Once again, a New Zealand church has erected a thought provoking billboard in time for Christmas. A shocked Virgin Mary is shown looking at the positive results on her pregnancy test. The billboard is "about trying to make people think about Christmas and to then think compassionately and kindly about people in a similar situation," the church says.
St. Matthew-in-the-City Church is the same church that struck up controversy in 2009 with a similar billboard. The board showed Mary and Joseph in bed with the tagline "Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow."
As can be expected, there is a firestorm of controversy from other churches. A spokesman from the church says the portrait was intended to "spark thought and conversation in the community." Christmas is "about a real pregnancy, a real mother and a real child," the church’s vicar says. "Mary was young, unmarried and poor. She was certainly not the first woman in this situation or the last."