Welcome to Straight White American Jesus, hosting a partnership with the Cap Center at

the University of California, Santa Barbara.

My name is Brian O'Neishie, faculty and religion at Skidmore College, and today in lieu of

an interview I wanted to just provide some reflections on the Super Bowl.

I did this last year, talked about purity culture and some of the criticisms that were

leveled at Shakira and J.Lo.

This year I want to talk about nothing as you can expect, nothing more than Christian

nationalism and how it was on display yesterday.

So let's start with Bruce Springsteen's ad about meeting in the middle.

If you haven't seen it yet, go YouTube it, it's a long ad, it's two minutes.

And in this, the boss talks about how it's been hard for Americans to meet in the middle

lately that we have been divided, we have found ourselves not together.

And in order to sort of highlight how it might be possible for us to come back together

as a nation, Springsteen finds himself at what he calls the middle, which is a chapel

in the exact dead center of the 48 contiguous United States and Kansas.

And this chapel is as the boss says in the ad, it never closes, it's open to all.

And on the surface of it, you might think, oh, this is a nice symbol, right?

I mean, this is a nice thing.

This is a great way to make a point.

You know, we are in the exact middle of the United States, we're at a chapel.

It never closes and everyone's welcome.

This is the kind of America we would want, right?

...