Mary

Emma Cieslik 6-15-2023

Image of Mary wearing a rainbow shawl. Image bernardojbp via Adobe, design by Candace Sanders.

Although the Roman Catholic Church might disagree with me, my Catholic faith revolves not around a man but rather a woman. Her hair is covered in an opaque veil; she wears a long white gown under a blue mantle. Her hands are outstretched and rays of light radiate from her fingertips, pouring down at her sides. Her name is Mary, mother of God, and within her rests the fulcrum of my queer Catholic joy and trauma.

An illustration of pink bubbles on a purple backdrop with various things in them, such as a baby in utero, pro-life and pro-choice signs, a Bible, a law book, and a hand holding a sprout.

Illustration by Alex William

THE REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH landscape in the United States has changed drastically in the last year, and it continues to change. But some things remain the same. One consistent aspect of our ongoing national conversation is that many of those who support the greatest restrictions, including on access to abortion and other elements of reproductive health, claim Christian faith as a primary motivator.

I spent much of my young adulthood in evangelical contexts where people had strong opinions about faith and reproductive rights. Most evangelicals I knew believed that life begins at conception and thus abortion should be broadly prohibited by the law as akin to murder. In these spaces, the Bible was considered the main — sometimes the only — source of authority when it came to navigating ethical questions. I’ve come to realize, though, that the Bible hardly speaks anything straightforward into the intensely personal realm of when human life begins and what decisions should be made in complicated, real-world situations.

I wonder, then: What does it look like to wade through this murky territory as people of faith? Who are Christians called to be in a post-Roe world?

A vibrant illustration of Mary in a hood holding baby Jesus in tones of violent, blue, orange, and red. A glowing halo surrounds her as she closes her eyes.

Illustration by Ryan McQuade

Compulsively larger than life,
mom swaggered out loud.
Her eyes you could get lost in,
and they gripped like a drug.
The Virgin Mary twerking in a thong,
always herself but never the same,
never quite right
but never completely wrong,
she made me feel proud
and destroyed me with shame.

2-16-2023
The cover for Sojourners' April 2023 issue, featuring a story about international adoption. There's a photo collage with one showing a toddler on a beach, and two photos with mothers holding babies. There's a map illustration and another of a baby bottle.

Wrestling with the complicated legacy of Christians and international adoption.

An image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows star formation with orange dust against a blue background.

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth. Photo via NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI

When the biblical writers penned words about the “creator of the heavens and the earth,” they didn’t have the faintest idea of what they were really saying. Yet Christian faith asserts the power that created galaxies full of black holes and dark energy is the same power that became mysteriously embedded in the uterus of a poor teenage girl in a forsaken village in present-day Palestine. The first chapter of the gospel of John describes Jesus’ arrival this way: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (1:3). That defies all boundaries of rationality.

Nate Rauh-Bieri 12-08-2022

Climate activist Vanessa Nakate at the Stockholm +50 conference, June 1, 2022. Credit: Reuters/Pierre Larrieu and Hans Lucas.

In recent years it’s become clearer how young women are leading the global movement calling for climate justice, even as government leaders fall short at global talks. Young women and girls have been shown to be catalysts for linguistic change — experimenting, gradually updating norms, and leading linguistic disruption. Children in general, but girls especially, have been shown to be more effective climate messengers to older generations.

Sarah James 10-31-2022
An ancient illustration of Mary giving birth to Jesus with the help of midwives as they are surrounded by animals.

“The Nativity,” from Ethiopian manuscript Nagara Māryām (1730-1755)

IN THE EIGHTH season of Call the Midwife, set in post-war east London, nuns and nurse midwives of Nonnatus House assist a woman with severe complications from a “backstreet” abortion. Sister Julienne says to a young nurse, “The word ‘midwife’ means ‘with-woman.’ A woman in that situation needs somebody by her side.”

I’m pro-choice, which was an unpopular stance in the Catholic community I grew up in. For my views on reproductive rights, people in youth group called me a “baby killer” and “Pontius Pilate.” During Advent, specifically, I loathed the hollow teachings on Mary and childbirth. We sanitized the Nativity into a cute story — the equivalent of a Disney movie featuring a white family and a manger crowded with men. Only recently did I learn that some scholars believe that midwives attended Jesus’ birth. As reproductive freedom and care are further undermined in the United States, this is an apt time to reclaim a more feminist view of the Nativity and rethink Advent as the season of the midwife.

Sophia Hunter 4-25-2022

From the book The Old Testament: three hundred and ninety-six compositions illustrating the Old Testament Part I. By J. James Tissot. Published by M. de Brunoff in Paris and New York in 1904. Via Alamy.

The women, in their songs, engage their community with authority, devotion, resolve, and assurance, offering praise for God’s work among and with them.

Josiah R. Daniels 12-16-2021

During this Advent season, Sojourners has featured a heavy dose of Mary-oriented stories. As a Protestant, I was taught, similar to Amar Peterman, that we should “be wary of those who spoke of Mary ‘too much.’” But what’s so scary about Mary? Some evangelical Protestants say the reason we should be leery of revering Mary is because if we honor her too much, our faith becomes a cult.

Lauren W. Reliford 12-08-2021

The season of Advent holds a special meaning for me because it reminds me of the power of a mother’s love. While I know “Jesus is the reason for the season,” I cannot help but shift my attention to the woman who brought him into the world — and what she had to endure to birth him.

Adam Russell Taylor 11-17-2021
Illustration of two white hands emerging from a rocky pool at night with water cascading down them

Illustration by Cate Andrews

DURING ADVENT, I always love reading and reflecting on Mary’s Magnificat, which begins, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” This song is more well-known and treasured within the Catholic Church than in my own tradition; I didn’t fully learn to appreciate it until I started delving deeper into Catholic social teaching. It is easy to gloss over how radical and profound this song of praise is (“He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty”), both when Mary proclaimed these words as well as for us today. This song, which is only found in the gospel of Luke, comes just after Mary greets her cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist and whose baby moves within her womb.

Mary’s song provides a timeless dose of pregnant hope during a year that has been characterized by so much peril, loss, and hardship. As we prepare to put 2021 behind us, it is important to take the time to properly lament the tragedy and heartache of this pastyear, including the hundreds of thousands of largely preventable deaths to COVID-19; the ways our democracy and the right to vote have come under increasing assault; the stark, often-devastating reminders of our mounting climate catastrophe; and so much more.

Liuan Huska 12-07-2020

A woman and her baby wait for a bus to take them to a railway station to board a train to their home state of Uttar Pradesh following a nearly seven-week lockdown to slow the spreading of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Ghaziabad in the outskirts of New Delhi, India. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

Like Mary, women the world over have had their childbirth plans disrupted by the pandemic, their path to motherhood rerouted, especially women of color.

Valerie Bridgeman 10-26-2020
Illustration by Ric Carrasquillo

Illustration by Ric Carrasquillo

WE HAVE COME through a turbulent year in which health concerns, weather concerns, social unrest concerns, and more have been at the center of our thoughts. From the first time we heard “COVID-19” to the last storm of hurricane season to the deaths of many significant cultural icons in the U.S., we have found ourselves reeling—or at least I have, and so have many people I know.

Advent and the beginning of the Christmas season give us an opportunity to recalibrate and take a breath. We are into the new Christian calendar, and for Christians that reality should mean something. Expectation, hope, joy, and peace are just some of the Christian ways of leaning into life. Advent allows us to flex those faith muscles. And we need them, because, as the texts for the first days of Christmastide notes, the struggle under which we live does not dissipate. We live our Christian faith most often amid social crises. “Calm” and “peace” are aspirational at best. The reflections for this month try to make sense of how we flex those muscles I mentioned earlier. How do we participate in God’s desire for us to live together in just, holy, equitable ways? How do we hold ourselves and each other accountable to building the commonwealth of God, in which we each play our part, great or small, so that all are made whole?

Norman Allen 12-23-2019

Mary - Annunciation Full, Will Humes. Flickr 

Mary’s example is an especially powerful one in these troubled times when people insist that their truth is the only truth. 

Lara Freidenfelds 12-12-2019

Visitation of the Virgin Mary, altarpiece in the Basilica of Saint Frediano, Lucca, Italy. Photo by Zvonimir Atletic / Shutterstock.com

As a historian who has spent a career studying pregnancy and birth, I always look forward to Advent. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, the scripture passages read aloud in Christian churches feature not just one, but two stories of miraculous pregnancies that end in safe and happy births. The more famous, of course, is the story of Mary’s pregnancy with Jesus.

Joe Kay 12-19-2018

The Jesus story begins with a young woman who also hears many critical voices around her. Mary lives in a culture that tells women they’re more property than persons. Galilee is considered the armpit of her society. Her religion portrays God as mostly a distant and disinterested deity.

John Gehring 12-22-2016

Image via RNS/Tommy Lee Kreger via Creative Commons

You probably don’t think of Christmas as a revolutionary holiday. Twinkling lights on trees, Starbucks gift cards, and sweet carols are not exactly the stuff of subversion. A domesticated Christmas is comforting, but considering our fraught political landscape today, we might find better lessons by reflecting on the disruption caused by Jesus’ birth, and the radical implications of his life.

Image via RNS/Doctors of the World

Don’t expect a peaceful scene of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus when you open a Christmas card from Doctors of the World.

The British branch of the humanitarian group has opted to set the characters of the creche in the midst of Mideast crises. On one card, Mary and Joseph are leaning over the baby Jesus, as a missile traverses a starry night.

“Christmas is a time people contemplate the world,” the group said in its online introduction to the cards. “Doctors of the World’s cards seek to remind the public that this year war has forced millions from their homes, and they really need our help.”

Sandi Villarreal 5-05-2016

For me, as a mother, the incarnation becomes tangible thus: “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus” and [not listed in Gabriel’s announcement] he’ll be brutally killed in front of you. It becomes tangible when I again picture this mother at the foot of a cross where her son hangs. He is the savior of the world, carrying out God’s perfect plan through his death and resurrection, yes. … But he is her baby.

Shively Smith 1-11-2016

Image via  / Shutterstock.com

The activities of the Christian community should be no less vigorous as we enter the mid-month point in January 2016 and the energy of the Christmas season has passed. In fact, it is on this second Sunday after Epiphany (the Christian feast day and season known as “manifestation”) that an honest evaluation of our situation locally, regionally, and abroad should be made.