A Southern California church flipped the lights on its outdoor manger scene Saturday evening to reveal Jesus, Mary and Joseph as border detainees, each figure isolated in its own chain-link cage with a barbed-wire top.
The nativity display from Claremont United Methodist Church, a suburban congregation east of Los Angeles, is raising both praise and ire for its depiction of the biblical story of Jesus’s family fleeing to Egypt in the context of controversial U.S. immigration policies.
The nativity is meant to highlight the plight of migrants and refugees, a longtime cause for this 300-member congregation, said the Rev. Karen Clark Ristine, the church’s senior pastor.
“Our intent is to focus on the asylum seekers and the ways they are being greeted and treated and to suggest there might be a more compassionate way to show God’s love,” Ristine said. “I think as Christians we have a responsibility to proclaim a narrative that might be counter to what the world thinks.” From Washington Post.
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I don’t buy into all the humanitarian claims about the border crisis but I have to say this display is pure genius.