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FEATURED INTERVIEW:

Interview with Jennifer Powell McNutt

BY: ANNA GRACE GLAZE

Jennifer Powell McNutt (PhD, The University of St. Andrews)

Jennifer Powell McNutt (PhD, The University of St. Andrews) is the Franklin S. Dyrness Chair of Biblical and Theological Studies and professor of theology and history of Christianity at Litfin Divinity School, Wheaton College. Her book, The Mary We Forgot, has been named a finalist in the ECPA Book Awards and the Midwest Book Awards. She is a fellow in the Royal Historical Society, an award-winning professor and scholar, and an ordained teaching elder in the Presbyterian tradition. McNutt regularly speaks at universities, seminaries, and churches across the country. She and her husband cofounded McNuttshell Ministries, which serves as a bridge between the academy and the church, and they live with their three children in Winfield, Illinois.

This interview was conducted via Zoom on August 27, 2025, and has been edited for clarity and length.

AGG: What is your scholarly origin story?

Dr. McNutt: The beginning of my interest in the world of the Bible, theology, and the history of the church, came out of growing up in a pastor's household. As a pastor's kid I was exposed to conversations around the dinner table that centered around those topics and became really formative to my journey. In addition to that, I experienced a call to ministry when I was a child. That set my focus on pursuing a religious studies degree in college and heading to seminary afterward.

I ended up going to Westmont College in beautiful Santa Barbara. I concentrated in biblical languages and received a wonderful education there. I then headed to Princeton Theological Seminary for my Master of Divinity degree. I originally thought I was going to apply to doctoral programs in biblical studies, but then I took a riveting class on European church history and fell in love with the topic. I'd also done a program at Oxford, as an undergraduate, and studied the Reformation and read John Calvin's Institutes. I loved that experience as well; history just came alive for me through those experiences!

That's when I changed directions and realized that history would give me the opportunity to bring all the pieces together—not just politics or economics or cultural history, but also theology and the Bible. I could bring it all together. So, I ended up at the University of St. Andrews working with Bruce Gordon at the Reformation Studies Institute. My dissertation explored Calvin's clerical legacy in eighteenth century Geneva. Then, in 2008, I graduated from St. Andrews and headed to Wheaton College to teach and run the M.A. History of Christianity program.  

AGG: How is it a Reformation scholar wrote a book on Mary Magdalene?

Dr. McNutt: The joy of doing church history is getting to explore so many pieces of the puzzle that make up the past. One of the areas of expertise I have developed over the years is on the history of the Bible. The Bible, of course, is a major part of Reformation history, and my research and teaching involves its reception, its interpretation, and its story as a material object or book. In my work on the women reformers, it became clear that they were engaging with Mary Magdalene in ways that we have not always recognized or understood, especially in regard to her apostolicity. In fact, it’s often been said that the Western tradition doesn't have a place for Mary Magdalene's apostolicity and only a place for her as a prostitute. It was exciting to discover a different story.

AGG: You have a brother who is also ordained, and you write about your relationship with him in the book. You also compare the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene to a sibling relationship. So why in the world do most folks, it seems, read the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene as romantic?

Dr. McNutt: In the mid-20th century, there were many texts that were discovered that had not been previously known, including the Nag Hammadi scrolls. Those texts were translated into English and published, so that there came to be a lot of public attention brought to these Gnostic texts that seemed to spur this idea of a romantic relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene (though I think that’s a misreading of the Gnostic texts since they devalue the human body and the physicality of life). The cultural imagination was then sparked by best-selling books, popular movies, and Broadway musicals. I explore those examples in my book.

AGG: Even before the Gnostic texts, we’ve had folks confuse all the different Marys. Which, honestly, I’m sympathetic to. There are so many Marys!

Dr. McNutt: Yes, I’m sympathetic too! There are so many Marys. Who are these different women that are named in the Gospels and also the unnamed women? The church has not always been able to recognize what the text reveals about the women of the Bible, including the women that traveled with Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem. But they were included in his ministry. They contributed to his ministry. Jesus taught them. Few will know that in that time, women did function as patrons of teachers or rabbis and that’s exactly what Mary Magdalene was. She was a patron of Christ’s ministry in addition to being a disciple, meaning student, of his itinerant ministry.

So, I wanted to highlight the sibling dynamic, a.k.a “sacred siblings,” because that's how Jesus invites his disciples to think about him, as a brother. He’s the one who set the relational dynamic, and that's pretty important theologically in our thinking about Jesus as well. To me, that is the crux of what Jesus commissions and sends Mary Magdalene to share with the remaining twelve in John 20. I’m paraphrasing, but that we have been brought into the family of God by Jesus’ death and resurrection. “I have seen the Lord” is also akin to “I have seen our brother!” Mary Magdalene is such an important part of conveying that aspect of what our salvation in Christ means.

AGG: Do you have a favorite depiction of Mary Magdalene in art, in film? Where should we look?

Dr. McNutt: I’m always interested in how and why Mary Magdalene is depicted at various times and places. So, from the thirteenth century on, she’s depicted as a preacher during the Mendicant movement, which is an important example of how the West has recognized her apostolicity. After the Reformation, she's depicted more as a penitent prostitute for specific reasons coming out of that time and from before that time. There is one image, though, that I am appreciating from the Reformation period. The image is by Albrecht Dürer, and he depicts her encounter with Jesus in the garden based on the John 20 account. What I love about the encounter is that she is depicted bringing the jar of oil and spices ready to anoint Jesus' body. This is the anointing that we should remember her for (rather than the Luke 7 one!). Jesus, meanwhile, is depicted as the gardener. This captures the revelation and realization that she’s about to experience. I love how she has one hand on the jar and one hand reaching out to Jesus. It’s such a powerful moment in the Gospels and such a good presentation of that biblical text that has too often been confused, mistranslated, and misread against her. Here, she is about to touch Jesus, and he is not shrinking from her touch. She is faithful to be there to tend to him, and she is about to be rewarded for that faithfulness. Just wow – beautiful!

AGG: In your experience doing research for this book, were there any surprises?

Dr. McNutt: Yes, there were many surprises! The research was rich and extensive, and I probably could have spent a lifetime on it. One of the first things that jumped out to me was the fact that the West has a tradition of recognizing her apostolicity. In fact, that tradition becomes very prominent at the times of the Crusades, when the East and the West are in tension with one another. The West grasps hold of Mary Magdalene to claim her connection to Christ in a way that legitimates the apostolic succession of the Western church.

It was also interesting to discover in the early church, that the locus of conversation around Mary Magdalene relates especially to her as first witness to the resurrection. When they are reading about her presence in the garden in John or Matthew, they're applying her story to questions and conversations they’re having about the Trinity and Christology. It really did blow my mind to think about how much we have limited her theological significance when considering her story. We often reduce her story to a women-in-ministry conversation, when the history of the church has thought about her in terms of apostolic succession, Christology, the Trinity, and more. We pigeonhole her significance when in fact it touches on all these major elements of the faith!

AGG: It is easy to think about history as simple and linear and moving towards progress in some way, but what you illustrate with Mary Magdalene is that that's not the case. She hasn't always been the way we've imagined her. What other women in Christian history have we similarly misremembered?

Dr. McNutt: When I first started the project of thinking about the reception history of women in the Bible, it began with the Virgin Mary, actually.[1] There’s a lot of good work happening on the Virgin Mary in theology and biblical studies from Protestant spaces more and more. Greater attention to women in the Bible, both named and unnamed (I love how the Bible defies its own time, culture, and practices by including those names like Rhoda, for example!) is an important outworking of the Protestant focus on the authority of Scripture. There’s so much value in remembering how these figures have been interpreted, misunderstood, and overlooked. We have more work to do for sure!  

In church history, of course, there are a lot of women that are overlooked and honestly just need to be better incorporated into the standard telling of the story. They are not just on the fringes; they are integral. You know, I was just talking about Pulcheria, the empress at Constantinople, and her role at the Council of Chalcedon. So few of my students have heard about her place there and role there. Julian of Norwich is a good example. Her writings were lost for hundreds of years. Only in the past century has the church begun to recognize her incredible ministry at the time and the importance of her writings.

That’s why we have to keep going back to the past: to probe, to re-look at sources, to incorporate new discoveries, to address the new questions or insights of new generations that can be brought to the past to help us better understand those times, and at the same time gain perspective on where we are today.

AGG: In your book, you talk about not only Mary Magdalene, but other biblical women like Eve and Rhoda, and you mention Christine de Pisan. Could you say a little bit about Christine and what she illuminates about Mary Magdalene?

Dr. McNutt: Christine de Pisan was a court writer in medieval France. What I love about her book, City of Ladies, (and there are so many things actually) is that it gives us insight into the challenges she's facing in her time in terms of being a Christian woman. At one point, she defends the idea that women are made in the image of God. It catches you off guard. I mean, wasn’t that settled already? We carry these assumptions that a doctrine like the image of God must have been settled for a long time, when in fact it still needed to be claimed for women. Here we are in the early Renaissance, and we still have to assert that women are made in the image of God! Those conversations will continue into the Reformation.

Also, Christine references Mary Magdalene quite a bit, and her commentary gave me insight into some of the criticisms used against women in her time. One question that comes up in the historical record is, why would Jesus first appear to a woman at all? The reasoning that Christine must address is that Jesus must have only told Mary Magdalene because women are by nature gossips. Telling her was the best way to get the word out there! So, there's the cultural reading and assumption of the time, but behind that is this very important question that we should be asking: Why is Mary Magdalene the one there in that moment and for that moment? The answer that they give, obviously, is ridiculous, but the question behind it is a good one for us to ask.

AGG: What's your answer? Why do you think Jesus chose Mary Magdalene?

Dr. McNutt: My answer is, after all this—demon possession! (Let’s all just appreciate that I’m a Presbyterian talking about demon possession, ha.) What Scripture does tell us about Mary Magdalene’s backstory is that Jesus released her from seven demons. This surprises a lot of people because of how many have thought of her as a former prostitute over the years and even today. Understanding her witness through this lens is critical to unlocking her significance biblically and theologically. She proclaims to us Jesus' power to save even over the forces of evil, which is also a sign that he is the anticipated king whose kingdom is coming. We must also remember that Mary Magdalene has been traveling with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. She’s been receiving his teachings. She’s been supporting his ministry financially. It's notable then that the Gospel writers are careful to show that she sees him on the cross, that she sees his body laid in the tomb, she sees the tomb sealed, and then that she's there on resurrection morning. All of those pieces combined make her a powerful witness who proclaims to us who Christ is by what he has done for her. He is the Gardener. He is the Lord. He is the Savior. He is the King who has conquered death on our behalf. There is so much to explore in the fact that a former demon oppressed woman becomes the perfect witness to encounter Christ after the resurrection. I explore this in a recent article I wrote for the Mockingbird: “She Who Hangs Out in Cemeteries.” I hope you’ll check it out!

AGG: Your book has a wonderful introduction by Esau McCaulley. In it, he says, “Just because this is a book about a woman written by a woman doesn't mean it's only for women any more than a book written by a male about the apostle Paul would be only for men. We can all learn from each other.” What can men learn from Mary Magdalene?

Dr. McNutt: Behind the project is my desire to see the church practice more preaching about the women of the Bible among the gathered body on a Sunday morning and from the pulpit. Many churches have women’s ministries, but they don’t necessarily tell the stories of women in Scripture from the pulpit. When the pulpit better reflects the fullness of Scripture, we can see the ways in which God’s kingdom saves, calls, and sends both men and women like Mary Magdalene. We're invited to know them in their struggles, invited to know them in their failures, and invited to know them in their faithfulness. When we partition off the stories of the Bible by male and female, we're actually defying how the Bible wants to be read, and we are missing the big picture of his kingdom. Mary Magdalene should inform and shape both men and women. That’s certainly what the Gospel writers thought when they took time to highlight her place in Christ’s ministry.

But there are so many other ways in which she is significant for the whole church. In terms of discipleship, Mary Magdalene completely redirected her life for Christ, her time, her attention, her money, and even her very footsteps came to be in lock step with Jesus’. And so, when Jesus called her to a particular task (I’m thinking again of that garden scene), she was ready to run and bear witness! That’s what the text says. She ran to do what he called her to do. She was ready to follow through in her commissioning, at her calling. She was ready to be sent. And in fact, that’s what the word apostle means, “one who is sent.” To claim her as an apostle, then, and a faithful disciple is to not only resonate with some of the church’s tradition but most importantly with what Scripture has revealed to us about her. And that’s where I end the book. Are we ready to be sent? Are we ready to run with her for Christ? That’s something I’m aspiring to do. At the end of the day, Mary Magdalene points us to Christ. If we don’t see her rightly or her significance, then we miss a very important part of our faith history.

RESOURCES:

  • (1):  Read Dr. McNutt’s article on the Virgin Mary, co-written with Dr. Amy Peeler, here.