LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A
Southern Baptist seminary professor says the arrests of a group of Baptists
from the United States accused of trying to remove children from
earthquake-stricken Haiti without proper documentation could give a black eye
to a budding movement of evangelicals who view adoption as a means of spreading
the gospel.
Russell Moore, senior
vice president for academic administration and dean of the School of Theology
at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recounted his reaction to hearing the
news that 10 Americans accused of human trafficking were members of Baptist
churches Feb. 1 on the “Albert Mohler Radio Program.”
“I thought, ‘Oh no,
this is going to cause all kinds of derision to the orphan-care movement and to
what the Holy Spirit is doing in churches all across America and all over the
world in having a heart for orphans,’“ Moore said, sitting
in as guest host for seminary president Al Mohler.
Last year Moore
published a book titled Adopted
for Life calling on Christians to adopt children as a “Great Commission
priority.” On Feb. 26-27, the seminary in Louisville, Ky., is sponsoring an “Adopting
for Life” conference
aimed at creating “a culture of adoption” in families and churches.
“The Bible tells us
that human families are reflective of an eternal fatherhood (Eph. 3:14-15),”
says a website
promoting the event. “We know, then, what human fatherhood ought to look like
on the basis of how Father God behaves toward us. But the reverse is also true.
We see something of the way our God is fatherly toward us through our
relationships with our own human fathers. And so Jesus tells us that in our
human father’s provision and discipline we get a glimpse of God’s active love
for us (Matt. 7:9-11; cf. Heb. 12:5-7). The same is at work in adoption.”
Moore, the father of
two children adopted from a Russian orphanage, said while all the facts are not
in about the motives and methods of the mission team comprised mostly of
members of two Southern Baptist churches in Idaho, he has heard from many
individuals stirred by images of suffering asking what they can do to help
Haitian orphans.
Particularly following
tragedy, Moore said couples seeking international adoption can feel frustrated
by the seemingly endless process of filing and processing papers. But he said a
certain amount of red tape is necessary to ensure that children have no
surviving relatives able to care for them before they are removed from a home
and that they receive proper care from their new parents.
“I’m worried that this
news is going to give a black eye to the orphan-care movement in the same way
that some of the really rambunctious, lawbreaking aspects of the right-to-life
protester movement did to the pro-life movement,” Moore said on Monday’s
program. “You had people who were saying for instance, ‘Unless we have a
constitutional amendment right now, outlawing all abortions in every situation,
then we can’t do anything.’ Well that hurt, I think, the pro-life movement in
many ways.”
Moore said backlash to
what is being reported as well-intended but poorly executed action by the
church group “is going to cause people to have increased skepticism toward what
I think is a genuine movement of the Spirit of God among God’s people.”
During the segment
Moore interviewed Jedd Medefind, president of the Christian Alliance for
Orphans, and, along with Moore and David Platt, senior pastor of The Church at
Brook Hills in Birmingham, Ala., one of three keynote speakers at the upcoming
conference.
“I think those of us
who care passionately for the cause of orphans and I think a lot of Christian
groups that are out there on the ground really are just deeply embarrassed by
this, and I think frankly it will have the potential to do some really pretty
significant long-term harm to the cause of both Christian care in country as
well as the cause of adoption,” Medefind said. “I think some folks who really
oppose our approach to caring for children will kind of point to this very
mistakenly as Exhibit A of reasons why a focus on adoption is not healthy and
why you should leave caring for orphans just to governments and not allow
ordinary people in the church to be involved.”
Medefind, a former aide
to President George W. Bush who led
the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, now
heads an alliance of orphan-serving organizations and churches promoting
Christian orphan and foster care and adoption and adoption ministry.
The group’s mission
statement says
it exists to “motivate and unify the body of Christ to live out God’s mandate
to care for the orphan.” The Alliance’s vision statement is “every orphan
experiencing God’s unfailing love and knowing Jesus as Savior.”
Moore said there are
some people, only a few, who comprise “kind of an anti-adoption movement out
there that would say every adoption is abduction, is man-stealing.”
Reacting to the news
out of Haiti, Moore said, “I can just see those people saying, ‘See, this is
what we’re talking about.”
In his book, Moore said
when he and his wife were adopting their boys they were encouraged by social
workers and family friends to “teach the children about their cultural
heritage.”
“We have done just
that,” he wrote.
“Now, what most people
probably meant by this counsel is for us to teach our boys Russian folk tales
and Russian songs, observing Russian holidays, and so forth,” Moore explained. “But
as we see it, that’s not their heritage anymore, and we hardly want to signal
to them that they are strangers and aliens, even welcome ones, in our home. We
teach them about their heritage, yes, but their heritage as Mississippians.”
(EDITOR’S NOTE — Allen is
senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.)