Consent isn’t something we talk about much in the church, but Mary of Nazareth showed how it was done. She asked questions and once satisfied with the answers, she gave her answer. She said yes.

The argument that Mary was coerced in to having Jesus is fairly recent on social media, and shows an incredible amount of ignorance.

• Mary was of legal marrying age in her community
• She was already committed to Joseph, they just hadn’t finalized the second half of the ceremony which would have Joseph coming to get Mary and taking her to his house to live
• Mary was probably 14/15/16… young by today’s standard, but already quite long lived by the standard of 1st century Palestine
• Luke 1 tells us the Mary was asked and freely gave her consent