Monday, February 13, 2023

Who Gets Whom?

So I found that "article," and it turns out it was a tweet.  Which gives me a bit more sympathy for AOC's "fascism" critique, but only in the sense I agree with the critique.  "Fasicsm" this ain't, not really.  It's good old American conservatism of the type I grew up with:  reactionary reactionism to the New Deal that has been with us since at least the 1930's, and arguably long before that (see, e.g., the "Gilded Age").

Viz:

He Gets Us is a subsidiary of the Servant Foundation, a Kansas-based charity also known as The Signatry that says it “exists to inspire and facilitate revolutionary, biblical generosity.”

Between 2018 and 2020, the Servant Foundation donated more than $50 million to the Alliance Defending Freedom — a nonprofit that’s led big policy fights over abortion and nondiscrimination laws at the Supreme Court and in states around the country. The nonprofit is designated as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Alliance Defending Freedom says it helped draft the 2018 Mississippi abortion law at the heart of the Supreme Court decision last year allowing states to ban the procedure — and also helped argue that case before the high court. This term, the Alliance Defending Freedom is leading a new Supreme Court case arguing that businesses should be able to discriminate against LGBTQ+ customers.

While the Servant Foundation reported having nearly $1 billion in assets and making $390 million in grants in its 2020 tax return, its contributions to the Alliance Defending Freedom were among the five largest donations given out by the foundation in each of those three years, according to our review.

“He Gets Us is a movement to reintroduce people to the Jesus of the Bible and his confounding love and forgiveness,” said a spokesperson for the company. “The campaign is governed by the Servant Foundation, a 501(c)(3) [charity] with a 100/100 Charity Navigator rating.”

The primary point there, for this argument anyway, is not the money or the 501(c)(3) charity; it's the premise.  Here, let me help you:  "exists to inspire and facilitate revolutionary, biblical generosity."

Now "biblical generosity" was a matter of government when Israel was a kingdom, because that generosity was the law of Israel.  No, literally.  The law of Moses specifically required care of the widow and the orphans and the alien among you.  Law is government, right?  And Jesus preached the same thing, specifically to the children of Abraham (see, e.g., the Syro-Phoneician woman in John's gospel, Matthew's Jesus who proclaims he has come to fulfill the law, not to set it aside), so his teachings were always rooted in the law of Moses.  And that law is not a suggestion or a persuasion or a handy pocket guideline to WWJD?.  It's the law.  Pure and simple.

I'm all for inspiring and facilitating a revolutionary biblical generosity, but I think the example is Dorothy Day or Thomas Merton or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (and not because he had "a dream"), not a million dollar TV ad shot in multiple locations using professional actors.

The argument here is a very old one (not mine, that of the Servant Foundation).  It's the argument that "charity begins at home," and it should stay there.  Government spending on people's needs (v. capitalism's needs) is a misuse of public funds.  Like the benefits of capitalism, charity should "trickle down" to the "worthy poor." It should, in short, be my choice to be charitable; it should not be a matter of law.

Which is, bluntly, as un-Christian an attitude as I can imagine.  Although it has a great deal of support in many corners of Christianity.  On the other hand, the ad campaign sounds nice and even "progressive-ish":

The company presents its campaign as inclusive, writing on its website that it has “included many voices in our work here — welcoming diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences to help us address the many concerns and issues we all face.”
“We are also about sharing Jesus’ openness to people that others might have excluded. His message went out to all,” the group adds. “And though you may see religious people as often hypocritical or judgmental, know that Jesus saw that too — and didn’t like it either. Instead, Jesus taught and offered radical compassion and stood up for the marginalized.”

Elsewhere on the website, the group also discusses how “Jesus promoted women’s equality.”

Jason Vanderground, a consultant involved with He Gets Us, told Christianity News that the company’s “goal is to invest about a billion dollars over the next three years” toward its branding campaign.

Though I'm not sure Jesus needs a branding campaign, or that ads are the best way to "sell" Christianity.  Traditionally Christians evangelized by...being Christians.  Actually doing charity, actually helping people.  I saw more Christianity (credit where it is due) in practice at the huge Southern Baptist church here during the aftermath of Katrina when so many people were bussed from New Orleans to Houston for shelter.  I went to a training for providing aid and comfort and charity to those refugees at the football stadium as they waited to be relocated to housing.  The church did an excellent job of coordinating and carrying out that effort.  It was a far more effective evangelism than expensive TV ads which have the virtue of not requiring any actual human contact or even sitting next to strangers in the pews (which I find to be ground zero. to this good day, of the problem with the churches.  You have to put up with people!  Next to you!  STRANGERS!!!  DANGER!!!!  I wish I was exaggerating.).  The message isn't necessarily the problem; the medium is.

Well, and the messenger.  I still feel like there's a bait-and-switch at work here.  Which isn't fascistic; but it is unseemly.  That, and I'm quite sure their Jesus isn't as radical, or revolutionary, as mine is.  But that's kind of my problem, isn't it?

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