Calling this more historical account of Mary to mind, I am reminded of the recent controversy around the nativity scene at Claremont United Methodist Church in California, in which Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are placed in cages.
She also declares God’s upending of the usual nature of things by lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry, while bringing down the powerful and sending away the rich. More happily, she actively seeks support from another woman, Elizabeth, during the first trimester of her pregnancy. She is living in occupied territory, and could have become pregnant through rape or seduction by an older man. She is a single, pregnant, twelve- or thirteen-year-old. Schüssler Fiorenza argues that feminists can recover just a bit of the historical Mary, who can be seen only here and there in the biblical text (Jesus, 185-87). If feminists wish to recover the “historical Mary” by which Mariology and the cult of Mary might be corrected, however, the biblical record does not provide a great store of material. “Malestream Mariology and cult of Mary, feminist theologians point out, devalue women in three ways,” Schüssler Fiorenza explains, “first, by emphasizing virginity to the detriment of sexuality second, by unilaterally associating the ideal of ‘true womanhood’ with motherhood and, third, by religiously valorizing obedience, humility, passivity, and submission as the cardinal virtues of women” ( Jesus, 164-65). Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza notes that when attention has been paid to Mary in the Christian tradition, she has been “‘mythologized’ far beyond any historical resemblance” in order to legitimize male domination in the church and the wider world ( Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet, 163). We know so little about her, and yet she has been used in so many ways.
When I encounter a nativity scene on someone’s front lawn, in a church, or on a Christmas card, I am often drawn to Mary. Her full bio is available on her first post with our blog.
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