“He gets us”: Fascism with a Happy Face?

If you watched the Super Bowl on Sunday — and there’s really no need to raise your hand or to identify yourself; you know who you are — you very likely saw one or two of the Christian ads that ran during the game from the “He gets us” campaign.  The potential audience for the ads was, I’m told, more than one hundred million people.

Important as it is, and as worthy of discussion as it is, I’m not interested here in the appropriateness or inappropriateness of spending twenty million dollars for those ninety seconds of total ad time, nor in whether spending a projected billion dollars on the overall three-year ad campaign is a proper use of funds that might otherwise have been used for the relief of poverty or, right now, to help the victims of the recent terrible earthquake in Türkiye.

I understand.  Such dilemmas are always going to be with us, pending the Second Coming.  In a world where many are starving and in which children are trafficked as sex slaves, can money justifiably go to such an ad campaign?  Or, as critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sometimes like to demand, wouldn’t funds for proselytizing missionaries or for temples be better spent on the poor?  Wouldn’t money paid for public art be better employed in more soup kitchens?  In such a world, should any money at all go to the local ballet company or art museum?  Should people spend time on degrees in eighteenth-century British poetry while others can’t make ends meet?  Until hunger is eradicated, can you really justify your new sofa or your upgraded cellphone or your more powerful new computer or your meal out at a nice restaurant?  How much is enough?  How much is too much?  Where should the line be drawn?

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, the village of Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. They gave a supper for him there, and Martha waited on the party while Lazarus took his place at table with Jesus. Then Mary took a whole pound of very expensive perfume and anointed Jesus’ feet and then wiped them with her hair. The entire house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot (the man who was going to betray Jesus), burst out, “Why on earth wasn’t this perfume sold? It’s worth thirty pounds, which could have been given to the poor!”  (John 12:1-5, J. B. Phillips translation)

This is, actually, an extraordinarily difficult question.  It’s one that merits continual reflection.  But I bracket it right now.  I have another question in mind, a far easier one.

The “He gets us” ad campaign has drawn a great deal of attention, much of it negative.  My favorite comment, among those that I’ve seen thus far, comes from the always-entertaining Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  This is what she said.  This is what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said:

“Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.”

I have now, I think, watched all of the ads in the “He gets us” campaign.  If I had known nothing of those sponsoring them but had been obliged to guess, I would have pegged them as coming from a politically “progressive” group of Christians.  Their messages emphasize inclusion and caring and peace, which, if anything, tend to be favorite themes (if not always favored practices) of the cultural/political Left. and which are (allegedly) alien to the cultural/political Right.  The ads dwell, affirmatively, on refugees and teenage mothers and the like.

I cannot, for the life of me, see anything “fascist” about them.  And neither, I was pleased to see just this morning, can the British-born conservative political commentator Charles C. W. Cooke (who has, by the way, repeatedly identified himself as an atheist or agnostic):  “Apparently ‘Love Your Enemies’ Is Now ‘Fascism’.”

Now, it’s evidently true, as some news outlets have informed us, that there are people among the ad campaign’s backers who have opposed abortion and same-sex marriage.  There are people among its backers who are affiliated with theologically and socially conservative churches.  Heck, even David Green, the co-founder with Hobby Lobby is involved.  (Shudder!)  As an article in the Deseret News observes, “Religious leaders, LGBTQ rights activists and even some politicians have questioned the motives of the “He Gets Us” movement in recent weeks.”

But I don’t quite see why the identity or the presumed motives of some of the ad campaign’s backers are relevant.  After all, so far as I can tell, none of the ads says anything at all about gay marriage or homosexuality.  None of them mentions abortion.  None of them refers to any specific sect or denomination of Christianity.  The people behind the campaign expressly set out their “agenda” here,  And it’s not only non-political, it’s anti-political.  I encourage you to read it.  I’m happy, in fact — although nobody has bidden me to do so — to endorse it.

If a devoted follower of Bernie Sanders makes a donation to the local dog pound, does that make the dog pound “democratic socialist”?  If somebody who endorsed Rick DeSantis for the governorship of Florida donates to a symphony orchestra, is he thereby attempting to spread his version of Republican politics via Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (“Resurrection”)?  It makes no difference, so far as I can see, whether the backers of the “He gets us” campaign are Protestant or Catholic, Greek Orthodox or Quaker, liberal or socialist or conservative or libertarian.  There isn’t the slightest specific whiff of any of those religious traditions or political movements in the ads.  Neither is there any specific theology, nor any controversial assertions about atonement or resurrection or virgin birth.  Instead, their message is an invitation to the most basic, simple Christianity, with an emphasis on Christ-like behavior and on discipled attitudes toward those around us.

I actually find the ads rather moving, and I encourage you to take a look at them.  At least at some of them.  They are available here:  https://hegetsus.com/en  A Spanish version is also available, here.