As I dive deeper into feminist theology, it’s hard not to feel angry at the church. Not that I need an excuse. But I think about those early decisions, the choices that were made that led to the exclusion of millions of people from the story of Jesus. Women and queer people and trans people who could have seen themselves in the bible from the beginning, but have spent millennia on the outside, looking in. Of course not everyone wants to be part of the church, but how many of these people would have chosen it, if they’d been allowed.
And it’s not even they just chose the books to include in the New Testament but allowed the others to float around, confident in the knowledge that their choice was divinely inspired and would be enough. They actively went around destroying the alternative narratives of Jesus, anything that didn’t fit with the patriarchal, heteronormative version of his teachings that they decided was The Way.
I’m furious about the missing pages of Mary Magdalene’s gospel. It seems stupid to be furious about something that happened, depending on what you believe - over fifteen hundred years ago, at the time the order for the copies to be destroyed was given, or a little over a hundred years ago when the Berlin Codex (the fullest version of Mary’s gospel currently available) was discovered, but I am. Those pages contain something incredible, unthinkable, magical. Something so powerful, something so antithetical to the teachings of the church that it wasn’t permitted to remain in the world.
It’s against the whole principle of her gospel to desperately want it to have remained - the answers lie within, after all - but I do. I want it with every fibre of my being. I want more of her gospel, not less. Even with those pages included, it would have been so short, her words so few in comparison to the other disciples. As a woman and a follower of Jesus I am hungry for her words. I need more of them, more of her story. More of how she was beloved. More of how she was trusted. More of how she was powerful.
And yet I have less, we have less. Because some old dudes thought it would be dangerous to let women have a voice, to be represented, to be seen.
I know it was cultural. And I’m sure they thought they were doing the right thing at the time. But I’m still angry.
Where’s the curiosity? Where’s the questioning? Where’s the turning inwards and listening to the voice of god within them, which might have told them it was okay to allow those texts to be in the world - not included in their holy book if they felt so strongly about it - but at least out there in the world, available for people who wanted more of the story.
Already responsible for the deaths of millions, we can add the deaths of all those who have taken their own lives for want of love and acceptance.
I’m just so angry.
Which is ironic, given the seventh power we are told we must overcome in Mary’s gospel is the compulsion of rage - not allowing anger to rule us.
And this anger could rule me. It could rise up and overwhelm me, I feel it. It’s not intellectual, and it’s not just rooted in my experience in this life. I close my eyes and I see and feel the experiences of two thousand years - of wars and witch hunts and the torture of gay and trans people. Of women being beaten and downtrodden and humiliated.
It was a choice - a choice - and they made the wrong one. How could it be divinely inspired? How can they stand by those decisions today? How can they trust the choices of their forefathers, knowing what we know now about those men.
This anger is hard to to live with. Even though I know that it’s okay to be angry, that anger is permissible, every time I think of the injustice that has been done to the world in the name of Jesus, my anger rises up and threatens to overwhelm me, to swallow me whole.
In Mary Chapter 9, we’re told that Jesus gave her a special teaching about the Seven Powers of Wrath - the things in life that bind us and keep us from reaching our own inner gnosis, our inner knowing. The seventh power is the compulsion of rage - the way in which anger can be righteous allow us to get stuck in our ego and ‘rightness’ about that which causes our anger.
This is where I am when it comes to the church. I am so wholly convinced of my rightness, of the righteousness of my anger. The impotence I feel in being able to change anything spurs it on. And all I want is to scream and rage and tell the world how wrong it is.
I’m still here. Two years since discovering Mary’s gospel. Ten years since leaving the church. I am still angry.
Karen King translates the seventh power in Mary 9 as ‘the wisdom of of the wrathful person’, and I think there’s a clue in there for us.
There can be wisdom in anger. It’s not that anger is wrong. It’s not that anger is something we shouldn’t ever feel. It’s that there’s a way to harness that anger and act on it in a way that is rooted in love. Love for the root, the very core of whatever it is causing the anger. Love for ourselves in the way we experience anger. Understanding and compassion and acceptance that where there is anger, there is love. We are only ever angry about things that intersect with our love for something. There can be no anger without love.
So, what is the response to my anger at the church? I no longer choose apathy. I no longer choose standing on the sidelines, being paralysed by rage. Instead, I choose for it to motivate me, to empower me to show up and do better for the world. I choose to remember what Mary’s gospel has given me, the knowledge for those who felt there was no place for us in Jesus teachings, we are welcome here - that there has been a place there for us all along.
And then I act.