Evangelical adoptions picked up in earnest in the middle of the last decade, when a wave of prominent Christians, including the megachurch pastor Rick Warren and leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, began to promote adoption as a special imperative for believers. Adoption mirrored the Christian salvation experience, they argued, likening the adoption of orphans to Christ’s adoption of the faithful. Adoption also embodied a more holistic “pro-life” message ”” caring for children outside the womb as well as within ”” and an emphasis on good deeds, not just belief, that some evangelicals felt had been ceded to mainline Protestant denominations.
Believers rose to the challenge. The Christian Alliance for Orphans estimates that hundreds of thousands of people worldwide participate in its annual Orphan Sunday (this year’s is Nov. 3). Evangelicals from the Bible Belt to Southern California don wristbands or T-shirts reading “orphan addict” or “serial adopter.” Ministries have emerged to raise money and award grants to help Christians pay the fees (some $30,000 on average, plus travel) associated with transnational adoption.
However well intended, this enthusiasm has exacerbated what has become a boom-and-bust market for children that leaps from country to country. In many cases, the influx of money has created incentives to establish or expand orphanages ”” and identify children to fill them.
Leave it to the Times to find the gray cloud behind the silver lining.
Agreed. It is much better if we just ignore the problem and instead of having a “boom and bust” cycle, we just have one long bust where nobody gives a rat’s patootie. Well played, Times.
Oh come, gentlemen, the article is about the distinction between the adoption of those for whom all family connections have been severed and the adoption of those from intact families who see adoption by Westerners as a temporary relocation to a more affluent region of the world solely for purposes of education.
Just becuase it appears in the NYT, should one really disagree with such a statment as this?
[i]Adoption can be wonderful when it’s about finding the right family for a child who is truly in need, but it can also be tragic and unjust if it involves deception, removes children from their home countries when other options are available, or is used as a substitute for addressing the underlying problems of poverty and inequality.[/i]
Jeremy: That’s not a statement I would take issue with. Of course, that’s not the only assertion/observation in the NYT article.
Actually, leave it to Mean Me to take issue with even that statement. Why should a child have to wait while people address “the underlying problems of poverty and inequality”? Sorry, but many don’t feel capable of “addressing the underlying problems of poverty and inequality” of an entire culture or even a family. They just know that they could bring security and stability to one child. Same with pet adoption. I’m not going to wait until we address the “underlying problems” of lack of spaying/neutering, breed health issues, or the epidemic of irresponsible and incompetent and malicious owners before I adopt one single creature. Further, of course, the NYT and I and many others do not agree on what it takes at all to “address the underlying problems of poverty and inequality” since we don’t share remotely the same values or foundational worldview.
Further, since we know that the writers at the NYT deem that “other options are available” for scads of situations that *should* in the minds of many of us who don’t share their values or foundational worldview entail removing children from certain families or situations, I also don’t grant this clause of the sentence either: “removes children from their home countries when other options are available . . . ”
About the only thing I actually agree with in that sentence is that adoption should not involve “deception.”
I have to disagree, Sarah. Preserving intact and stable families ought to be the paramount Christian concern.
Overseas adoption is the solution when a child is deprived of all family connections or where those connections that do exist are prejudicial to his or her well-being.
Absent such situations, it’s surely far more desirable to sponsor children through the programs of World Vision or Anglican Relief and Development, which give the next generation the means to transform the communities in which they live. It has nothing to do with the notions of progress that readers of the [i]New York Times[/i] embrace, and everything to do with empowering the Global South’s human capital.
RE: “Preserving intact and stable families ought to be the paramount Christian concern.
Overseas adoption is the solution when a child is deprived of all family connections or where those connections that do exist are prejudicial to his or her well-being.”
Yup — and that’s not what the quote you referenced in the NYT said. It said [blockquote]”Adoption can be wonderful when it’s about finding the right family for a child who is truly in need, but it can also be tragic and unjust if it involves deception, removes children from their home countries when other options are available, or is used as a substitute for addressing the underlying problems of poverty and inequality.[/blockquote]
The NYT and I do not agree on what are appropriate “other options” that “available” nor do we agree that it is the appropriate calling of individuals to address “the underlying problems of poverty and inequality” much less do we even agree on the meanings of the words “poverty” and particularly “inequality.” In short, I don’t share enough in common with the NYT writers to be capable of agreeing with most of the words or concepts they use in their articles nor the ideas they espouse about “inequality” and “options”. Nor does the NYT and I agree with the meaning of the words *you* use which were “stable” and “prejudicial.” What the NYT teams by “inequality” and “options” or “stable” or “prejudicial” most likely entails quite the opposite in certain instances.