The liberally minded Christians from St Matthew in the City, Auckland, New Zealand have pulled out another fine Christmas billboard design for Christmas 2011. With perhaps their best design since the controversial “Poor Jesus. God was a hard act to follow” billboard of 2009, St Matthew’s again pokes fun at the Christian virgin birth legend:
St Matthew in the City billboard, Christmas 2011
Now that’s nicely done.
If that weren’t fun enough, St Matthew’s are also running a caption contest for this one:
This billboard portrays Mary, Jesus’ mother, looking at a home pregnancy test kit revealing that she is pregnant. Regardless of any premonition, that discovery would have been shocking. Mary was unmarried, young, and poor. This pregnancy would shape her future. She was certainly not the first woman in this situation or the last.
As in the past it is our intention to avoid the sentimental, trite and expected to spark thought and conversation in the community. This year we hope to do so with an image and no words. We invite you to wonder what your caption might be.
Enter the caption contest here.
Mary really didn’t want to swallow but if the Holy Spirit insisted…
No! There’s a good joke out there somewhere in the self-identified liberalism of the church. Either it’s an amusing contradiction because they’re not supposed to believe in such things, or those liberal guys are supposed to be sterile because of all those years of soy milk or something. And there’s a *really* good joke out there somewhere incorporating New Zealanders’ part abuse of the Australian welfare system and the post-2001 reforms into the narrative. I just can’t think of it…