Queer Madonnas, nonviolence, and the macho Christian right: or ‘how to do Mariology without Men’

This article asks whether Adriana Cavarero’s invocation of the Christian Madonna to inspire a pacifist feminist ethics could help counter the ever-strengthening alliance between Conservative Christianity and the radical right which I refer to as “Macho Christianity.” To flesh out Cavarero’s undeveloped invocation of the Madonna’s love as “non-stereotypical” I turn to queer and non-dominant indigenous Mariologies to provide a novel reading that demonstrates, against the dominant exegetical tradition, the radical absence of normative Man at the heart of the Christian story. This indicates that for too long the normative Man of patriarchy has held Christianity hostage, limiting and contorting its message. In response, I use these alternative Mariologies to develop Cavarero’s “non-stereotypical” love via a novel interpretation of the Christian love of enemies as a nonviolent, militant, performative political practice of interruption, from which less dominatory ways of relating to one another could emerge.