Illinois Church’s Nativity Scene Depicts Baby Jesus Zip-Tied, Romans as ICE Agents

An Illinois church has unveiled a Nativity scene this holiday season that features a baby Jesus zip-tied in the manger, with Roman soldiers depicted as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Mary and Joseph wearing gas masks.The Lake Street Church of Evanston wrote on Facebook that the display “reimagines the nativity as a scene of forced family separation, drawing direct parallels between the Holy Family’s refugee experience and contemporary immigration detention practices.”The church explains on the Facebook page that the installation is intended to challenge viewers. “By placing the Christmas story (Christianity’s central narrative of refuge, sanctuary, and sacred family) within the visual language of immigration enforcement and detention, this work asks viewers to confront the disconnect between professed religious or moral values and immigration policies,” the post reads.“The zip ties on the infant’s wrists directly reference the children who were zip-tied by agents during a raid on a Chicago apartment building earlier this year, where most residents were U.S. citizens: a stark reminder that enforcement terror does not discriminate by documentation status.”The installation uses other props to highlight current events and conditions in detention centers. “The emergency blanket references the actual materials used in detention facilities,” the church says.The statement notes that the “gas masks worn by Mary and Joseph reference the documented use of tear gas and other chemical weapons deployed by ICE agents against peaceful protesters, journalists, and community members advocating for immigration reform and bearing witness to human rights abuses within the system.”Lake Street Church of Evanston is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches in the USA and is led by Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf, who has been protesting at ICE detention centers. The church declared itself a “Sanctuary Church” in 2014 and notes on its website that its mission includes “Walking With Detained Immigrants.”It says the Nativity display is rooted in the church’s theological stance that the central figures of the Christmas story were displaced persons. The church also said it hopes to spark conversation regarding “what sanctuary means when families fleeing violence are met with separation, detention, and dehumanization.”“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 wrote. “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 his footsteps.”The classification of Jesus as a refugee is a point of contention for some theologians and historians, who note that the Holy Family fled from Judea to Egypt — both territories within the Roman Empire at the time — to escape King Herod, before eventually returning to Galilee.

Illinois Church’s Nativity Scene Depicts Baby Jesus Zip-Tied, Romans as ICE Agents

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