'Tis the season for blasphemous nativity scenes as church features zip-tied baby Jesus

As the Christmas season approaches, one church has a rather blasphemous take on the nativity scene.

Lake Street Church of Evanston in Illinois is proud of the display, which features a zip-tied baby Jesus and Roman soldiers as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. In a Facebook post explaining their decision, they explained that the scene draws “direct parallels between the Holy Family’s refugee experience and contemporary immigration detention practices.”

Look:

“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. By placing the Christmas story (Christianity’s central narrative of refuge, sanctuary, and sacred family) within the visual language of immigration enforcement and detention, this work asks viewers to confront the disconnect between professed religious or moral values and immigration policies,” the post reads. “The emergency blanket references the actual materials used in detention facilities.”

“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,” the organization wrote. “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.”

“This installation is not subtle because the crisis it addresses is not abstract. We hope viewers will join the conversation about what sanctuary means when families fleeing violence are met with separation, detention, and dehumanization. We further hope that conversation will move people to action, regardless of faith or philosophical background,” the message continues. “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 millennia. 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.”

This disturbingly political reimagining of the nativity scene did not sit well with X users:

Hadn’t Mary & Joseph been ORDERED to Bethlehem by the Government to participate in the census?
The opposite of being uninvited..

— Francesco del Giocondo. (@gopuckgo) December 2, 2025

This is a longstanding problem. Evangelicals were told starting about 2010 that Jesus was an illegal immigrant and/or a refugee by leaders like Russell Moore in the Southern Baptist Convention. Leftists manipulate religion for their own ends. Always.

— Capstone Report (@CapstoneReport) December 2, 2025

Churches that play politics should be stripped of non profit status

— Earth Fart (@earthfart) December 2, 2025

Thry did it for shock value and attention. The best thing to do is not give t to them.

— Patriot Butterfly 🇺🇸🦋🇺🇸 (@butterfly101luv) December 2, 2025

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Sierra Marlee

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Sierra Marlee is a millennial whose hunger for the truth in a world of fake news has led her to write. Marlee also contributes to BizPac Review.

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