Between the ubiquitous Super Bowl ads for everything from Dunkin’ to McDonald's and M&M’s, there were two commercials with a significantly more cloying message—a message that allegedly promotes Jesus and claims to be “committed to being scripturally accurate.”
The “He Gets Us” ads first ran during the NFL’s Conference Championships, causing people to wonder what was happening and who was behind them. Then two more ads, reportedly costing about $20 million, ran again during the big game Sunday night. Now we know who’s behind them.
The Washington Post reports that the spots are part of a campaign by the nonprofit The Servant Foundation, also known by the name of its business entity, Signatry.
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With titles such as “Be Childlike,” “Love Your Enemies,” and “AI Love,” the ads are elegantly produced with moving music and strong imagery. The problem is, The Servant Foundation has given billions to anti-abortion and uber-conservative causes.
Ed Stetzer, a prominent evangelical Christian who advises the campaign, told the Post that, although he understood the worry people might have about where the money earned by the ads is going, “if millions of people are touched and maybe even impacted by this and become more like Christ… there’s actually a lot of resources that will flow from their changed hearts.” Stetzer added, “I think it would be successful if millions of people left with a question about who Jesus is, how to learn more.”
Jason Vanderground, a spokesperson for “He Gets Us” and president of creative marketing firm HAVEN, told CNN that The Servant Foundation uses a fund that “unites donors to provide pooled support for organizations while ensuring the organizations can operate without donors impacting specific messages.”
“Funding for the campaign comes from a diverse group of individuals and entities with a common goal of sharing Jesus’ story authentically,” he alleges.
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Donors to the nonprofit can remain anonymous, but Hobby Lobby co-founder David Green has been open about his support, telling right-wing talk show host Glenn Beck last November that his family was helping fund the ads.
“You’re going to see it at the Super Bowl—‘He gets Us,’” Green said. “We are wanting to say—we being a lot of people—that he gets us. He understands us. He loves who we hate. I think we have to let the public know and create a movement.”
According to research by Jacobin obtained by CNN, The Servant Group Foundation donated tens of millions to the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion legal group currently embroiled in a legal battle seeking to ban abortion medication nationwide.
Labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, ADF helped to write the Mississippi law at the center of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which the Supreme Court used to overturn Roe v. Wade. Now, the group is using a 150-year-old anti-obscenity law titled the Comstock Act in order to argue for a total ban on the abortion medicine mifepristone and any other medication or device used to provide an abortion through the mail.
In 2014, Hobby Lobby famously fought and won in court the right of for-profit corporations and religiously affiliated nonprofits to use their religious beliefs as protected under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA). This gave the multibillion-dollar company the right to restrict its 43,000+ employees' access to birth control.
The fact that this organization would run these ads during one of the most-watched events on television—to the tune of $20 million—and then claim they had anything to do with Jesus is beyond hypocritical.
Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.”
