Mother Mary wearing a respirator to protect herself from tear gas. Baby Jesus with zip-tied hands, wrapped in a thin blanket that looks like aluminum foil. Masked centurions with sunglasses and green vests labeled “ICE.”
This is how the Lake Street Church of Evanston chose to assemble its outdoor Nativity scene for the Christmas season. The church and its leaders have been vocal critics of the Trump administration’s Operation Midway Blitz, which roiled the Chicago region from September through November, and expressed a message with their holiday decorations.
“Enforcement terror does not discriminate by documentation status,” the church wrote on its Facebook page on Nov. 25.
The organizer of the nativity scene, Associate Minister Jillian Westerfield, told Pioneer Press that in the months prior to organizing it, she has been reflecting on the impact of Operation Midway Blitz, in which hundreds of immigrants have been detained, the overwhelming majority of which do not have criminal histories that have a “high public safety risk,” the Chicago Tribune found.
“For me at least, I have experienced seeing the face of Christ in the people who are suffering,” Westerfield said, pointing to arrests, detainments and altercations in Evanston and Chicago. “We just really saw a parallel between the ICE forces and the centurions.”
“Of course it’s political,” but the set is not up for political interpretation, Westerfield said.
“This is what the Bible says happened to Jesus, and we use our contemporary imagery to illustrate that,” she said. “I do feel like it’s a pretty straightforward representation of what the Bible says happened to Jesus’ family.”
According to Biblical texts, King Herod, fearing that a rival had been born to usurp his power, tried to kill infant Jesus by ordering the murder of all baby boys in Bethlehem. Jesus’ father Joseph acted quickly to take his wife Mary and baby Jesus and flee Bethlehem to avoid the bloodshed, heading for safety in Egypt. Some have argued that made them immigrants or refugees.
Most traditional, popular renditions of the Nativity depict peaceful scenes of the newborn Jesus in a manger with his parents, angels, shepherds and their animals prayerfully looking on.
Westerfield said the feelings about ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, are not just shared by the church’s leadership, but also its congregation. “This is who we are, and this is what’s important to us. And we would be much more afraid to hold back, because ultimately, we feel like we answer to God, not to anyone else,” Westerfield said.
As of Thursday, Westerfield said the respirators on Joseph’s and Mary’s faces were missing, along with the zip ties on Jesus’ wrists. She did not know whether someone had vandalized the Nativity scene or whether the missing objects fell victim to the heavy snowfall of the past few days. Lead Pastor the Rev. Michael Woolf, however, said he is certain someone removed the zip ties, and he could not find the gas masks anywhere in the area.
While much of the reaction, especially locally, on social media to the church’s Nativity scene has been positive, some conservative individuals and media outlets have pounced on it, calling it “heresy” and “blasphemous.”
Westerfield said there are always concerns about reactions from outside forces, but that they will not be deterred from expressing themselves. If someone is really upset by the Nativity scene, “I hope that what happens is they examine why they’re upset and maybe find within their own conscience a change of heart,” she said.
Woolf, a frequent protester of Operation Midway Blitz, said: “Christians have to look at the birth story — not just a sort of a rosy sort of tale that we can just read in scripture — but actually sort of wrestle with its coming into being in context.”
“We don’t speak for all Christians, but we certainly speak for a certain strand of community that’s trying to take that message and say, ‘If Jesus were born in America right now, what would this nativity set look like?'” Woolf said.
Lake Street Church and Westerfield have previously organized Nativity scenes with political messages. In 2023, the church featured baby Jesus surrounded by rubble, as an homage to people trapped in the war in Gaza.
“We were all very, and still are of course, very concerned about the situation in Gaza, and the suffering of people all over the world,” Westerfield said. The reception the church received two years ago was largely positive, she said. The church also held an outdoor prayer vigil for Palestinians at the time.
