Pub Theology 12/9/25 -- The Holy Family has been detained
You may have run across this story over the last week or so, but if not, the above is the Nativity scene on display out from on St. Susanna Parish, a Roman Catholic church in Dedham, MA, a suburb of Boston. Notice what's missing from the scene: Yep, Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus are gone, replaced with the sign "ICE was here," a reference to the federal agency that has been engaged in aggressive raids and detentions targeting immigrants and refugees the government argues are in the country illegally. The implication, of course, is that the religious figures have picked up for immigration violations.
Despite criticism from some in the Dedham community, and leaders of the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, the parish says the display will be kept as it is: "Father Stephen Josoma said he chose to focus the nativity on immigration after speaking with several of the refugee families the church has worked with in the past few years. Several of his congregants, who come from countries like Honduras, Guatemala and Afghanistan, expressed fear about what the stepped-up deportations could mean if they were sent back to the violence they fled. ... He said th.e display is meant to show “the context Christmas is happening in this year,” adding that current immigration policies feel “brutal” and threaten the status of people who have already settled in the U.S."
A spokesman for the archdiocese called the scene "politically divisive" and called on the parish to return the display to its "proper sacred purpose." You can read more in this article from Boston Public Radio station WBUR. For its part, the parish says it has no plans to budge on its nativity display, which for more than a decade has served as a vehicle for the congregation to comment on politically charged issues like gun control, climate change, and immigration.
What do you make of this? Both the specific display at St. Susanna's this year as well as the larger idea of using a Nativity scene to comment on controversial issues of politics and social justice? Josoma, the parish's rector, acknowledges that some people might just want to come and see "a nice little place for baby Jesus and his family to celebrate Christmas," but that he believes religious art should engage the viewer in more profound ways. So is this sacrilegious or a creative act of bearing witness? After all, in the Gospel of Matthew we learn that a few days after Jesus birth an angel comes to Joseph and warns him to flee with his family to Egypt to escape King Herod's plans to find and kill the infant Jesus. Is the parish's display an act of political resistance, and is that appropriate for a church?
Join us for the conversation tomorrow evening, Tuesday Dec. 9, starting at 7pm at Irish Tavern in downtown Lake Orion.
