A Chicago-area church has updated its already controversial nativity scene following damage from vandalism and inclement weather, removing Joseph, the father of Jesus, and replacing him with a memorial to those who have been affected by raids and arrests conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Lake Street Church of Evanston, Illinois, made headlines earlier this holiday season with a nativity scene that depicts baby Jesus as lying in a manger with his hands zip-tied together. The infant is wrapped in what appears to be an emergency blanket. Mary and Joseph are standing near the manger wearing gas masks. And the young couple is flanked by three Roman soldiers who are wearing sunglasses and vests emblazoned with “ICE.”
The church, which is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA (ABCUSA) denomination and practices “a progressive Christian theology that embraces people from all different religious denominations and religious traditions,” said in a social media post that the scene is “not subtle because the crisis it addresses is not abstract.”
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“The Holy Family were refugees. This is not political interpretation, this is the reality described in the stories our tradition has told and retold for millenia,” the church said of the scene. “By witnessing this familiar story through the reality faced by migrants today, we hope to restore its radical edge, and to ask what it means to celebrate the birth of a refugee child while turning away those who follow in that child’s footsteps.”
Rev. Michael Woolf, the church’s pastor, said, “Christians have to look at the birth story—not just a sort of a rosy sort of tale that we can just read in Scripture—but actually sort of wrestle with its coming into being in context.”
Following heavy snowfall and apparent vandalism, Joseph has now been replaced by a sign that says, “Joseph didn’t make it.”
“We hold this space to honor and remember all the victims of immigration enforcement terror,” the sign reads. It continues:
Everyone who has been deported. Everyone who has disappeared. Everyone who has been denied medical care. Everyone who has had to go into hiding. Everyone who has seen these things happen to friends, family, and neighbors. Everyone who has had chemical weapons deployed in their neighborhoods. Our children whose schools have had to go on lockdown. For the Dreamers, the permanent residents, the people with legal status whose futures are also in jeopardy. For everyone, regardless of documentation status, who sees the suffering of God’s children at the hands of our government and feels their hearts break as we weep alongside God.
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The Joseph figure was replaced after it was damaged to the point of not being able to stand. Woolf told the Chicago Tribune that the zip ties that had been around the infant Christ’s wrist had been removed and that the gas masks previously worn by Mary and Joseph were also missing.
