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Special to United Methodist Insight | Dec. 10, 2025
“She brought forth her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” [Luke 2:7 KJV]
A manger, a food trough, an inauspicious starting place for the Christ Child. It would have to do. They were exhausted. There was no room in the inn – no place for them. It would have to do. It’s a familiar story, at the heart of the Nativity. But there is another, subtle, dimension to the narrative, easy to overlook. In the manger there is a metaphor for who this baby would become. And, there are profound implications for 21st century American Christianity.
American Christianity is being hijacked by a version that 1st century disciples could not even begin to imagine. This new false religion is characterized by “white Christian nationalism” that has been seduced by a right-wing political ideology enamored with empire, triumphalism, and a narrow biblical reading. It subscribes to a fundamentalism that is fixated on sin, is anti-science, and is so heavenly bound that it is no earthly good. And there is an arrogant exclusivism that divides people into an “us and them” that often demonizes those who are not like them.
Enter the manger. It was a commonplace item, well known to all who lived around animals. It was a place for sustenance for the animals. The poor and the humble understood what a manger represented. It was the right size for a baby, a perfect beginning place for the Christ child, and a perfect metaphor for us in 2025.
In Bethlehem there is no room in the manger for empire – Caesars and Herods and their oppressive authoritarianism, the rich and their disdain for the poor and the servant, and their followers who hope to benefit through their support of them.
In Bethlehem there is no room in the manger for stifling religion – rules that make faithfulness into obedience rather than grace, that is judgmental and emptied of compassion, that tries to gain the world while losing its soul.
In Bethlehem there is no room in the manger for the arrogance of pride – the puffed-up spirit that is so focused on self that it misses the joy of community. In Bethlehem there is no room in the manger for anything else than the Christ child.
The manger would soon be left behind as the Holy Family became refugees and exiles as they fled from Caesar and Herod and all they represented. The manger would be outgrown as Jesus grew in knowledge and in wisdom and in favor with God. The manger could not contain all that Jesus would embody, and teach, and all that his ministry would become. The manger that once held the Christ Child was empty. But what would follow was full of hope, faith and love.
An empty manger is like an empty tomb - a sign of life. It beckons us, do not succumb to a false religion that is so full of itself that it has forgotten who Jesus is and what Jesus embodied and taught. In Bethlehem there is no room in the manger for anything else than the Christ child.
The Rev. F. Richard Garland is a retired clergy member of the New England Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church.