The Super Bowl truck ad with a Martin Luther King quote drew from a sermon against consumerism
Among the less popular ads at Super Bowl LII was a spot with a voiceover by Martin Luther King, Jr., in which the preacher's exhortation to service, grace, and love is used to urge viewers to purchase a Dodge Ram truck.
The incongruity was glaring, but it gets worse: The recording came from a 1968 sermon in which King railed against consumerism and the "drum major instinct," which he defined as the desire to "be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade." He specifically critiqued new car commercials as an example of the destructive ethic of envy, waste, and pride he had in mind:
In fact, the passage the Dodge commercial quotes is part of King's closing call to reject the "drum major instinct" and live in service, not competition, to others. Watch below an edit of the ad from Current Affairs. In this version, the voiceover is a bit more on-topic. Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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