Jesus Christ was not a hater, but he believed in Jewish moral strictures and the idea of sin. He also believed in the power of redemption, something entirely different from embracing Marxist social justice concepts that demand aborting children, bowing before hostile faiths, or embracing homosexuality, among other things. Nevertheless, according to a very well-funded ad campaign that bought a video during the Super Bowl, those are exactly the precepts Jesus advanced. This is part of an increasingly visible campaign to reframe Jesus as a leftist and impose a new form of Christian supremacism on America.
I first took note of this movement more than a decade ago. In 2011, The Guardian published an essay in which the writer insisted that new evidence revealed that
Jesus Christ was unambiguously and openly gay. He and his disciples formed a same-sex coterie, bound by feelings of love and mutual support. There are recorded instances of same-sex activity – the "beloved disciple" plays a significant role – and there is affirmation of the joys of friendship and of living and loving together.
I bet you didn’t learn that in Sunday school.
In 2015, a blogger insisted, “Sorry, right-wing ‘Christians’: Jesus Christ is a liberal and these 20 quotes prove it.” She then cherry-picked her way through the gospels to prove that Jesus was completely non-judgmental, supported gay marriage and abortion, opposed all wars, wanted government welfare and socialized medicine, hated capitalism, opposed all government legislation, and wanted higher taxes.
Image: Things Jesus never said meme. Creator unknown
What she said was a far cry from the man who, although sparing the adultress from the stoning that Jewish law called for, nevertheless told the woman “sin no more”—a meaningless instruction if he did not believe in sin or judgment. Jesus also felt that good acts were individual requirements that could not be foisted onto the government, for he said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Nor was Jesus taking a stand against capitalism when he threw the money changers out of the temple. Instead, he was opposed to Mammon despoiling “my Father’s house,” another indication that he sought to keep the spiritual and moral plane separate from the world of politics and commerce. One can also argue that there’s no greater embrace of capitalism than the Parable of the Talents. I could go on and, in fact, did so here.
In 2016, Nicholas Kristoff, from his bully pulpit at the New York Times, preached to the leftist choir that Jesus would be a Democrat, something that John Ellis swiftly debunked. By 2018, Tat-Siong Benny Liew, a heavily credentialed “New Testament scholar” at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, was arguing that Christ was actually a gay pederast who was also a “drag king” or even a trans man.
All of the above, of course, are examples of leftists preaching to the choir. Over the last few years, though, something new has happened: We’re beginning to see very well-funded advertising campaigns aimed at convincing ordinary people that Jesus and God are woke social justice activists.
Just last year, a group called Alliance for Full Acceptance (“AFFA”) bought seven billboards on Interstate 26 in Charleston, the main artery in that region. One said, “God loves trans kids,” while the other said, “God loves LGBTQ+ people.”
The implication wasn’t that God hated the sin but loved the sinner. Instead, ordinary people would understand that to mean that God had no trouble with the sin. Indeed, AFFA’s executive director explained, “People who use religion to excuse their bigotry and hate hurt our children and damage our communities.” The problem isn’t sin; it’s the people who dare to notice it.
All of the above leads me to the much-talked-about “He Gets Us” Super Bowl ad. That ad is the biggest splash (to date) of “a multi-year, multi-million dollar effort that kicked off in March 2022 and will run through 2025,” according to an ad executive behind the He Gets Us promotion. The same executive explained that the ads are intended to “generate support and opportunities to share the confounding love of the Jesus of the Bible.”
If you watched the ad, you saw obviously AI-generated images of people washing other people’s feet:
Then, we’re told, “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet. He gets us. All of us.”
The message is clear: If you’re a cop, a blonde, a white person, a pro-life activist, an opponent of illegal immigration, someone working to produce the hydrocarbons that make the world work, a non-Muslim, or someone who believes homosexuality should not be celebrated, you are a hater, and you need to humble yourself before minorities, illegal aliens, weird people, abortionists, Muslims, and homosexuals.
In other words, hidden behind the anti-hate message is…a whole lot of hate.
What’s happening here is an attempted religious revival that rewrites scripture, and that intends to use the protections of the First Amendment to create a new American theocracy. This one, though, won’t be informed by the actual Bible. Instead, it will be in a Marxist mold with a light Christian gloss.