Tweet
Billboard shows Joseph in bed with Mary
A billboard outside a church depicting Joseph in bed with Mary has caused controversy in New Zealand.
It shows a downcast Joseph lying beside Mary in bed under the heading "Poor Joseph, God was a hard act to follow."
Church vicar Archdeacon Glynn Cardy said the billboard was intended to challenge stereotypes about the way Jesus was conceived and get people talking about the Christmas story.
But it was defaced just hours after it was erected outside St Matthew's Anglican Church in Auckland, and triggered heated debate on talk radio and the Internet.
Archdeacon Cardy said: "This billboard is trying to lampoon and ridicule the very literal idea that God is a male and somehow this male God impregnated Mary.
"We would question the Virgin Birth in any literal sense. We would question the maleness of God in any literal sense."
But Auckland Catholic Diocese spokeswoman Lyndsay Freer said the billboard implied the Virgin Mary and Joseph had just had sex and was inappropriate, disrespectful and offensive to Christians.
"We would see a billboard like that being used by an anti-Christian group to actually poke fun at the divinity of Christ," Freer told National Radio.
Many messages on the church website attacked the image: "This billboard and your 'sermon' is a sacrilege," posted one visitor, identified as Karen.
But another, Andrew M, wrote: "I for one think this is an excellent billboard. Challenging and thought-provoking. Just what it was intended to be."
Comment