Last night, after getting off the phone with my mom, I ended up going down this Christianity and Empire rabbit hole thanks to a load of homework I still had to do, and it got me thinking about consent.

One of the readings that got my brain turning around this was from Social Analysis for the 21st Century by Maria Cimperman. In it, she says, ” In Cimperman, consent arises when she says, “While never loving us less, God enters only upon our consent, honoring our free choice, our free will.” (pg 39). The act of inviting Jesus into your heart is one of consenting to an offer made by God. That’s something important that we shouldn’t lose sight of. Empire gets in the way of the offer/acceptance transaction. A conversion through coercion is icky. This is what has always bothered me about the way so many churches go about their altar calls. I was “saved” while visiting a friend’s church as a tween. I didnt feel called to be saved, it was more like I was the only one in the room who hadn’t been and I’d better go up to the guy in the plum suit and get it over with. I had never even witnessed an altar call and the whole thing was confusing and disorienting.

That’s my experience. A tween who feels icky is nothing compared to say, seeing your family members split up or murdered while put through compulsory re-education in a mission and feeling pressured to accept christianity or die, but the core tactic of using fear and shame to single out those with relationships with Christ and those who don’t is still one that thrives on this colonial model. It’s a disgusting model that doesnt value the process of coming to consent.

I’m glad I belong to a tradition that doesnt use a lot of language about salvation and altar calls. It totally gives me culture shock when I do encounter it. I do wonder, despite not having this particular practice, which ways we have invited empire into our hearts, crowding Jesus out. Something I’ll be marinating on for a while.