Alas, I do not have a Buzzfeed quiz for you with 10 easy questions to determine whether you are Joseph, an angel, or one of the Magi. But I do have some new articles that ponder the fascinating characters at the heart of the stories about Jesus’ birth. This sort of pondering is one of my favorite parts of Advent.
Rachel Mann gets real about her struggles with Mary—or perhaps with the dehumanizing ways the church has narrated Mary’s story through the centuries. Peter Marty reflects on the wilderness setting of John the Baptist’s ministry; I must say it is the most viscerally terrifying First Words columns Peter has written (is this Christmas or Halloween?). And though it’s not Advent-related, I am excited to share with you Haley Hudler’s new article, the cover story of our December issue, about the colonialist assumptions undergirding many international closed adoptions.
Plus more great new content. Scroll down for a poem about childhood grief in Advent, a podcast episode about “queerly rooting,” and more!
Email me: Which Bible character resonates with you during Advent?
“Mary’s humanity has often been eroded away. So many statues and paintings of her are sentimentalized. She is presented as a middle-class simpering White woman dressed in pristine blue robes. In emphasizing her virginity and suggesting that she was sinless, traditional ideas about Mary redact out the facts of her female body.”
“The theological underpinnings of overseas closed adoptions have not often been scrutinized. Even more rarely have the voices of adoptees themselves been heard in these conversations.”
