You’re allowed to dress up as Satan or one of his henchmen on Halloween, but as a Chicago teen learned the hard way, dressing up as Jesus can get you thrown out of school.
Fox 32 News reports that Marshon Sanders was removed from class for wearing a Jesus costume. His mother, Angenetta Frison, says her son was readmitted after he returned home and changed clothes.
Sanders says he wasn’t trying to be offensive when he dressed up as Jesus, but that Jesus is the light of his life.
“I wanted to be Jesus because I just got baptized and so I felt like, why not?” Marshon says of his costume. “He’s the most influential person in my life.”
He says shortly after arriving to class he was called into the dean’s office.
“She tells me that, um, my costume was offensive and I was promoting religion, which I wasn’t at all,” Sanders says.
Since removing Sanders from class, the school has backtracked on its initial decision and admitted that Sanders should not have been thrown out of school: “We initially were concerned that the costume could be offensive to religious sensibilities. Upon further review, we realized the student did not intend to be offensive.”
Frison wonders if the image of a black Jesus is what really got her son removed from school.
“Race is an issue in our country,” she said. “We still struggle with racism. I don’t know if that was a factor, but it may have been. Would a Caucasian student dressed as Jesus have had the same effect?”