Jesus Washed Feet Super Bowl Commercial

Submission 3,744

Part of a series on Super Bowl XLVIII. [View Related Entries]

About

Jesus Washed Feet Super Bowl Commercial or Jesus Washed Feet Super Bowl Ad refers to an advertisement aired by the Christian organization He Gets Us on February 11th, 2024, during Super Bowl LVIII. The ad's message sparked controversy in religiously minded circles as posters argued over its interpretation of Christ's message, while also inspiring memes about the idea of Jesus Christ "being into feet" or being "a foot guy."

Origin

The advertisement first played during the Super Bowl LVIII on February 11th, 2024. It was posted later that same day to YouTube by the Christian organization He Gets Us (seen below), where it received over 346,000 views and 2,700 likes in 22 hours.^[1]

He Gets Us described the campaign and the images taken by photographer Julia Fullerton-Batten as "a surreal and magical view of human interaction that we could all aspire to."^[2] In the Bible, Jesus Christ washes the feet of the disciples and it is often read as symbolic of his willingness to serve others and engage with the dirtiness of life.

Spread

The advertisement was widely discussed online shortly after it aired, with Christians taking differing stances on it. Many right-wing commentators, like Ian Miles Cheong (seen below, top) accused the ad of being woke. His post on February 11th, 2024, received almost 700 likes in a day on X.^[3]

Others, like X user @509RhymeAnimal (seen below, bottom) posted about the high cost of a Super Bowl ad and the wealth it would take to buy a spot and produce an advertisement for it. @509RhymeAnimal received over 157,000 likes in a day for making this point on X on February 11th.^[4]

Many commentators also posted that the images in the advertisement appeared to be generated by artificial intelligence, however, they were actually posed photographs of real people taken by a photographer named Julia Fullerton-Batten.^[2]

Others took the opportunity to joke about the ad's foregrounding of feet. For example, on February 11th, 2024, X user @jzux received over 52,000 likes on X in less than a day for imagining a scene in the writer's room (seen below, top).^[5] That same day, X user @funnybrad posted a Pointing Rick Dalton meme imagining Quentin Tarantino's response to the foot ad, receiving over 3,500 likes (seen below, bottom) in a day.^[6]

On TikTok, content creators discussed the ad and the broader campaign. For example, on February 11th, TikToker @mamsissiesays (seen below, left) criticized the ad and the organization for its ties to Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft stores with notable right-wing leanings, receiving over 1.1 million views and 108,000 likes in the course of a day.^[7]

Also that day, TikToker @caseyleebarker posted a take criticizing the ad for the tolerance it showed towards people that he deemed "sinful," receiving over 94,000 likes and 1.1 million views in a similar timeframe.^[8]