The narrow victory of the Kansas City Chiefs and Rihanna’s halftime show were not the only topics that raised eyebrows at the Super Bowl, the final of the American football league that took place on Sunday.
Among the television commercials that were broadcast during the match, there was a publicity series that drew particular attention.
Unlike other commercials for consumer products like soft drinks and automobiles, these ads promoted jesus christ.
And they have offended people and groups with opposing political views.
“Fascist” or “woke”?
The Evangelical Christian Web Portal Announcement Series He Gets Us (“He Gets Us”) has been appearing on US television since last year during sporting events and also at the Grammy Awards.
Commercials Show Shocking black and white photographs of recent events to project Christian values in modern life.
Under slogans such as “love your enemies” or “Jesus was a refugee”, they resemble the messiah of Christianity with a influencers “canceled”, a refugee, a hard-pressed worker and other stereotypes.
And at the Super Bowl they sparked outrage on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.
Left-wing Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York tweeted: “Something tells me Jesus *wouldn’t* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.”
On the other hand, Charlie Kirk, founder of the right-wing university group Turning Point USA, said the ads “please progressives.”
He called the campaign “one of the worst services to Christianity in the modern age” and called its promoters “woke tricksters”.
The campaign promoters
So who is behind the campaign and why has it gathered such a wide range of detractors?
The campaign is run by the Servant Foundation, a Kansas-based nonprofit also known as The Signatry.
The website doesn’t explain much about where the campaign funds came from, noting that “most of the people who push He Gets Usincluding our donors, choose to remain anonymous because they are not the protagonists and do not want the credit.”
However, David Green, the billionaire founder of the Hobby Lobby craft store chain, confirmed in November that he is a major donor to the campaign, whose initial budget was around US$100 million.
Green is known for his like-minded conservative Christian values.
In a landmark 2014 Supreme Court case, Hobby Lobby won the right to deny coverage on religious grounds for contraception and the morning-after pill in its employee health plan.
The company was also previously accused of homophobia.
Jacobin, a socialist-leaning magazine, said the Servant Foundation donated $50 million to Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization designated as an anti-LGBT hate group by the civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center.
Who do the ads annoy?
The website remarks: “We are not ‘left’ or ‘right’ or a political organization of any kind.”
And, while the left directs its anger towards the campaign for who are their promoters and the huge expense -argue that there are better ways to invest money-, the critics of the right point to the content itself of the ads.
In this sense, an advertisement that narrates the family history of Jesus Christ with images of Latin American families fleeing to the United States is especially striking.
The video concludes with the phrase: “Jesus was a refugee.”
Some interpret this and other announcements as a promotion of left-wing political ideas on immigration and diversity.
“Do you think open borders are biblical?” the Turning Point USA founder censured.
The number of Americans who identify as Christians has steadily declined in the last decades.
He Gets Us He did not directly respond to the criticism and instead highlighted the attention the campaign has managed to attract, citing two marketing companies that ranked their Super Bowl ads among the most talked about on the networks.
In addition to a wave of tweets about the ads, Google data showed a sharp increase in searches for the campaign during the game.
“The goal is that the two ads will not only inspire those skeptical of Christianity to ask questions and learn more about Jesus, but also encourage Christians to live their faith even better and exhibit the same love and forgiveness that Jesus modeled.” said the spokesman for He Gets UsJason Vanderground.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-64643250, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-02-14 18:20:06
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