Why churches using the Nativity to protest immigration enforcement are wrong.

I'm reading a number of stories regarding churches turning their nativity scenes into political statements about immigration agents enforcing the laws.  Namely, these churches are replacing Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus with signs saying "ICE was here".  At least one church went all the way and has ICE agents surrounding the crèche with zip ties and weapons drawn.

Photo credit: Matthew McDonald

I would not want to visit these churches, because they are demonstrating that they have no grasp of scripture at all.

Here's the truth of the matter: Jesus and his parents were never refugees or immigrants.  Joseph took his wife to Bethlehem because that was their hometown, and they had to take part in a census that had been ordered by Caesar.  They may not have been fully citizens of Rome (few in Roman territory were) but they were certainly 100% legal residents of the empire.  There was nothing wrong about that at all.

So already, to depict Mary, Joseph and Jesus hauled off by immigration enforcement is ridiculous.  More  than that, it's blasphemous.

And so far as the holy family being in Egypt to escape from Herod goes, Egypt had fully been a part of the Roman Empire since the end of the Ptolemaic dynasty a few decades earlier.  Joseph brought his family there to escape from Herod, a puppet king ruling Judea on behalf of Rome.  The family of Joseph were escaping a wicked provincial ruler who Rome pretty much let do whatever he wanted so long as he kept the local Jews in line.  But Herod's jurisdiction went no further than that.  People were still free to travel within the empire, across provincial boundaries.  So it is that to go from Judea to Egypt was no more big a deal than if I were to drive a car from the upstate of South Carolina across the border and into Georgia.  To claim that Joseph and his family were going to a foreign land and that made them refugees is... well... dumb.

This hatred of all things Donald Trump is begetting some truly mad behavior.  It says more about the people hating, than it does about the man they are targeting with their spite and bitterness.  For a church to ignore basic scripture, as these places of worship are doing, absolutely reeks of ignorance.  And they need to be called out about it.

Categories: christianity, christmas, churches, Donald trump, history, illegal aliens, immigration, jesus christ, politics