Far-left Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) likened Jesus, Mary, and Joseph to illegal migrants in a Christmas Day post depicting a nativity scene being raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“May this be the last Christmas we live this nightmare,” the California congressman wrote on X, along with a photo of spray-painted ICE agents breaking into the Bethlehem stable where Jesus was born.
The Bible does not state that Mary and Joseph were illegal immigrants, clearly explaining that they traveled to Bethlehem because Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus ordered a census, requiring everyone to register in their ancestral hometown:
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. [So] Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David (Luke 2:1-4)
The prevalent left-wing claim that Jesus was a refugee is considered by many Christians to be historically inaccurate. As Breitbart News’s Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D., described, Jesus was born in Joseph’s ancestral hometown of Bethlehem, after which his parents fled with him to Judea when King Herod set out to kill all baby boys. The family temporarily settled in Egypt, which was part of the Roman empire at the time. They returned to their home in Galilee when Herod died, and Jesus spent most of his growing up years there.
A progressive Illinois church recently came under fire for a similar display after it put up a nativity scene with a zip-tied baby Jesus, Roman soldiers depicted as ICE agents, and Mary and Joseph wearing gas masks.
Lake Street Church of Evanston said in a post to Facebook last month that the display “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.”
Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram.
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