A California church is using the Christmas season, a time we remember and celebrate Christ’s birth, to make political statements. Claremont United Methodist Church has set up a nativity scene depicting Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus separated by cages.
The church hopes the nativity will show people “How they may have been treated if captured at the US-Mexico border.”
The church’s senior minister Karen Clark Ristine asked on Facebook: “What would happen if the family sought refuge in America today?”
Ristine wrote about Mary and Joseph fleeing Israel for Egypt after Jesus’ birth and added:
“In a time in our country when refugee families seek asylum at our borders and are unwillingly separated from one another, we consider the most well-known refugee family in the world. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, the Holy Family.”
“Imagine Joseph and Mary separated at the border and Jesus no older than two taken from his mother and placed behind the fences of a Border Patrol detention center as more than 5,500 children have been the past three years.”
The church shows figurines of the family separated by cages on the church’s front lawn, inside the building the family is reunited.
To read more about Christmas nativity scenes, click here.
