By Kim Lawton
It's Christmas-and for Protestants, that means it's time for the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, to make her annual cameo appearance in creche sets, carols and children's bathrobed Christmas pageants.
But for some Protestant theologians and activists, the season also presents a time to take a fresh look at the role of Mary in the life of the church and to recover her presence for a more vital faith and spirituality. A host of books, essays and magazines are doing just that.
These Protestant thinkers and writers see a recovery of Mary as in keeping with historic Reformation views.
“Martin Luther had a very high view of Mary,” says Southern Baptist Timothy George, dean of the evangelical Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala., “and a loving devotion to Mary, in a way.
“He [Luther] refers to her as the place where God did his handiwork on earth,” George adds.
George made his comments in an interview for the PBS show, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.
At the time of the 16th century Protestant Reformation, and again in the middle of the 19th century when the Roman Catholic Church promulgated the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary (the notion Mary was born without original sin) there was a strong reaction against Marian piety and devotion.
“It was seen to be competitive with Christ, and in some ways, even idolatrous,” George said. “Mary was exalted so high that she displaced Christ. And so, Protestants have generally reacted against that. Perhaps we [Protestants] have gone to the other extreme.”
Protestants aren't likely to embrace some beliefs about Mary held by some Catholics who consider her an intermediary with God. Nor are they likely to adopt the notion of the immaculate conception or the belief that she was bodily “assumed” into heaven at the end of her life. And while Catholics call her the queen of heaven, Protestants are emphasizing a more human Mary.
But George and others say it is possible to recover a Protestant and Scriptural understanding of Mary.
“Even if some of the language that some other Christian traditions use to talk about Mary is uncomfortable for us, we can still do what Protestants like to think we do well, which is stay with the biblical stories,” said Beverly Roberts Gaventa of Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.
Indeed, Gaventa sees the new focus on Mary connected to a number of recent trends, including a renewed interest in biblical characters who are women and a new interest by people in traditions other than their own.
According to Gaventa, Mary is deeply connected with some of the major themes in the Gospels.
Mary first appears in the Gospel of Luke, when the angel Gabriel appears to her and tells her that through the power of the Holy Spirit she will give birth to the Son of God.
“Really, Luke tells us nothing about her,” Gaventa said. “He doesn't give us any credentials to make us think Mary is worthy of being chosen by God. What happens in the story is that Mary is chosen entirely by God's own initiative.
“This is a primary example,” she said, “of what Protestants emphasize as God's divine grace, God's initiative.”
George said that when Mary responds to the angel, “let it be according to your will,” she is responding with an “act of submission” and with “an act of humility.”
“It's an act of surrender to the will of God. And that's a wonderful line of discipleship for any Christian that wants to take seriously the call of God on our lives,” he said.
Another biblical theme associated with Mary that Protestants can embrace, Gaventa said, is in Mary's song of praise, known as the Magnificat, also recorded by Luke, which takes its name from Mary's words, “My soul magnifies the Lord.”
“The Magnificat is really an example of biblical prophecy,” Gaventa said. “Mary takes on a very strong role there of declaring God's favor upon the poor and oppressed, and God's warning about the downfall of the mighty and the powerful and the wealthy. And we have not given due regard to Mary as the one who utters the words.”
In the Nativity, George said, Mary plays a special role in the incarnation-the Christian teaching that in Jesus God became human.
“It's a very humble, homely event,” he said. “But the angels are listening in, and the angels are singing and celebrating as well. So it brings together the heavenly and the earthly, the divine and the human, which is what the incarnation is about. The word became flesh,” he said.
According to the Gospels, Jesus' mother was also present at other key points in Jesus' ministry, including the wedding at Cana, where Jesus performs his first miracle, and at the crucifixion, where Mary remains at the foot of the cross after many of his followers have fled.
For some Protestant professional church workers, Mary can be a role model for young women. Shannon Kubiak, an evangelical youth worker and author of the forthcoming God Called a Girl, said it is the very human Mary that can serve as a spiritual role model. “So many of us girls think, you know, I'm no one. What can I do? I'm not a beauty queen like Esther. I'm not someone phenomenal. What can God really do with me? And that's the type of life Mary lived,” Kubiak said.
“She was a nobody from the middle of nowhere. … and it's what countless teenage girls across the nation feel like, and God chose to use her for the most incredible task of a lifetime.”
For Princeton's Gaventa and others seeking to recover Mary, to understand the Gospels, “which is so much of what Protestants prize,” more attention has to be paid to Mary. “We can't just bring her out for Christmas Eve and put her back away on the 26th,” she said.
Religion News Service
Kim Lawton is managing editor of Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, a weekly PBS television show.