Hawking religion on TV
You may have thought that the Super Bowl was about football, or maybe Taylor Swift, or maybe even those hyper-expensive ads hawking chips and beer.
Nope. It’s really about those hyper-expensive ads hawking a different kind of religion, not the religion of consumerism but the real thing – you know, real religion that’s focused on your relationship to God and others.
Super Bowl commercials cost about $7 million for 30 seconds. For that price, you get exposure to millions of TV viewers – this year a record 123.4 million viewers, by one count.
Surveys show that for a mere $230,000 per second, plus production costs, these commercials can provide valuable exposure for new products, though in general they do a pretty poor job of moving product.
Obviously some religious organizations are willing to cough up huge bucks for such exposure, whatever result they expect.
Five religious commercials appeared during Super Bowl LVIII. One generated a lot of controversy. I’ll mention it last.
Strangely enough, to my mind anyway, the most compelling message may have been the 60-second pitch for the Church of Scientology. It starts with the dubious claim, “Every day millions of people ask, ‘What is scientology?’ ”
Millions? Really? At least the claim establishes the theme for the commercial. It never really says what Scientology is, of course. Rather, it encourages people to “Come take a look” and “Decide for yourself.”
Christian churches might do well to emulate such a low-key, “Our doors are open to all” approach, though it could be argued that not a lot of people are listening anymore.
Also effective was the 30-second pitch for Hallow, a Roman Catholic prayer app. “Join us for prayer this Lent,” movie star Mark Wahlberg urges. Of all the celebrity pitches during Super Bowl commercials, this one seemed the most personal and authentic.
Curiously, another personal and authentic message seemed to fall flat. This was the brief anti-hate ad featuring Clarence Jones, an associate of Martin Luther King Jr. “Sometimes I imagine what I would write today for my dear friend, Martin,” Jones says.
To us, he says, “All hate thrives on one thing: silence.” He concludes: “When we stand up to silence, we stand up to all hate.”
A strong message, but somehow it didn’t connect with me. Maybe just me?
Two other messages were part of the “He Gets Us” campaign supported, in part, by the founders of the Hobby Lobby chain.
The ad in the second quarter, lasting only 15 seconds, asks, “Who is my neighbor?” After a series of photos of people who mostly look on the down and out, it says, “The one you don’t notice, the one you don’t value, the one you don’t welcome.”
Those are our neighbors! Great message! Though maybe it’s so short and punchy it gets lost in all the ad clutter.
A similar message gets blurred in the first-quarter “He Gets Us” ad, a 60-second look at foot washing.
Not surprisingly, some observers were simply baffled by this, a few even wondering if it involves a foot fetish. Others railed at the “woke” nature of it all and claimed satanic influence. Both responses show how ignorant of Christian basics many people are.
The ad is intended to be provocative. It hits on many of our hot button issues, without apology. It pairs apparently unlikely people: a cop washing the feet of a Black youth, for example, or an anti-abortion protester washing the feet of a pregnant woman about to enter an abortion clinic.
It concludes: “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.”
The stated goal of the “He Gets Us” campaign is "sharing the life and love of Jesus in thought-provoking new ways." Maybe the message would be better received if some of the sponsors were not so vocal in their opposition to birth control, abortion, or the rights of LGBTQ people, among other things.
And maybe the millions of dollars somebody paid for these ads might be better spent actually working in the fields among those unnoticed, unvalued, unwelcome folk whom Jesus wants us to care about.
But, hey, at least somebody tried to slip in a little religion of some kind in a very long evening otherwise devoted to selling the excesses of pop culture and mindless chatter from football commentators.