Voices: Bad Bunny, belonging, and my Baptist upbringing

In the middle of the Super Bowl, one of the most watched moments in American culture, Benito—Bad Bunny to most of the world—turned a football field into a love letter.

It might have been the most energetic, cinematic halftime show in history. Every shot felt intentional. Every transition felt orchestrated. It wasn’t just a performance. It felt like a story being told with light and movement and bodies and rhythm. It was spectacle, yes, but it was also testimony.

I celebrate Puerto Rico. Their culture is beautiful. I love the island, and at the same time, I’m ashamed of how little we understand its history. I’m grieved by the abuses of power, the neglect, the ways we have benefited from people while failing to fully honor them.

My brothers and sisters from that beautiful island play an important role in our story, whether we’ve taken the time to learn that story or not.

Some people said they felt left out because they couldn’t understand the words.

Let me promise you: even those of us with mediocre Spanish couldn’t understand most of the words unless we’ve been singing these songs for years.

But you didn’t have to understand the words to hear the story. In fact, he put the message on a billboard for us, loud and clear: Love is the only thing stronger than hate.

You don’t have to agree with everything Benito has ever said to agree on that.

Desiring diversity

What struck me most was how winsome the invitation felt. This wasn’t scolding. This wasn’t shaming. It was joy. It was beauty. It was a wide-open welcome to embrace people of all cultures and all nations.

That invitation stirred a memory in me I didn’t expect.

When I was growing up in the church, we weren’t very diverse. It was a Baptist church: good people, faithful people, sincere people. But the truth is, we were mostly white with a little Latino and African American culture sprinkled on top. Even as a kid, I think we knew something was missing. Not wrong in a hateful way. Just … incomplete.

We knew—instinctively, scripturally—the kingdom of God was bigger than our sanctuary. Bigger than our zip code. Bigger than our music styles and potlucks and fellowship halls.

So we sang:

“Jesus loves the little children,
all the little children of the world—
red and yellow, black and white,
they are precious in His sight.”

It may not be the most politically correct language now, but the longing underneath it was holy. We wanted the world God loved to look like the world God made. We just didn’t know how to get there.

So, we did what a lot of churches did back then. We flew flags.

Expressing diversity

We hung them in the sanctuary, the gathering place of God’s people. If someone in the church had roots in another country, we flew that flag. If we went on a mission trip, we flew that flag. If someone had a cousin who once visited from another country, sometimes we flew that flag. If the janitor had migrated from Vietnam, we flew the Vietnamese flag.

It was imperfect. It was symbolic. It didn’t actually create diversity. But it revealed our hunger for it.

We were trying to say in the only language we had at the time, “All of God’s children belong here.” Even when most of them weren’t actually in the room.

Watching Bad Bunny fill the Super Bowl halftime stage with language, culture, bodies, flags, and stories that have so often been marginalized or muted in America, it felt like those flags finally came down off the walls and walked onto the field, not as decoration, not as aspiration, but as presence.

Celebrating diversity

I’m a pastor in the most ethnically diverse city in the United States. That means we have more culture and better food than almost anywhere else. It means we’re a beautiful, complicated, vibrant place to live. Our diversity isn’t our weakness. It’s our strength.

Somehow, by the grace of God, I now get to pastor a church as diverse as the city we’re in and as diverse as the world we are called to love. It’s beautiful. It’s compelling. People want to be a part of it. Not because we’ve figured everything out, but because embodied diversity—real community across lines of difference—feels like good news in a fractured world.

Somewhere along the way, the conversation in our country got reframed as if diversity itself was a threat. As if the presence of different languages and cultures somehow diminished us instead of deepening us. My hope—and my prayer—is moments like this help the pendulum begin to swing back.

Even beyond the halftime show, it felt like the whole broadcast was quietly whispering the same longing. Despite a mediocre-to-boring game, every entertainer, every commercial break, even the national anthem—sung so beautifully by Charlie Puth—and artists like Brandi Carlile, carried echoes of something deeper.

Two of the commercials even featured songs by my hero, Fred Rogers. It was as if the culture itself was saying: “We’re tired. We want a better example. We’re hungry for an invitation to love and unity, not hatred, bigotry, and division.”

Thanksgiving

The church I grew up in didn’t have it figured out. But we knew the difference between right and wrong. We knew, deep down, love was better than fear. My hope is we don’t forget that now.

For those who tuned out and watched a different halftime show: You might have missed something beautiful, a reminder the world is longing for an invitation to love and unity, not division.

Bad Bunny seemed to know all of this, and he filled his brilliant show with small, holy Easter eggs for those willing to pay attention:

• An actual wedding, officiated by a Latino Christian pastor.
• The gift of his Grammy to a young Puerto Rican version of himself, a reminder any kid is capable of changing the world.
• Tiny, defiant signs of dignity placed inside one of the largest platforms in the world.

This was the halftime show our country needed. Well, I can’t speak for the country.

I can only say this: It’s the halftime show I needed.

Thank you, Benito.

Chris Seay is the lead pastor of Ecclesia Houston. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.