He Gets Us — again

Thanks to Taylor Swift, Super Bowl 58 was the most-watched telecast ever. This is good news for advertisers like “He Gets Us,” who paid $17 million for two commercials totaling 75 seconds of airtime.

However, despite the record number of people exposed to these ads, feedback indicates audiences still don’t “get” He Gets Us. Conservatives on the right found the advertisements “too woke,” while progressives on the left thought the millions could have been spent in better ways, such as actually helping those in need.

These same criticisms were leveled at the 2023 ads. In response, He Gets Us plans to run more advertisements during the Paris Olympics, the NFL draft and the Republican and Democratic conventions. Either those behind the campaign don’t “get it” either and are rerunning a losing play, or something else is going on, a different goal, one they see and audiences don’t.

New year, new theme

If the 2023 commercials focused on who Jesus was, 2024’s are all about what Jesus did.

The first to air was a 60-second spot called “Foot Washing.” It’s a montage of photographs by British fine art photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten set to a cover of an ill-suited INXS song “Never Tear Us Apart.” Each photo is a staged scene of a foot washing between a pair of cultural adversaries.

Among the 12 vignettes is a police officer washing the feet of a young Black man, a priest washing the feet of a gay man, and an abortion protester outside a family planning clinic washing the feet of a pregnant woman. The ad concludes with the text, “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.”

“Many watching the Super Bowl had absolutely no frame of reference for foot washing as practiced in churches.”

Many watching the Super Bowl had absolutely no frame of reference for foot washing as practiced in churches. Social media was full of “Jesus had a foot fetish” jokes after the ad aired.

Terry Mattingly, known for his “On Religion” column, noted that washing feet was not actually a regular part of Jesus’ ministry. “He did that once. That’s not something he did with lepers. There’s no account of him washing the feet of Herod or Roman soldiers.” When Mattingly asked users on X how they would respond if someone approached them outside a family planning clinic to wash their feet, he found most “viewed it as a hostile act, which made me wonder if people had really thought through that particular image.”

John Lee, who worked on the ad, said the team wanted to create “a world where people who might not see eye to eye serve one another, love one another and wash each other’s feet.” But while the photographs are engaging, they don’t exactly project love. Fullerton-Batten, whose work sells for up to £15,000 a print, cites the artist Edward Hopper as a major influence on her work, and her images for “Foot Washing” skillfully capture his “alone in a crowd” aesthetic.

For a commercial that needed to convey empathy and emotional connection, she seems an odd choice. The models in the photographs appear so awkward and aloof some who saw the intricate ads thought they were generated by AI.

Who’s who?

Both conservatives and progressives assumed the one doing the washing was the “Christian,” and the person whose feet were being washed was the “sinner,” even though both figures in the photographs have bare feet, hinting the foot washing could be reciprocated. Yet the audience never sees this reversal. As a result, conservatives accused He Gets Us of condoning “sin” because the commercial did not demand repentance from the ad’s gay and pro-choice characters.

The Advocate’s senior editor, John Casey, found the advertisement insulting: “God loves the marginalized and doesn’t take away their dignity by making them feel like sinners in an ill-conceived foot-washing ad that makes a mockery out of Jesus’ humility.”

The second commercial, “Who Is My Neighbor?” is a 16-second montage of photographs by cinematographer Bret Curry accompanied by jarring music interspersed with the sound of breaking glass. Viewers are confronted by close ups of people they don’t “Notice,” “Value,” or “Welcome” according to the ad’s text.

This is not photojournalism, which was so effective in last year’s “Jesus Was a Refugee” video. Rather, it reads more like a privileged white man’s idea of who marginalized “neighbors” are based on the extras in Hollywood movies: “homeless Black woman,” “biker in bar,” “abused meth head.”  The models are caricatures, which defies the reality that those who are homeless or struggle with addiction often look just like everyone else.

Like “Foot Washing” before it, “Who Is My Neighbor?” objectifies the “other” in a way totally devoid of compassion or empathy.

“Our goal is to really show that Jesus loved and cared for anyone and everyone,” said Greg Miller, spokesperson for He Gets Us.

Again, who’s behind this?

While Jesus certainly did love and care for everyone, the same can’t be said of those behind the campaign. Last year’s ad campaign was funded by the Servant Foundation, a secretive donor-advised fund made up of conservative billionaires like Hobby Lobby co-founder David Green. The organization funnels millions to right-wing groups like Alliance Defending Freedom and the Conservative Partnership Institute, an incubator for the most extreme Christian nationalist groups, including The Center for Renewing America and Project 2025.

Perhaps to obscure such connections as well as more effectively focus the campaign, the Servant Foundation has turned He Gets Us over to a newly formed nonprofit, Come Near. This North Carolina-based organization is so new it hasn’t filed any taxes yet and only applied to trademark its name in January, barely a month before the Super Bowl. While Come Near claims to be “an independent organization with an independent board,” a closer look reveals it’s anything but independent.

Come Near’s board of directors is comprised of three men with close ties to one another and to the Servant Foundation. One member of the board is Mart Green, who is David Green’s oldest son. He formed the Illuminations Foundation to “irradicate Bible poverty” around the world. How the organization’s $23 million contribution to the National Christian Foundation, one of the biggest backers of the hate groups Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council, will accomplish that is unclear. Mart Green also is the ministry investment officer for Hobby Lobby. He oversees donations to Every Home for Christ, OneHope, the Museum of the Bible and Oral Roberts University. Hobby Lobby spent $70 million bailing out Oral Roberts University in 2008 and Mart served as chairman of the trustees before handing that position over to the son of Bob Hoskins, one of Come Near’s other board members.

Hoskins is a close friend of the Green family and the founder of OneHope, an evangelical ministry focused on sharing the gospel with children and youth around the world. Tangible resources like food and clean water “only provide temporary aid,” says the organization’s website. OneHope “devotes all its resources” to delivering God’s word to children. Incidentally, more than half those resources come directly from the Servant Foundation, which gave the charity almost $30 million in 2022.

The final board member of Come Near is Marwan Rifka, executive vice president of OneHope. Rifka was a successful businessman before joining OneHope. He also is the executive pastor at Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Va. Cornerstone is a conservative nondenominational megachurch whose senior pastor has spoken out against abortion, claimed anyone for “gay marriage is thumbing their nose at God,” and believes when it comes to immigration, “God is into borders” and “the only one not into borders is the Anti-Christ.”

In addition to the three-man board, Come Near is led by CEO Ken Calwell, formerly chief marketing officer at Compassion International. Like Hoskins, Calwell was struck by the “spiritual poverty” of the children served by Compassion International.

He came to the charity from the restaurant industry. (Americans have him to thank for Pizza Hut’s stuffed crust pizza). Calwell also consulted on last year’s He Gets Us campaign and was likely hired as CEO for Come Near because of his success reinvigorating CI’s digital marketing and increasing donations. Under his leadership, average giving rose by “significant double digits.” The Servant Foundation gave $354,829 to Compassion International in 2022.

Calwell already is busy touting hegetsus.com, the campaign’s digital presence, which has half a million visitors every month. “We’re a gateway, a connector, a hub to go and learn more through a (YouVersion) Bible plan, local church, or Alpha,” he said. Over the last year, the videos on hegetsus.com have been shared and viewed 3.7 billion times and 450,000 people have signed up for the Bible reading plan.

YouVersion is a product of the conservative evangelical Life.Church, one of the largest Protestant churches in the U.S. with 45 locations. Mart Green secured the rights to YouVersion for Life.Church, which received $8.5 million from the Servant Foundation in 2021. In addition to its He Gets Us plan, YouVersion’s other Bible reading plans include “Letter to the American Church” from Turning Point USA and devotionals like “Things to look for in a husband.”

Alpha USA is a charismatic evangelical organization that promotes this theology through small group Bible Studies. The Alpha USA videos feature conservative pastors, who are anti-LGBTQ and complementarian. In 2022, the Servant Foundation donated half a million dollars to Alpha USA, which also has close ties to evangelical Republican politicians like Glenn Younkin. The founding church in the UK, Holy Trinity Brompton, is currently leading the conservative faction at the center of the Church of England’s split over blessing same-sex couples.

Following an uproar over the Servant Foundation’s donations to anti-LGBTQ organizations, the He Gets Us website is now careful to say, “Jesus loves gay people and Jesus loves trans people. The LGBTQ+ community, like all people, is invited to explore the story of Jesus.”

Jesus does love gay and trans people. The true feelings of He Gets Us seem much less clear. Last year, hegetsus.com included another statement saying it and all its partner churches affirmed the evangelical Luasanne Covenant as “reflective of the spirit and intent of this movement.” Sometime in the intervening year, they removed this post from the website once people began looking into the Lausanne Movement and discovered its warning against “disordered sexuality,” including premarital sex and homosexuality. In 2022, the Servant Foundation gave the Lausanne Movement almost $30,000.

Why does all this matter?

We cannot help but wonder why this small circle of uber-rich conservatives, who keep passing board seats and wads of cash to each other, do not seem overly concerned that ads costing millions of dollars are not playing well with conservative Christians (or progressive Christians for that matter). It’s possible that, within their uber-affluent circle, $17 million is little more than petty cash. It also could be that those footing the bill for Jesus’ foot washing promo have other motives.

In 2023, He Gets Us referred individuals who reached out to hegetsus.com looking for prayer to partnering churches in their communities through a platform devised by Gloo, a digital communications organization. That initiative is currently on hold. Instead, seekers are directed toward local Alpha groups. However, Alpha USA, just like Compassion International, YouVersion, OneHope, the Laussane Movement, and He Gets Us, still partners with Gloo, so the personal information of these seekers is potentially still circulating in the same data pool. And Gloo has ties to right-wing Republican backers desperate for data they can use to target would-be voters.

Across the political spectrum, nearly half of all Americans believe Christianity should influence the nation’s public policy and identity. And, unlike voters on the extreme right and left who panned the He Gets Us ads, moderates have had a more positive response to “can’t we all just get along?” message. These are the voters that are persuadable.

“If exposed to consistent and attractive messaging, these moderate or independent voters might only need a nudge to support a Christian nationalist agenda if it comes in an appealing package.”

If exposed to consistent and attractive messaging, these moderate or independent voters might only need a nudge to support a Christian nationalist agenda if it comes in an appealing package. Herein may lie part of the motivation behind the He Gets Us ads. Those who respond positively to ads and visit the He Gets Us website then have their digital information captured by Gloo and they are directed to churches or Alpha groups whose programs are infused with Christian nationalism.

The ads also benefit the millionaires and billionaires behind them. Besides lacking empathy and failing to create any sense of intimacy among the pictured participants, the 2024 He Gets Us ads reduce fundamental matters of justice and human dignity, such as gender identity, racism or personal decisions about medical care, to surface level “differences” between “ideological others” as described on hegetsus.com.

In so doing, the ads minimize the impact these matters have on real people in real life. To imply that racism is just a matter of a police officer not “seeing eye to eye” with a young Black man is patronizing and dismissive of a systemic injustice that destroys lives.

In this way, the ads are actually divisive.

“The night before he died, Jesus washed the feet of his friends and enemies,” explains the website. He Gets Us intended for the commercials to symbolize “love and unity” among “enemies.” Yet rather than bridging divides, “Foot Washing,” reenforces what Aja Romano at Vox called “an uncomfortable ‘us/them’ dynamic between the foot-washer and the washee.” By highlighting the animosity between these pairs, the He Gets Us ads are diverting attention away from the entities working in the background to actively stoke or passively propagate these divisions — entities funded by the Servant Foundation and other Christian nationalists.

When Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, it wasn’t about sowing division. It was a radical act of solidarity with the gospel. The Servant Foundation can try to hide their involvement with a new organization, a new name and a few new ads, but with the same old network of Christian nationalists in charge, it’s obvious they still don’t “get” Jesus.

 

Kristen Thomason is a freelance writer with a background in media studies and production. She has worked with national and international religious organizations and for public television. Currently based in Scotland, she has organized worship arts at churches in Metro D.C. and Toronto. In addition to writing for Baptist News Global, Kristen blogs on matters of faith and social justice at viaexmachina.com.

 

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