Writer explores everything about Mary

“Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints”

By Elizabeth A. Johnson (Continuum, 379 pages, $26.95)

For someone who is close to the center of the Christian church, relatively little is known about Mary.

Sure, the Bible documents her role in the birth of Jesus. And she is present at a few key moments of his life, including his death. But we are given only glimpses of her life, left to fill in the blanks on much of what she thought and how she lived.

In her new book, “Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints,” Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson tries to take a fresh look at the first lady of Christianity.

Johnson does not view Mary as the ideal woman, the female face of God, an icon or any of the other labels that have been thrust upon her by the male-dominated church. Instead, she was a real person with her own story.

“Mary is a concrete woman of history who had her own life to figure out, a first-century Jewish woman in a peasant village with a culture very different from 21st century, post-industrial society, though similar to peasant culture in those countries where it still exists,” Johnson writes.

Johnson, a theology professor at Fordham University, is a leading feminist Catholic theologian. Two of her previous books — 1993’s “She Who Is” and 1998’s “Friends of God and Prophets” — won national awards for religious writing.

She takes on Mary at a time when modern women seem to be split on how to view Christ’s mother. Was Mary a powerful and influential woman who helped carve a place for women in the church? Or was she an obedient, passive virgin the church used to keep women in their place?

Mary Hines, a theology professor in Washington, D.C., was startled a few years ago to find all of the students registered for her course on Mary were men, Johnson writes.

Female students told the professor they had too many conflicted feelings about Mary to enroll. “Some said there was just too much baggage for them to summon up interest in studying Mary,” Hines said.

Johnson uses her book to look at Mary from every angle. She explores Mary’s portrayal throughout history and outlines how different branches of Christianity have lionized or diminished her influence.

But the author is at her best when she puts aside dense theological arguments and uses historical and archaeological evidence to paint a picture of how the real Mary — or Miriam of Nazareth — might have lived.

Johnson explores everything from Mary’s appearance (probably muscular, with dark hair and eyes) to her language (Aramaic with a Galilean accent) to the conditions of her village (dirty and dusty in the dry season, muddy in the wet season, smelly all the time).

She probably lived a hard life in a remote farming community, trying to survive the political turmoil and violence of her era.

“All evidence points to the fact that Miriam of Nazareth, wife of a carpenter in the farming village of Nazareth, lived the bulk of her child-bearing years along the rigorous lines described here, engaged in the labor of maintaining a Jewish household in a rural village overlaid with the economic pressures of dominant Roman authorities and their Herodian client-kings,” Johnson writes.

The book also delves into the sticky debates on whether Mary remained a virgin throughout her life or if she bore as many as seven or more children after Jesus, as some scholars argue.

In the end, Johnson concludes that once society gets past the stereotypes and iconic images, Mary can be viewed by contemporary women as a friend.

“She is truly, subversively, our sister,” Johnson writes.