The Gospel passage read for the Assumption joins Luke’s infancy narrative in the middle of the story – a story most of us learn as children as a tidy Christmas pageant, amalgamated and simplified. Mary, the lead character in this pageant, is idealized, whether as a serene and silent vessel or a pious and willing disciple. In her book, Mary Mother of Martyrs: How Motherhood Became Self-Sacrifice in Early Christianity, Kathleen Gallagher Elkins discusses how theologians have sought to combine the Gospel stories about Mary into a unified narrative, an exercise that has led to the promulgation of “Mary – both mother and virgin – as the paradigmatic impossible ideal” (5). Citing the work of dozens of scholars, she describes traditional Mariology, which emphasizes Mary’s obedience, humility, passivity, and self-sacrifice as the essential qualities of good Christian women and mothers – qualities that have been, and continue to be, used explicitly and implicitly to oppress women. She contrasts this with a description of how feminist theologians have focused on questions of Mary’s agency, reframing Mary as the ideal disciple. In practice, however, this view of Mary can easily become simply another impossible standard by which to measure women. Gallagher Elkins then proposes a more expansive reading of the Gospels via a lens of community, examining Mary’s response to specific contexts and the connections between Mariology and maternal activism.

In Luke 1:39-56, we read Mary’s Magnificat: a prayer and a greeting between Mary and her elder cousin, Elizabeth. By expanding our reading to the whole of Luke Chapter 1, we see that Mary and Elizabeth are both pregnant in specific, shared context: they are women in a highly patriarchal society; they are Jews living under the oppression of violent colonizing forces; they are mothers in a time of rampant state violence against children; they have become pregnant under unusual circumstances that draw attention and rumor from their neighbors. They are both marginalized people embarking upon a perilous journey – motherhood – that they know may lead to further marginalization. The Gospel writers also assumed that their audience had a certain degree of background knowledge: that Mary would become the mother of a martyr and would witness the terrorizing of both her child and her community (Gallagher Elkins, 25). 

Luke writes that Mary learns of Elizabeth’s pregnancy from the angel Gabriel, and went “with haste” to go to her (Luke 1:38-39). Gallagher Elkins proposes focusing on this action as the nexus of Mary’s agency: that in a difficult situation, she reaches out to her community in solidarity (31). Mary and Elizabeth greet each other with praise for God and encouragement for each other, but also with calls of hope for revolution and an end to oppression. 

Mary’s Magnificat is bookended by the story of Zechariah. Gallagher Elkins notes that this is commonly interpreted as a literary device used to highlight the exceptionality of Jesus’s birth: that “whatever happens to Elizabeth is replicated and surpassed by what happens to Mary” (31). She asserts that setting Mary and Elizabeth as foils risks obscuring the communal context of their stories. Zechariah is an important connection to that communal context, and one which subverts the patriarchal norms that might be assumed in that particular context. At the beginning of Luke 1, Zechariah loses the ability to speak as a result of his disbelief of the angel Gabriel. Since he was serving in the temple, his muteness was immediately known to the entire community. He is unable to speak again until Elizabeth gives birth and wants to name her child John, and is met with resistance by the community. When Zechariah is given a tablet to write and uses it to tell the community that Elizabeth is right, he regains the power of speech – and his first words are a canticle that echoes Mary’s Magnificat. Zechariah’s role in the story is to be an ally: to listen to and uplift the words of mothers. Zechariah does not – and by divine intervention cannot – speak over Mary and Elizabeth. 

Gallagher Elkins states (while quoting gender theorist Judith Butler): “Interpretations of Mary as a self-sacrificing mother are…imbued with paralyzing judgements…[that promote] a monolithic understanding of motherhood as submissive” (31). She also describes the ways that Mary’s responses to suffering varied throughout the Gospels, and that the common thread among all of them was connection to community. By grounding Mary’s agency, not in an acceptance of suffering, but in her responses to situations of suffering, and by emphasizing her connections to her community, we restore flexibility to our image of Mary. This flexibility functions as an antidote to the harmful idealization of women’s suffering by framing self-sacrifice as one of many strategic means of resisting injustice rather than a natural quality of good motherhood (33). 

God, Creator, who makes each human being in Your image, imbued with dignity, be with me.
God, Healer, who knows, mourns, and transforms human suffering, be with me.
God, Wisdom, who calls us to solidarity, justice, and community with each other, be with me.

Listen to the song “Magnificat” by Three At Home. Notice what feelings come up for you as you listen. Then, spend some time reflecting on your own understanding of Mary. Meditate, write, and/or draw about your responses to these questions.

What parts of Mary’s story resonate with you? What parts of her story do you struggle with? What images of Mary have evoked strong emotions in you, and what were those emotions? Have the portrayals of Mary you have encountered influenced your understanding of your own gender? Did the song “Magnificat” prompt any new imaginings or questions about Mary for you? If you were to engage in a dialogue with someone in your community about the themes in the song, who would you desire to hear from, and why?

When Cindy Wang Brandt describes her experiences as a young wife, mother, and missionary trying to fit the mold of the submissive Christian woman, she writes, “I found that my ambitions and desires felt shackled…People expected my husband to do the leading and the teaching and the speaking, practically throwing opportunities at him while I hustled to be seen and heard, all the while keeping the household and making sure I stayed appropriately small. The dissonance became harder and harder to sustain.” 

Now, Wang Brandt is an internationally-published writer, community leader, podcast host, and founder of the Parenting Forward conference. She has published two books: Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness; and You Are Revolutionary (a picture book for children). In her work, she acknowledges the pain that fundamentalist religion causes to so many people, and offers resources for those seeking to parent in new ways. She has also written: “If recovery from fundamentalist religion wasn’t painful, I wouldn’t name it as trauma.” Both her personal story and the response to her work (her audience numbers in the thousands) demonstrate the need for new visions of Christian womanhood, motherhood, and parenthood. 

Like Mary, Cindy Wang Brandt has sought and nurtured community. Like los madres, her concern for her own children has grown into concern for others’ children and for justice. Her work and her example teach how to recognize and heal from the harm that is caused when Christian narratives, particularly Marian ones, are used in service of misogyny, patriarchy, and other oppressions. 

Between 1977 and 1983 in Argentina, after a coup installed a military dictatorship, thousands of youths were kidnapped and subjected to torture and execution. They were called desaparecidos, which means “disappeared ones.” A group of mothers whose children were among the desaparecidos began organizing, holding demonstrations in the Plaza de Mayo, a public square in front of Argentina’s presidential palace (Gallagher-Elkins, 18). 

Los madres de Plaza de Mayo, as they came to be called, became activists for justice in response to the violence perpetrated against their children. In protesting publicly, los madres risked their own safety, and some eventually sacrificed their lives. As Gallagher Elkins writes: “To speak of “agency” or “choice” in their situation resists certain commonplace assumptions about individual autonomy and freedom…it is not the unfettered, free choice of an individual with every option available…Their self-giving is connected to and a direct consequence of their passion for justice” (21). 

Los madres explicitly drew upon Marian imagery, at times wearing a carpenter’s nail, and verbally comparing their suffering with Mary’s suffering while witnessing the crucifixion (18). This comparison drew criticism from those committed to a more passive Mariology; in similar quotes attributed to an army captain and a Monsignor, the madres’ critics complained: “I can’t imagine the Virgin Mary shouting [and] protesting” (20). 

Like Mary, los madres suffered as mothers living in oppressive contexts, unable to prevent state violence against their children. Like Mary, los madres sought community, both for support and to cry out together for justice. They also begat lasting change in their communities, as two organizations descended from los madres are active in Argentinian and global efforts to seek justice for all children (Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo  and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo). Los madres still march weekly in the Plaza de Mayo, a living witness to Mary’s Magnificat prayer to the God who has “thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly” (Luke 1:52).

Postpartum Depression, Monica Lundberg, 2020. Acrylic on canvas. 

Image description: Against a black, orange, red, and purple background of paintbrush swatches lies a person with black hair, their skin white, gray, and black. Their face is cast down, eyes closed, and they hold a baby, painted orange, in their arms.