adverts.
But Jesus is political. Explicitly so! Every message he said was political, and many economic too. And Republicans are on the wrong side of almost every such issue while inventing a few that don’t appear in the bible at all, such as their war against abortion, premarital sex, LGBT people, etc. (The bible never explicitly condemns abortion and explicitly condones it for at least one situation, etc.)
Well. On the one hand, it’s good that they recognize that they are regarded as a hate group. Recognition of the problem is the first step on the road to solving it. On the other hand, they don’t seem to recognize that they are justly regarded as a hate group—they seem to think it’s just a matter of poor PR, and can be solved by the application of good PR. Still… baby steps, right?
i’ve seen the “set of somber black & white image” versions of these ads on yewchoob on my TV where i can’t easily block them. they include the URL for website “hegetsus dotcom,” which makes me think of that video game Among Us, like, “He get sus.”
in other things, with the kind of dosh they’re dropping on this dogshit, you think they’d be able to get original fucking photographs instead of blatant stock photography. holy shit, i had no idea those cheap cheap cheapass ads were funded from a billion dollar pool. that’s fucking pathetic.
What’s a Super Bowl?
@8: drsky
I think it’s a typo. They mean Superb Owl. That’s when people ignore the TV and post memes with pictures of their favorite owls. It’s quite fun.
drksky #8
It is an annual USAian Sportsball tournament which used to be about the ball sport but is now about the TV commericals.
but what IX-103 said is better.
What I don’t get about a “He Gets Us” campaign is why exactly it’s needed. Christianity has been around for a long time, and we kind of know what it is and what it’s about . . . Oh, yeah, now I see. You’re trying to convince us that we’re not seeing what we’re seeing and that we don’t know what we know. You think you can run a bit of BS PR by us and we’ll all say, “Oh, gosh, I’ve so badly misunderstood those poor people all this time. I am so sorry!”
It never ceases to astonish me just how hard people are willing to work, how much time and effort (and money) they’re willing to put into hating and hurting people they don’t like. It seems like it would be a lot easier just to let the hateful crap go, just go about living your own life and seeing how much you can enjoy it. That might actually be a better life strategy–and I do point that out to haters from time to time, but they never seem terribly impressed. A hater’s gonna hate. It don’t matter what I say.
We got a sample of that here just recently when another darling Christian decided that his religious faith excused him from recognizing the existence of non-binary people and, of course, from the need to show them any respect at all. The insistence that he needs to recognize and respect people would actually be an infringement on HIS rights.
So, “He Gets Us,” you don’t get it. You can yap-yap like little yap-yap mutts all you like about what you’re supposed to be and what you would like us to believe that you are, but it won’t do you a bit of good when we’re regularly getting evidence from so many of your partisans as to what you really think about us.
A hint: as long as you keep telling us that we’re deserving of eternal torture just for being what we are, we’re not going to believe that your Jesus or your god loves us. I suppose we might be a bit hard-headed, but we don’t see torture as an expression of love. Just for your information.
Now if Jesus would get us sandwiches, that would actually be useful during the Super Bowl.
@ 8. drksky : ” What’s a Super Bowl?”
An item of crockery that was bitten by a radioactive spider / exposed to kryptonite or magic or something and thus been given mutant superpowers and brought to life somehow?
Think it ran away with The Spoon..
A softcore compassionate superhero whose power is, uh, spooning and magic healing thereby or suchlike?
@7. Great American Satan : “i’ve seen the “set of somber black & white image” versions of these ads on yewchoob on my TV where i can’t easily block them. they include the URL for website “hegetsus dotcom,” which makes me think of that video game Among Us, like, “He get sus.”
Emphasis on that last word – sus?.
As in slang term for suspect..
@12. feralboy12 : “Now if Jesus would get us sandwiches, that would actually be useful during the Super Bowl.”
Well, he’s supposed to be able to do bread and wine & miracles (fillings?) so.. maybe? Also metaphorical cannibalism but, hey.
Saw a video on FaceBook about this Jesus rebranding produced by Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
I haven’t read the bible in a long time but my recollection was “where’s all that stuff about jesus being all lovey and kind?” It seems that was all retconned afterward. Like the stuff about him being a great teacher. Was he really a great teacher? Plato was a great teacher, as was Lao Tze, and Epicurus. Did jesus drop a bunch of wisdom like Lao Tze did? Where is it in the bible, because I must have missed those few little nuggets of wisdom.
Marcus @17: Funny, my recollection is that there’s lots of “lovey and kind” stuff. Just off the top of my head, the bit about “judge not, lest ye be judged”, the bit in Matthew 25 about looking after the hungry, the imprisoned, the stranger, etc. Largely ignored or apparently forgotten by many modern fundies and some atheists too, I guess.
Sandwiches? I thought we were wondering when Jesus would bring the pork chops?
Xtian Terrorist ads at the stupor bowl ROFLMAO! Is anyone surprised? PZ points out all the maniacs behind this insane fantasy. This event is just more panem et circenses for the billionaires to use to shear the drooling sheople. For the past 2 weeks, Phoenix TV Snews stations have broadcast nothing but the promotion of this rancid pablum. (OOH, a bowl of mixed metaphors, how tasty)
All of us in my organization are frantically trying to find all possible ways to avoid all this toxic, violent, hateful meaningless, abusive bullshit. But, is too pervasive; just look at the shrieking clown circus that is congress. To celebrate Mass Shootings Survivors, these aholes changed from flag lapel pins to AK47 lapel pins. WTF.
Such commercial commodification of Jesus reminds me of Temple of the Dog’s: “ Wooden Jesus, where are you from?
Korea or Canada or maybe Taiwan?
But I didn’t know it was the Holy Land
But I believed from the minute the check left my hand and I pray
Can I be saved?
I spent all my money on a future grave
Wooden Jesus, I’ll cut you in
On twenty percent of my future sin
I’ll cut you in”
But during the actual game, if God is really so deeply invested in football and arbitrates ultimate right and wrong, when a flagrant penalty is ignored by the refs why not Tool’s: “Jesus, won’t you fucking whistle
Something but the past and done?
Jesus, won’t you fucking whistle
Something but the past and done?”
Thanks for the heads up. I won’t be watching the Super Bowl tomorrow night.
Especially since this hate group funds other hate groups including Dumb Idiot Ham’s own Putrid Hate Group.
Jesus gets us!
Sell all you have and give to the poor. Jesus gets us!
Anandon homes, farms, familes. Sit around waiting for the end of the world and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus gets us!
Do not pray in public, only in privet.
Jesus gets us,
Lend to all who ask and do not expect repayment.
Jesus gets us,
Lend me $100 my Christian brother.
Jesus gets us!
Sell all you have and give to the poor. Jesus gets us!
Anandon homes, farms, familes. Sit around waiting for the end of the world and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus gets us!
Do not pray in public, only in privet.
Jesus gets us!
Lend to all who ask and do not expect repayment.
Jesus gets us!
Lend me $100 my Christian brother.
IX-103 @ 9
The boreal owl will start the mating season soon, there is probably a connection.
IX-103@#9:
They mean Superb Owl.
I stole your meme: [stderr]
@25. cheerfulcharlie : “Do not pray in public, only in privet.”
Er, is that a case hedge-ing their bets? ;-)
https://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/grow-plants/how-to-grow-privet-hedge/
Ligustrum species I presume?
Ok I started watching. Trying to not root for a team but for a good game. Looks like a serious matchup, but ”Chiefs” fans are doing the obnoxious war chant and chop. Ughh!
I’m otherwise bored and get to see Rihanna‘s halftime thing. Excuses.
Well, I just saw all those godawful ads, and I gotta say one stuck out for some probably unintentional honesty: the one that concluded with “Jesus loved the people we hate.” Um…who is “we” in that message, exactly? If “we” means “we, the people bringing you these ads,” then their statement is absolute obvious truth: Jesus (as he’s described in the New Testament at least) did indeed love the people whom the Christians making those ads hate. So…why do those people hate the people they know Jesus loved?