What the “Save the Orphan” Christian Movement Has that We Don’t
In our battles for truth, within the adoption community, we have ignored the church and we need to re-examine that.
As a recovering bad Catholic, I do not consider myself a religious person. In my own personal definition, that means I do not agree with the rules of my church, so I refrain from their ceremonies and such. Part of that is out of respect for what is believed. Part of that is because I refuse to be hypocritical. Part of that is because our beliefs are so far apart, I get nothing out of the Sunday ceremony and I don’t want to support something I do not believe in. But I have no issue at all with God. I like God..to me, it all comes back to doing good things, with good intentions, all the time, in the world, not just a church on Sunday. Sometimes, I call it the “universe” speaking to me and I try my best to listen to the messages given. I have a faith that says the universe will give me what I need and it is my job to listen and accept. It’s actually pretty close to lots of pretty quotes about Letting Go and letting God” that I see on Facebook all the time. I just use different lingo and find my church in the mountains.
I notice that the older I get, I have more and more friends that are self identified “Christians” and while I have political issues with doctrine on the news, I find that I really rather like all the folks I personally know. They don’t force it down anyone’s throat. They don’t cast stones at anyone. They are just good people, trying to do good things..like I strive to be. I’m down with that. I think Jesus was a pretty cool guy though I would have told him to not bother dying for my sins since I don’t consider the same “sins” as the church does. All and all, I dislike any form of organized religion. I have found them to cause more trouble than they are worth.
I think that many folks in adoption land were injured by the church and have also walked away from the conventions of organized religion. After all, Catholic Charities, Lutheran Services, Salvation Army, the LDS church, etc. all had a strong hand in the relinquishment experience for many mothers of the Baby Scoop Era. And, many adoption agencies today still have strong religious affiliations. God is often used to justify adoptions and let’s face it, that makes many of us angry again all over. So we have understandable separated ourselves from it. Big mistake.
Cutting Off Our Noses to Spite Our Face
What I have begun to understand by reading The Child Catchers is that we have hurt ourselves with this stance. I’m just as guilty as any. I, living in nice liberal blue state of New York purposely mock and laugh at things like “creationism” or “Christian Rock” and are very critical of the values that morph into policy such as abstinence only policy and the whole Right to Life movement. I know I have, and I think many of us do, separate ourselves as an “us versus them”, seeing all people with Christian values as purposefully ignorant and not worth paying attention to. This attitude is wrong.
For one, it has gotten too big to ignore as clearly demonstrated in The Child Catchers. To get the full picture, you really do have to read the book but just these numbers should say something. California’s Saddleback Church is one of the country’s largest churches with 20 thousand people attending weekly. They host the Christian Alliance for Orphans Summit which hosted 2,000 other pastors and “adoption ministry” leaders in 2012. The first Summit in 2004, had 38 attendees. Each and every one of these folks are being instructed on how to encourage people to “be called to adoption” to “save orphans”. They then go back to their own huge congregations and preach the same message. The Christians of the world have a calling and that is to “Save Orphans” body and soul, through adopting.
To contrast these numbers, let’s look at we manage to pull off in Adoptionland and the battles fought since the 1970’s. The American Adoption Congress holds pretty much the biggest adoption conference to date and that gets about 300 attendees annually. Last year the Chicago, Adoptee Rights Coalition Annual Demonstration had a record breaking 97 hotel rooms booked. The latest round of petitions on the White House We the People Petition site fail miserably to even break the quota of signatures needed to go to the next round. Twenty Five hundred were required and we are lucky to get 1,000 for anything.
So if we are to play an “us versus them” game, where “they” are promoting adoption as a calling from God and “we” are providing education on the adoption truths, we are not just losing. We are getting our asses handed to us on a silver platter the size of Mount Rushmore.
This isn’t all churches and all religions. The Child Catchers focuses on the Evangelical movement to adopt. I will be honest, I don’t even know the difference between the sects, Pentecostals, Charismatics and Evangelicals, or whatever. Not all Christians are crazy nuts about adopting, but most of us who have been around enough know that there is a LOT of God in adoption to begin with. There all ready is a connection and we have ignore it and fought against it or mostly ignored it, rather than USE it.
What do you mean USE the Church?
It’s way more than the numbers. While it is easy to say almost 7 million people in the USA are adopted, that is only 2.21% of the US population of almost 316 million. Even if we expand that number directly and say each of those 7 million adoptees have two mothers and two fathers, adopted and birth, that are also affected, we barely eek over 10% of the US population. Oh, we love to say that 1/4 of every America is affected by adoption in some way, but the question is what do MOST people DO about that?
The answer is, sadly, nothing. If we were mobilized, active, volunteering on a mass scale, then, perhaps the fight for open OBC access might not still be going on after almost 40 years! I can’t count how many times I have heard someone ask” Where are all the adoptees? Where are the people who care? Where are all the parents?” Oh our numbers ARE growing, but not nearly like the church which already has them. And more importantly, has them ready to roll.
Roll? Yup. That Orphan Alliance filled with 2,000 attendees had 100 breakout sessions focusing on “orphan care” where “attendees learned about starting adoption ministries in their home churches, using orphan care to reach the world’s unsaved population, and lobbing primers on important adoption legislation. “[i]
What the churches have are the pulpits and the audience to inspire. Here we are trying to woo the media, educate the public and get attention, while they just preach and magic happens in the name of God and adoption.
And then there is the money. Redeeming Orphans, Orphan’s Ransom and The ABBA Fund “help born-again Christians pay the “ransom” of $20,00 to $35,000 or more in adoption fees …” They hold church fundraisers, volunteer, donate time and money all for adoption. I got a $300.00 donation once for the work I do and I nearly fell of my chair. I know that most of the adoption organizations, even the bigger non-profits, have tiny shoe string budgets that rely on donations. I know that many of us in the adoption community don’t have a lot of free money to donate and that’s why we do what we can, rather than pay out, but we’re hurting in the funding department meanwhile they are giving in the churches.
Again, you really have to read The Child Catchers, especially the chapter “The Touchable Gospel”, to get the full picture of WHY we really need the churches. And I can’t say that I know HOW to get them. Too many years of being separated and the idea of treading into those waters is not appealing to me either, but my desire to spread our own gospel of adoption truth is too strong to ignore.
And I’m going to go back on my own prejudices with organized religion and say that I do truly believe that MOST people are good people who want to do the right thing. In the case with the Gospel of Adoption , I can say that the Churches have simply got it all wrong, but their hearts are in the right places. They just have the wrong messages. Much like the media, much like the general public, drinking the adoption kool-aide and parroting the adoption industry marketing messages. So perhaps it is just a matter of starting to CONSIDER the various churches as possible allies that need to hear from us.
[i] THE CHILD CATCHERS page 42
This is a four part series of blog posts inspired by reading Kathryn Joyce’s adoption book “The Child Catchers- Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption”.
BEAUTIFUL! I often wonder this same thing… I have several facebook friends that have adopted via their churches message. And though I believe every child deserves a “forever home”, I struggle with the things they say on their facebook walls and the messages they share to other “christians” about adoption. Not many of them care to hear what I have to say, and I AM pro-adoption, just in a different way (especially different from my 1970’s BSE adoption)
Good blog Claud!
One thing I’ve been wondering about –
Have any of these orphan saving ministries ever taken a cold hard look at adoption fees? They are calling it “ransom” and I know they see the money and the red tape as things that get in the way of their call to adopt.
I don’t know about reaching out myself. I’m an atheist who was raised Jewish.
I think adoption fees may be a conversation starter though.
JMHO.
Claud,
I really appreciate where you’re coming from with this blog. I appreciate the fact that you didn’t paint all Christians with the same brush that you paint the self-important, hypocritical “versions” of general Christianity that you see on the news all the time. As a self-described Christian, I strive continually to be the quieter version – the one who is more concerned with self and with kindness to others than using my beliefs as a weapon to beat others into submission. I think that Jesus preached that when He was here on earth much more than the way that the Christians in the public spotlight tend to preach. They’re so concerned with converting the world (which is not necessarily a bad thing), that they’re going about it all wrong.
Anyway, this is off on a tangent to the whole point. I think you’re absolutely right – that instead of trying to work against Christianity as a whole, we need to work at finding commonalities – their heart for the “orphan” needs to be turned into assisting the family of that “orphan” whenever possible, etc.
I agree with your thinking here. I am an evangelical Christian and a mom of both biological kids and an adopted son from China (adopted at age 8.) The church needs to hear from first moms and adult adoptees, and I know from experience that there are people in churches who would be open to what you have to say. Not everyone, of course. But many of us see the need to take an intelligent, thoughtful look at current adoption practice. Many of us know that “good intentions” are not enough. People, as a whole, are uninformed. You are right in thinking that churches have a huge platform that can be used to bring about change.
Forever home eh? Forever taken away you mean..in July of 1985 a young mother looses her child to adoption, the adopters think letters are enough….the father who wanted never told of the birth or where the mother…four years later discovered.g..child name changed & hidden with societies blessing. Now 28 years later a broken family patch up their first year. Grateful to have her physical needs met, good Christian adopters so desirous for the flesh of another they think no further the atrocity they become party too. That child now grown, finds her 9 month younger sister the eldest of her 3 siblings. So much sorrow has passed, eeking it’s way past the joy of an imperfect unification. As confusion & loyalty to what is family lays bare.
Claudia, you are totally on the right track about this. We NEED the churches and actually we have the high road because we are right and our cause is just. And our time is now too, at least in the Catholic church, because I believe Pope Francis is on our side and listening. But what is the problem?
About two years ago I motivated our parish to offer a “Birthmother’s Day” on the day before Mother’s Day. (I know, some people don’t like that, but it was an effort to do something.) Our parish administrator, me, and the minister of a Protestant parish put together a lovely program and advertised it all over our area. It was modeled after a Birthmother’s Day event that I had participated in when I lived in Washington that was a great help to me. Another birth mother was in the group planning it. The day came and NOBODY showed up. It was quite upsetting. Our parish was willing to listen, do what they could to help. The Catholic Charities administrator who helped plan it said she was hoping be supportive in the right way where maybe they had made mistakes before. So why did nobody come? Is there nobody in this town (Boise) who has given up a child? There were two large unwed mother homes here for many years so I think that is not the problem. No, I think the moms are still in the closet, too ashamed to show their faces. They won’t step out to be seen, much less challenge the adoption advocates. The shame and fear is too deep.
We could change the world, but the problem is us. We blame the churches for foisting this nightmare on us, but don’t see that a younger generation is there who wants to make things better. We have internalized this so much that we can’t speak up, can’t challenge the morality of this travesty, and can’t change an obvious wrong.