Virgin Mary with a
very different message
New Zealand billboard shows Mary in bed with Joseph
By Toni Fitzgerald
Jan 6, 2010
At Christmastime we're inundated by images of the Virgin Mary, and she's usually shown in repose, wearing modest garb and smiling serenely at her newborn son.
But on a billboard in New Zealand, Mary is shown in a very different pose. She's pictured next to Joseph in what looks like a post-coital scene. Their heads lay on pillows, their shoulders are bare, and they both wear looks of disappointment.
In fact, Mary's look borders on disgust. Written above her are these words: "Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow."
Clever? Amusing?
Surely to some, but a lot of New Zealanders have taken deep offense. Since being erected in early December, the billboard has been defaced by vandals several times, stolen once, and decried by Kiwis (New Zealanders) across the country.
Here's the twist: The billboard was commissioned by a church, St. Matthew-in-the-City, located in Auckland.
The aim was to spark discussion about faith, and it certainly worked, considering all the public flap since it went up.
Here's how the billboard came about.
St. Matthew-in-the-City, an Anglican church with strong liberal beliefs, wanted to reach out to potential congregants by demystifying some of the more supernatural elements of the Bible. It decided to place a billboard outside the church to deliver that message.
St. Matthew-in-the-City believes in a less literal interpretation of the Bible. It does not subscribe to the virgin birth of Christ and argues that Jesus instead had two human parents.
That goes against the teachings of many other churches, which have been very vocal in their objections to the billboard.
"To make Joseph look like some kind of wimp or inadequate is so derisive and disrespectful, it's beyond belief," said Lyndsay Freer, a spokeswoman for the Auckland Catholic Diocese, told the Washington Post. "To believers, it's blasphemous."
Blasphemous or brilliant, the billboard has become quite the conversation piece in Auckland, where it's a popular topic on Twitter and has inspired dozens of media stories.
The lesson here: If you want to get folks talking about religion, a surefire way is to put out messages that border on b
lasphemy.
A handful of churches have embraced similarly over-the-top billboards in recent years to draw new followers. Churches in Ohio and Oklahoma put up billboards with quotes attributed to Satan that inflamed local residents.
In Australia, a billboard reading "Jesus Loves Osama," hanging outside a Sydney church, caused a stir two years ago. The church claimed it was simply illustrating the "love your enemies" teaching, but families of victims of 9/11 didn't see it that way.
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