April 12, 2008 8:28 AM
Why Does America Have Orphans If It Has Christian Churches?
Anthony Bradley, a professor at Covenant Seminary, wrote the following challenge last year, and the title is so good, I just used it instead of making up my own:
Why Does America Have Orphans If It Has Christian Churches?America has nearly 115,000 orphaned kids in foster care waiting to be adopted. Some wonder how this is possible in a country with Christian families. Surely, there are 115,000 missional families in America, right? Missional families, for example, embrace the redemptive mission of God and practice "true religion" in their local communities (James 1:27). Missional Christians in America could eliminate the foster care system tomorrow if we would stop "shootin' up" with the American Dream (heroin) in order to get high on a lame life lived for the sake of comfort and ease.
"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world," writes James (1:27). As a matter of fact, the Bible has over 40 verses mandating God's people to look after orphans and the fatherless for various reasons.
According to the American Religious Identity Survey, conducted by the City University of New York, there are over 224 million Christians in the United States. So, why are there 115,000 orphans in a country that has over 224 million Christians?
Read entire article here
Find more information about Anthony Bradley and links to his other writing here.
Thanks to Jennifer Oshman, who along with her husband is serving as a missionary in Okinawa - and who is in the process of adopting an older child from Thailand. You can visit the Oshman family here.
Posted in Adoption, Church Issues | Permalink
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Comments
I appreciate the sentiment of his blog but wonder why he stopped short and didn't include how to rectify this - how does the church go about and take in the orphans who are under the state's care. I'm ignorant and would like to be part of a solution. Where does one go from here?
Posted by: Barb | April 12, 2008 9:54 AM
Dear Barb -
I think that's a great question. And here's my answer - through calling Christians to a higher standard of social responsibility and personal sacrifice (as Christ sacrificed for us - "Greater love than this.....")
Also, through shifting paradigms and viewing the support of orphans as not only an individual task, but a church responsibility. It would help greatly if the church would encourage the generosity of its members in making possible adoptions as they do when collecting to send people off to missions.
Actually, I was kind of ahead of this question as I just posted on this at Adoption giveaway
Posted by: barbara | April 12, 2008 10:05 AM
115,000 kids in foster care? I am honestly shocked by how small that number is. Not that it isn't a big problem, but it's a problem we could manage -- which makes it all the more shocking that we aren't.
What if each and every church in America asked its members, "Who is interested in adopting a child from the foster system?" There may not be a family in every church, but surely there are many out there. Maybe families who had never even thought of it would consider it. If the church then worked together to pay the fees and support those families emotionally, what would stop us from adopting all of those children? Isn't it really that simple?
Posted by: Michelle Potter | April 12, 2008 11:57 AM
Many kids in foster care are older, so no one wants them. They age out, and the state tells them to have a nice life.
Posted by: buck jarret | April 13, 2008 11:56 PM
