Mary Magdalene wasn’t silenced by accident. This essay explores how Christian Nationalism depends on erasing women’s spiritual authority and why Magdalene still threatens patriarchal power today.
This reminded me of the pushback I received when I first began writing on Facebook many years ago. It was all men, all Christians, and they were brutal. Their heads would spin that I was teaching without being "under the authority" of a man. Their interactions turned out to be a gift because I needed to see how much I was still seeking their approval by exhausting myself trying to explain who I was to people who would never accept me as anything but a heretic. I was attempting to move beyond patriarchal control without all of the resources I needed to do so. Teachings as yours are a reminder of Mary Magdalene's story and its significant for women untangling from Christian patriarchy. Thank you.
Thank you for naming this so clearly. What you describe is such a familiar initiation. The moment a woman teaches without asking for covering, permission, or male translation, the system panics.
What makes this so powerful is that it’s a theological intervention, not a plea for inclusion. Magdalene isn’t softened or symbolic here — she’s a woman who knows, and that’s exactly what systems built on control can’t handle. This piece refuses to ask permission, and I love that about it. Blessed be the women troublemakers who refuse to ask permission. I am here for all of it.
Inclusion still leaves the system intact. Magdalene doesn’t ask to be included because she never lacked authority in the first place. What threatens power is not a woman being allowed in, but a woman who already knows.
“Blessed be the women troublemakers who refuse to ask permission” might be the whole thesis.
A passing glance at the most fervent of the Christian Nationalists in the form of Groypers reveals not just a desire to submit the divine feminine, but an outright hatred of it. A seething, rabid venom towards the feminine in all its forms. And yet a craving for it. Which explains the popularity of the femboy fetish among many of its denizens. They're souls who long for reunion and wholeness but have been radicalized to despise an entire half of their essence. And their inverse mirrors in the 4B movement and others represent the same impulse; if expressed differently.
There’s truth in that tension. What’s forbidden often turns into fixation. What’s shamed gets twisted.
Virgin Monk Boy would say this: when a culture teaches people to despise the feminine, inside or outside themselves, it doesn’t disappear. It mutates. Into contempt. Into obsession. Into ideology.
Different movements wear different costumes, but the fracture is the same. A soul cut in half will either try to dominate what it fears or exile itself from what it longs for.
The problem isn’t the feminine.
It’s what happens when wholeness is declared illegal.
The ancients didn’t have this fear. Gaia was said to have been the first being to emerge from Chaos. The Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Druids… all included women in their pantheons. (The Greeks actually took it a step further with a nonbinary god.) But they are — today — viewed as “archaic” and their religions as “pagan”.
I wonder why. Was Moses *that* pissed off about being left in the river in a basket?
The ancients weren’t afraid of feminine power. They assumed it. What gets labeled “pagan” or “archaic” is usually whatever resists hierarchy and control. It’s less about Moses being angry and more about older memories that refused to stay buried.
It can be labeled a lot of other things too. (Like “domestic terrorism” for example.) And honestly, I imagine Moses wasn’t all that mad at Miriam considering she did that to save his life (as I recall). But it does seem that the religions that grew out of that tradition are the ones that are doing the gatekeeping. And for some reason we keep calling it “progress”.
If we’re being precise, it isn’t “that tradition” as a single block. It’s what happens when any living tradition fuses with state power and starts confusing order with control.
Early Judaism wasn’t monolithic. Early Christianity wasn’t either. And early Islam absolutely wasn’t. Islam’s classical period (750–1258) preserved women scholars, debated openly, translated pagan philosophy, and held mystical lineages that would make modern gatekeepers sweat.
I have to confess I have a blind spot where Islam is concerned. That much I knew. But clearly that’s not the only one. Perhaps that’s how I ended up here among the scrolls.
“If God can be encountered directly, then you do not need empire.” VMB 12/12,‘25
I need to focus on my connection to the Source of all Good by doing my “practice” daily. I have drifted away. Deep down I feel like I don’t deserve to feel good, connected, and loved. I am not alone in this human lapse. I need peace.
Thank you for saying this out loud, Carol. You’re not alone in that drift. When I feel that way, it helps me to pause and remember that others are feeling it too.
As painful as all of this patriarchal history is to read, finally understanding why i felt so disconnected with the Christian faith I was a raised in, I feel a hope I have never felt before that Truth is finally being just not spoken but heard in a way that is perhaps rocking the boat so much it seems like A) the boat will sink & EVERYONE will drown (not just women) or B) it will survive & this time the outcome will finally be different than the same one thats happened over & over & over. I have witnessed the roller coaster in my own life of considering suicide at 16 because i thot I was pregnant & abortion was only legal in NY, to being thrilled to see ROE V. WADE change everything, to the unthinkable happening again when ROE V. WADE was overturned & to anything regarding women having any kind of control over their bodies dismantled (name me ONE LAW that contains ANY kind of control over a man’s body) - maybe I’m just so sick of it all, from the response to this post demonstrating stepping into the Way Back Machine & how this has persisted since Eve ate the damn apple (it had to be a male snake), but maybe because the Truth refuses to be silenced & you gave such a genuine, thorough, heartfelt, positive, truthful history whose thread has persistently refused to cease BUT that’s exactly what gives me the HOPE - because the oppression still HASNT WON.
Weary as I am, I so truly believe after all that I read in the comments following your blistering history of TRUTH that’s tried but failed over & over to be buried,
IT NEVER WILL BE. Because ultimately TRUTH CAN’T BE.
Cock-eyed optimist here maybe, but y’all burn brightly & are what gets me up in the morning. That and coffee. 💔❤️🩹💗💓💖💝 what a gift.
Let those Christian nationalists, and those who insist on being gatekeepers or enforcing a hierarchy be uncomfortable. I'm not asking for permission anymore.
Yes. Discomfort is often the first sign that the gate is losing its power.
When permission is no longer sought, hierarchy has nothing left to enforce. Magdalene didn’t ask to be allowed. She spoke. And the discomfort followed.
Blessed be the women who stop waiting at doors that were never meant to open.
Would you say the same about Israel or Sudan or Congo or America and on and on. I know the story, but it seems to me any right wing nationalist would tell their own heart wrenching story. A different one, or the same. Not criticizing, this post is excellent. Just curious what your thoughts are on my question.
That’s a fair question, Linda. Yes, I’d say something similar anywhere nationalism fuses itself to sacred meaning.
Most nationalist movements are rooted in real trauma and real suffering. The issue isn’t the pain. It’s what the pain gets used to justify. When suffering is baptized as divine entitlement, hierarchy and silence always follow, especially for women.
Great answer and damned near close to what I would have said. But, I am a mouthy female. I get this retort a lot, “It’s not what you said, it’s how you said is.” Okay, but that sentence is not going to change one iota of how I represent being a woman. Loud, proud, highly opinionated but reasonable. . Thanks for responding. Great topic.
Well put. In Clark Strand’s book (“Waking up to the Dark”) he describes a vision of Mary approaching him with duct tape over her mouth. It’s a powerful transmission.
Mary with duct tape isn’t subtle symbolism. It’s the visceral truth of how wisdom gets treated when it speaks from the body, from the feminine, from direct knowing instead of sanctioned authority. A transmission like that doesn’t ask to be analyzed. It asks to be felt.
Love it. That becomes clear in The Chosen: one of the many highlights of a series I watched when I was veering faithwards.
Ironically the death of the character Rehema (was that a fabrication?) stopped me in my tracks and sent me spinning back Buddhawards. It just seemed sooooo gratuitous.
The series seemed rather well done on the whole, given that it came from the Christian Right if I'm not mistaken. Speaking of which, one of the other catalysts for me turning on my heels was that members of the evangelical church (in Spain!) I was just starting to attend being circulating videos of "St" Charlie Kirk, the "glorious martyr". That was, I'm afraid, one nail in the coffin too many for me. But never say never...
This reminded me of the pushback I received when I first began writing on Facebook many years ago. It was all men, all Christians, and they were brutal. Their heads would spin that I was teaching without being "under the authority" of a man. Their interactions turned out to be a gift because I needed to see how much I was still seeking their approval by exhausting myself trying to explain who I was to people who would never accept me as anything but a heretic. I was attempting to move beyond patriarchal control without all of the resources I needed to do so. Teachings as yours are a reminder of Mary Magdalene's story and its significant for women untangling from Christian patriarchy. Thank you.
Thank you for naming this so clearly. What you describe is such a familiar initiation. The moment a woman teaches without asking for covering, permission, or male translation, the system panics.
What makes this so powerful is that it’s a theological intervention, not a plea for inclusion. Magdalene isn’t softened or symbolic here — she’s a woman who knows, and that’s exactly what systems built on control can’t handle. This piece refuses to ask permission, and I love that about it. Blessed be the women troublemakers who refuse to ask permission. I am here for all of it.
Yes. Exactly that.
Inclusion still leaves the system intact. Magdalene doesn’t ask to be included because she never lacked authority in the first place. What threatens power is not a woman being allowed in, but a woman who already knows.
“Blessed be the women troublemakers who refuse to ask permission” might be the whole thesis.
A passing glance at the most fervent of the Christian Nationalists in the form of Groypers reveals not just a desire to submit the divine feminine, but an outright hatred of it. A seething, rabid venom towards the feminine in all its forms. And yet a craving for it. Which explains the popularity of the femboy fetish among many of its denizens. They're souls who long for reunion and wholeness but have been radicalized to despise an entire half of their essence. And their inverse mirrors in the 4B movement and others represent the same impulse; if expressed differently.
There’s truth in that tension. What’s forbidden often turns into fixation. What’s shamed gets twisted.
Virgin Monk Boy would say this: when a culture teaches people to despise the feminine, inside or outside themselves, it doesn’t disappear. It mutates. Into contempt. Into obsession. Into ideology.
Different movements wear different costumes, but the fracture is the same. A soul cut in half will either try to dominate what it fears or exile itself from what it longs for.
The problem isn’t the feminine.
It’s what happens when wholeness is declared illegal.
The ancients didn’t have this fear. Gaia was said to have been the first being to emerge from Chaos. The Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Druids… all included women in their pantheons. (The Greeks actually took it a step further with a nonbinary god.) But they are — today — viewed as “archaic” and their religions as “pagan”.
I wonder why. Was Moses *that* pissed off about being left in the river in a basket?
The ancients weren’t afraid of feminine power. They assumed it. What gets labeled “pagan” or “archaic” is usually whatever resists hierarchy and control. It’s less about Moses being angry and more about older memories that refused to stay buried.
It can be labeled a lot of other things too. (Like “domestic terrorism” for example.) And honestly, I imagine Moses wasn’t all that mad at Miriam considering she did that to save his life (as I recall). But it does seem that the religions that grew out of that tradition are the ones that are doing the gatekeeping. And for some reason we keep calling it “progress”.
If we’re being precise, it isn’t “that tradition” as a single block. It’s what happens when any living tradition fuses with state power and starts confusing order with control.
Early Judaism wasn’t monolithic. Early Christianity wasn’t either. And early Islam absolutely wasn’t. Islam’s classical period (750–1258) preserved women scholars, debated openly, translated pagan philosophy, and held mystical lineages that would make modern gatekeepers sweat.
I have to confess I have a blind spot where Islam is concerned. That much I knew. But clearly that’s not the only one. Perhaps that’s how I ended up here among the scrolls.
Gaia ✨💕
“If God can be encountered directly, then you do not need empire.” VMB 12/12,‘25
I need to focus on my connection to the Source of all Good by doing my “practice” daily. I have drifted away. Deep down I feel like I don’t deserve to feel good, connected, and loved. I am not alone in this human lapse. I need peace.
Thank you for saying this out loud, Carol. You’re not alone in that drift. When I feel that way, it helps me to pause and remember that others are feeling it too.
“The Source of all Good”. Love that😌🙏♥️
As painful as all of this patriarchal history is to read, finally understanding why i felt so disconnected with the Christian faith I was a raised in, I feel a hope I have never felt before that Truth is finally being just not spoken but heard in a way that is perhaps rocking the boat so much it seems like A) the boat will sink & EVERYONE will drown (not just women) or B) it will survive & this time the outcome will finally be different than the same one thats happened over & over & over. I have witnessed the roller coaster in my own life of considering suicide at 16 because i thot I was pregnant & abortion was only legal in NY, to being thrilled to see ROE V. WADE change everything, to the unthinkable happening again when ROE V. WADE was overturned & to anything regarding women having any kind of control over their bodies dismantled (name me ONE LAW that contains ANY kind of control over a man’s body) - maybe I’m just so sick of it all, from the response to this post demonstrating stepping into the Way Back Machine & how this has persisted since Eve ate the damn apple (it had to be a male snake), but maybe because the Truth refuses to be silenced & you gave such a genuine, thorough, heartfelt, positive, truthful history whose thread has persistently refused to cease BUT that’s exactly what gives me the HOPE - because the oppression still HASNT WON.
Weary as I am, I so truly believe after all that I read in the comments following your blistering history of TRUTH that’s tried but failed over & over to be buried,
IT NEVER WILL BE. Because ultimately TRUTH CAN’T BE.
Cock-eyed optimist here maybe, but y’all burn brightly & are what gets me up in the morning. That and coffee. 💔❤️🩹💗💓💖💝 what a gift.
Truth always feels like it’s going to sink the boat when the boat was built on control. But it keeps surfacing anyway. That persistence is the hope.
Also yes. Coffee is absolutely doing holy work here.
Great post. Thanks!
Amen
Yes! 🥰✨💕
Let those Christian nationalists, and those who insist on being gatekeepers or enforcing a hierarchy be uncomfortable. I'm not asking for permission anymore.
Yes. Discomfort is often the first sign that the gate is losing its power.
When permission is no longer sought, hierarchy has nothing left to enforce. Magdalene didn’t ask to be allowed. She spoke. And the discomfort followed.
Blessed be the women who stop waiting at doors that were never meant to open.
Would you say the same about Israel or Sudan or Congo or America and on and on. I know the story, but it seems to me any right wing nationalist would tell their own heart wrenching story. A different one, or the same. Not criticizing, this post is excellent. Just curious what your thoughts are on my question.
That’s a fair question, Linda. Yes, I’d say something similar anywhere nationalism fuses itself to sacred meaning.
Most nationalist movements are rooted in real trauma and real suffering. The issue isn’t the pain. It’s what the pain gets used to justify. When suffering is baptized as divine entitlement, hierarchy and silence always follow, especially for women.
Different stories. Often the same mechanism.
Great answer and damned near close to what I would have said. But, I am a mouthy female. I get this retort a lot, “It’s not what you said, it’s how you said is.” Okay, but that sentence is not going to change one iota of how I represent being a woman. Loud, proud, highly opinionated but reasonable. . Thanks for responding. Great topic.
Well put. In Clark Strand’s book (“Waking up to the Dark”) he describes a vision of Mary approaching him with duct tape over her mouth. It’s a powerful transmission.
Mary with duct tape isn’t subtle symbolism. It’s the visceral truth of how wisdom gets treated when it speaks from the body, from the feminine, from direct knowing instead of sanctioned authority. A transmission like that doesn’t ask to be analyzed. It asks to be felt.
Your fierce restoration of the spiritual authority of Magdalene, helps mortals like me get an invaluable insight and learning.
Thank you
🙏🙏
Thank you. Magdalene doesn’t need rescuing, but many of us need our eyes reopened to what she already carries.
Love it. That becomes clear in The Chosen: one of the many highlights of a series I watched when I was veering faithwards.
Ironically the death of the character Rehema (was that a fabrication?) stopped me in my tracks and sent me spinning back Buddhawards. It just seemed sooooo gratuitous.
Yes, Rehema is a fabrication, not in the Gospels. That moment landed hard for a lot of people. It felt gratuitous rather than revelatory.
Sometimes when a story loses its compassion, the turning away isn’t rejection. It’s discernment.
The series seemed rather well done on the whole, given that it came from the Christian Right if I'm not mistaken. Speaking of which, one of the other catalysts for me turning on my heels was that members of the evangelical church (in Spain!) I was just starting to attend being circulating videos of "St" Charlie Kirk, the "glorious martyr". That was, I'm afraid, one nail in the coffin too many for me. But never say never...
Red flags for sure!!!