The campaign – very expensive: one hundred million for a few seconds on the air – financed by a Missouri foundation: the Servant Christian Foundation. The purpose: to stem the loss of faithful
Jesus the rebel, Jesus who submits to the judgment of men, Jesus who socializes and knows how to have fun with friends. a black and white Jesus told in his most human aspects is the one that has been appearing for months in the campaign commercials He Gets Us (Jesus understands us, one of us) transmitted by the television networks of the main American cities: messages that have gone viral on YouTube and which will reach the largest audience in the United States by the end of next week: that of the Super Bowl.
Inserting one’s advertisement into a sports show seen by one hundred million Americans has unheard-of costs: the campaign funded by the Servant Christian Foundation, a Missouri foundation that has already spent $100 million, has booked two spots. And its promoters say they want to continue their effort to relaunch the Jesus brand in order to stem the loss of faithful – especially young people – of the churches: they plan to collect and invest in the next three years another billion dollars in what they describe without embarrassment as a real marketing campaign.
The Super Bowl multiplies the attention, but also the controversy for the use of tools created for commercial campaigns. And it fuels suspicions: the origin of the funding that supports this gigantic campaign is unknown.
Many churches consider marketing a forbidden word, to be hidden says Haley Veturis, digital communication expert and former social media manager of Saddleback Church (Lake Forest Evangelical Baptist mega-church which, with its eleven offices, is the one that has the most faithful in California), but what is evangelism if not marketing presented by another name?.
In the United States, as is known, the religion of a thousand congregations and televangelists is a media business on which sometimes impressive economic activities are built (just think of pastors like Joel Osteen who have transformed old twenty-thousand-seat basketball arenas into mega-churches ).
Furthermore, the tendency to use the most advanced media strategies in all sectors, including religion, is part of American pragmatism: the 1979 film Jesus made history, which was a flop in cinemas, but was then translated into two thousand languages and dialects (ending up in the Guinness Book of Records) and has been seen by billions of people around the world, since streaming digital to the squares of remote villages.
But there is much more, from the large billboards scattered along the American highways praising God (or accusing atheists, perhaps compared to Stalin) up to the phenomenon of Christian TikTok: kids who become influencers with their micro-sermons on Jesus (born-again Christian Kanye West also contributes with his JesusTok).
Obviously not everyone agrees: many Christians fear that, if the medium is the message according to Marshall McLuhan’s famous definition which has become dogma for communicators, the transformation of Jesus into a marketing object could lead the faithful to see their church as a consumer product.
The curators of the He Gets Us campaign (moreover entrusted to Haven, a Michigan marketing agency specializing precisely on Jesus) try to get away from the controversy: The churches are losing faithful, especially young people. We try to reach the millennials and Generation Z with messages suited to their sensitivities. Jesus did the same when he spoke of agriculture to farmers and fishing to fishermen.
But beyond the media techniques used, doubts remain about the origin of the initiative. The foundation that funds it says the money comes from wealthy Christian families who do not want to be identified.
The left, however, fears that, sooner or later, the initiative could turn into a form of recruitment of conservatives: whoever enters the campaign site is offered involvement in prayer groups or shared Bible reading plans; or by participating in Alpha communities, small groups that spread the faith of evangelicals. And many evangelical churches support right-wing candidates during election campaigns.
Moreover, David Green, the only one who has so far declared having contributed to the campaign on Jesus, is an ultra-conservative billionaire.
February 3, 2023 (change February 3, 2023 | 07:16)
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