Key Points:
- The plight of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. is weighing on leaders in some United Methodist churches, and it’s showing up in art, including Nativity scenes.
- One church presented an evening of art on the immigration theme by a poet, songwriters, a children’s book author and a photographer.
- Art can be a powerful response to authoritarianism, says theologian Tim Sutton.
There’s no getting around it. Mary, Joseph and the newborn Jesus were vulnerable people at the mercy of the Bethlehem community.
“Jesus made it very clear that the way we treat the vulnerable among us is a reflection of how we treat God’s own self,” said the Rev. Abby Holcombe, pastor of River Forest United Methodist Church and Urban Village Church in River Forest, Illinois, near Chicago.
“We stand with people who are targeted by authoritarian governments,” she said.
River Forest and Urban Village, congregations on their way to a merger, spell it out with their Nativity display outside the church for the Advent and Christmas seasons.
The Nativity scene features all the usual characters except Mary, Joseph and Jesus. A nearby sign explains: “Due to ICE activity in our community, the Holy Family is in hiding.”
ICE stands for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Our bishop, Dan Schwerin, said, ‘We are only as safe from empire as Jesus was,’ and I think about that a lot,” Holcombe said. “I have felt more fear from this (U.S.) government in the past few months than I have in my whole life, and that is nothing compared to the people who are ripped apart from their families, whose children come home to find houses and apartments empty, children who are zip-tied in the middle of the night outside of an apartment building on the south side (of Chicago) by ICE agents.”
Holcombe herself has felt the sting of government power. On Oct. 10, at a protest at Broadview ICE Detention Center outside of Chicago, she says ICE agents shot pepper chemical agents at her as she tried to serve Holy Communion.
“If this is what they do to pastors in broad daylight, who knows what they’re doing to our immigrant neighbors who we can’t even find?” she said.
At Oak Lawn United Methodist Church in Dallas, the outdoor Nativity display is set within a cage with razor wire on top and includes a shopping cart and trash barrels.
“We feel it’s important to depict the parallel of what’s happening in our world with what we understand to have been happening in the biblical story of the birth of Jesus,” said the Rev. Rachel Griffin-Allison, senior pastor of Oak Lawn.
“This is our opportunity to draw the parallels between the two,” she added.
A related crèche is set in the Oak Lawn sanctuary, with an empty manger and two empty chairs. Signs ask the questions, “Where is Mary?” “Where is Joseph?” “Where is the Christ Child?”
The Rev. Jay Campbell and his wife, the Rev. Katie Monfortte, co-pastor Claremont United Methodist Church, which is about a half-hour from Los Angeles.
Claremont’s manger scene this year is a painting by artist Sonja Dotson of a contemporary couple and baby, all with brown skin, with a dark figure lurking behind them. Messages in the painting are “Jesus was a refugee,” “We cannot remain silent” and “In His name we are called to protect them all.”
“We’re trying to make sure that the Holy Family is not depicted as white, but representing their Middle East, Eastern origins,” Campbell said. “A silhouetted figure in the back represents an ICE agent who is targeting and tracking the Holy Family in everyday life.”
The depiction hammers home the point that “how we are treating immigrants in our country is how we are treating Christ and the Holy Family themselves,” he said.
The churches with the reimagined manger scenes haven’t received much negative feedback.
“We’ve had a couple of negative comments on our Facebook post about it,” Campbell said. “Just some kind of mean comments who said that we’re being unbiblical and distorting the biblical story in text by saying that Jesus was a refugee.”
In Dallas, most of the feedback has been positive, Griffin-Allison said.
“We’ve had a couple of rounds of some big trucks with flags in the back really emphasizing or supporting deportation,” she said. “It’s just people trying to make a ruckus and incite fear.”
In Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, the Rev. Suzy Todd took a different tact than a Nativity display to use art to address immigration. An event was held Dec. 4, dubbed “A Night of Art and Protest: Immigration.”
“I believe art is a way to reach people that kind of brings their defenses down,” Todd said. “It makes them feel, as opposed to argue with you. Art opens people’s compassion instead of their argument.”
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Photographer Bill Franz displayed and talked about 12 photographs of undocumented immigrant children, each one captioned “Not a Criminal.” Poet Mary Cox recited a poem inspired by “The Bus,” a painting by Frida Kahlo depicting all classes of people riding on a bus.
Also, two musical acts performed, and there was a reading by the author of a children’s book, Todd said.
The event attracted about 50 people, about 20 of them non-church members.
“It was well received, actually better than I anticipated,” Todd said. “We were prepared in case there was some counter protest or anything, but we had nothing, no pushback.”
Todd cited theologian Tim Suttle, who started off his essay “Artists Are the Antidote to Authoritarianism” with this: “There’s a reason authoritarians fear poets, musicians and storytellers. Artistic expression constitutes a powerful form of resistance to authoritarian regimes. When governments ignore civil rights and erode freedoms, artists become dissidents by definition. Every act of free expression becomes a form of rebellion.”
Todd echoed that sentiment.
“I think art’s a powerful form of appealing to people across multiple different avenues,” she said. “I think it holds a lot of potential for changing the world.”
Patterson is a UM News reporter in Nashville, Tennessee. Contact him at 615-742-5470 or [email protected]. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to free news Digests.
