The creche at a landmark Lutheran church in Bethlehem, West Bank, features baby Jesus surrounded by jagged chunks of stone — evoking bombed-out buildings. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times ...

Just weeks before Christmas, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, located in the West Bank, unveiled a new display of the nativity scene that shows baby Jesus lying in a manger amid rubble.

In a controversial take on the classic nativity scene, some churches are replacing the baby Jesus’s traditional blanket with a keffiyeh — a symbol of pro-Palestine activism.

Even Pope Francis has drawn criticism for inaugurating a Vatican nativity with baby Jesus wrapped in the scarf that has become ... Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, ...

“Last year, I left the Nativity church at 3 a.m. after multiple Masses,” says Kevin Vollrath, manager of Middle East partnerships at Churches for Middle East Peace, who lives near Bethlehem ...

An installation of a scene of the Nativity of Christ with a figure symbolizing baby Jesus lying amid the rubble, in reference to Gaza, inside Christmas Lutheran Church in the West Bank town of ...

But in some churches this year, the nativity crèche is looking a bit different. The manger has been replaced with a pile of rocks, and the baby Jesus is swaddled not with a thin blanket but with ...

Father Issa Thaljieh, a 40-year-old Greek Orthodox parish priest at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, kneels at the spot where tradition says Jesus was born. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times ...

Nativity scenes around the world have added a new accessory this Christmas season: the keffiyeh. In a controversial take on the classic holiday display, some churches are replacing the baby Jesus ...