To Mary through Jesus: the Virgin in feminist theology

The old picture of Protestant hostility to Mary of Nazareth is changing. Some of the freshest, most creative contributions to our understanding of the mother of Jesus are now coming from Protestant women theologians and biblical scholars

When it comes to Mary of Nazareth, Christmas is the one time of the year that has brought Catholics and Protestants together – though only up to a point. “Mary stars briefly in annual Christmas pageants, if encountered at all,” says Protestant Bonnie Miller-McLemore, professor at Vanderbilt University. A similar tale is told by Presbyterian Beverly Roberts Gaventa: “She creeps into our consciousness along with the Advent wreath, making a brief appearance perhaps in sermon and song, and then she disappears along with the crèche, no later than Epiphany.” Nora Lozano-Díaz, a Mexican Baptist, recounts the absurd extremes to which anti-Catholic prejudice could go: “My siblings and I were not allowed to have a Christmas Nativity scene or to participate in the Posadas [pre-Christmas novena] because they were Catholic traditions. We did, however, set up a Christmas tree and wait for Santa to bring us our toys.”
The three women theologians were writing in a 2002 collection of a dozen essays (10 of them by women) called Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary, which includes some of the freshest, most creative contributions to Mariology this millennium – except that they do not call it Mariology, of course. Miller-McLemore calls it a “feminist maternal Protestant theology”.

As women enter increasingly into theology and ministry in all the Churches, the old picture of Protestant hostility to Mary of Nazareth is changing. Protestant women want to rediscover the female biblical figures that tradition has semi-suppressed, and do not want Jesus’ mother brushed aside as an embarrassment. Many theologians and ordinands nowadays are themselves mothers, and feel they already know a lot about her because of the universally valid emotions of motherhood. And they find ample further development of that in the gospel stories.

Bonnie Miller-McLemore tells vividly how motherhood has affected her response to Mary of Nazareth, as she considers the two passages in Luke where Mary “ponders” and “treasures” things said to her – the shepherds’ report, and Jesus’ reply when he is found in the Temple. “I never paid much attention to these passages until I became a mother myself,” she says, but “with children in tow, the words ‘Mary kept all these things in her heart’ literally jumped off the page.” She uses the word “ponder” to describe her own thoughts on the dilemmas of mothering, as she was “tested regularly in the fire of trivial yet revelatory moments of childcare”.

“Perhaps I felt able to identify with Mary – albeit partially and in a carefully contained Protestant feminist way,” she muses. “Frankly, I have been in awe of Mary’s pondering for a long time. I have, so to speak, wanted this conversation with her. I have wished, as I think many in Catholicism also desired, that she could talk back. I have wondered if Mary’s experience as a mother even remotely resembles my own.” Let us not cheapen this by saying Miller-McLemore is fumbling towards the practice of praying to the Virgin. Let us rather say that she is teaching Catholics who pray to the Virgin something about why they feel the need to do so.

Feminist maternal Protestant theology (if we are to call it that) is continuing and developing. In the February 2018 issue of the Baptist journal Review and Expositor, Natalie Webb pointed out that the word traditionally translated as “lowliness” in the Magnificat, tapeinosis, actually means “humiliation”, and she links it to the #MeToo movement of women speaking out against sexual assault. Mary’s humiliation could refer generally to her social position as a young female under foreign occupation, she says, but it is noteworthy that when the word occurs in connection with women in the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament), it specifically indicates sexual humiliation such as rape. “Mary’s pregnancy would have looked to those around her like the result of this kind of humiliation,” she reflects.

Nor is the United States the only place where Protestant women are rediscovering Mary of Nazareth. In 1987, a statement was issued by 32 Christian women from 16 ­countries in Asia and the Pacific region, meeting in Singapore (published in Feminist Theology from the Third World: A Reader, edited by Ursula King). They are just as angry with the way the Protestant Churches have ignored Jesus’ mother as they are with the way the Catholic Church has used her to keep women in their place. “In the Catholic Church, Mary’s exaltation has been used to reinforce women’s oppression, while in the Protestant Churches the rejection of Mary has oppressed women,” they write.

They read all the Marian texts with new eyes. While traditional interpretations of the virgin birth “emerged from male fear of female sexuality”, its real meaning, in excluding the human male, is that “the end of patriarchy is announced”. At the Visitation, there is recognition of the support and solidarity that women give to one another, especially older women to younger women, so “it is time for us to claim and celebrate the presence of the Spirit in old women. We need them.”

Mary’s Magnificat announces “moral, social, political, economic and cultural reversals”, so, “with the singer of the Magnificat as his mother, it should not surprise us that Jesus’ first words in Luke’s account of his public ministry are also a mandate for radical change. Predictably, however, the Church has forgotten that Mary is the first to announce this change. Understanding this is basic to our response to everything else about Mary.” In fact, they say, it is she who “inspires and initiates Jesus’ ministry from its beginning to its end”. For example, “she is the one who pushes her son into responding to the needs of hospitality at Cana.” She is the one who said “Thy will be done” at the Annunciation, and taught her son the same response, for “these are also his words in the garden of Gethsemane”. They claim Mary as “a woman of the poor” and “challenge the lie that depicts her as jewelled and elaborately dressed. Because the good news of the Magnificat is bad news for the rich, we reject Mary’s hijacking by a wealthy Church – for the consolation of the rich.”

Like or dislike these ideas, we need to recognise that Asian women’s theology is emerging like “the eruption of a volcano”, says Korean Presbyterian Chung Hyun Kyung in her moving book Struggle To Be the Sun Again. Some Westerners will just want to reinforce the old entrenched positions, on either the Catholic or Protestant side, but others will hear the tone of discovery, and be ready to listen to new ideas and forge a common future.

At this point I should make a perhaps surprising confession. I absolutely love singing the Salve Regina (“Hail holy Queen”), the ­second-best-known Marian prayer after the Ave Maria (“Hail Mary”). I will go to Masses purposefully where it is sung, usually Latin Masses. The Salve incorporates something of the idea of the queenly lady disliked by the Asian women, and it promotes much of the kind of Mariology that I feel uncomfortable with, applying to Mary of Nazareth epithets that properly belong to God: “Mother of mercy”, “our life, our sweetness and our hope” and our “most gracious advocate” with “eyes of mercy”. It seems to imply that she is more merciful than Jesus is, more merciful than God is.

It can be rationalised by saying that we just feel she is more approachable because she is a woman, not that she really is more compassionate. But it is still an indictment of the smallness of our male image of God. In the words of Elizabeth A. Johnson, whose book Truly Our Sister is the most important Catholic contribution to Mariology so far this millennium, “Let God have her own maternal face. Let Miriam the Galilean woman rejoin the community of disciples.”

Why, then, do I love the Salve so much? It is not just that I love the music – though I do – nor is it just that I like Latin – though I do. It is also something to do with feeling plugged into the centuries-old tradition of the Church, part of a believing community, part of the family of God – everything that being Catholic is about in terms of the communion of saints. But how can I make sense of it? How, in short, can I allow myself to enjoy it?

A recent experience has led me to see a ­possible new meaning in the prayer. This year my daughter has become the mother of a son; and although I myself have borne three children, I am now watching this relationship as an observer, and seeing the bond between them. The confidence of my grandson in his mother, his insistence on her presence, his sense of completeness when she is there, almost his sense of ownership of her – all this tells me something about the way baby Jesus felt about his mother.

For a baby boy, the mother is indeed the source of mercy. She is indeed his life, his sweetness and his hope. She is indeed the queen, the one who can do no wrong. She is the person to whom he turns when distressed, with total confidence that she will make him better. In the privations of the exile, Jesus would have turned to his mother crying, confident that she would look on him with eyes of mercy and make everything right again.
Jesus’ favourite title for himself was “Humanity’s Son” and he represents us. (The translation “Son of Man” is now so archaic as to be inaccurate, and to those who would suspect me of changing the words of Jesus, I would point out that he did not speak English.) By placing ourselves with Jesus in his ­experiences, even as a small child, we can begin to feel about his mother as he did. Vicariously, we can find it acceptable to love her, put our trust in her and ask her to help us. The old adage “to Jesus through Mary” changes into “to Mary through Jesus”.

If this perspective is found comprehensible by those of the new feminist maternal Protestant theology, it could enable them to bring on board something of the wealth of our centuries of Marian devotional art, music and liturgy that they have lacked for so long. Meanwhile, for Catholics, the time has come to allow our Protestant sisters to help us look at Mary of Nazareth with new eyes. Far from Mary being someone to divide the Churches, says the Singapore Statement, “the Magnificat is the rallying point for ecumenism, as Christians join together working to liberate the poor and all victims of injustice.” Is it time for the male celibate interpreters of Mary of Nazareth to be silent and to learn from women?

Margaret Hebblethwaite is writing a book about women in the gospels.

Salve Regina

Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiæ,
vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.

Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevæ,
Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes
in hac lacrimarum valle.
Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos
misericordes oculos ad nos converte;
Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,
nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.

O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.

Hail holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,
Hail our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children
of Eve;
To thee do we send up our sighs,
Mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
Turn then, most gracious advocate,
Thine eyes of mercy towards us;
And after this our exile,
Show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb,
Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.