(ANALYSIS) It’s universal for kids when they lose their way or skin their knees to call out for their parents. But from my experience as a parent, and now a grandparent, children more often cry for their mommy. 

“I want mommy.”

There’s something about a mother.

This natural cry is widening how I understand our bodies telling God’s story, especially our gender as male and female. I see this in one female in particular, a mother known as the Virgin Mary. There’s something about Mary.

Brad East has noticed this as well. He’s a Protestant and an associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. East’s new book, The Church: A Guide to the People of God, says we’ve lost touch with how the church through the centuries understood the Virgin Mary. In his review for the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, Protestant pastor Brett Vanderzee calls East’s book “a much-needed tonic for our times.”

A medicinal tonic restores people to good health. Vanderzee feels the church needs such a tonic. He cites a staggering statistic: 40 million Americans have left the church in the last quarter century—the biggest and fastest religious transformation in our country’s history. He feels if there was ever a time to answer the question, “Why church?” That time is now.

Brad East’s book answers that question. He begins with the transcendent mystery of the church and moves deftly to the church’s mother: Mary. By divine adoption, he writes, we became brothers and sisters of Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, we are Mary’s children, which makes us children of the church. To those who have lost their way, or lost touch with the church in our day, East gives time-honored advice: “Call your mother.”

Protestant Evangelicals might find this advice quite stunning. They shouldn’t. Early Reformers, Protestant and evangelical, held to what the church for centuries believed about the Virgin Mary. The church has long recognized Mary as the “mother of God.”

“No human being ever knew Christ with greater intimacy than Mary,” East writes.

To read the rest of this post, visit Mike Metzger’s Substack page.

Michael Metzger is the president and founder of The Clapham Institute, which consults ministries and nonprofits.