A left-wing church in Illinois put out a Nativity scene with a zip-tied baby Jesus, Roman soldiers depicted as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, and Mary and Joseph wearing gas masks.
Lake Street Church of Evanston said in a post to Facebook last week 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.”
“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 church explains in its post.
“The emergency blanket references the actual materials used in detention facilities. 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 post continues.
“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,” the post reads.
The church said it hopes the display will spur on conversation about “what sanctuary means when families fleeing violence are met with separation, detention, and dehumanization,” before making the claim that Jesus and his family “were refugees.”
“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 claimed. “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 display echoes a prevalent left-wing claim that Jesus was a refugee, which is considered by many Christians to be historically inaccurate. As Breitbart News’s Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D., described, Jesus was born in Joseph’s ancestral hometown of Bethlehem, and his parents took him and fled Judea when King Herod set out to kill all baby boys under two years old. The family settled temporarily in Egypt, which was still part of the Roman empire at the time. They returned to their home in Galilee when Herod died, and Jesus spent most of his growing up years there.
Lake Street Church of Evanston practices “progressive Christian theology that embraces people from all different religious denominations and religious traditions,” Protestia first reported, citing the church’s website. The church is led by Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf — who authored a book called “Sanctuary and Subjectivity: Thinking Theologically About Whiteness in Sanctuary Movements — and is affiliated with the America Baptist Churches in the USA.
The church has a bizarre “covenant,” which is completely devoid of the main tenets of the Christian faith and lacks discussion of the trinity and divinity of Jesus, His death on the cross and resurrection, and the receiving of salvation by grace through faith, and the repentance of sins.
The church’s website and social media detail “social justice” trainings — including for youth — “anti-racism” efforts, and studies on Buddhism and New Age beliefs, which are antithetical to Christianity. A deeper dive into the church’s Facebook and website show support for abortion and transgenderism, as well as special “Gay Pride” services.
On its website, one of the church’s main missions is “Walking With Detained Immigrants,” which involves “offering direct support to immigrants who have been detained.”
Lake Street Church of Evanston said it became a “Sanctuary Church” in 2014 and is “currently home to an immigrant family in the process of asylum.”
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
