Sunday, September 21, 2008

Making adoption a priority

A friend just turned me on to an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal last month regarding new initiatives to promote adoptions of children at risk including orphans. As many of the regulars to the site know, I was adopted as an infant through the United Church of Christ affiliated Crossroad Ft. Wayne Childrens Home and I'm a strong advocate for adoption programs. While Crossroad is no longer handling adoptions, there is clearly an opportunity for our denomination to find new ways of serving the most vulnerable people in our society.

The WSJ article politicizes the issue more than I care for, but there are some important issues that are raised. I'm not a fan of 'Focus on the Family' and I don't have any respect for James Dobson's effort to politicize religion, but they are 100% right about the role faith commuities should play with regards to adoption. From the WSJ:
The theme was "You Are God's Plan for the Orphan," which represents something of a shift, says Kelly Rosati, who oversees Focus on the Family's adoption and orphan-care division and is the mother of four adopted children. "The traditional way of viewing adoption was something you considered if you were facing infertility." You could call it God's Plan B for the Couple. But now, according to Ms. Rosati, "the commitment to adoption is part of a holistic sanctity-of-human-life ethic."

This fall, Focus on the Family (whose leader, James Dobson, has been slowly warming to Sen. McCain) will be launching a different sort of adoption campaign. In cooperation with the state of Colorado, where the Christian organization is based, it will be shining its media spotlight on the 127,000 children in the U.S. who are considered unadoptable -- kids, typically over the age of 8, who are languishing in foster care. Many are racial minorities.
Did you know that there were 127,000 kids in our country that are "unadoptable"? What is your church doing about this? What is our denomionation doing about this? Do we care about 'the least of these' only when it's politically convenient or are we really committed?
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1 comment:

  1. jadedjabber8:31 PM

    Thank you for this. I too am a huge advocate for adoption and foster parenting. At the age of 57 my parents became foster parents, wanting to foster to children who were older, and at the age of 60 they adopted a nearly 11 year old boy and a 12 year old girl. D and C have been with us for almost 2 years but it wasn't until this August that we were able to adopt them into our family. They truly are a blessing. More advocacy needs to be done for adoption and foster care. There are so many children out there that need good homes. It can be a challenge-we have experienced that first hand, but the blessings are countless and the love endless. So thank you.

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