What Evangelical Orphan Boom?

Chapter 1 discusses the practical failure of the evangelical orphan care movement. It draws on available data on adoption and foster care participation as well as recent surveys of Americans to demonstrate that, despite the considerable efforts of the movement to mobilize Christians to adopt more or foster more, there is no evidence to suggest that they have been successful. Both at the national and state level, adoption and fostering have not increased over the last fifteen years among non-relatives, even in states where the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) would seemingly have the most potential to mobilize Christian families to adopt or foster. Other evidence suggests that American Christians or evangelicals, as recently as 2013, are not significantly more likely than other Americans to adopt or foster children. The remaining chapters of the book will focus on explaining why evangelical efforts to mobilize Americans to adopt or foster more children have been so practically ineffective.

What Will a Mature Evangelical Movement Look Like?

Chapter 6 considers how pietistic idealism shapes the evolution of the orphan care movement in tension with other internal and external pressures. First, it shows that CAFO and the movement itself have already evolved considerably since the movement’s inception in the early 2000s. This evolution has followed a common pattern of religious groups and movements—they have grown in numbers, diversified, professionalized, and gradually become more accommodating to secular society and the state. While these changes have moved the movement toward greater strategic effectiveness in several regards, the chapter proposes this is actually in spite of pietistic idealism, not because of it. Drawing on interviews with movement leaders, the chapter shows that pietistic idealism is fundamentally conservative in that it values preservation over innovation and progress. Thus, while movement leaders would affirm that tactical adjustments are necessary and good for improving strategic effectiveness, effectiveness is not the ultimate goal; obedience is. Those most committed to pietistic idealism will always be more concerned with keeping the movement focused on the main thing—glorifying God and communicating the gospel, even if it means neglecting strategic effectiveness. Evangelical efforts influenced by pietistic idealism will thus be fundamentally self-limiting.

Orphans Need Families! Just Not Those Families

Building on the previous chapter, chapter 3 draws on data primarily from interviews with movement leaders to explore how the evangelical cultural schema of pietistic idealism as well as that of the “biblical” (that is, married heterosexual) family model influences movement leaders to draw moral boundaries around the movement cause and activism in a ways that severely hinder their mobilization efforts. It demonstrates that because evangelical leaders are so committed to the evangelical perspective that God-honoring orphan-activism must be preceded by “right motives” (i.e., obedience to divine calling, God’s glory, expressing the gospel) and carried out by the “right people” (heterosexual, married, Christian families) that their mobilization target to recruit to the task of adopting and fostering is severely limited, excluding Christians adopting merely for family growth, as well as Christian singles and LGBT individuals and couples, all of whom might make strategic partners in the cause of moving vulnerable children from institutions or otherwise sub-optimal or even harmful environments.

Costs Not Counted

Chapter 5 examines the ways certain aspects of the evangelical subculture intersect to hinder the sustainability and effectiveness of evangelical attempts at social engagement. It draws on interviews with both movement leaders and grassroots families to show how the evangelical cultural schemas of individualism/anti-structuralism and pietistic idealism, along with the evangelical tendency toward populism, create a situation in which evangelicals are challenged and exhorted to commit to sacrificial forms of activism through shallow theological rhetoric and pietistic pursuits of obedience at the expense of evaluation and research. Moreover, it show how the individualism and pietistic idealism of evangelical congregations makes them unwilling to accommodate for such families to provide the support that they need, having adopted or fostered children with significant health and/or behavioral challenges. This results in families feeling unsupported and in trouble, and ultimately hinders the sustainability of the movement.

Culture Building for Change

Chapter 2 lays the groundwork for understanding evangelicals and social engagement by unpacking how evangelicals think about mobilization. Specifically, it draws on data from movement “mobilization literature” (books written to promote orphan care among Christians) and interviews with movement leaders to demonstrate the mobilization strategies of the orphan care movement. The chapter show how these strategies are almost entirely built on the institutionalized evangelical assumption that cultural change (meaning change in values, beliefs, or worldviews) necessarily (in a moral sense) precedes both individual and collective action and that this cultural changes happens through transformative interpersonal conversations and teaching. It also highlights the evangelical skepticism about social change being accomplished through social structure in the form of government intervention or establishing “ministries” to serve orphans, as opposed to influencing individuals with the gospel to take personal action.

Introduction

The introductory chapter states the central argument of the book, that while certain aspects of the evangelical subculture may stimulate flurries of social engagement, the very same cultural elements inhibit their strategic effectiveness. To frame the remainder of the book, the chapter introduces the sociological terminology that will be used throughout, specifically that of “cultural schemas” prevalent among American evangelicals. The chapter briefly describes the concepts of pietistic idealism, individualism/anti-structuralism, relationalism, and populism. It then provides an overview of the history of evangelical adoption and orphan care and introduces the contemporary evangelical orphan care movement. Finally, the introductory chapter discusses the importance of adoption and foster care within the orphan care movement and concludes by outlining the chapters for the book.

Conclusion

The concluding chapter revisits and clarifies the contributions of the book and establishes comparisons between evangelical orphan care activism and contemporary efforts among evangelicals at addressing race relations and human trafficking. It also provides several recommendations for the orphan care movement moving forward.

So, Why Did You Adopt?

Chapter 4 argues that the orphan care movement has been unsuccessful at generating new motives to mobilize Christians to adopt or foster more than they have in the past. Rather, they have been successful at circulating what I call “evangelical vocabularies of motive” that evangelicals now use to justify their adoption pursuits to the evangelical community. Through in-depth interviews with families involved in adoption and fostering, the chapter shows how many grassroots evangelical families, and even many movement leaders themselves, were initially drawn to adopting or fostering, not because of their belief in the importance of orphan care to Christians, but because of a combination of infertility and interpersonal connections with others who had adopted. It is only after these families became involved in adoption or fostering that they began to internalize dominant evangelical vocabularies of motive to give an account for why they adopted or fostered. The chapter argues that these evangelical accounts of adoption mislead both movement leaders and outside observers into believing the movement has been more successful than it really is.