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American Magnificat: Protestants on Mary of Guadalupe. Edited by Maxwell E. Johnson. (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2010, Pp. x, 204. $19.95, paper.)
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that during an Episcopal visitation James Madison, the first bishop of Virginia, knocked the candlesticks off the altar, saying "there will be none of that Romishness in this diocese!" The essays in American Magnificat: Protestants on Mary of Guadalupe show that Protestants no longer need to define themselves as opposed to all things associated with being Roman Catholic. In fact, as Maxwell Johnson argues in the introductory essay, Protestants can even celebrate the Virgin Mary as revealed in Mary of Guadalupe "because she proclaims the gospel" (3), "because she embodies for us God's unmerited grace" (6), and "because she is a type and model of what the church is to be in the world" (11).
Roman Catholics write the foreword and conclusion to this collection, which includes eleven essays by protestant scholars (six Lutherans, two Presbyterians, one...