Welcome to the Strong Women Podcast, where each week we explore a deeper understanding of the humanity, value, intellect, and creativity of women.

I'm Sarah Stone Street.

And I'm Erin Kunkel.

Glad you're here.

Welcome to the Strong Women Podcast for our Merry Christmas episode where we're talking about our conversation with Tim Ralston from two years ago about Mary.

It was such a good conversation that we wanted to re-air it for you all this Christmas.

And then as a bonus, we want to just talk about it and reflect on it with you.

So thanks for joining us.

And I hope you're all having a Merry Christmas this week.

So, Aaron, why don't you start us off?

Because we talked about a lot of things,

but I want to hear where you want to go first in our conversation.

Well, this topic of Mary, the mother of Jesus, two years ago we wanted to talk about

because we realized that growing up in Protestant churches, as we both have, there just really isn't a lot taught about Mary.

Now, if you go to liturgical churches, you certainly have heard the Magnificat Mary's song,

which is recorded in Luke 1, But a lot of Protestant teachings and Bible studies and especially women's Bible studies do not focus on Mary.

And we know so much about Mary, actually.

She's mentioned in all four gospels and we are given so much

information about her actually. And Tim Ralston in his chapter called the Virgin Mary

reclaiming our respect that Tim wrote in the book Vindicating the Vixens, which was edited by Sandra Glon, who we also had on the podcast.

But when we read his chapter, he talks about how Mary is actually out of all the people in the New Testament that are talked about and mentioned and words quoted.

Of course, Jesus is the number one

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