I keep noticing how quickly conversations about religion turn into conversations about politics. Not always, but often enough that it changes the air in the room. Someone mentions the name of Jesus, and before the story of Jesus even gets a chance to land, the discussion shifts to party lines, slogans, and tribal assumptions. It becomes less about what Jesus taught and more about what someone thinks a campaign must be trying to accomplish.
That tension sits at the heart of He Gets Us. The campaign invites people to consider Jesus, his life, and his teachings, and why he matters today. It presents itself as “about Jesus” while also saying it is not affiliated with any single individual, political position, church, denomination, or faith viewpoint. It is led by Come Near, Inc., a nonprofit, and He Gets Us, LLC is wholly owned and managed by Come Near, Inc. It began in 2021 as a response to loneliness, division, and anxiety, with the aim of sharing stories about Jesus in unexpected places to spark curiosity and conversation. The campaign has been widely associated with major cultural advertising, including Super Bowl ads, and it has published resources focused on topics like relationships, bias, mental health, and hospitality. It also states that Jesus loves LGBTQ+ people and that everyone is welcome to explore Jesus’ story.
Those facts do not erase disagreement. They do, however, clarify what the campaign says it is trying to do. And that matters, because clarity is one of the few tools we have when public messaging is interpreted through partisan lenses.
The real question: what are we talking about?
When people hear “campaign,” they often hear “strategy.” When they hear “Jesus,” they often hear “culture war.” And when those two ideas collide, the instinct is to treat the message as a proxy for something else.
With He Gets Us, the clearest way to approach the conversation is to separate three questions that are usually tangled together:
First, what does the campaign claim to be about? Second, what themes does it highlight? Third, how do people respond when the message sits in the middle of a public landscape where religion is frequently recruited for political identity?
On the first question, the campaign says it is not tied to any single political position, and it is not affiliated with a particular church, denomination, or faith viewpoint. It is led by a nonprofit. On the second question, it consistently frames Jesus as a person whose life and teachings point toward love, forgiveness, understanding, kindness, and service. On the third question, it runs into a predictable problem: public messages about Christianity do not arrive in a vacuum. People bring their own stories, and those stories include past experiences with religious leaders, religious institutions, and public figures who used faith as leverage.
I have seen this happen in everyday settings, too. You can watch it unfold in a conversation at work when a coworker brings up faith and immediately qualifies it with, “I am not trying to argue.” The qualification is understandable, but it also reveals the underlying assumption. Most people have learned that faith talk often becomes argument talk.
A campaign like He Gets Us tries to cut through that. It does it by focusing on Jesus’ story rather than on partisan talking points. But even when a message avoids explicit political alignment, critics may still read it through the political associations that have been attached to its funding or its broader ecosystem.
“Not partisan positions” is not the same as “no controversy”
It is tempting to frame the controversy as simple: the campaign says it is not partisan, therefore it must be harmless. Or the campaign is controversial, therefore it must be partisan. Both shortcuts flatten the reality.
The campaign explicitly states it is not affiliated with any single political position. It says it is connected to Christianity because it is “about Jesus,” which is an honest limitation, not a workaround. It began with the intent to respond to loneliness, division, and anxiety. It aims to spark curiosity and conversation through stories about Jesus in unexpected places.
That is a different goal than campaigning for a candidate or lobbying for a policy. Still, the real world does not only operate on goals. It also operates on context. When public advertising for a religious message appears alongside political fundraising ecosystems or when religious language has historically been used to support exclusion, some people do not experience the message as neutral. They experience it as a signal.
One of the most concrete pieces of context here is the criticism reported in public coverage: some criticism focused on perceived tension between the campaign’s inclusive public message and some financial supporters’ backing of conservative causes, including anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ efforts. That detail does not prove intent, and it does not automatically negate the campaign’s stated aims. But it does explain why people argue about He Gets Us as if the dispute is about politics, even when the campaign tries to speak mainly about Jesus.
That is the key trade-off. If you place a Christian message into major cultural spaces, you do not get to fully control how others interpret it. Even a message that avoids official affiliation with a party can be read as a movement within a larger political story.
Loneliness, division, anxiety: why those starting points change the tone
The campaign says it began in 2021 in response to loneliness, division, and anxiety. Those are not theological buzzwords. They are emotional conditions people recognize quickly. When a public message starts with loneliness, it pushes against the common tendency to treat faith as a debate club. Loneliness is harder to win than to name. Division is harder to dismiss than to document in personal relationships. Anxiety is harder to argue away than to show up for in the day-to-day mess of life.
This matters because it influences what kind of Jesus is being presented. The campaign’s themes include love, forgiveness, understanding, kindness, and service. Those are not abstract virtues floating above real people. They are relational virtues. They imply a practical posture toward other humans.
I have worked with enough groups that deal with conflict to know how quickly “values language” either becomes empty or becomes useful. Values language becomes useful when it translates into everyday behavior, like how you respond when someone hurts you, how you handle disagreement without humiliation, and whether you assume good intent or prepare for the worst. A campaign that centers Jesus’ life and teachings can, in principle, keep values language from becoming mere branding. But only if the content actually connects to lived experience.
The campaign’s described approach does attempt that connection through stories and resources aimed at conversation. It publishes articles and resources focused on topics like relationships, bias, mental health, and hospitality. That list of themes is important because hospitality and bias are not typical campaign buzzwords. They point toward internal change as well as external messaging.
Jesus in unexpected places: the method, not the metaphor
“He Gets Us” has been associated with major cultural advertising, including Super Bowl ads in 2023 and 2024. That is one of the reasons the campaign has stayed in the national conversation. Major advertising spaces come with built-in assumptions. People watch them, talk about them, analyze them, and sometimes mock them. A religious message placed there is going to be judged for how it fits the setting.
But there is also a method in this choice that aligns with the campaign’s stated origin. If the campaign began with loneliness, division, and anxiety, then the point of unexpected placement is not simply reach. It is interruption. It is the jarring moment when someone who usually scrolls past faith messages suddenly sees Jesus framed as someone who understands ordinary people.
Unexpected placement can also widen the audience that never chooses religious content. That can be a genuine good. It can also create resentment in people who feel like they did not consent to religious content in the first place. I do not say that to be inflammatory. I say it because it is a real dynamic. Advertising is voluntary only in the shallow sense that you can turn away. If you are someone who feels already overexposed to political messaging, religious messaging may feel like another layer of noise rather than an invitation.
So the question becomes: does the campaign offer more than a one-time emotional hit? The campaign says it shares stories about Jesus to spark curiosity and conversation and it publishes resources on a range of topics. That suggests an effort to extend beyond the ad itself. Whether it succeeds depends on the content, the follow-through, and the audience’s willingness to engage.
The campaign’s stated inclusivity, and why some people see it as brave, others as risky
One of the most specific statements in the campaign’s materials is that it says Jesus loves LGBTQ+ people and that everyone is welcome to explore Jesus’ story. That is direct language about inclusion, and it is likely one reason the campaign’s public message gets read as welcoming.
At the same time, the reported criticism about financial supporters backing conservative causes including anti-LGBTQ+ efforts is part of why trust can be complicated. If someone hears “everyone is welcome” from the campaign while also seeing, through other channels, funding or influence associated with harm or exclusion, they may decide the welcome is conditional or rhetorical. Even if that conclusion is unfair, it is understandable. People do not separate words from the ecosystems that surround them as cleanly as we wish they would.
This is one of those areas where nuance matters. A campaign can say “Jesus loves LGBTQ+ people,” and it can invite curiosity, but the public may still ask, “Who is backing this message, and what do those backers believe?” The campaign’s own FAQ claims it is not affiliated with any faith viewpoint or political position, but it cannot control what observers infer about the supporters’ broader projects.
In practice, this becomes a credibility test. People tend to trust messages that line up across multiple signals, not just one slogan. If signals conflict, conversation slows down. It turns from “Tell me about Jesus” into “Let me assess the messenger.”
I have seen what that looks like with difficult topics inside families and communities. The moment you doubt an organization’s alignment, you either step away or you start debating. Few people can sustain open-ended curiosity in that environment.
How “about Jesus” can still sound like a political argument
Even if He Gets Us tries to avoid partisan alignment, “Jesus” itself can be politically loaded. In some communities, Jesus is used to justify policies, in others Jesus is dismissed because of how some people wield religious language, and in many settings both reactions happen at the same time depending on who is in the room.
This is why a campaign that centers Jesus must also manage tone. The campaign describes themes like love, forgiveness, understanding, kindness, and service. It frames itself as responding to loneliness, division, and anxiety. Those themes are hard to weaponize into a party platform. They do not automatically map onto partisan extremes.
Yet the mapping is still tempting for outsiders and insiders alike. If someone hears love and kindness, they may say, “That is nice, but what about justice?” If someone hears forgiveness, they may say, “Forgiveness can be used to avoid accountability.” If someone hears understanding, they may say, “Understanding can become moral compromise.” And if someone hears service, they may say, “Service gets messy when you disagree about who deserves help.”
The campaign does not erase these debates. But it tries to anchor the conversation in Jesus, not in partisan targets. That is a meaningful distinction, even if it does not end the disagreement.
What to watch for if you want to judge the message on its own terms
If you want to evaluate He Gets Us fairly, it helps to decide what “fair” means. In my experience, fairness is not the same thing as agreement. Fairness usually means you apply the same tests to every message, especially messages that touch something personal like faith.
Here are a few tests that do not require you to like the campaign, but they do require you to pay attention.
- Does the campaign clearly claim what it is about, and does it avoid claiming partisan authority? Do the themes it highlights actually connect to concrete behaviors like forgiveness, kindness, and service? Does the campaign invite conversation without forcing you into a predetermined political identity? When it addresses inclusion, does it offer warmth and welcome, not just a slogan?
Those questions keep the conversation from drifting into pure suspicion or pure cheerleading.
At the same time, you should also recognize the edge cases. If you are someone who has experienced religious messaging used to justify harm, you may not be able to treat a Christian campaign as “just stories.” You may need stronger guarantees than an invitation to explore. If you are someone who avoids public faith messaging because you fear it will be performative, you may need to see sustained resources rather than one-time https://privatebin.net/?ad01a8aab61b5198#GMMUquVGvDYZumN6eDdDm9zJvUcSVXgy6Ny5g22Q36vU advertising impact.
No single campaign can solve those personal histories. But you can at least check whether it tries.
A practical way to talk about Jesus without turning it into a duel
I am going to share a pattern I have used in real conversations, because it works better than “argue less, listen more,” which sounds nice but does not help when someone is upset.
When a topic like Jesus enters a tense conversation, I try to slow the first exchange and make it about what the other person actually wants. Sometimes people do not want theology. They want reassurance. Sometimes they want boundaries. Sometimes they want to know whether the conversation will include judgment or humiliation.
One simple move is to ask, “What part of Jesus do you think people miss when they argue about politics?” That question shifts the energy from identity to perception. It also helps both sides admit that people often miss the human core of Jesus’ teaching when they are distracted by public conflict.
If you are the one bringing up He Gets Us, another helpful move is to say plainly what the campaign claims: it invites people to consider Jesus, it is about Jesus, and it says it is not affiliated with any single political position, church, denomination, or faith viewpoint. That framing can reduce the urge for the listener to guess your motives.
The trade-off is that you may still get pushback. People may accept the claim and still disagree about credibility because of how public funding ecosystems work. Or they may reject the claim because they distrust the entire advertising effort. That is not your fault. The goal is not to “win.” The goal is to make it possible for Jesus to remain the main character in the conversation.
Where the campaign’s resources can either help or fall flat
The campaign publishes resources focused on Jesus and topics like relationships, bias, mental health, and hospitality. Those topics overlap with the questions people actually carry around in daily life. Bias is not an abstract concept when you have been misunderstood. Mental health is not a marketing niche when anxiety has made ordinary tasks feel impossible. Hospitality is not a slogan when you have been excluded.
However, resources can also fall flat if they feel generic or if they try to cover too many topics without giving readers a steady way to apply the teaching. The strongest resources tend to be specific enough that you can practice them this week, not just admire them this quarter.
From a practical standpoint, if you explore the campaign’s materials, it helps to approach them as conversation starters, not as a replacement for personal community. Jesus’ story can be a companion when you lack words, but people often still need support from other humans, especially when life is heavy.
That is one reason I appreciate the campaign’s origin story about loneliness and anxiety. Those are not “read one article and fix everything” issues. They are issues that usually require relationships and patterns over time. A campaign can help spark curiosity, but real support often comes through communities of practice, and those communities vary widely in quality.
The hardest part: asking for trust in a noisy environment
Public advertising is loud by design. Even when the message is gentle, it competes with everything else. That competition makes it harder to build trust. It also makes it easier for skeptics to dismiss the message as branding, and easier for optimists to dismiss concerns as bad faith.
He Gets Us tries to stand on the Jesus side of the line. It says it is about Jesus. It highlights themes like love, forgiveness, understanding, kindness, and service. It claims it is not affiliated with any single political position or denomination viewpoint. It invites everyone to explore Jesus’ story, including LGBTQ+ people, and it frames Jesus as loving LGBTQ+ people.
But trust is still hard. It is hard because the conversation often happens in layers: people hear “Jesus,” then they recall church history, then they recall political conflicts, then they weigh advertising motives, then they consider who funds the work.
If you want a calmer conversation, the best approach I have found is to keep returning to the core content. Jesus’ life is not a slogan. It is a narrative with choices, relationships, and moral demands. If the campaign helps people rediscover that story, then the method can be more than marketing. If it only becomes a symbol to represent sides in a debate, then it will never fully escape the political framing.
What “He Gets Us” gets right, and what people will keep arguing about anyway
So what can be said, fairly, without pretending the controversy evaporates?
The campaign’s strongest points, based on its own stated aims, are its focus on Jesus and its attempt to address loneliness, division, and anxiety through stories and resources. It also states a kind of openness that many people recognize as important, including the message that Jesus loves LGBTQ+ people and that everyone is welcome to explore his story. It also claims a structural nonpartisanship in the sense of not being affiliated with any single political position or faith viewpoint.
The points that keep arguments alive are not automatically inside the campaign’s message itself, because the campaign tries to avoid partisan alignment. Instead, the arguments persist because of how public faith advertising intersects with a wider political landscape, including reported concerns about supporters and conservative causes.
That means you can support the campaign’s Jesus-centered aim and still remain cautious. You can also oppose the campaign while still appreciating the idea of getting people to consider Jesus’ life and teachings. The real disagreement is not only over what it says. It is over how it should be interpreted and how much trust the public should place in an initiative that shows up in major cultural advertising.
People will keep arguing because Jesus sits at the intersection of belief and public life. That intersection is messy, and it is personal.
If you are deciding whether to engage, start with the question you actually have
If you are on the fence about He Gets Us, you do not need to decide everything at once. In my experience, the most productive engagement starts with the question you are already carrying.
Do you want Jesus to feel less like a weapon and more like a guide? Do you want to see whether Christians can speak in ways that do not assume you belong to their camp? Do you want to explore the kind of love and forgiveness the campaign highlights, without turning it into a political identity test? Or do you feel cautious because you have seen good religious language used to cover bad outcomes?
Whatever your starting point is, it can be honest. The campaign’s whole premise is to invite curiosity and conversation about Jesus in unexpected places. Curiosity is not naive. Conversation is not agreement. If you can hold onto those distinctions, you can engage without surrendering your discernment.
And if the conversation keeps trying to become partisan, you can gently return it to the center. Ask for the Jesus story. Ask what forgiveness looks like in an actual relationship. Ask how understanding changes the way you speak to people you disagree with. Ask how kindness becomes service when the other person does not deserve it, or at least when you think they do not.
That is where He Gets Us is trying to land. Not on party platforms, but on Jesus.
A short, realistic checklist for reading the message charitably and critically
If you want a practical way to proceed, here is a small routine you can use as you explore the campaign’s content or discuss it with others.
- Separate what the campaign claims from what observers infer. Focus on whether the Jesus themes lead to humane, concrete practices like kindness and service. Take the campaign’s inclusivity statements seriously, then ask how those themes align with the broader ecosystem. Keep the conversation on Jesus rather than turning every reaction into a political verdict.
That balance, charitable and critical at the same time, is often the only way public faith messaging becomes more than a trigger. It turns into a doorway.
If Jesus is the point, then the most important thing is whether people walk toward him, even if they walk slowly. The campaign’s job, as it describes it, is to invite that first step, and then to offer resources that help the conversation move beyond reflex and into story. Whether it succeeds for you depends on what you need from Jesus right now, and what you are willing to let go of in order to hear the story again.