For the last two-plus years, we’ve seen numerous ads for the “He Gets Us” advertising campaign, which has bought billions of dollars in advertising for the last two Super Bowls, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. While it bills itself as an effort to overcome the bad rap that Christians have gotten over the years, it was actually funded by outfits with unmistakably right-wing underpinnings.
One of the major donors for the campaign is David Green, the founder of the unshakably conservative craft store chain Hobby Lobby, which proudly touts its successful push for the right to restrict its employees’ access to birth control. Additionally, the nonprofit that originally started the campaign, Servantly, donated scads of money to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christianist legal advocacy group that is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Rebekah Slager diaried about it here in 2023.
But it turns out “He Gets Us” has problems more fundamental than just possible astroturfing. Christian left blogger and retired pastor Keith Giles recently discovered that the people behind “He Gets Us” have no qualms about selling your information to local churches, despite public claims to the contrary. What is more, He Gets Us partners with a data-mining company that makes it all too easy for bad actors to get said information.
Giles relates the story of “Kathy Wilson,” a woman from his hometown of El Paso who happened to see a He Gets Us ad on Instagram. Wilson had been going through a rough time of late. She clicked on a link that connected her with someone in her area who could offer support and prayer if she wanted it.
Shortly after entering her information, she began getting texts from “Janice,” who co-pastors a church in El Paso alongside her husband. Kathy thought she was getting a sympathetic ear in her time of need. But a few weeks later, Janice was speaking at a women’s conference about the need for women to reach out to their unsaved friends. She used that talk to reveal that her church partnered with Christian data-mining company Gloo (no relation to the British electronic music group) to get cell data from women looking for support in partnership with He Gets Us—a direct contradiction of He Gets Us’ own claim that it is “not a back to church campaign.” She then whipped out her phone and read several personal texts from Kathy about how she felt lonely at times, even going as far as to share information about her occupation and her work schedule. A recording of that talk soon appeared on the Website of Janice’s church.
A few weeks later, Giles was sitting for coffee with one of his friends, “Gustavo,” who revealed he’d recently gotten an invite to a local prayer meeting after years of being out of church. However, he had second thoughts about going when he happened to check out the church’s Website and discovered Janice’s talk at that women’s conference. Gustavo was dumbfounded that anyone could be so cavalier with someone else’s trust—even more so after a quick Google search revealed a trove of personal information about Kathy.
Giles did his own search and corroborated what Gustavo told him. He then reached out to Kathy on Facebook and let her know Janice had essentially blasted out her information for all to see and hear. Kathy confronted Janice, who immediately offered an unreserved apology. That didn’t go far enough for Kathy, who retained a lawyer and sent a further message asking her to publicly apologize to her and give written assurance that she would never pull a stunt like this again. The talk was deleted soon afterward, and Janice promised to record another message apologizing to Kathy and post it to her church’s Website.
Giles soon discovered how Janice got her hands on Kathy’s information. It turned out that the Instagram ad was one of many ways Christian organizations “capture the personal data of people who are emotionally and spiritually vulnerable.” They then sell this data to Gloo, who then sells it to “local pastors seeking to grow their churches.” How does it work?
According to GLOO, a US-based Christian Data-Mining Company started by Scott and Theresa Beck in 2013, their mission is to “help ministry leaders scale their impact through technology.” To do that, they purchase meta-data from a variety of groups like He Gets Us, K-Love, Barna Research, and other organizations, to create a database of potential targets – like Kathy Wilson – and then they sell that data on their platform to more than 38,000 churches who sign up for their “Explorer” program.
Here’s how it works, according to GLOO’s own website:
“GLOO enables cooperative outreach by partnering with a wide range of campaign partners, including K-LOVE and He Gets Us. One partner, Churches Care, runs digital ads on channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Google on topics including faith, relationships, vocation, finance and health. When a person responds to an ad, they can provide their information to be connected to a church in their local area. The church can message the individual directly through the Gloo platform and help them with their inquiry, often resulting in the person receiving prayer, help for a need and even visiting that church in person.” (the emphasis is Giles’)
If that isn’t unnerving enough, Giles discovered that Gloo has almost no means of keeping people’s information from bad actors. He was able to sign up for a Gloo account with just his email address and a credit card. Once he paid $49.99 to set up an account, he immediately got a phone number to allow him to get texts forwarded to him from Gloo’s many partners—including He Gets Us. No one asked if he had any written evidence to prove he was affiliated with a church or religious organization.
He then found the “Explorer” program that Janice’s church had joined. Users with Premium accounts are automatically matched with “Explorers,” or people “reaching out for encouragement, prayer, or answers.” According to a Gloo press release, whenever “Explorers” interact with ads from Gloo partners, they have a chance to connect with a nearby church. Their ultimate goal is to amass data from over a million people.
In a statement, Come Near, the nonprofit that has run He Gets Us since 2023, maintains that it “does not, and has not, sold data to Gloo.” It added that it paused all Gloo-related activities this past February. But Giles discovered that Gloo lists He Gets Us as one of the campaigns with whom it partners, and discovered a screenshot from the Gloo Website that details how Gloo collects data from He Gets Us ads. Giles believes this means one of two things—either Gloo is lying about getting user information from He Gets Us, or He Gets Us may have given the data away for free. After all, Janice had to get Kathy’s information somehow.
Either way, Giles is being way too kind when he suggests a better description of “He Gets Us” is “He Tricked Us.” To my mind, it’s more accurate to say “They Exploit Us”—and are doing so in a textbook case of evangelicalism in its most unacceptable form. And in so doing, it is putting churches and pastors in astronomical reputational and legal danger. If I were Come Near and Gloo, I’d have lawyers on speed dial.