Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary

Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary. By Beverly Gaventa Roberts and Cynthia L. Rigby, eds. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 2002, xii + 168 pp., $19.95 paper.

Historically, Mary has occupied a sacred but secluded space in Protestant thought. The essayists of Blessed One move Mary from the margins of Protestantism to a more central and relevant position in the life and mind of the church.

Joel Green considers Mary's place in Lucan discourse and labels her the "accessible exemplar"-one who responded to God's call and one to whom the faithful can look for exemplary spirituality. Mary's response has a transformative and winsome power, Green attentively observes, and it is within this context that the faithful of today can live a "life . . . that runs counter to the world of normal perception" (p. 18).

Katharine Doob Sakenfeld focuses on the ways in which Mary's presence among the OT women in Matthew's genealogy "challenges ordinary human expectations and values" (p. 21). The women, Sakenfeld keenly asserts, are marginalized for a variety of reasons but considered within the context of Mary's life and witness, marginalization is reversed and the key role each woman played in God's redemptive plan comes forth.

E. Elizabeth Johnson, from Mark's gospel, shows how Mary first reveals "domestic disorientation" (p. 33) as a "rejected mother" when Jesus seeks fellowship with his supporters. This disorientation is "reoriented" when Christ mystifies the residents of Nazareth. The Nazarenes subsequently balk at Jesus' claims to divinity and thus embrace his family. In another Markan moment, Johnson concisely observes, Jesus challenges domestic boundaries in an apocalyptic light by making references to his hour of death. Finally, the domesticity of Jesus' family is restored as his mother and his siblings become disciples of the resurrected Christ.

Beverly Roberts Gaventa carefully explores the role of Mary in the Gospels to show that she embodies devotion in John, is engaged in oneness with her Son at the cross in Matthew, and acts as a "disciple, prophet, and mother" (p. 53) in Luke. The varying visions of Mary, Gaventa instructively demonstrates, direct the faithful to reflect on the scandal of the cross.

Nancy Duff fashions Mary from a Reformed perspective such that the incarnation reveals an obedient Mary, a faithful woman who responded to God's call and thus engaged in transformative discipleship (p. 65). Duff carefully rejects Mary as "ideal woman" and convincingly argues that the Reformed concept of vocation creates space where pastoral identification with Mary occurs and where the "reversal of power" (p. 68) at the manger and the cross is observed.

Cheryl Kirk-Duggan constructs a twenty-first century Mary by fostering a unique and innovative dialogue between scholarship and popular culture. Kirk-Duggan uses the lyrics of Tina Turner's song "Proud Mary" to begin discussion of a Mary who is concerned with development and survival (p. 77). Kirk-Duggan innovatively draws on the work of Leonard Boff and Andrew Greely to suggest how Mary might "move us to action, then contemplation" (p. 78). Finally, to observe Mary in film (Eve's Bayou, Soul Food, Down in the Delta) from a liberationist-womanist perspective creates "a collage of inner beauty, strength, and good will" (p. 81). Kirk-Duggan makes a compelling case for "Proud Mary . . . a sociocultural figure who symbolizes the embodiment of a vibrant, wise woman with maternal and earthly instincts" (p. 71).

Nora Lozano-Diaz uses the Virgin of Guadalupe as a "cultural symbol" (p. 93) to show, negatively, how Latin Protestants have obfuscated and ignored Mary and to suggest, positively, that the same virgin offers both freedom and liberation. According to Lozano-Diaz, Protestants have ignored Mary in the "naming ritual" and a "Protestant view of culture" (p. 88) leaves Mexican and Mexican-American Protestants unaware of Mary. Only through an "alternative feminist" (p. 93) approach to the Bible, Lozano-Diaz artfully claims, are Mary's "liberating qualities" of a "strong will" and "social consciousness" seen.

Bonnie Miller-McLemore views Mary "from the perspective of feminist maternal Protestant theology" to explore ways in which she shapes motherhood and suggest how the process of mothering can transform sentiment about Mary. Mary's "pondering" in Luke, Miller-McLemore contends, reveals the "attention, anguish, and amazement" (p. 107) of the one who not only gave birth to the Son of God, but mothered and raised him as well. Miller-McLemore offers a winsome challenge as Mary's "pondering suggests fresh ways of embodying faith in the act of mothering" (p. 111).

Daniel Migliore creates a Reformational Mary who consents to God's election and models genuine faith. By faith Mary participates in the poverty of the poor through which God's righteous concern for the poor emerges. In several "fallible" moments, Migliore intriguingly asserts, Mary reveals the concept of semper reformanda. Finally, Migliore lucidly observes, Mary models ministry as she tends to Jesus at the foot of the cross and shows the vitality of prayer by her own prayers for the execution of God's will.