The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption by Kathryn Joyce Page A

cornered a bend too fast, he grinned and deadpanned, “We’re about to find out if we were right about the whole Jesus thing!”
    He isn’t sure about all the aspects of BridgeStone’s ministry. He does realize that the $20,000 spent just on airfare for every group that comes to BridgeStone could probably make a larger impact in Ukraine—when he’s gone there, Ukrainian officials have told him as much. However, he’s also wary of critics who condemn a mission like this without doing anything themselves. But on the larger picture Eric has no doubts. “The Bible really talks about how we’re adopted as sons because we’re grafted in [to God’s family] after we were separated because of our sin and our selfish nature,” he said. “All we’ve ever done is sin and transgress thethings He really wanted us to be, and He still loves us. The love of the father is unconditional.”
    When he talks to people about adoption, he tells them what he thinks is true: Christians aren’t just called to adoption; they are commanded to it. Christians who don’t get that, he began to reflect, and then stifled himself—he doesn’t want to say “bad Christians.” He thinks for a minute and starts again: “We seem to be known for everything but how we love.”
    ______________
    * Interestingly, the ideological battle at stake in this mission has carried over even to how it is named. Many US advocates refer to the mission as “Operation Pedro Pan” to depict it as a local Cuban initiative to send their children out of harm’s way, while many Cubans refer to it as “Operation Peter Pan” to underscore what they see as its imperialistic roots in the United States.
    * “Voluntourism” has been criticized in recent years for doing more harm than good. A 2010 report by the Human Sciences Research Council on AIDS orphan tourism in Southern Africa found that global trends of voluntourism often centered around orphanages, with wealthy Westerners paying to spend time on their vacations or mission trips playing with institutionalized children. Too often, wrote report coauthors Linda Richter and Amy Norman, the emotional needs of the tourists are the key focus of these trips, as visitors seek personal fulfillment by forging immediate emotional connections with orphanage children. But after the tourists leave, the children suffer yet another abandonment, leading to a pattern of intense connection and loss that is detrimental to their emotional well-being and development.
    * Restaveks are children sent to live as unpaid domestics for relatives or other families.
    * O’Brien seems to have become a believer in at least one sense, repeating in an essay on CNN.com a motivational story that has been widely adapted as the driving parable in the Christian adoption movement: the “starfish story.” This tale tells of a young boy rescuing a coastline of beached starfish by throwing them back in the water, one at a time, when a naysaying older man scoffs that he can never save them all. “It matters to the one,” the boy replies in a sentiment that has become the anthem of the movement.
    * In 1993 fifty-four Ukrainian children hosted by Christian families in the Chicago area were kept by their US hosts, who had been incorrectly told the children were all available for adoption. The incident led to international diplomatic tensions.

CHAPTER 2
    The Touchable Gospel
    O n a rainy morning in May 2012, as I crossed the university-sized campus of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, the voice of Georgia Pastor Crawford Loritts boomed from the ground, turning the damp, empty walkways into an open-air chapel, his sermon piped through concrete speakers shaped like rocks and nestled at the base of palm trees. The Christian orphan-care and adoption movement, Loritts said, is not a passing fad like other social justice causes in the church’s past. The movement cannot be allowed to become a seasonal attraction, rising and fading like a style of