If you ask the Rev. Katy Fitz Shedlock, there is something wrong with the way Mary is portrayed in most church Christmas pageants.
She’s boring.
Mary is often played as the “most perfect, most boring girl,” said Fitz Shedlock.
“She’s just a silent prop up there, holding a baby and looking sweet,” she said. “But she’s way fiercer and more powerful than that.”
This Christmas the pastor is revamping the Nativity drama at Creator’s Table, a congregation she co-pastors in Spokane, to show off Mary’s fierce side.
Dubbed the “Deleted Scenes Christmas Pageant,” the play skips most of the traditional elements of the Christmas story. There are no wise men, no shepherds, no camels or sheep and no star in the sky.
Joseph is mentioned in the pageant but he’s offstage. And most of the events take place before the birth of Jesus.
Instead, the pageant, which portrays Mary as a modern, strong teenage woman, emphasizes a portion of the Christmas narrative called the Magnificat.
Also known as the Song of Mary, the Magnificat is found in the Gospel of Luke, when Mary visits her relative Elizabeth, who is pregnant as well.
In the first part of the Magnificat, Mary gives praise for being chosen to mother Jesus. In the second half, though, her message changes, said Robert Tannehill, emeritus professor at Methodist Theological School in Ohio.
“She talks about God overthrowing human rulers and overturning society and showing strength against the proud and the rich,” he said. “Mary is important for her role as the mother of the Messiah, but is also a representative of the people of low status, the oppressed.”
The Rev. Jonathan Myers, co-pastor of Creator’s Table, agrees.
“Her tone is often meek and mild, but she’s talking about overthrowing the system,” Myers said.
In the Deleted Scenes Christmas Pageant, Mary will be played by a teenage girl from a nearby Methodist church, who wears a baggy hoodie, gets kicked out of her house, texts Joseph and talks back to the angel Gabriel.
Instead of a meek, sinless girl, Fitz Shedlock, a competitive slam poet, said she wants the audience to see Mary as a troublemaker, someone who isn’t afraid of upsetting the status quo.
The pageant idea stemmed from a poem she wrote last year about Mary and the Magnificat, called “Hail Mary.”
In it Fitz Shedlock writes:
“We skip the moment
where she walks up to the mic,
a teenager starting to show,
she makes us nervous
she might say anything —
she speaks.
in magnificent poetry,
the verses fly by,
more of them than any other woman in the New Testament.”
Christmas pageants at churches have a long history. St. Francis of Assisi is credited with staging the first Nativity scene, according to his biographer, St. Bonaventure.
And pageants remain an effective way of engaging worshippers, said Fitz Shedlock, a Methodist minister who co-pastors the Creators Table with Myers, an Episcopal priest. The congregation uses spoken word, stand-up comedy, live art and other alternative worship experiences in its services.
“That’s the power of the tradition of pageants, whether they be Christmas pageants or Passion plays; there’s a lot of power in asking people to incarnate a story,” Fitz Shedlock said.
Ultimately, the pastors hope those who see the pageant on Dec. 23 will rethink the Christmas story — and view Mary as anything but boring.
“I think the No. 1 hope is that Mary would be uncovered and become more of a three-dimensional human being,” Fitz Shedlock said. “Maybe it will leave some questions in folks’ minds about what we choose to show or not show and why.”
As Christmas approaches, many Christians will reflect on the Nativity, or birth of Jesus. The Christian Bible includes two different stories of the birth of Jesus, found in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. But there are precious few details about the rest of his childhood in the New Testament.
Some Christians today may wonder, what happened next?
It is not a source for the historical Jesus. What it reveals instead is the early Christian imagination. It was read widely by ancient Christians, who copied the stories and translated them into a number of different languages: Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, to name a few.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas includes stories about the child Jesus between the ages of five and 12. The contents of this gospel might trouble many modern-day Christians, who picture Jesus, even in childhood, as a perfect being.
While the child Jesus performs blessings, healing his brother, James, for example, from a snakebite, he also gets into trouble. Jesus curses and hurts other children. He gets a bad reputation. When a playmate named Zeno falls from a roof and dies, his parents accuse Jesus of pushing Zeno from the roof. But Jesus brings the dead boy back to life. The parents of Zeno praise God and the young savior.
Jesus, age 12
If readers are confused by the behavior of the child Jesus in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, they are in the same position as his parents. Mary and Joseph don’t understand him.
The final episode of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is an echo of the single childhood story about Jesus in the New Testament. In the Gospel of Luke, the holy family nearly splits up. Jesus, 12 years old at the time, goes with his parents to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. Afterwards, Mary and Joseph head back home. But not Jesus.
He stays in Jerusalem without permission. Traveling home, Mary and Joseph suddenly realize that Jesus is missing. Three days into the search they find the child in the temple in Jerusalem, teaching the grownups. Mary scolds Jesus for upsetting them,
“Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.”
Jesus replies,
“Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
Jesus shrugs off Mary’s worry and all but ignores Joseph, speaking instead of his divine father. His words leave Mary and Joseph at a loss as they do not understand what he said to them.
Far from the tree
I suspect that Mary and Joseph’s failure to understand Jesus is the element that will resonate most strongly with modern readers. It reminds me of Andrew Solomon’s powerful book, “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity,” which describes parents and children who seem to be separated by profound differences.
In one chapter Solomon describes the experiences of parents of deaf children. In another, he portrays the challenges faced by families with children born with Down syndrome. What Solomon uncovers through these case studies is “the profound unknowability of even the most intimate human relationship.”
Yet, as Solomon observes, differences can strengthen rather than weaken bonds. Differences that push us to the limits of understanding can nevertheless teach us how to love.
Solomon’s chapter on Down syndrome hits close to home. I am the father of two children, one who was born with Down syndrome and one who was born without an extra chromosome. On rare days the stars align, and I know exactly what to say or do as a parent. Most of the time I am uncertain. Sometimes, I am deeply confused. Yet, like Andrew Solomon, I think love is built from all of these moments.
Perhaps a similar message can be found in the story of the 12-year-old Jesus. Is he “far from the tree”? Uncertain after the scene in Jerusalem, Mary, Joseph and Jesus return home together. Family is not a clearly defined structure in the story: It isn’t biologically based or reflective of some “norm.” It is instead a choice to stick together, come what may.
This Christmas, stories about the baby Jesus will get most of the attention. But spare a thought for the tween-age Jesus and his confused parents. They don’t always understand him. They love him anyway.
New Jersey’s athletic association said Saturday that a referee who told a high school wrestler to cut his dreadlocks or forfeit, which drew ire from an Olympian, the state’s governor and many others, won’t be assigned to any matches until the incident is reviewed.
Michael Cherenson, spokesman for the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association, said the organization had reached out to groups that assign referees “and they’ve all agreed” not to assign Alan Maloney to any event until further notice.
Buena Regional High School wrestler Andrew Johnson, who is black, had a cover over his hair Wednesday night during a match. But Maloney, who is white, said that wouldn’t do. An SNJ Today reporter tweeted a video of Johnson getting his hair cut minutes before the match. Johnson went on to win but appeared visibly distraught.
The video was shared widely on social media, with users calling the incident “racist,” ”cruel” and “humiliating.”
Jordan Burroughs, a 2012 Olympic gold medalist and four-time world champion, posted and spoke on social media early Saturday about the incident, saying he had never seen anything like it in a quarter-century of wrestling.
“This is nonsense,” a message on Burroughs’ Twitter account said. “My opinion is that this was a combination of an abuse of power, racism, and just plain negligence.” In a video posted on Instagram, he criticized parents and coaching staff at the match for not intervening, calling it “absolutely shameful.”
Burroughs called Johnson “courageous” for his performance in the match despite “all of the adversity and racism that you were facing in the moment.” The fellow southern New Jersey wrestler said Maloney had been the referee for some of his high school matches growing up.
Gov. Phil Murphy weighed in on the issue on Twitter, saying he was “deeply disturbed” by the story.
“No student should have to needlessly choose between his or her identity and playing sports,” he said.
The state attorney general’s office has confirmed an investigation by the Division on Civil Rights. The school superintendent said in a letter to the community that they support and stand by all student athletes.
Maloney came under fire in 2016 for using a racial slur against a black referee, according to the Courier Post newspaper. Maloney told the newspaper he did not remember making the comments. After the incident was reported, he agreed to participate in sensitivity training and an alcohol awareness program. A one-year suspension was overturned.
A woman answering the phone Friday at a listed number for Maloney said the ordeal is being blown out of proportion and the referee was simply following rules.
Exhibit A: This past Sunday, in the pages of the New York Times Book Review, Ms. Walker endorsed “And The Truth Shall Set You Free,” by David Icke: “In Icke’s books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about. A curious person’s dream come true.”
The problem? David Icke is notoriously anti-semitic. In fact, his publisher judged “And The Truth Shall Set You Free” too anti-semitic to release, and so Icke did it on his own.
Icke’s book blames a Jew for the Holocaust and refers to the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, one of the greatest anti-semitic forgeries in history — a document that asserts that there is an international Jewish cabal that controls the world.
Exhibit B: Six years ago, Alice Walker refused to allow her classic book “The Color Purple” to be translated into Hebrew.
This had nothing to do with the typical anti-Israel stuff.
This had everything to do with Hebrew, i.e., the language of the Jews.
This is a curious variant of what it means to be anti-semitic; it is someone who is anti-a particular Semitic language.
Exhibit C: On her website, Alice Walker offers a poem titled, “It Is Our (Frightful) Duty To Study The Talmud.”
And, no — this wasn’t an advertisement for a yeshiva.
The poem engages in your usual anti-Israel screed.
But, then it takes an alarming turn.
We must go back
As grown ups, now,
Not as the gullible children we once were,
And study our programming,
From the beginning.
All of it: The Christian, the Jewish,
The Muslim; even the Buddhist. All of it, without exception,
At the root.
For the study of Israel, of Gaza, of Palestine,
Of the bombed out cities of the Middle East,
Of the creeping Palestination
Of our police, streets, and prisons
In America,
Of war in general,
It is our duty, I believe, to study The Talmud.
It is within this book that,
I believe, we will find answers
To some of the questions
That most perplex us.
She then names every crackpot, out of context, admittedly offensive but a historicized reference in the Talmud that she can find:
Are Goyim (us) meant to be slaves of Jews, and not only
That, but to enjoy it?
Are three year old (and a day) girls eligible for marriage and intercourse?
Are young boys fair game for rape?
Must even the best of the Goyim (us, again) be killed?
Pause a moment and think what this could mean
Or already has meant
In our own lifetime.
Jews are no stranger to these words, and to these accusations.
There is a long history of anti-Talmud rhetoric in Jewish history. Such rhetoric dates back to the 1200s, when Inquisition officials in Spain put the Talmud on trial.
Over the following centuries, the Talmud was often burnt in public — often with Jews accompanying the volumes into the flames.
Let me tell you the last time that I encountered this vile line of conversation.
It was when I was living in the South. A white supremacist and neo-Nazi sent me hate mail. He started by sending me a list of problematic quotes from the Talmud and rabbinical literature. He had simply copied and pasted them from a hate website.
So, let’s get our minds around this.
When it comes to the Jews, Alice Walker is echoing neo-Nazis.
So, yes. Alice Walker has a problem with the Jews. And, with Judaism. And, of course, with Israel. Her hatred of the Jews illustrates a despicable Venn diagram — in which you find a circle for the left, and a circle for the right — and the overlap is in Jew-hatred.
Ironic, then: just a few days ago, right-wing pundit Anne Coulter let loose — also about the Jews.
On Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox, Coulter said:
“I mean you have the Muslims and the Jews and the various exotic sexual groups and the black church ladies with the college queers …you must hate white men. It’s the one thing they have in common.”
When it comes to the Jews, Alice Walker = Anne Coulter. Pure and simple.
This is not easy for us to say, and it is not easy for us to accept.
Because we tend to ignore, excuse, rationalize, and contextualize the anti-semitism that emerges from our own side of the political spectrum.
In particular, people who are center-left often have difficulty recognizing and naming leftist Jew-hatred when they see it.
Why?
Take Alice Walker. She’s an intellectual, an author, a poet, a person who is a member of a minority group that has itself been disempowered. She is our imagined social, intellectual, and cultural peer. She is someone whom we would normally want to like and admire — the literati.
But, Anne Coulter? Please. Who would sympathize with this overly-privileged right-wing bigot?
You have to call out the anti-semitism of those who would otherwise be your allies. If you don’t, then you have allowed your politics to outweigh and out speak your morals.
Not good. Not good for the Jews. Not good for America. Not good for the world.
A rare bipartisan deal in Congress to overhaul federal sentencing laws passed after a few black ministers, leaders and lawmakers forged an alliance with President Donald Trump, who some have condemned as racist for the last two years.
The reforms could offer a path to freedom for hundreds of black and Latino inmates who were sent to prison by a justice system that critics say has long been stacked against minorities.
“It’s like threading a needle politically,” said Marc Morial, the National Urban League’s president and CEO. “It’s been very delicate to get us to the point where we are right now.”
Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Maryland, still gets questions from fellow African-Americans asking him why he and other conservative black ministers went to the White House over the summer to talk about the issue with Trump.
“People are still mad at us about that,” Jackson said.
But the end result could be worth it to address what Jackson called “the defining civil rights issue of this era,” even as detractors complain that the legislation did not go far enough and could invite new problems for minority communities.
The bill, which is expected to go to Trump soon for his signature, gives judges more discretion when sentencing some drug offenders and expands prisoner rehabilitation efforts. It also reduces the life sentence for some drug offenders with three convictions, or “three strikes,” to 25 years.
Another provision would allow about 2,600 federal prisoners sentenced for crack cocaine offenses before August 2010 the opportunity to petition for a reduced penalty.
That will be a win for minorities who were caught up in a sentencing system that made crack cocaine a more serious offense than other types of cocaine, said New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2020.
“When you correct an injustice in a biased system, it dramatically helps the marginalized people,” Booker said. “That provision alone, 96 percent of the people who are helped by that, are black or Latino.”
Among the advocates of the legislation was a diverse and unlikely group that included presidential adviser Jared Kushner, Kim Kardashian West, the National Urban League, black ministers and minority lawmakers and libertarian-leaning conservatives.
Some of the bill’s advocates say it was a tough decision to work with a White House that is deeply unpopular with black people. More than 8 in 10 African-Americans said they thought Trump was racist in a February poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
But even the supporters say they know this legislation is only the beginning, as reflected by its name, the First Step Act.
Groups such as the NAACP cheered the passage of the bill but also harbored reservations.
The legislation “offers some important improvements to the current federal criminal justice system, but it falls short of providing the meaningful change that is required to make the system genuinely fair,” said Hilary O. Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau.
The bill only affects the federal system, meaning anyone given harsh sentences at the state and local level will have no recourse. Those inmates make up the bulk of people behind bars across America.
Blacks constitute 38 percent — or about 68,000 — of the more than 180,000 inmates in the federal prison population, according to the Bureau of Prisons. Hispanics make up 32 percent — or about 58,000 — of federal prison inmates, with about 122,000 non-Hispanics in federal prison.
Some groups say the bill will open the door to increased surveillance of minority communities through electronic monitoring of released inmates. Others point out limitations in the bill on which federal prisoners will benefit from its changes.
The Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of more than 150 black-led organizations, called the legislation “custom-made for rich white men.”
“All of the carve-outs make the vast majority of our people ineligible for the benefits of the bill,” the group said.
Even with the limits, the bill’s advocates are thrilled to have made progress on an issue where reform has remained elusive for more than a decade. Jackson said any president willing to talk about even minor changes should be worked with.
“I believe with all my heart, if Dr. Martin Luther King was alive, he would have been in that meeting,” Jackson said. “And he would have been advocating for the voiceless instead of playing politics and personality games.”
