Mary’s Magnificat: The Anawim and Church on the Margins

Abstract

The Magnificat is Mary’s song proclaimed to her cousin Elizabeth and, through the Gospel of Luke, to the world. Mary’s Magnificat proclaims what God is doing among us: bringing the poor to their just reward and demanding the narcissistic rich to look to God, not their wealth for fullness of life. The song speaks of God’s justice through the great reversal, casting down the mighty and lifting up the lowly. The author asks whether the mainline Christian churches find their identity with the rich or the poor; their past or their present. With deep concern she calls religious institutions to take their place with the ‘anawim’ on the margins, and affirm the prophecy of the Magnificat of a future that returns them to their beginnings.