Link

Here’s a great story for CNS all about how Protestants are discovering Mary and thinking it might be a good idea to hold her in a little higher esteem than they have been. I would personally qualify it to be “re-discovering,” since all Protestants started out holding Mary quite high. From the earliest Protestants, the Eastern Orthodox, to Calvin, Luther, and Wesley, all have considered Mary to be a lot more than just “highly favored daughter” as the NIV translation says. There are some great lines in this article:

Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, a Baptist college in Birmingham, Ala., wrote recently that “it is time for evangelicals to recover a fully biblical appreciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in the history of salvation, and to do so precisely as evangelicals.” George’s comments appeared in the December 2003 issue of Christianity Today and in a 2004 collection of essays by various theologians, “Mary: Mother of God.”

“We may not be able to recite the rosary or kneel down before statues of Mary, but we need not throw her overboard,” George wrote.

[snip]

“We have been afraid to praise and esteem Mary for her full worth,” said George, citing Robertson, “lest we be accused of leanings and sympathy with Catholics.”

Of course, we have to have a little touch of anti-Catholic drivel mixed in her, fortunately, quoting Dean George and not editorializing on the part of the reporter (hey, it’s not like this is the NCR.)

A.T. Robertson, who said Mary “has not had fair treatment either from Protestants or Catholics.” Robertson argued that while Catholics have “deified” Mary evangelicals have coldly neglected her.

[snip]

“We need not go through Mary in order to get to Jesus,” George concluded, “but we can join with Mary in pointing others to him.”

This brings up what I think is a reasonable question. How the heck do you get to be Dean of a school of divinity when you think Catholics “use” Mary to get to Jesus? This is outright intellectual dishonesty and the esteemed Dean gets this stuff published?!?

Still, the core of the story is quite encouraging. I think that it’s possible a lot of this started because “The Passion of the Christ” was likely hotter among the Protestant crowd than the Catholics…and what those Protestants saw on the big screen was a very Catholic view of the Passion – including a very definitive characterization of Mary.