Why Evangelical Christians Love Adopting Kids

[angi_is_altered]

American Christian families are adopting children from other countries with the hopes of giving them a better life - but is it actually better? An interview with Kathryn Joyce, author of The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption.

Comments

[oceandezignz]

What I want to know is this: If the adopted child comes out to the family who's taken them in that they were legitimately taken from their actual family in their home country; do they try to return/reconnect them to their original family or do they hand wave it away because "God put you with us"?

[tallycola]

I would wager that it's really difficult for these evangelicals to see the foreign parents as real people. They probably imagine some random brown slum girl who is so grateful that her child has a home, and if she does want her child back she must be being misled or something. Idk.

I saw an episode of Intervention that had an Indian guy who was adopted at age 3 from a slum by a huuuge family of white evangelicals, and had a very hard time with his sense of identity. Feeling like he didn't fit in with the family and was a charity case contribute to his addiction as a young man, and the guilt he felt because he had been SAVED FROM THE SLUMS AND OWED HIS FAMILY HIS LIFE kept him addicted. It was so sad. The family really fetishized his adoption story. It grossed me out.

ETA Oh man I just remembered a part where the parents were talking about how they were ~ministering~ in this poor part of town and saw him with his mother and "we knew that was our son!". It was groooooss.

[the_physicist]

damn, i just really hope they bring in some laws in the US to stop this. and any other countries where this happens.

[dearmisterecho]

I remember that episode, it was heartbreaking :( well, they all are...

[romp]

Freaky that they'd see him WITH his mother and take in only the child.

[tallycola]

For sure, like, how did they arrange that? Was this poor, uneducated woman completely informed of what was happening and able to consent? What went on there? Really skeevy.