Make Herod Great Again?

’Tis the season for controversies about nativity scenes.

City officials in Concord, New Hampshire, agreed last week to allow a Satanic Temple display to go up near the city’s nativity scene on city property “to avoid litigation.” However, just hours after its unveiling Saturday night, someone vandalized the satirical Satanic Temple holiday monument. A similar incident occurred last year when an out-of-state activist attacked a Satanic Temple holiday display in the Iowa Capitol that sat near a nativity scene.

A different conflict about religious holiday decorations in Iowa last year is seeing a second round of controversy now. A nativity scene on the lawn of the Toledo Fire Department gained attention in 2023 after an atheist drove by and wondered what such an explicitly religious display was doing on government property. When a threat of potential litigation meant there was no room for them at the firehouse, the city moved the holy family, an angel, the Magi, and the shepherds to a nearby private lawn of a retired firefighter. But the journey to Bethlehem wasn’t over yet for our sacred plywood figures.

Out of the empty lawn there arose such a clatter at a packed city council meeting as people complained about the move. So the city returned the nativity scene back to the fire department but added Santa in a sleigh being pulled by just one reindeer (which is as accurate to the story as having the shepherds and Magi together to see baby Jesus). Santa almost looks like a weird Magus experimenting with non-camel travel options. City leaders argued that Santa’s inclusion meant it wasn’t just a Christian display and therefore was a broader holiday that could meet constitutional scrutiny. The implication, of course, is this proves Santa is inherently unchristian (and now I’m on the naughty list).

So even though Santa saved the dear eight-pound, six-ounce newborn, infant Jesus, a pastor in Toledo decided to strike back this year with his church’s nativity scene. In addition to the traditional two-dimensional characters, Solid Rock Bible Church also put up Herod. To make sure you know who the angry guy holding a bloody knife is, his chest reads “Herod” (which would be cooler if it were just a large “H”). But there’s another word on his crown that quickly drew headlines: “Atheist.”

Screengrab from a local news report of the “Herod” nativity figure at Solid Rock Bible Church in Toledo, Iowa.

“You may notice a new member in our nativity this year. We are pleased to announce we are representing atheists this year,” Pastor Adam Todd wrote on Facebook. “Herod is the perfect representation of atheists and he's a very real part of the Christmas account in Scripture. Herod wanted to destroy Christ. Herod pretended to be sincere to the wise men but in his heart his true intentions were just to kill the Savior. Many times it seems to me that atheists try to appear genuine, as if they want to just practice religious freedom, when in reality they have very ulterior motives, just like Herod.”

He’s apparently been planning this for a year. During his Christmas Eve sermon last year shortly after the firehouse controversy, Todd went on a rant against those who had complained about the nativity on government property. And he floated the idea of using Herod to depict atheists: “I told my family, by next year we need to have us something that’d fit in, same style, to go with our nativity. We ought to have over here lurking in the shadows a King Herod with a knife looking to kill baby Jesus, and then tell everybody that’s the representation for atheists.”

For Todd, the effort the previous year to remove a government endorsement of a religion from government property meant that atheists were like the government 2,000 years ago. What the church’s Herod nativity figure lacks in subtleness, it makes up for with historical ignorance. While Todd seeks to use Herod as a metaphor for atheists today, he doesn’t actually consider the man behind the myth he’s creating. If he did, he’d find Herod wasn’t pushing atheism but religious nationalism. So this issue of A Public Witness reconsiders King Herod to move beyond a flat, culture wars depiction of the dangerous ruler.

The Historical Herod