[T]he Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest Christian denomination save the Catholic Church, passed a resolution calling on its 16 million members to get involved, whether that meant taking in children themselves, donating to adoptive families, or supporting the hundreds of adoption ministries that were springing up around the country to raise money and spread the word. Neo-Pentecostal leader Lou Engle also called for mega-churches to take on the cause, which would give them “moral authority in this nation.”

The movement spawned numerous conferences and books built around the idea that adopting a needy child is a form of missionary work. “The ultimate purpose of human adoption by Christians,” author Dan Cruver wrote in his 2011 book, Reclaiming Adoption, “is not to give orphans parents, as important as that is. It is to place them in a Christian home that they might be positioned to receive the gospel.” At an adoption summit hosted by the Christian Alliance for Orphans at Southern California’s Saddleback Church, pastor Rick Warren told followers, “What God does to us spiritually, he expects us to do to orphans physically: be born again and adopted.”

from “Orphan Fever” by Kathryn Joyce in the May/June 2013 issue of Mother Jones. Joyce will be on the show today talking about the outsized role of evangelical Christians on the adoption industry. Her new book is The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption. (via nprfreshair)

I have personally found this to be true in some instances, and it does cause me some level of discomfort. Will be listening today.