''Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus'' is a

viral video Viral videos are video, videos that become popular through viral phenomenon, a viral process of Internet sharing, primarily through video sharing websites such as YouTube as well as social media and email.Lu Jiang, Yajie Miao, Yi Yang, ZhenZhon ...

created by

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

speaker Jefferson Bethke, who uploaded his work that rose him to fame onto

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

and

GodTube GodTube is an online video platform which provides Christian video content. It is owned by Salem Web Network, the internet division of Salem Communications. GodTube includes music videos, comedy, children, animals, sports, news and inspirational ...

, under the

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bball1989. The video has thus far received more than 34 million views. The theme of the video revolves around "the difference between

Jesus Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...

and

false religion Pseudoreligion or pseudotheology is a pejorative term which is a combination of the Greek prefix "pseudo", meaning false, and "religion." The term is sometimes avoided in religious scholarship as it is seen as polemic, but it is used colloquially ...

." Underneath his video, Bethke delineated its purpose: Jefferson Bethke repudiated those who used his video to criticize the

Church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

, stating "The Church is His vehicle to reach a lost world. A hospital for sinners. Saying you love Jesus but hate the Church, is like a fiancé saying he loves his future bride, but hates her kids." Nevertheless, the author of the video stated that he wanted to expose the legalism prevalent in many houses of worship. The popular rapper

Lecrae Lecrae Devaughn Moore (born October 9, 1979) is an American Christian rapper, singer-songwriter, actor, and Record producer, recording producer and Music executive, executive. Since having begun his career in 2004, he has released ten studio alb ...

, on his

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, encouraged his fans to think about the video by linking an article titled "Does Jesus hate religion? Kinda, sorta, not really" by

Kevin DeYoung Kevin Lee DeYoung (born June 23, 1977) is an American Reformed church, Reformed pastor, Church history, historian and author. He is currently the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Matthews, North Carolina. Th ...

who had, since writing it, spoken with Jefferson Bethke about it and the video.

Popularity

The four-minute video had received 6 million views three days after its release on January 10, 2012, as well as 64,000 comments. and by January 23, the video was viewed over 16 million times. Jefferson Bethke's videos "Sex, Marriage, & Fairytales", "Sexual Healing" and "Death Of Yolo" are his other most popular works, receiving over 6 million, 5.2 million and 1.9 million views respectively.Archived a
Ghostarchive
and th
Wayback Machine

References

{{Reflist, 30em

External links

''Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus''
video on YouTube Christian missions Viral videos 2012 in Christianity 2012 YouTube videos Mars Hill Church Sociology of religion Films critical of religion Depictions of Jesus in music