Want to evangelize the poor? Pay them more!
What if the best method of evangelism is simply paying employees more?
Unless you were essentially living under a rock, you saw the “infamous” He Gets Us ad campaigns during the Super Bowl. Estimates suggest 124 million Americans watched the game, plus there was the endless debates on social media about the commercial. So, I trust you know what I’m talking about.
The critique, from the left, was basically “that money could have been better spent to help the poor” or “the funders are hypocrites.”1 From the right, folks argued the ads portrayed Jesus as “weak” and the ads didn’t convey the whole message of the gospel (essentially they were not orthodox).2 Rather than continue analyzing these points ad nauseum, I’d like to suggest a different critique.
As the funders and creators of the ad campaign want to help people “rediscover the love story of Jesus,” I have to wonder if they would have been better served saving their money and instead paying their employees more?
Professor and sociologist
has rode to prominence of late through his relevant charts and data sets. In a particularly intriguing Substack titled “Religion Has Become a Luxury Good,” Burge notes “the people who are the most likely to attend services this weekend are those with college degrees making $60K-$100K. In other words, middle class professionals.”3Which leads me back to my initial point. Is the best method of evangelism simply for Christian business owners to pay their employees more money?
One could take it a step further, like pastor David Emery, who proclaimed in a recent sermon that the “wealthy have drove the poor into a spiritual poverty.”4 This a bold claim for sure, and certainly one that goes against the American ideals that “wealth creation” is only a net positive. But, what if Emery is right? What if, as Burge’s data suggests, the simplest way to improve someone’s spiritual fervor is to pay them more?
If we think about a family or individual struggling to make ends meet, it’s likely a single person holding down two jobs to pay the bills, or two parents working opposite schedules to avoid childcare costs, either of which leaves little time and energy to get up on a Sunday morning to go to church. Now sure, I wish these folks would, and I’d argue they’d be better for it, but I also completely understand why they might choose to sleep in (assuming they even have that luxury and are not simply working another job on Sunday mornings).
In data that should surprise no one, research suggests well-being improves along with one’s income.5 To make this quite clear, if a single parent or couple wasn’t holding down two jobs and could instead get by (and dare I say thrive) off one salary, chances are they would. Again, there is data suggesting workers are more interested in quality of life than a higher salary—but we all need enough money to pay the bills.6
So, to repeat for emphasis, the best way for a Christian business owner to share the message of Jesus is to first simply pay their employees more.
I’m far less negative of the campaign as many others are. I tend to think that the story of Jesus being shared with millions of Americans is a positive thing. Even still, I can’t help but wonder, would people be more likely to be involved in church if they simply made more money?
AJ Willingham, “The Truth behind the ‘he Gets Us’ Ads for Jesus Airing during the Super Bowl,” CNN, February 13, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/us/he-gets-us-super-bowl-commercials-cec/index.html.
Andrew Stanton, “Christian Super Bowl Commercial Outrages Conservatives,” Newsweek, February 14, 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/christian-super-bowl-commercial-outrages-conservatives-1869125.
Ryan Burge, “Religion Has Become a Luxury Good,” graphsaboutreligion.com, June 26, 2023, https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/religion-has-become-a-luxury-good.
Emery, David. “Forgotten Virtues: Justice.” Sermon, Harvard Avenue Christian Church, Tulsa, OK, January 28, 2024.
Alex Ledsom, “New Study Shows That More Money Buys More Happiness, Even for the Rich,” Forbes, November 9, 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexledsom/2021/02/07/new-study-shows-that-more-money-buys-more-happiness/?sh=6711ca9a70d5.
Juliana Kaplan, “Almost 70% of Workers Want a Career Change. They’d Take Better Work-Life Balance over Higher Pay.,” Business Insider, accessed February 21, 2024, https://www.businessinsider.com/workers-want-work-life-balance-more-than-higher-pay-2021-8?op=1.