Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said Sunday she did not believe Jesus would support pro-Christian Super Bowl commercials because they make fascism “look benign.”
The Christian group “He Gets Us” spent some $20 million on two advertisements that aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl portraying Jesus Christ as loving “the people we hate.”
“Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.
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
One of the ads shows scene after scene of angry people in each other’s faces and ends with the caption “Jesus loved the people we hate. He gets us. All of us.”
Another of the commercials takes the opposite approach, with touching scenes of small children helping one another. This ad bears the message: “Jesus didn’t want us to act like adults. He gets us. All of us.”
It is unclear where Ms. Ocasio-Cortez sees the hidden “fascism” lurking behind these ads, designed to help overcome divisions and hatred in the name of Jesus.
Perhaps she takes issue with the fact that the advertising campaign was funded in part by the family behind Hobby Lobby, as well as Christian groups and other anonymous donors. According to CNN, the ad campaign “has connections to anti-LGBT and anti-abortion laws” because The Servant Foundation that oversees the campaign “has donated tens of millions to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group.”
The two Super Bowl ads were meant to focus on “the behavior Jesus modeled in relationship and conflict,” He Gets Us spokesman Jason Vanderground told Catholic News Agency (CNA).
“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,” Vanderground said.
According to the He Gets Us website, the ad campaign aims at helping people “understand the authentic Jesus as he’s depicted in the Bible — the Jesus of radical forgiveness, compassion, and love.”
The two ads were aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles. The Chiefs ultimately won the match 38-35 after a game-winning field goal by Harrison Butker.