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Notes -
He Gets Us
There has been great controversy over a recent Christian ad that played during the Super Bowl.
“He gets us,” the ad in question, and the organization that created it, is a subsidiary of the ‘The Signatry,’ a fund that aims to spread biblical teachings around the planet, which is also a business alias by another organization called “The Servant foundation.” It is one of the largest Christian Grant foundations in the world, with donations from many of the top churches in the country as well as billionaires such as David Green, the owner of hobby lobby. It has pledged over half a billion dollars to the spread of their message on a global scale, with a large portion going to America exclusively.
This has caused habitual controversy within secular circles among those blue tribe adjacent, with many of their reactions being familiar to those already within religious denominations. What is ironic, however, is that these ad campaigns were modeled in a way that was specifically tailored to the leftist worldview by very modern sects of Christianity. The campaign focused on a perception of Jesus with traits that are explicitly progressive. Examine some of the perspectives given by the organization
-Jesus was a refugee and an Immigrant
-Jesus was an ‘influencer’ who got ‘cancelled’ after standing up for something he believed in
-Jesus was wrongly judged
-Jesus had to control his outrage too
Take a look for yourself at some of the ads in question.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=0z0J-2P8a3s&ab_channel=HeGetsUs
https://youtube.com/watch?v=v1IJFJwexus&ab_channel=HeGetsUs
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QEEq5VTfmic&ab_channel=HeGetsUs
Since I assume most members of this forum are atheists, most would not look any deeper into the motivations or presentation of this ad campaign with any closer analysis than they would any other form of Christian evangelism. But the point of my post is not to examine this ad campaign, but to extrapolate on a current trend of modern Christianity that is exemplified within it.
To say that the ad campaign was a complete failure is an understatement. It resonated with very few non-religious people, failed spectacularly with leftists in general, and came with the same amount of pushback that any other Christian sentiments in popular media would receive.
AOC claimed that the ads “Makes fascism look benign.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/aoc-jesus-ad-fascism-definition-superbowl-he-gets-us-b2281862.html
For full disclosure, I am a Christian who converted as an adult, and have perspectives of both religious and non-religious worldviews. There is a succinct lack of understanding of the goings on in the Christian community by non-religious people and I wish to shed a light on some of the current underpinnings.
Unbeknownst to many outside the church, Christians are dealing with a type of heretical civil conflict within their own faith. ‘Progressive Christianity’ has become commonplace in most urban centers around NA, and it is exactly as it sounds. They usually set up their own churches so they may freely practice their beliefs. Usually, they attract members with a more serious Christian appearance and then slowly ingratiate their own ideology as time goes by. They are a denomination that has made multiple doctrinal changes that are completely against more traditional Christianity.
They do not accept the divinity of Jesus. While traditional Christians believe Jesus to be the literal incarnation of God that walked the earth, progressive Christians merely believe that Jesus was a man who set a good moral example. This also implies that they deny the literal resurrection of Jesus. While these beliefs are not universal, the importance of faith in general is placed very low on the totem pole of progressive Christianity. This turns their interpretation of salvation into human self-actualization. Along with this, there comes with it a denial of the bible as ultimate authority. They believe the bible only goes so far as to give guidelines, but ultimately puts the bible secondary if it contradicts modern sensibilities.
Due to the first point, this lack of belief in the Divinity of Jesus and with the resurrection turns something that was once about salvation into simple moralism. This allows the Christian doctrine to be molded into something that fits more contemporary progressive worldviews, and gives them authority to shame and accuse other churches or Christians of not following 'correct' christian doctrine.
They embrace homosexuality. Gay people can become pastors and other authoritative figures within their churches. While traditional Christianity considers homosexuality a sin, progressive Christian will spout Jesus’ example of love and kindness to trump any biblical teachings that come from other writers in the New Testament. This allows them to still maintain some moral high ground that they accuse other churches and Christians of "unchristian like behavior" and "Not true Christians."
These are the churches that are heavily advertised on Tik-Tok and other social media websites and are extremely popular in that niche. The reality of the churches, however, is vastly different. I have been to many of these churches out of sheer curiosity, and I have never seen any of them survive for any significant period of time. The numbers they draw will repeatedly dwindle, as many of the congregation begin to understand the perspectives being espoused, and will leave the church for a more traditional one. I have many in my Church who are refugees from progressive churches and most of the stories are very similar. Over time their numbers will progressively dwindle, until they cannot afford to stay open and have no congregation. People who are not religious are not interested in becoming religious for simple political motivations, and people who are religious are interested in the legitimate spiritual traditions of the faith, not materialist interpretations of said traditions. Leftists who already hate Christianity are not going to be convinced by a softer form of it. Likewise, people who are already Christians are not going to be effected by people who don't even really believe in the core tenets of Christianity to begin with.
Everyone is familiar with the trend of progressive ideologues infiltrating certain niches and groups and slowly turning them into spokesman of their causes. Regardless of your views of religion or Christianity, it is an extremely durable belief system. It has survived for thousands of years, multiple empires, countless plagues, and disasters, and I don’t think far leftist types yet have an understanding of why that is. Christians don’t go to church or believe out of a hatred or dislike of Homosexuals. Christianity promises eternal life and spiritual salvation for just the simple belief in its figurehead. Progressive Christianity will always fail, because in order to justify their own inclusion of contemporary social beliefs they must subtract the very things about the philosophical aspects of Christianity that make it appealing in the first place.
Wait, what? That is literally the one thing you have to believe in to be a Christian. Even a doctrine as foundational as the Trinity has had sects who don't believe in it. But if you deny the divinity of Jesus, you can't be a Christian, full stop. In any other context if someone said "hey there's a group of Christians who deny the divinity of Jesus" I would assume they were joking, but I imagine you are not joking about this. I seriously do not understand what goes through people's brains to want to identify as something they disagree with so fundamentally.
As an ex-Christian I find this view somewhat flawed. To me Christianity and religion in general are things that people do. If Christians start disbelieving in Jesus's divinity that seems totally fine from an outsiders perspective. Lot's of tiny Muslim sects in the Middle East believe in later prophets after Mohammed and other things an orthodox Muslim would decry. The most fundamentalist Muslims consider almost all practicing Muslims today kafirs due to the practices they follow.
I don't think God came on down from heaven and created some platonic definition of Christianity. I think it has changed a lot since it was founded and the early Christians would likely consider your practices far outside the acceptable range and you a non-Christian. I don't really care and trying to push this sectarian line as if it was some kind of obvious ground truth that can't be argued with is silly from an outsiders prospective.
Though the inner Catholic in me agrees with you, just another reason why I can't ever consider myself a Christian again.
The problem with your argument is that denying the divinity of Jesus goes way far beyond the other examples you mentioned. There are a lot of dogmas in Christianity that you could deny and be super heretical: the Trinity, that Jesus was legitimately human, and so on. The Muslim example, or the early Christian practices differing from today, are in that ballpark. Orthodox Christians (small-o, not the denomination) would be aghast at a lot of things and say "this is heresy and you are bad", but at least those people would still be nominally Christian.
Denying the divinity of Jesus is in a whole other ballpark. That's the one thing Christianity is about at its core. The entire point of the faith, in every denomination, is "Jesus is God, and so we worship him". That's the fundamental split with Judaism (and with Islam too for that matter). If you don't agree on that, then you are not Christian and there's no two ways about it.
And, yet it moves. And, yet we are arguing about Christian denominations that don't believe in this immutable fact.
Well no, it doesn't. That's kind of the point. A person can call themselves anything they want, but that doesn't make it so. These people calling themselves Christian is kind of like me calling my fat ass athletic. It's certainly something nobody can stop me from doing, but it doesn't somehow make it true.
I don't accept the ground premises you do physical and metaphysical. If I accepted your premises I would agree with your definition of Christianity and agree these people were not Christian. The epistemological and inferential differences between us are to great for us to really resolve this debate. I am just giving my materialist, sociological view on the issue. You are free, from your devote Christian view, to believe the Progressive Churches to not be real Christians, but this debate can't be resolved by appealing to these definitions that rest on assumptions I don't agree with, you have to defeat the assumptions first.
That some Christians consider others not really Christians is completely meaningless to my epistemology of religion.
I don't know why you're claiming materialistic worldview as a reason why we can't agree. What we are talking about is a materialistic matter. One need not believe in the divinity of Jesus (or even that such a man existed at all) in order to evaluate whether or not the church teaches that it's true. That is a materialistic matter, not a spiritual one. Similarly, I don't need to believe in the tenets of Hinduism to say whether or not they teach that reincarnation is real.
Ultimately it sounds to me like you just don't care about the issue of what the church teaches, which is fine. But that doesn't mean we can't resolve the debate because I believe in spiritual things and you don't. It means we can't resolve the debate because you don't really care to hammer out what the church teaches.
Which church is that again? The multitude of them disagree heavily, including very conservative ones considering other conservative denominations as hellbound. For example, a lot of the people in this thread arguing against these progressive churches being a type of Christian appear to be Catholics. The "trad" evangelical church I went to growing up taught that Roman Catholics are not Christians, they practice a form of Roman pagan polytheism and constantly demonstrate their break from monotheism by:
- Groveling before graven images and idols.
Use of magic talismans like rosary beads and "holy" water, belief in sacred relics and those having magical powers.
Belief in literal cannibalism in the form of transubstantiation.
Worshipping humans and pagan deities with the serial numbers filed off labeled "saints.
Treating Mary like a goddess and often absorbing Mesoamerican pagan deities renamed Mary through all the "Virgin of [location] stuff.
Belief in spells resolving sins in the form of confession and stuff like reciting Hail Mary's rather than faith alone, and the historic practice of indulgences.
The most powerful Catholic religious leader and most powerful Roman pagan religious leader both sharing the title Pontifex Maximus and being based in Rome.
Catholicism's historic hostility to making the Bible accessible to normal people was also interpretated as being a move by this pagan religion to keep people from reading the Bible and noticing discrepancies between Catholic teachings and "real" Christianity, the persecution of other denominations being persecution of many "real" Christians, use of priests for confession and praying to saints as a way to minimize people trying to directly contact god, and infant baptisms as invalid and a way of tricking people into not getting "real" baptisms as a conscious adult choice.
I'm sure the Catholics in turn have plenty of reasons arguing how these are compatible with Christianity and why that evangelical sect is wrong about them and damned. From an outside perspective this stuff is just like watching Sunnis and Shia arguing and insisting the other isn't a type of Muslim when both are clearly divergent branches of the same religious traditions.
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