Saint Susanna Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, went viral last week for taking Baby Jesus out of their nativity scene and replacing him with a sign that said “ICE WAS HERE.”
The priest of the parish, Father Stephen Josoma, told Boston 25, “We thought this was a good way to show the dynamic of what’s happening in the world today. This is a stance I’d hope all churches would take. We should be a welcoming community.”
Well, this appears to be a trend. Another nativity scene is going viral, and this time it’s in Evanston, Illinois, at Lake Street Church.
A post on Facebook explains what’s going on: “This installation 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.”
According to the church, “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 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.”
And lastly, “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. 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.”
A storm knocked Joseph down, and instead of replacing him, they put up a sign.
That sign says, “Joseph didn’t make it. We hold this space to honor and remember all of the victims of immigration enforcement terror.”