In December 2003, the prominent Evangelical magazine Christianity Today featured an article called “The Blessed Evangelical Virgin Mary.” This article begins with a striking anecdote from John Knox's book History of the Reformation in Scotland. In this story, a young man who had left the Roman Catholic Church was forced to row in a galley ship for nineteen months. Soon after the boat arrived in Nantes, France, an image of the Virgin Mary was brought to those in the ship to kiss. This young man took the image and threw it into the water, saying, “Let our Lady now save herself: she is light enough; let her learn to swim!”

According to the author of the article, Timothy George, this attitude toward Mary often resurfaces in the Evangelical response to Mary. Evangelicals generally have an extreme wariness and instinctive distrust of Marian piety. But George asks the question voiced by many of his contemporaries: “Does Protestantism have a place for the Virgin Mary or, like Knox of the galleys, must we throw her overboard once and for all?”

This question is currently being answered in a variety of ways. On a personal level, many Protestants are slowly warming to the idea of asking for Mary's intercessions, or at least very intentionally contemplating her example.

Princeton theologian Robert Jensen, a Lutheran, and coeditor of the book Mary, Mother of Godnow encourages the practice of praying to Mary in stark contrast to his father, who was a strict Lutheran pastor. According to Jensen, asking for Mary's intercessions does not decrease our focus on God or take away from prayers to God. Instead, this practice is more like asking for the prayers of a deceased friend or family member — these prayers allow for participation in the Communion of Saints and are not a negation of God.

A recent joint commission of Anglicans and Roman Catholics issued a statement that it is officially theologically acceptable within both contexts to ask for the prayers of the Virgin Mary. The statement also clarified that according to Anglican principles of Biblical interpretation, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary are not necessarily contrary to Scripture, although concerns were raised about the fact that the Scripture does not explicitly recount these events. Anglicans also expressed some concerns about the ways that these doctrines were proclaimed by popes without a church council.

Increasingly, Protestants are expressing desires to find ways to integrate Mary's witness into their own spirituality. Although many have historically felt that Mary “belonged to the Catholics,” more and more churches are now seeking ways to make Mary their own. In a recent article in U.S. News & World Report Senior Pastor Mark Roberts stated that the increasingly warm feelings toward Mary within Protestant churches suggests “that the dividing wall between Catholics and Protestants has come down a bit.” As this wall comes down, questions about Mary begin to surface, and some Protestants are finding ways to integrate Marian devotions into their own lives.