The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption: A response

When I used to teach marriage conferences with my late coauthor, we drew on John Gottman’s research-based work that identifies the four most damaging patterns in marriage: withdrawal, escalation, invalidation, and negative interpretation. In the case of the latter, “no good deed goes unpunished.” If a husband brings home movie tickets for his wife, she assumes he bought them only because he wanted to see the film. If she buys him a pair of boots, he assumes she did so because she thinks his shoes are ugly.  In the words of my father, “Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.”

Negative interpretation, like the other three communication patterns, is lethal to a marriage. And what negative interpretation is to a marriage, Kathryn Joyce’s book The Child Catchers is to evangelicals in the world of adoption.

That word “Gospel” in the title was clearly chosen for its semantic domain. Indeed, the dust jacket makes the connection overtly: the abusers of the adoption system are the “tens of millions of evangelicals to whom adoption is the new front in the culture wars.”  

Let me state up front that I’m the parent of an adoptee, and I believe in adoption: bias number one. And I’m an evangelical: bias numero dos. Yet while these two truths about me could not help but influence how I read Kathryn Joyce’s book, I agreed with much of what she had to say. So much so that I think those involved in the adoption triad should read her work. The fact is, Christians and adoption could benefit from a course correction.

In my husband’s capacity as East Africa field leader for East-West Ministries—which has a child sponsorship program in Kitale, Kenya—one of his tasks is to find sponsors to help keep kids in school. For children with no living parents, the African nationals who do the work on the ground have seen to it that all orphaned children stay with their extended biological families. The child sponsorships help make this possible for poor people. And parentless children who have no extended families to care for them go to the homes of their local church members. No one goes to an orphanage. And no one comes to America. We are committed to keeping these children in their home communities. Why? No one should lose access to a family member just because that family is poor.

But enter the millionaire do-gooders. They come along and, without consulting the local churches or organizations, erect orphanages and put their names on them. And some nationals see filling those orphanages as a way to get Western funds. So the would-be saviors inflict harm and feel good about it. 

Indeed, often Westerners’ wealth contributes to corruption. Poverty-stricken parents may be told their children have been offered an education program. Only later do these parents learn that the “exchange program” they signed up for legally terminated their parental rights.

About such situations Joyce writes, “Western parents continue to display an incredible willingness to believe the stories of their children’s provenance despite the fact that so many read as remarkably the same: hundreds of children allegedly left on police station doorsteps, swaddled in blankets and waiting to be found—a modern-day version of Moses’ basket among the reeds. In reality, the abandonment of babies is not such a common occurrence.”

Up to this point in the paragraph I agreed. But then she added, “But among Christian adopters lining up, the stories usually go unchallenged” (133). Yet she knows the phenomenon is not unique to Christians. 

Only a few pages earlier, she had written about a birthmother saying that “unless she placed her child for adoption with a Mormon family, she would not get to the highest level of heaven” (124). She lumps in Mormons with evangelicals?

Joyce tells stories of corruption and injustice that include even Angelina Jolie (136), whose efforts the author sees as misguided—a reference that might be fine if the book was broadly about adoption. But it’s about adoption and how evangelicals have messed up.  So basically, the author has gathered all the negative examples she can find and blamed the entire fire in Rome on the Christians. Never mind that many of the people in her stories who suffer at the hands of unethical adoption brokers are Christians themselves.

At times it seems Joyce is driven to bring up every beef she’s ever had with evangelicals. In one chapter she criticizes the campaign to get rid of Kony (what does that have to do with adoption?), likening it to Christian fad advocacy (40). She makes Christians guilty by association (there's lots of guilt by association in this book) with the “Orphan Train” of the Children’s Aid Society (45). She accuses Rick Warren of grandstanding (53) and assigns ill motives to those whose intentions she can’t know. She describes the movement within Christendom toward adoption as “a way for conservatives to demonstrate their compassionate side, making their antiabortion activism seem more truly pro-life (56). She cynically describes microbusinesses as  being “money-making ventures” (150). You get the idea.

If someone does approach adoption in a way that she considers just or right, she uses words with negative nuances to describe the way they dress or wear their hair. She accuses Christians of not helping birth mothers. So the reader might expect that she would applaud the work of Pregnancy Resource Centers (PRCs) with their free services that include sonograms, classes, cribs, and diaper bags. But no Christians get a free pass. Instead, Joyce quotes a critic’s assessment of PRC’s: “They say they want to help people in a crisis pregnancy, but really, they want to help themselves to a baby.” The facts do not bear this out. Adoption discussions are rare in PRCs, which focus on helping birthmothers parent.

Like a good journalist, Joyce interviews people on both sides of a story. But then she always sides with the person criticizing the adoptive parents (e.g., 122). Part of her bias is that she is self-described as “secular and pro-choice”—so much so that she cannot seem to imagine that someone else could hold an opposite point of view from her and simultaneously be a reasonable person.

All this bias is bad. Especially because she says some things we need to hear, and her inability to judge fairly gets in the way of her journalism.  

Still, I committed to sorting through her negative interpretations. And having done so, I found that I agreed with about 70 percent of her analysis. We evangelicals have made some mistakes—some big, huge, gaping-wound ones—in the world of adoption. The following areas are where I had points of agreement with her.

We should be able to assume that Christians have the highest standards of ethics and justice. But believers have often been so focused on rescuing that we've even bent the rules, justifying our behavior by pointing to the desperate kids. In the process we hurt our testimony and provide an incentive for corruption.

Birthparents and adoptees need better advocates. The people in the adoption equation with money are usually adoptive parents, not birth parents. Thus, the laws are more skewed toward adoptive parents’ rights, not birth parents’, and certainly not the adoptees. Because of this power differential, Christians should be on the front lines speaking up for those who can’t speak for themselves (Prov. 31:8).

Money corrupts. Anytime we show up with money in a context of deep poverty, we provide an incentive for corruption. That is not to say we should not show up. But it does mean we should have many checks and balances in place, and we must serve the nationals on the ground who know their subcultures better than outsiders do. And we should never give money to people to do things they could do for themselves.

It is in the best interest of families for them to stay together. We should be more focused on keeping families together than rushing kids into the arms of waiting families. The trauma that comes from having kids taken away, from being ripped away from parents, from losing a community connection—these stay with people for life and leave gaping wounds. We should look to adoption only as a last resort. When nations slow their process of approving international adoptions in order to better investigate the babies' backgrounds, we should be slow to criticize.

We should cry rather than only rejoicing. When a new family is formed by adoption, that pronouncement evidences someone’s brokenness. And this is where human adoption differs significantly from our spiritual adoption. God created us in the first place. So when we become his children through adoption, we are actually twice his. Thus, spiritual adoption is a picture of restoration. Not so with human adoption. While it reflects deep unconditional love and choice on the part of the parent, it still does not picture restoration. Rather, it is sometimes a good solution to a tragic situation. But we often deny the tragedy.

If Jesus is the truth, we should be zealous about truth-telling. That means we stop exaggerating the number of children available for adoption. It also means we go to great lengths to verify that a child actually has no parents when we classify him or her as an “orphan.”

We must stop “caring for orphans” at the expense of widows. We wrongly separate the phrase “widows and orphans” (Jas. 1:27); the two often go together. In many parts of the world, when the dad/husband disappears for whatever reason, the family gets split up. So our compassion to widows should involve fighting to keep that family together rather than guilting destitute moms into giving their kids a “better life.” It is bad enough to lose a spouse; but to lose a child because you lost a spouse…and to lose that child only because you are poor—Christians! We must do a better job of speaking up for the widow! Sending such a child to richer parents is not the best way to care for widows—or orphans.

We need a more accurate understanding of biblical adoption. We say adoption is a biblical concept, but often there’s a big gap between what we mean by “adoption” and what the biblical writers meant. We use Moses as an example of adoption, but Moses is actually an example of a failed adoption. Through his story we see that children never stop identifying with their people—a good reason to keep families together. God used Moses’s tragedy for good, but that does not make what happened to him a beautiful thing. Moses’s separation from his family of origin was a disaster caused by great evil. 

We use Esther as a biblical example of adoption. But Esther was raised by a family member, not strangers.

In all the laws laid out for the people of Israel, everything from instructions about textiles to medical concerns, not one word is written, not one law dictated, about adoption. People dealt with infertility either by resorting to polygamy (e.g., Hannah, 1 Samuel 1) or levirate marriage. People dealt with the death of parents through extended family. In either case the inheritance stayed within the family unit.
  

Before Abraham impregnated Hagar or Sarah, he assumed Eliezer would inherit his goods (Gen. 15:3). At that time, the whole point of adoption was that a man needed a male heir—and he found an adult male if he had no son. The emphasis was on inheritance. It was not about a little child entering a new family and being nurtured as if that child were their own.

Some see adoption in Psalm 2:7: “I will proclaim the LORD’s decree: He said to me, 'You are my son; today, I have become your father.'” The emphasis here is on the Father’s choice. And also on inheritance. Think of this in Messianic terms: The Son who was already the Son inherits all the Father has—the world.

In the intertestament period, Julius Caesar made provision in his will—that is, posthumously—to adopt his great-nephew, Gaius Octavius Thurinus, 19, known to us as Octavian, or more likely, Caesar Augustus. This legal pronouncement made Augustus the heir. Everyone in the world of Paul and John, the two New Testament writers who spoke of adoption, would have known this.

In the New Testament, Paul writes, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery leading again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are God’s children. And if children, then heirs (namely, heirs of God and also fellow heirs with Christ)…  (Rom. 8:15–17). Note the contrast with slavery and the connection of adoption with inheritance.  

Inheritance is not the first thing Westerners think of when we adopt, but it would have been an integral part of the New Testament writers’ perceptions of adoption. 

In Galatians 4:4–5, Paul writes, “But when the appropriate time had come, God sent out his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we may be adopted as sons with full rights.” Notice the emphasis on rights. The contrast would be with slavery, in which a person had no rights, not even to his or her own body.   

In Ephesians 1: 5–6 we read that God “did this [choosing us] by predestining us to adoption as his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the pleasure of his will— to the praise of the glory of his grace that he has freely bestowed on us in his dearly loved Son.” The emphasis here is on God’s choice, not ours. We did nothing.

In short, while biblical adoption is secondarily about love and affection, it is primarily a picture of choice and benefits, especially of inheritance.

Some parents need to rethink the language they use with adopted kids. Parents who view themselves as saving waifs who should be eternally grateful for the gift of parents have it backwards. Yes, children are to honor their parents, but Scripture says “Children are a gift from the Lord” (Ps. 127:3, italics mine). The parents are the ones who should be expressing gratitude. Imagine if Pharaoh’s daughter had communicated, “You are so lucky you got pulled away from those slaves. Here in the palace, you are rich. And loved. Your life is so much better than it would have been. You should act more grateful.” Our kids are better served by our grieving with them about their loss as we express our gratitude to God that he has blessed us with them.

Nobody should adopt a kid to gain gold stars with God. Nor should they speak of adoption as rescuing, doing good works, or as anything remotely associated with charity. That’s insulting. Nor should they assume they will “save” kids spiritually by adopting them.

We should never use the Bible as an Ouija Board. That is—opening the text and getting a “message” that has nothing to do with the context or authorial intent. The author objects to this, and I agree. Some believers she interviewed spoke of receiving messages from God this way. Often they justified their questionable practices because they said God told them to do what they were doing. Certainly God can speak through a donkey, but that does not mean it is his preferred method. Such an approach is not “handling accurately the Word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).

Children with special needs require a lot of extra love and affection. Let me say that again. If the kids have special needs, they require extra love and attention and services. Parents who keep adopting sixteen more kids when they have already adopted some with special needs should do so only in a context of much accountability and counsel. Because in the same way that some people can’t seem to stop having plastic surgery, some can’t seem to stop looking for babies to adopt.  The church and adoption agencies must help them. We have a responsibility to the kids, if not the parents, in such situations.

Sometimes God chooses those who oppose us to help us see the truth. In the ironic story of Jonah, the lost sailors were more righteous than God’s prophet. In the story of Baalam, the donkey—not the person chosen as God’s mouthpiece—spoke the truth. In the case of The Childcatchers, an author who negatively interprets just about everything Christians do still gets some things right.

Our Father twice-over accepts this as pure and faultless: that we look after orphans and widows in their distress and keep ourselves from being unstained by the world. May the apple start to fall a little closer to the tree.