MSNBC's Joy Reid Is Not Happy About the Jesus Super Bowl Commercials
Joy Reid knows that Jesus would never take religion to the people and roundly condemned Super Bowl ads that delivered a Christian message to millions of viewers on Sunday.
On Monday night, Reid used part of her “The ReidOut” show on MSNBC to attack the ads on the grounds that their sponsors were on the wrong side of the political fence and that the ads did not belong on the air.
In this, Reid echoed a snarky comment from Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that claimed the goal of the ads was “to make fascism look benign.”
Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 13, 2023
The two ads that drew attacks were part of the Servant Foundation’s “He Gets Us” campaign, according to Fox News.
The 30-second advertisement featured the song “If I Could See The World (Through The Eyes Of A Child)” by Patsy Cline and called for Americans to be “child-like” in reference to Jesus’ command that Christians should have the faith of a child in Matthew 18:3, while the 60-second commercial emphasized a need to love our enemies. The longer ad included the message: “Jesus loved the people we hate.”
The most powerful Super Bowl commercial.
It caught me off guard.
I wasn’t expecting it to be what it ended up being.
Powerful!#HeGetsUs pic.twitter.com/dAnjmiLbfH
— Patrick Bet-David (@patrickbetdavid) February 13, 2023
For Reid, people she hates were the ones bringing the message of God to the people.
“What those ads didn’t tell you is who was behind the ‘He Gets Us’ campaign. It’s part of a $100 million campaign to help promote Christianity and build the brand of Jesus, according to its backers,” she said.
Although a Pew Research Center study said Christianity is on track to become a minority religion in America by 2045, Reid said there is no reason for advertising that focuses on Jesus “because his brand has really just never been built before.”
Reid than attacked Hobby Lobby founder David Green, who supported the ad campaign, calling him a funder of “right-wing religious causes.”
She said the group supporting the ads has to be suspect because it does not kowtow to her beliefs on abortion.
The Servant Foundation “donated more than $50 million to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a group that has led fights against abortion,” she said.
After all, she reasoned, the Alliance Defending Freedom had to be wrong because it “drafted the Mississippi law at the heart of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade” and is “behind a Texas lawsuit seeking to reverse the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill.”
“In other words, it’s not as apolitical as ‘He Gets Us’ claims,” she said.
Once she was done trashing the backers of the ads, she went after their purpose.
“I think it is fair to say Jesus Christ wouldn’t spend millions of dollars on television ads promoting his image,” she said.
Then came a mocking close.
“Next year, if His brand is sufficiently promoted, maybe He can find a way to improve the officiating,“ Reid closed with a chuckle at her own wit.
Jason Vanderground, spokesman for “He Gets Us,” said that the ads were designed to convey Jesus’ behavior in both relationships and conflicts as a model for our own, according to Yahoo.
“Instead of responding to divisiveness in anger or avoiding conflict altogether, Jesus demonstrated how we can and should show confounding love and respect to one another,” Vandergound said.
“The goal is that the two commercials will not only inspire those who may be skeptical of Christianity to ask questions and learn more about Jesus, but also encourage Christians to live out their faith even better and exhibit the same confounding love and forgiveness Jesus modeled.”
“Together, these spots connect the dots on how we can respond better in all circumstances with love and understanding. “
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