Aussie church forced to remove ‘offensive’ Jesus from sign

With Easter fast approaching, many Australian churches are getting ready for one of the holiest weekends on the Christian calendar.

However, one church on New South Wales’ Central Coast has found itself at the centre of a political-correctness storm, being forced to remove the word “Jesus” from its Easter advertisements. Elim Church paid for an advertisement at a local shopping centre, but was quickly asked to remove any reference to Jesus as it was offensive to non-Christians. The digital signs displayed around the local shopping centre featured the phrase, “Jesus is alive”.

The property company, Lendlease, forced the church to remove any reference of Jesus from their campaign for their upcoming Easter Festival.

Easter Sunday is celebrated by Christians around the world as the day Jesus Christ was resurrected after being crucified on the cross and dying for mankind’s’ sins.

Pastor Martin Duffy from Elim Church told 2GB radio’s Ben Fordham that removing the word Jesus from the advertising goes against everything the Christian faith stands for.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Jesus and the phrase ‘Jesus is alive’ is the central message of the Christian faith and what Easter’s really all about,” he explained. He said that the fact Jesus rose from the dead gives people hope, no matter the situation they find themselves in. “Really in our world today, that’s a wonderful message that people need to hear,” he added.

Pastor Duffy believed that a minority in the community was behind the initial complaint. “I think there’s a minority group out there that are constantly distorting the message of Jesus Christ. It’s just going on and on.”

He said the shopping centre made the church change the phrase to “the risen Christ”. Pastor Duffy said the same shopping centre had borderline pornographic advertising for lingerie that he constantly has to direct his family away from. 

Landlease has now backtracked on their request and allowed the word back on the sign.

“They’ve acknowledged they’ve made a mistake and they said in this case, they’d wished they’d not done that,” Pastor Duffy said. “So that’s a victory.”

Still, the advertising had not been changed yet, but the church is hopeful that Jesus will return to his neon glory soon.

It’s not the first time political correctness has interfered with religious holidays in Australia. Last Christmas, Big W faced backlash after stocking Christmas trees that didn’t contain the world “Christmas”. Instead, trees were sold as “Grand Pine Trees” and “White Forest Trees”. Big W later said it didn’t mean any offence and that the store was proud of the Christmas range on offer.

More recently, a UK supermarket began selling gender-neutral Mother’s Day cards. Ditching the word “Mum”, the cards opted to celebrate “You Day”. Waitrose later said it was trying to be more inclusive.

What do you think? Is it offensive for churches to use Jesus in advertisements, or is this completely ridiculous?