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  • Trayvon Martin is Added to Church’s Nativity Scene

    A church out of California has stirred the pot with their controversial Nativity scene. The Nativity scene at Claremont United Methodist Church includes Joseph and Mary, but Jesus is nowhere to be found. Instead of including Jesus in the scene, the artist that designed the scene decided to use a bleeding Trayvon Martin. Many people are furious with the altered Nativity scene, calling it “blasphemous,” among other things.

    Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman in February 2012. Zimmerman was eventually charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter. The high-profile case ended in July 2013 with Zimmerman being found not guilty, a verdict that left many outraged. Since his death, Martin has become a symbol for race relations and gun violence in the U.S., which influenced artist John Zachary’s decision to include Martin in the scene.

    The controversial scene shows a hoodie-wearing Trayvon Martin hunched over with blood spilling out of his chest. The blood spills over to the front of the Nativity scene where the phrase, “A Child is Born, a Son is Given” is written.

    Check out images of the Trayvon Martin Nativity scene below.

    Zachary, the Nativity scene designer, insists he wasn’t trying to make a religious statement with his inclusion of Martin. Instead, Zachary says he is trying to send a message about gun violence. “My feeling about it is that we have so many guns in our country and there are so many killings and it’s unique to our children. And I think that people still need to talk about it in a reasonable manner until there’s something done about it,” Zachary said.

    The artist also said that he hopes that, like Jesus, Martin will be seen as a symbol of hope. “He was, in my view, an innocent child like the innocent children killed by King Herod,” Zachary said. “I think the Nativity has to be relevant to our time. I think Jesus is a symbol of hope and I think he has to be seen in today’s context.”

    As you can see from the Twitter posts below, some people don’t think that using Trayvon Martin in the Nativity scene was remotely appropriate.

    Image via YouTube

  • Trayvon Martin Depicted In Church Nativity Scene

    One church in California has decided to forgo the classic nativity scene this holiday season and turned it into a controversial piece of art instead.

    Claremont United Methodist Church tapped artist John Zachary to turn the manger scene we’re all familiar with into something topical in order to get people talking, and it worked. For several years now, Zachary has created pieces of installation art at Christmas to illustrate the story for today, and this December he took it even further, replacing Jesus with a hoodie-wearing figure representing Trayvon Martin. A bright red stream of blood flows from his chest to the floor of the nativity scene, representing the bullet wound Martin succumbed to last year.

    “I found this year’s hard to look at. It’s hard to look at a young man who’s shot and bleeding to death. But even though I’m uncomfortable with it, that’s the point,” Sharon Rhodes-Wickett, lead pastor for the church, said. “We have to take a look at the violence.”

    Zachary says the point of the installation is to draw attention to the similarities between the dark times we face and those faced in Biblical times.

    “He was, in my view, an innocent child like the innocent children killed by King Herod,” Zachary said of Martin. “I think the Nativity has to be relevant to our time. I think Jesus is a symbol of hope and I think he has to be seen in today’s context.”

    The scene has garnered quite a bit of attention since it was set up earlier this month, and social media users have taken to Facebook to complain about the installation on the church’s page, calling it disrespectful. The artist himself says he had reservations about setting it up–more so than in previous years, when the subjects told stories of homelessness and gay rights–but felt that in itself was a reason to do it.

    “I have had reservations, although I have come to think that it’s the right way to do it,” he said. “I feel a little sad that some people are so outraged about it.”

    Image via Wikimedia Commons