A Massachusetts church is under fire for their holiday display featuring a pro-immigrant take on a classic Christmas decoration: the Nativity.
St. Susanna Parish, a Catholic church in Dedham, reportedly first put up the display shortly after Thanksgiving. In lieu of the standard image of Mary, Joseph, shepherds, farm animals and wise men, the church had two simple signs: One reads “ICE was here” and another letting parishioners know “The Holy Family is safe in The Sanctuary of our Church” and advising them to contact the hotline for LUCE, an immigrant justice network.
While far from their first rodeo making statements of this nature, the latest move from the parish follows clear and pointed statements top-down from Catholic leadership on the “dehumanizing” immigration policies in the U.S., including the Pope calling them “disrespectful” himself.
Per Mass Live, Father Stephen Josoma, the priest at St. Susanna, defended the decision on Monday and said that he would refrain from taking down the signage, as requested by the Boston archdiocese, until he could have a clarifying conversation with leadership.
“The Vatican itself displays different themed Nativities each year highlighting social issues to contemporary life,” Josoma said. “Our hope was to similarly evoke dialogue around an issue that is at the heart of contemporary life.”
Despite that synergy, they’ve since drawn ire from pro-ICE critics around the country, many of whom flocked to the church’s Facebook page to call the display “despicable, and [sic] sacrilegious” and complaining about the priest’s decision to “remove” the holy family from the display.
(Notably, complaints about Jesus himself not being present might miss that, in traditional Nativities, the infant doesn’t make an appearance until midnight on Dec. 24.)
Another commenter said, “Politics and religion should NOT mix and there are reasons for that…”
And, of course, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons referred to Josoma as an “activist reverend” and condemned the display as “absolutely abhorrent,” claiming it adds to a “dangerous narrative” that has led to an uptick in assaults on ICE officers.
However, Christians are far from a monolith — and there are a number of community members who continue to support the choice from the parish. Particularly, the parishioners who actually attend the church in question.
“I am extremely thankful to be a member of this parish,” a commenter, identified as an administrator on the parish’s page, wrote in the comments. “Father Steve is an inspiration to us all. I have to say, I don’t recognize a lot of names that have made posts here. I wonder why that is?”
“This parish follows the words of Jesus: ‘Welcome the stranger’ and ‘Feed the poor,‘” they continued.“Christ set an example for us to follow; Call out injustice wherever and whenever you see it... Christ ALWAYS ‘mixed religion and politics.’”
Christian Scholars Appreciate These Displays — So Why Are MAGA Christians Crashing Out?
For Bible scholar Mattie Mae Motl, who typically specializes in gender and sexuality in the bible, the display isn’t just a valid statement — but one that shows a real understanding of the story of the Nativity and the birth of Jess.
“Jesus, along with his mother and father, are depicted in the gospels as refugees who flee to Egypt to escape political violence,” Motl told HuffPost. “The messiah is not only vulnerable in his physical status as an infant, but his citizenship status is also threatened as he seeks asylum in a foreign land. The message is one of unequivocal subversion— Jesus is a king alienated in the very land he came to rescue.”
Malynda Hale, the executive director of Christian nonprofit The New Evangelicals, added that displays like the one at St. Susanna “build on the Nativity and they make the story honest again.”
“These displays feel like churches are actually remembering who Jesus was and how he came into the world — among the oppressed, which is who he ended up advocating for,” Hale said. “Jesus was an immigrant. His family fled state violence. They crossed borders without permission. They sought safety in a land that wasn’t their own.”
“It forces people to see Jesus the way the world saw him: as poor, displaced, brown-skinned refugees seeking protection from an empire that wanted them dead,” she continued.
Making individuals who are entrenched in MAGA Christianity — a term for the kind of Christian nationalist who often backs the Trump administration and their policies — sit with this perspective can unsurprisingly lead to strong reactions, Hale said, as it “reveals what they’ve chosen not to see.”
“When Christians call something ‘sacrilegious,’ what they usually mean is, ‘This challenges the version of Christianity that benefits me,’” Hale said. “For a lot of MAGA-aligned Christians, faith has become intertwined with nationalism, hierarchy and maintaining cultural control. So when other churches use their faith to defend immigrants, call out injustice, or tell the truth about the current administration, it exposes the gap between Jesus’ teachings and their political ideology.”
“It’s not that these displays are sacrilegious,” she added. “It’s that they are truthful. And a lot of people don’t want to embrace the truth because it will require self-reflection.”
Remembering Jesus as a refugee at birth and an unapologetic defender of the marginalized in life, per the holy text these people can’t seem to stop citing in their Instagram bios, reveals too the “devastating irony of Christian nationalists co-opting Christ,” as Motl noted.
“Jesus Christ preaches preferential treatment for the poor and immigrants throughout his life and ministry,” Motl said. “To defer to gospel-allegiance as the reason for the unwavering support of evil immigration policies is to use God’s name in vain. To use God’s name in vain is to openly defy the second commandment, and to do so in blind devotion to Trump is to openly defy the first — ‘You shall have no other gods before me.’”
Hale also touches on that same irony, noting that “the immigration debate in this country has been shaped entirely too much by Christians who have forgotten the origin story of who they claim to believe in — and what’s sad is that many American Christians defend policies that contradict their own scriptures.”
So, Are We All Reading The Same Bible — Or What?
Plenty has been said on how MAGA Christianity often forks away from some of the more commonly understood teachings of various Christian churches. At its core, Motl said she blames the division on this issue on “the complete and utter lack of biblical literacy skills promoted and subsequently weaponized by the Christian nationalist movement.”
“Promoting Biblical literacy is an act of political resistance because it gives people the skills they need to be critical about the dogma they are inheriting,” she said. “The Bible can either be used as a weapon for oppression or a tool for liberation. Christian nationalists use it as a weapon to promote policies like the ones that lead to ICE raids in the United States. But this is not the heart of the text to which I have dedicated my life.”
This isn’t a case of a squabble over the more deep-cut ecumenical debates in the church (about transubstantiation or the role church leadership should play), but instead a reading that seems to be missing out on what Motl called a “crystal clear” teaching.
“If you’re looking for the divine, look to the margins,” Motl said. “These Nativity scenes carefully and faithfully demonstrate this truth.”
Both Hale and Motl emphasized that there is nothing unusual or contradictory about the church stepping in to make a progressive statement in favor of justice for the marginalized.
“Scripture is full of people who confronted people in power, advocated for the vulnerable, and disrupted systems of harm because they believed God demanded justice,” Hale said. “...Christians are very clearly called to protect the vulnerable, confront injustice, and use our voices for good. And I really think Christians need to move back to the actual work Jesus asked his followers to do.”