Time Magazine Reports Interest in Mary Rising Among Protestants

Marian Renaissance among Protestants? The surprising answer is yes

The signs do not point to a complete restoration of the Blessed Mother's rightful place in the Church, but the signs are surely intriguing, and thoroughly biblical which is to say, thoroughly Catholic. The Marian renaissance includes pastors from all mainline Protestant denominations: Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists. High -Church Anglicans are mentioned only in passing because they're old hands at this. Here is a favorite quote from the Time Magazine article:

In a shift whose ideological breadth is unusual in the fragmented Protestant world, a long-standing wall around Mary appears to be eroding. It is not that Protestans are converting to Catholicism's dramatic exaltation: the singing of Salve Regina, the Rosary's Marian mysteries, the entreaty to her in the Hail Mary to "pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death." Rather, a growing number of Christian thinkers who are neither Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox (another branch of faith to which Mary is central) have concluded that their various tradition have short-changed her in the very arena in which Protestantism most prides itself: the careful and full reading of Scripture.

Of course, there's always a spoiler, in this case, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Southern Seminary:

He is underwhelmed by the Scripture-based reconsiderations of [Mary's Protestant defenders]. "Insofar as Evangelicals may have marginalized Mary's presentation in the Bible, it needs to be recovered," he concedes. "But the closer I look at the New Testament, the more convinced I am that it does not singler her out for the kind of attention that is being proposed. We have not missed the point about her. To construct a new role for her is simply overreaching."

Perhaps the good Dr. Mohler should be reminded that the intention of his fellow Protestant theologians--as I read them--is not "to construct a new role" for the Blessed Mother, but to rescue and restore herold, rightful roles.

Anyway, there's always going to be someone with plenty of diplomas and who is highly respected in his circles that will never understand, or choose to understand, the Blessed Mother and her place in the Bible, so I'm not surprised nor will I lose any sleep on it.

The article is a good one, refreshing for Time Magazine. Buy the magazine and read it, and consider purchasing some of the Protestant-authored books on the Blessed Mother that are beginning to change some long-held prejudices or omissions held by Christians of that tradition.

- Read The Blessed Evangelical Mary in Christianity Today.

- Read What About Mary? Protestants and Marian Devotion in the Christian Century.

- Purchase Mary: Glimpses of the Mother of Jesus by Princeton Theological Seminary's Beverly Gaventa, from Amazon.com

- Purchase the icon above from MonasteryIcons.com