The War on Christianity Intensifies
More hypocrisy in German media--whose practitioners denounce the Hallow prayer app as 'right-wing' while there's not a sound as negative as is said about the Catholic Church
I found the below piece during Holy Week—it actually appeared on Maundy Thursday—but I had no time to do this; hence, this will do for today’s posting, if you can believe it.
Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.
God Helps With Business
The ‘Hallow’ app promises Catholic beliefs, inner peace, and prayers at the touch of a button—courtesy of celebrities such as Gwen Stefani, Mark Wahlberg and Jesus himself. But there are one or two problems.
By Marie Gundlach, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 April 2025 [source; archived]
For the church, this weekend is one of the most important this year [this shows either that Ms. Gundlach is a moron—Easter is the essence of Christianity—or she’s doing this on purpose: note that this is the opening sentence, and it sets the tone for the rest of the article™]. Not only because Easter is the highest church holiday [orig. höchste kirchliche Feiertag; another one of these linguistically denigrating notions], but also because the pews are probably as full this weekend as they usually are at Christmas. But you no longer have to go to church to pray [you never have to, Ms. Gundlach; you can pray all day long, if you wish so; people attend church to celebrate mass]. During the American football Super Bowl in 2024 [it’s 2025—why bring this up now?], a commercial flickered across US television screens that seemed oddly placed at a sporting event [lol, the NFL is a ‘sports entertainment’ outfit that, since it relinquished its tax exempt status at the end of FY2015, no longer has to disclose paperwork; see also here]. It featured Mark Wahlberg, US actor and musician, as he, oh well [orig. naja, a very condescending, smug comment (it’s the equivalent of rolling one’s eyes)], prays. And at the very end, he refers to an app to continue praying: Hallow [and that, dear readers, is what this piece is about; note that the alt-text of the link—when I first bookmarked it on 18 April 2025—was ‘faithful to the Bible and right-wing conservative’ (orig. bibeltreu und rechtskonservativ)]
Anyone who knows how much a Super Bowl advert costs (last year it was around USD 7 million for 30 seconds) may guess that Hallow is not a local church project, but a mega investment. In the United States, the advert struck a chord and the number of users exploded, reaching several million worldwide [there are no official numbers available; imagine, though, that there are more than a billion Catholics worldwide—what a shock /sarcasm]. At times, the app ranked at the top of the download lists. Other stars are also advertisers: singer Gwen Stefani, actor Chris Pratt, and racing driver and imperial scion Ferdinand Habsburg.
Hallow’s design is reminiscent of mindfulness or meditation apps, with a hint of Spotify [while I’m not a user of this app, my wife is—but we don’t have any experience with either mindfulness (whatever that is) or meditation apps]. A bit of inner peace, mixed with chorales and piano music. Instead of lyrics, there are Bible verses to read along to [the condescension is palpably dripping from Ms. Gundlach’s fingers], performed [sic] by Mark Wahlberg or Jonathan Roumie, for example [who also, apparently as per her choice of word, knows both Mr. Wahlberg and Mr. Roumie to be actors when praying: at least these few lines constitute journalistic malpractice and denigration of religious belief, but then again, it’s a-o.k. if directed against Christianity]. He played Jesus in the crowdfunded series ‘The Chosen’ and doesn't seem to have really found his way out of the role since then [would people like Ms. Gundlach and her ilk dare to write something like this about Islam or Judaism? I very much doubt it, which, once more, reveals their true colours]. This Easter week, he is tracing Jesusʼ last days in Israel, walking the Way of the Cross in real time [as if that’s such an odd thing to do during Holy Week], naturally edited for the app users. Jesus has a smartphone, and Hallow is installed on it.
The Church would do well to spice up the dissemination of its message, which is no longer quite as fresh as dew, with a little zeitgeist and individualism instead of dusty liturgy [imagine—if you only could, Ms. Gundlach—why people would pray: a ton of reasons, none of them comprehensible or intelligible to you]. A quick prayer in the morning? A meditation to fall asleep with a Bible story in the evening? Or the Lent challenge advertised by Mark Wahlberg, devotions spread over 40 days? With just one click, you can join in, no matter when and where, and at the same time feel part of something bigger—1.76 million people are praying with you.
At Hallow, Faith Meets the Hyper-Capitalist Tech World of the USA
A prayer app like this doesn’t hurt anyone, there are plenty of Christian influencers and modern church music, so why not an app too? Anyone can meditate on the sentence ‘Jesus, I trust you’ with the speaker ‘Gregor’. However, the German version of the app also includes content from Jana Highholder, a Christian influencer and author who has repeatedly attracted attention in the past for her fundamentalist views [never heard of her; here’s her German website].
She didn’t study theology, by the way—just like Jonathan Roumie or Mark Wahlberg [nope, Ms. Highholder is a medical doctor currently working on a doctorate in palliative medicine, according to her Wikipedia profile (click on Über, or About, in the rider at the top); note, that Ms. Highholder is a Lutheran and not a Catholic, which is Ms. Gundlach’s apparent target]. Of course, these personalities are mainly there for publicity, the content is most likely prepared by others [this is too stupid not to comment on: as Ms. Gundlach herself noted two (!) paragraphs ago, the app disseminates Catholic teachings, which she labelled ‘dusty liturgy’: of course, the content is ‘prepared by others’ (the Congregation of the Faith, perhaps?), but apparently Ms. Gundlach doesn’t know…]. The creators of Hallow describe the content of their app as being ‘100 per cent in line’ with the teachings of the Catholic Church—whether this is a sign of quality is something everyone has to decide for themselves [whatever happened to respect for individual belief?]. However, the company behind the app does not belong to the Church itself—even though app founder and main owner Alex Jones promises on X that he will one day return his shares to the Catholic Church.
At Hallow, a church that preaches charity, peace, trust, and generosity meets the hyper-capitalist tech world of the USA [only one part of this sentence may be true], in which everything ultimately has something to do with politics. Did Trump friend and democracy critic Peter Thiel invest in the app out of the goodness of his heart? Did J.D. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, buy his shares in the platform out of charity and mercy? He who believes is blessed [I suppose that might qualify as blasphemy].
That Jesus—sorry, Jesus actor Jonathan—is suddenly sitting in a show on Trump’s house and court channel [orig. Haus- und Hofkanal] Fox News and praying? Divine providence. The fact that, at times, users’ personal notes could be saved along with their user data and passed on to business partners? [did we mention that literally every other app does so?] Surely just an oversight that the Trump campaign team would never take advantage of [while I don’t know if this allegation is true (it might not be more than a rather unprofessional insinuation), here’s Hallow’s Privacy Policy]. That the EU could potentially ban the app due to data protection concerns? [you mean, like Google?] For app founder Alex Jones, an attack on religious freedom. Incidentally, Hallow has already disappeared from the Chinese app store—but presumably less because of data protection concerns and more because of the content disseminated in the app [oh, the CCP doesn’t like Catholicism, what a stunning discovery™ by the intrepid Ms. Gundlach].
‘Stay prayed up’, Wahlberg recommends at the end of the Super Bowl advert—always stay upbeat by praying. If you want to take advantage of all Hallow has to offer, you will be asked to pay: the annual subscription costs seventy euros and a lot of sensitive data. By the way, going to church and praying is free. Not just at Easter.
Bottom Lines
After reading the original by Ms. Gundlach several times, I’m honestly unsure what to make of it: is this an op-ed? It could be, but it’s classified as a journalistic piece in the ‘Religion’ section of the Süddeutsche Zeitung (not that this classification per se means all that much…).
Is the author, Marie Gundlach a moron or does she bitingly comment on the suggested hypocrisy of the prayer app? It could be one or the other (or both, for all I know).
What I consider quite inappropriate, though, are two things: on the one hand, there are no such pieces speaking about Islam (the meta-category) or Judaism, for that matter. It’s the tone, its (presumed) condescension, and the constant finger-pointing to less-than-savoury associations. Yes, I know, German legacy media (as well as politicians, academia, etc.) has a very big historical burden to bear, but it’s virtually guaranteed to find equivocations and disclaimers for virtually everything relating to, say, certain less-than-savoury Moslem groups (such as the people running Syria these days) or the Netanhayoo gov’t. While this is surely falling into the category of free speech, this kind of equivocation, double-standards, and hypocrisy is certainly noticeable.
As to the other issue that’s omitted from the piece—well, it’s the one thing that must not be named: ‘Catholic dioceses across the world are reporting that record numbers of adults are seeking baptism at this year’s Easter Vigil’, one Catholic website reports. Then there are several pieces, all appearing during Holy Week—i.e., at the same as the above smear piece—showing this to be a rather world-wide phenomenon, such as Catholic Culture (dot org): ‘Many dioceses in Western world report surge of adult converts’, published 19 April 2025.
And then there’s the NY Post piece by Rikki Schlott (from 17 April 2025) that offers a bit more information as to why esp. US citizens are flocking to the Catholic Church:
Young people are converting to Catholicism en masse — driven by pandemic, internet, ‘lax’ alternatives…
According to the National Catholic Register, some dioceses are reporting year-over-year increases of 30% to 70% in new converts. The Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, for instance, experienced a 72% jump in converts just from 2023 to 2024.
The Post spoke to several young new Catholics who cite the pandemic, the internet and a distaste for ‘lax’ Protestant alternatives as reasons for turning to the faith.
Oh, would you look at that: to my knowledge, it’s never been the Vatican’s policy to fly the (blasphemous) LGBTQ++ alphabet soup flag.
I live in Norway, which is a traditionally Lutheran country, but the official Norwegian Church is so desperate these days—they offer ‘drop-in weddings’ (Oslo diocese website link), which aren’t a real wedding ceremony but ‘a simple blessing ceremony’; many more devout Lutherans left in 2015/16 as the Norwegian Church went for same-sex marriage, with evangelical ‘free’ churches (frikirken) taking up most of them. And then there’s the Norwegian Church’s full embrace of Trans™ stuff, which I’ve detailed in two parts:
Yes, the Church’s official position during the WHO-declared, so-called Pandemic™ was shitty as hell: there were pop-up injection sites in churches (e.g., click here for Vienna’s St Stephen’s Cathedral), the disgusting 20 euro commemorative coin (of a person ‘ready to receive the vaccine’), and a ton of other shitty things related to Covid.
The NY Post piece explains this by quoting a bunch of Ivy League students who went to church looking for something—and stayed. But there’s also several other testimonials, and all of them boil down to these two quotes found at the end of the article:
A lot of young people are converting to the faith, and I think that’s just because there’s a wealth of things to search on the internet, and people are just on a search for truth which has them gravitating to the Catholic Church.
I’d say the most common impetus of the young is that they realize the world cannot provide them with any moral order, or reasons for living in any particular way. A culture of license has left them unmoored.
I do consider both apt and telling explanations, in particular as the latter one points to the proximate origins of this development: our increasingly nihilistic western world. It’s almost as if Modernity is showing signs of decreasing marginal returns.
Here’s another piece from the Catholic Courier, if you’re up for it.
All of these news items are focusing on the US, and it took me a few seconds to identify them—but to look into these notions never occurred to Ms. Gundlach.
So, on this Tuesday of the Easter Octave, we note that nothing fundamentally changed in the bubble of Western media élites (sic) who remain as active and adamant to manufacture their world:
So, is there harm using the app Hallow? Well, S.M.A.R.T. phones are a real, clear, and present danger for a variety of reasons, ranging from ionising radiation exposure to making people addicted to click-bait (which is also why I’m writing these long postings).
Personally, although I’m not a user, I consider Hallow to be among the more harmless things people can do on their phones.
Yes, as any other human-run institution, the Catholic Church suffers from a thousand bad apples, but at least the Vatican never tried to adjust to the Zeitgeist™ as much as many other congregations. This, to me, explains their ‘success’, but, as with many other things in life, time will tell.
The implications of Ms. Gundlach’s piece, however, as are moronic as they are incendiary at the same time. To say nothing about her/its hypocrisy.
Speaking of hypocrisy, here’s Jesus ranting about hypocrites (via Matthew 23).
Nuff said, I s’ppose.
„ Is the author, Marie Gundlach a moron…“
Unclear but she’s writing for people who read the SZ willingly. You do the math.