This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2006, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

The vision of a beatific Virgin Mary, passive, patient, uncomplaining and stereotypically female, was hardly helpful to Anne Collier-Freed in the months after she gave birth to triplets while also caring for a lively 2-year old.

Collier-Freed was thus delighted to discover Ann Belford Ulanov's book Receiving Woman, in which Mary is pictured as "a figure of fierce, aggressive capacities who singly held herself open to God's presence, without support of reason or conventions of her culture."

The Centerville mom and Salt Lake Theological Seminary instructor noted in her journal that she needed such "fierceness" in her mothering.

"Mary can become a role model as I also try to 'hold myself open to God's presence' and work in my life," she wrote. "If I am going to meet the intense demands of nurturing four small children and also attend to my children's and my own spiritual development, I need the kind of robust spiritual power that Mary displayed in holding herself open to God. In a similar way, Jesus held on tenaciously to the love of God in the face of doubts, trials and persecution."

Collier-Freed, who earned a doctorate from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., and now attends Community of Grace Presbyterian Church in Sandy with her husband, Darryl, and their children, is among many evangelical Christians who are embracing Mary in new ways.

More and more Protestant authors have taken up the topic of Mary in recent years and scores of evangelical churches are helping to promote the new film "The Nativity Story," which opened Friday. They hope their efforts will produce the same box-office success as Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ."

On top of that, this Sunday, Paraclete Press, a Christian publishing house in Orleans, Mass., will host 78 forums on her life at churches in California, New Jersey, upstate New York, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Texas and Oregon. The forums are prompted in part by the publication this month of Scot McKnight's latest book, The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus.

In it, McKnight argues that Mary has been swallowed up by theological debates about whether Joseph and Mary had sex, captured by controversies about whether she was free of original sin, that the mother of Jesus has largely been ignored by Protestants.

That's too bad, McKnight writes in a Christianity Today essay published this week. Mary is a multifaceted woman who could serve to ignite the spiritual passion of Protestants everywhere.

The "Blessed Valorous Mary," as he dubs her, "wears ordinary clothing and exudes hope from a confident face. This Mary utters poetry fit for a political rally, goes toe-to-toe with Herod the Great, musters her motherliness to reprimand her Messiah-son for dallying at the temple, follows her faith to ask him to address a flagging wine supply at a wedding, and then finds the feistiness to take her children to Capernaum to rescue Jesus from death threats."

This Mary followed Jesus "all the way to the Cross," McKnight writes, "not just as a mother, but as a disciple, even after his closest followers deserted him."

She exemplifies the yearning for justice and the courage to fight for it.

"Like other women of her time, she may have worn a robe and a veil," McKnight writes, "but I suspect her sleeves were rolled up and her veil askew more often than not."

This is old news to Catholics, who revere Mary but also have a strong emphasis on social justice.

They see her as the "mother of God," a sinless soul, who never tasted death but was "assumed" into heaven, and is even considered by some to be a "co-redemptrix" with Jesus Christ.

Her visage graces Roman Catholic churches and cathedrals, replicated and revised in stained glass, paintings and statues. Marian apparitions seem to be on the rise across the globe, as well as alleged images in such places as the window of a Florida office building and a knot in a Salt Lake City tree.

Dee Rowland, director of the Salt Lake Catholic Diocese's Peace and Jusctice Commission, appreciates the more recent emphasis on celebrating "the virgin of Guadaluple," a Marian visitation to a Mexican peasant.

"I'm fascinated at how empowering that has been for Mexican Catholics," Rowland says. "It helps them to appreciate their own value and dignity."

She has also contributed to a new prayer book titled Living God's Justice. In it, there is a litany to Mary of Narareth that refers to her as mother of the homeless, the dying, the nonviolent, the political prisoner, the condemned, the executed criminal.

The litany calls her a model of strength, gentleness, trust, courage, patience, risk, openness, and perseverence.

"Be our guide," it asks of Mary. "Pray for us."

---

* PEGGY FLETCHER STACK can be contacted at pstack@sltrib.com or 801-257-8725. Send comments about this story to religioneditor@sltrib.com.