I don’t know if my younger self would be surprised to know that at age 41, I’m a single, childless dog lady. But I do think my younger self would be surprised to know how happy I am.
I think the idea that a woman’s happiness can only be found with a partner and children is common enough anywhere you go (just watch a Hallmark Christmas movie!), but growing up evangelical I probably received this messaging even more than the average, albeit in fairly subtle ways. Thankfully, I was lucky enough not to encounter remarks like those by incoming American Vice President J.D. Vance, disparaging “childless cat ladies” as “miserable” people, who inflict that misery on others. However, I don’t think views like those of Vance (who identifies as Catholic) are as fringe as we might like to think, especially in Christian circles. Just recently, I encountered a claim from a conservative Reformed organization that “marriage is normative for Christians.” As I’ve argued previously, such claims run counter to the radical decentering of marriage in Jesus’s teachings. But that doesn’t seem to stop many Christians from focusing on the family as the center of faith.
Of course, saying that marriage will make you happy and saying that marriage is normative aren’t exactly the same claim, but the language of happiness or misery often comes morally loaded, as in Vance’s remarks about childless women. Projecting misery onto childless women is a convenient way to uphold the belief that women are naturally, perhaps divinely, designed as wives and mothers, and that only in this destiny can true happiness and fulfillment be found. For a childless woman to be happy, or even just non-miserable, threatens this belief and thereby threatens the wider patriarchal belief system that maintains power for men—especially white men, especially wealthy white men.
Undergirding these claims around women’s fulfillment or lack thereof is the theological framework of “blessing.” Does God’s blessing for women come only in the form of marriage and children? What would it mean for someone like me to claim that I am blessed?
Blessing is an ongoing theme in the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus. When the angel Gabriel first greets her, the first thing he does is tell her that she has God’s favour: “Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28, NRSV). We are told that Mary “was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be” (Luke 1:29), but Gabriel reiterates to her that she has “found favour with God” (Luke 1:30). Later, Mary’s cousin Elizabeth also greets Mary with a proclamation of God’s favour and blessing: “‘Blessed are you among women … blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord’” (Luke 1: 42, 45). Finally, in her glorious Magnificat, Mary herself proclaims herself blessed:
“‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.’” (Luke 1:46-49)
It has always struck me as a bold claim, that generations to come will call her blessed. That Mary is uniquely favoured by God isn’t obvious to the world at the time when Mary utters these words. To all appearances, she is in a precarious situation, a single (betrothed) woman expecting a child. We don’t know the precise timeline, but it’s likely that at this point, Joseph either does not know about the pregnancy at all or is planning “to divorce her quietly” (Matt. 1:19). Yes, Mary is going to have a child, but in the patriarchal culture in which she lived—just like for many people today —a pregnancy without a man around isn’t exactly considered #blessed. It’s no accident that the annunciation narrative that most clearly foreshadows Mary’s is that of Hagar (Genesis 16), another unmarried mother in very precarious circumstances.
Mary’s self-assertion that she is blessed is a declaration of faith in God’s message that has been conveyed to her via Gabriel. She trusts that the strange situation she finds herself in is part of God’s purposes unfolding, and that her special part in it is a sign of God’s favour, even if it doesn’t appear so to others. And as she makes clear in her Magnificat, Mary understands that it is not just her own life that is being turned upside down by this pregnancy. The birth of her child will initiate a divine unsettling of human systems, an upturning and overturning of those who hold power, of who is considered “blessed” and who is not:
“He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:50-55)
Mary sees her being chosen as the mother of God’s Son as a sign that God is upturning the order of the universe. The lowly are lifted up, the powerful are taken down.
Mary chose to believe that God’s very specific promises to her would be fulfilled—that the strange situation she was in was truly part of a cosmic plan unfolding. But the promises that Mary claims in her Magnificat are for everyone. We are invited to believe with Mary that God has something different in mind for the world than the power structures we currently inhabit.
With apologies to Vance and to anyone else threatened by the happiness of a single, childless dog lady, my Christmas confession is this: I am #blessed. As much as I love watching trashy Christmas movies where a big city lawyer visits her hometown and falls in love with a singing lumberjack, I know that I don’t need a similar experience to receive God’s blessing. Nowhere has God promised me a husband or child—but God has promised that the existing order of this world is being overturned through the birth of Jesus Christ. And this overturning includes systems of patriarchy. Instead of allowing my faith to be co-opted in shoring up patriarchy, I am invited to participate in the divine dismantling of the hierarchies of this world, believing with Mary that God will bring down the powerful and lift up the lowly. God has removed the CEO’s from their thrones and sent the billionaires away empty. Amen and amen.
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