If the HeGetsUs Super Bowl ad had been a table, Jesus would have flipped it over.

The major funder of the HeGetsUs campaign, David Green, is one of the major funders of the Christian nationalist movement here in the United States. His funding of this campaign is not simply some sacrificial devotional spending on Jesus. It is a well-funded propaganda campaign by someone who believes the following:

“If there’s any hope for our government, it will be via Christians declaring that our foundation is in going to God’s Word to define our laws. This is how we began as a nation and, if we hope to once again be a ‘city on a hill,’ it’s what we must return to.”

David Green, 2013 in Charisma Magazine

Green is against LGBTQ2S+ rights, against reproductive freedom, against universal healthcare, against regulations for the protection of the environment, against any action to address the climate crisis, supportive of measures that will have catastrophic implications for the poor and most vulnerable in our society, and supportive of autocratic Christian nationalist politicians. I get that the messages thus far in the HeGetsUs campaign are relatively progressive sounding, but just take a moment to ask yourself why someone with the above agenda plans on spending tens of millions of dollars on this campaign.

A multi-million dollar propaganda campaign about Jesus funded by one of the most significant supporters and funders of Christian nationalism should make alarms go off for anyone who is concerned about the spread of Christian nationalism and other forms of religious nationalism in the United States and around the world.

David Green is from my home state of Oklahoma, and if you want to see an example of what happens to a state that succumbs to the propaganda of Christian nationalism that Green promotes, I invite you to take a close look at Oklahoma and see how pathetic we have become in the areas of education, healthcare, rights of persons who are LGBTQ2S+, reproductive freedom, political corruption, and the environment. There are real, extremely negative, and sometimes deadly consequences of going down the Christian nationalist path that so many in Oklahoma, at Green’s well-funded urging, have chosen.

The HeGetsUs campaign comes off as a form of “Jesuswashing” by a billionaire who doesn’t get us spending tens of millions of dollars telling us Jesus gets us while also spending millions of dollars to elect politicians that embrace values and implement laws and practices that are antithetical to the messages being conveyed in the campaign.

And let’s not only look at who is funding the HeGetsUs campaign. Let’s look at why it was decided that the campaign should take millions of dollars from someone who is a Christian nationalist and who has already spent millions of dollars on causes that are extremely detrimental to people and the planet. Let’s also look at the organization that is managing the funding of the campaign and ask what the Servant Foundation is (not to be confused in any way with Church of the Servant’s Foundation which goes by the same name); and let’s ask what Signatry is, the entity that manages the Servant Foundation money; and let’s ask why the campaign has chosen these entities that do not have to identify their donors to fund this campaign.

Let’s take some time to look at Signatry and the fact that records show they have funded anti-LGBTQ2S+ hate groups, creation museums, abortion ban campaigns, and anti-Islam campaigns. Why would HeGetsUs use such an organization to manage the funds for a campaign about Jesus?

Why would the campaign use Bill McKendry to produce these ads, a producer who has worked on campaigns for Focus on the Family and Alliance Defending Freedom, and let’s ask what Focus on the Family and Alliance Defending Freedom stand for.

It is not only about who is funding the campaign but also about the decisions of the managers of the campaign to align themselves behind the scenes with organizations and persons who have proven to have a Christian nationalist agenda.

Given the persons funding, managing, and producing the HeGetsUs campaign, I think that more likely than not we are witnessing the wolf of Christian nationalism disguised in what appears on the surface to be sheep’s, or in this case, Jesus’ clothing, but it is not really Jesus underneath it all.