Wellington, Dec 18 (DPA) An Anglican church billboard depicting Joseph and the Virgin Mary in bed with the words “Poor Joseph, God was a hard act to follow” was back on display Friday in New Zealand after being defaced and stolen overnight.
Clergy at Auckland’s St Matthew-in-the-City - delighted with what the Reverend Clay Nelson called “the mind-blowing dialogue around the world” the billboard had created - printed another copy and re-erected it.

“It’s important,” he said. “We can’t let the vandalism be the last word on the subject.”

He said the church had been inundated with e-mails from home and overseas since the billboard, which was designed to get people thinking about the Christmas story, was put up Thursday.

“There were dinner tables all over the world discussing this last night, and there will be sermons on Sunday all over the world about it,” he said.

Nelson said two-thirds of correspondents had supported the church’s action while others had been abusive.

Of the man filmed painting out the image and caption Thursday, Nelson told Television New Zealand that he was “full of the religious righteousness, which has been a destructive force throughout the world”.

Archdeacon Glynn Cardy told reporters that the billboard was not the most radical one an advertising agency that had been asked to produce a challenging message had come up with.

“One of the options we turned down had a sperm coming down with the words ‘Joy To The World’,” he said.

Lyndsay Freer, spokeswoman for New Zealand Catholics, condemned the picture as “offensive and inappropriate”, saying, “Our Christian tradition of 2,000 years is that Mary remains a virgin and that Jesus is the son of God, not Joseph.”