A church in California has erected a nativity scene depicting Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus as refugees in cages to try and highlight conditions faced by migrants seeking asylum in the United States.
The Claremont United Methodist Church, located around 50km east of Los Angeles, installed the nativity scene last weekend.
It shows the trio separated and held in cages topped with barbed wire, with baby Jesus wrapped in a foil blanket.
Reverend Karen Clark said Mary and Joseph’s fleeing of Israel to escape persecution was symbolic of the plight of refugees seeking asylum in the US.
"This year the group that plans the nativity every year was unanimous in deciding that we had to make the focus the separation of families at the border," she said.
"This is not unlike public art, this is public theology, this is an intentional display of something that's sacred to us, the holy family is indeed sacred to us and us imagining what might happen to them is a way to raise awareness.”
The church uploaded the nativity scene’s theological statement to Facebook.
“In a time in our country when refugee families seek asylum at our borders and are unwillingly separated from one another, we consider the most well-known refugee family in the world,” it reads.
“What if this family sought refuge in our country today?
“Imagine Joseph and Mary separated at the border and Jesus no older than two taken from his mother and placed behind the fences of a Border Patrol detention center as more than 5,500 children have been the past three years.”
The scene will be on display until 6 January 2020.
