A Graceful Embrace: Theological Reflections on Adopting Children [1 ed.] 9789004352902, 9789004352896

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A Graceful Embrace: Theological Reflections on Adopting Children

Theology in Practice Editors-in-Chief Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore (Vanderbilt University) Elaine Graham (University of Chester)

Editorial Board Tom Beaudoin (Fordham University) Dale P. Andrews✝ (Vanderbilt University) Joyce Ann Mercer (Yale Divinity School) Eileen Campbell-Reed (Central Baptist Theological Seminary) Claire E. Wolfteich (Boston University) Anthony Reddie (University of South Africa)

Volume 4

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/thip

A Graceful Embrace: Theological Reflections on Adopting Children Edited by

John Swinton Brian Brock

Cover illustration: Ethereal Industry (7). © Photograph by Suzanne Forrest. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017032126

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2352-9288 ISBN 978-90-04-35289-6 (paperback) ISBN 978-90-04-35290-2 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

This book is dedicated to our good friend and colleague Dale P. Andrews, Dale Andrews. Dale, you left us far too soon. We miss you.

∵

Contents Foreword ix List of Tables xii Notes on Contributors

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Introduction 1 John Swinton and Brian Brock

Part 1 Adoption: A Theological Account 1 On Language, Children and God: Naming, Dominion and Domination 15 Brian Brock 2 Why Christians Should (Not) Choose Adoption 36 Jana Marguerite Bennett 3 Belonging: A Theological and Moral Inquiry into Adoption 57 Brent Waters 4 Entrusted for Creaturely Life within God’s Story – The Ethos of Adoption in Theological Perspective 69 Hans G. Ulrich 5 Adoption in Christian Social Ethics: Reflections from a German Perspective 87 Henning Theißen 6 The Importance of Knowing Where You Come from 107 Karin Ulrich-Eschemann

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Contents

Part 2 Explorations in Living out Adoption 7 Why Would I Look for My Parents?: Living Peaceably with the Only Family I Have 121 John Swinton 8 Why is Adoption Such a Difficult Choice? A Practical Theology Inquiry 131 Dale P. Andrews 9 Identity and the Adoption Triad 143 William R. McAlpine 10 Theological Reflection on Inter-country Adoptions of Special Needs Children from Mainland China 161 Sarah Shea 11 Unnatural Ties: How Adoption Queers the Family 183 R. Ruard Ganzevoort and Marco Derks 12 Embraced in God’s Trembling-Womb Love: A Theology of Adoption 195 Kirsten Sonkyo Oh 13 Between Ascension and Pentecost: A Theology of Adoption 205 Heather Walton 14 Jonathan and Me: Constructing a Movie, Constructing Ourselves 217 Paul Shrier References 237 Index 247

Foreword Nick Watson

This generation has been wounded the most in relationships—it is in relationships where the healing must begin. Dr John Sowers1 There is a clear consensus amongst social scientists and Christian commentators that we live in a fatherless age characterised by fractured relationships and wide-spread family breakdown. John Swinton and Brian Brock, in the Introduction to this book, intimate this in stating that ‘spirits of fear’ are afoot in Western cultural space, ‘… spirits which threaten the peace of children, adults and whole societies’ (p. 12). Indeed, as Pope Benedict XVI has recently suggested ‘the basis of family life is under threat’ and therefore the Church needs to intentionally engage those who are deeply wounded by fractured familial relationships.2 The thoughtful and carefully considered adoption of children is one way in which the Christian community can, and needs to, respond to this social and spiritual crisis. Thankfully the book you hold in your hands, A Graceful Embrace: Theological Reflections on Adopting Children (edited by two leading practical and pastoral theologians), provides a clearly articulated response and call-to-action on this issue—a call to an intentional agape model of embracing the most vulnerable among us. As an adopted child, a practising Christian and an amateur theologian, I was then delighted and honoured to write the Foreword to this book. A book that beautifully interweaves insights from Christian ethicists and theologians (some of whom are adopted, or, have adopted children themselves), and provides ‘practical’ suggestions for the Church and individuals to provide a redemptive response in this age. There is a burgeoning literature from both the social and medical sciences that addresses the many dimensions of adoption. For example, prenatal and perinatal psychology and social policy research that informs the strategies of adoption agencies. This volume offers a diverse and yet coherent set of essays addressing a wide range of issues from a theological standpoint, i.e., the theology of naming and the morality of adopting 1 Cited on the home-page, The Mentoring Project, 3 November, 2015, http://www. thementoringproject.org/. 2 Libereria Editrice Vaticana, The Basis of Family Life is Under Threat (Pope Benedict XVI’s annual address to the Curia), The Catholic Herald, 4 January (2013): 5.

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children, and analyses of ‘adoption hot topics’, such as identity and belonging, inter-country adoption of special needs children and a fascinating autobiographical essay by John Swinton. Reading John’s essay made me again realise that people’s lived experience of adoption are vastly different and are moderated by a multitude of variables (many of which are examined in this book). John’s experience of being adopted seemed to have had little conscious impact upon his psyche and life. Conversely, I was deeply wounded from my encounter with adoption at just ten days old—my dear mother had been in psychiatric care and was troubled whilst carrying me in her womb. John and I have one thing in common though. We have been ‘gracefully embraced’ by Abba, as described by Paul in the Romans 8, and our adoptive parents. We have been ‘healed in relationship’ by the creator and his chosen parental imagebearers. The deep ‘primal wound’ described by Nancy Verrier in her land-mark book,3 The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child, which millions of children receive from the experience of separation from their birth parents, often has a devastating effect on their sense of identity, orientation in the world (to others and God), and ability to contribute positively to the families, communities and societies which they inhabit. Consider the millions of orphaned and abandoned children in South Africa, America and Western Europe. And then consider the importance of a book such as this which introduces and develops a Christian understanding of adoption and which should inform government legislation, the decision making of prospective adoptive parents, the policies and strategies of adoption agencies and the amendment of family law. The fatherless age in which we live is at its roots a spiritual issue—an abandonment of the divine mandate to obey God and live in harmonious relationships that were modelled in Eden. Satan was the first of God’s creatures to become an orphan. And now, he is an intentional orphan-maker bent on the destruction of the nuclear family and therefore social order—bent on warring against Divine love and parenting. The editors of this book propose a response from God’s image bearers: Understood Christianly, then, human adoptive practices are explorative ways of seeking out and awaiting the divine love for every child that expresses the Christian freedom for love (p. 19) 3 Verrier, N. (2009) The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child. UK: British Association for Fostering and Adopting.

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We are to ‘… counter a broader culture of abandonment that often rules supreme within our societies’, suggests John Swinton (p. 168). The editors and chapter contributors to this book have initiated this process through careful theological (and personal) reflection, providing an invaluable resource for the Church, adoption organisations and individuals alike. Dr Nick J. Watson York St John University UK

List of Tables 10.1 Percentage of special needs adoptions in intercountry adoptions originated from Mainland China, 2005-2009 162 10.2 Top three receiving countries of Mainland Chinese adoptees with special needs, 2005-2009 163

Notes on Contributors Dr. Dale P. Andrews is Distinguished Professor of Homiletics, Social Justice, and Practical Theology at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion. Dr. Andrews earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University and M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary. In addition to multiple chapters in diverse edited volumes and journal articles, he is the author of Practical Theology for Black Churches: Bridging Black Theology and African American Folk Religion). He also co-authored Listening to Listeners: Homiletical Case Studies and New Proclamation: Advent through Holy Week, Year A, 2004-2005 and is coeditor of a multivolume lectionary commentary series, Preaching God’s Transforming Justice. Tragically Dale passed away before this book was published. He left us far too soon and we miss him. Jana Marguerite Bennett is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and the University of Dayton, where she teaches courses in sexual ethics and catholic moral theology. She is the author of Thicker than Blood: A Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singleness (2008). Brian Brock is Reader in Moral and Practical Theology at the University of Aberdeen. He is the author of Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Christian Ethics in Scripture, Christian Ethics in a Technological Age and Captive to Christ, Open to the World: On Doing Christian Ethics in Public. He also edited Theology, Disability and the New Genetics: Why Science Needs the Church and Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader, both with John Swinton, and is Managing Editor of the Journal of Disability and Religion. Marco Derks studied theology in Kampen (MA) and Manchester (MPhil) works as a Trainee Research Assistant (PhD candidate) at Utrecht University for the project Contested Privates. His research interests include Augustinian Studies, Christian Ethics, Cultural Studies, Queer Theory/Theology, and Radical Theologies. Having worked as e.g. project manager, teacher and editor, he is the chair of the Dutch Society of Queer Theologians and (managing) editor of gOdschrift.

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R. Ruard Ganzevoort is professor of practical theology at VU University Amsterdam and director of the Amsterdam Center for the Study of Lived Religion. His main research regards trauma, sexual diversity, and popular culture. Full details on www. ruardganzevoort.nl. Bill McAlpine is professor of Pastoral Theology at Ambrose University College. He has authored two books, Sacred Space for the Missional Church Four Essential Loves: Heart Readiness for Leadership and Ministry. Bill has studied at Capernwray Hall, England, Columbia Bible College (now Columbia International University) in Columbia, South Carolina, Canadian Theological Seminary, and defended his PhD dissertation through University of Aberdeen in Scotland in October 2006. He has pastored for just under 16 years in Alliance Churches in Ontario and Saskatchewan and is presently serving as Professor of Pastoral Theology at Ambrose University College. Kirsten Sonkyo Oh is an ordained elder in full connection in the California Pacific Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies from Biola University, an M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary, and her Ph.D. in Practical Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary. Dr. Oh is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Practical Theology under the Division of Religion and Philosophy. Sarah Shea graduated from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. The focus of her PhD thesis was spiritual care for people with severe intellectual disabilities. Adopting a practical theological research approach, she explored the care practices of local evangelical congregations from multiple perspectives. Her interest in disability theologies was developed during the period of studies at the Divinity School of Chung Chi College. Her master thesis explored the contribution of Karl Barth’s Christological anthropology towards a theological understanding of disabilities. Paul Shrier earned his PhD in practical theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and is professor of practical theology at Azusa Pacific University. Paul is a Canadian who has lived in Los Angeles County for twenty-two years. In Canada, he was an economist. Paul and his wife Cahleen have been involved with foster care for

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fifteen years. They have had seven foster children and adopted two children, Jonathan and Emily. For the past eight years Paul has been making movies and videos for seminaries, Christians universities and colleges. Christians in the Workplace, a six-week video curriculum, has been used by over 25,000 people in church small groups and university classrooms. Most recently, Paul has been working with colleagues on a documentary about Montrose Church and the Special Olympics. Paul and his wife Cahleen, professor of biology at APU, study, write and make presentations together integrating neurology and theology. Paul co-teaches Suffering and Disability, a senior class at APU, with colleagues from the Department of Social Work. John Swinton is Professor in Practical Theology and Pastoral Care in the School of Divinity, Religious Studies and Philosophy at the University of Aberdeen. He is the author of a number of monographs including Dementia: Living in the memories of God, Raging With Compassion: Theological responses to the Problem of Evil, Spirituality in Mental Health Care: Rediscovering a “Forgotten “Dimension. He is the Director of Aberdeen University’s Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/sdhp/centre-for-spiritualityhealth-and-disability-182.php). Henning Theißen studied Protestant Theology and philosophy at Tübingen and Bonn and worked for five years as a vicar and pastor. He holds degrees from the universities of Bonn (Dr. theol.) and Greifswald (Dr. theol. habil.), where he has been living with his wife and three daughters since 2007. His main research interest is in Protestant ecclesiology where a Heisenberg Grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft currently enables him to specialize in United Theology. He is a member of the supervisory board of the Evangelical Association for Adoption and Foster Care Service, which is one of the leading ecclesial adoption authorities in Germany. Hans. G. Ulrich is Professor for Theological Ethics at the Institute of Systematic Theology, Theological Faculty, University Erlangen – Nürnberg (Germany); emeritus since 2008. His main areas of research are Biblical Ethics, Ethics and Hermeneutics, Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Political-Ethics. He is a member of the Clinical Ethics committee, Medical Faculty University Erlangen-Nurnberg.

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Karin Ulrich-Eschemann is Professor of Religious Education and Didactics of Protestant religious education at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. Heather Walton is Senior Lecturer in Practical Theology and Co-Director of the Centre for Literature, Theology and the Arts at the University of Glasgow. Her research interests lie in the intersections between poetics and practical theology and in the use of creative writing in theological reflection. She is the author of a number of works in this field including her recent book Writing Methods in Theological Reflection, SCM Press, 2014. Brent Waters is the Jerre and Mary Joy Professor of Christian Social Ethics, and Director of the Jerre L. and Mary Joy Stead Center for Ethics and Values at GarrettEvangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois. He is the author of Christian Moral Theology in the Emerging Technoculture: From Posthuman Back to Human, This Mortal Flesh: Incarnation and Bioethics and The Family in Christian Social and Political Thought. Nick Watson is Senior Lecturer, Sport, Culture and Religion Co-Director, Centre for Sport, Spirituality and Religion, University of Gloucestershire, UK.

Introduction John Swinton and Brian Brock

In 2013 a speech made by 15 year old Davion Navar Henry made global news by exposing an uncomfortable reality. He stood up in front of a Florida church and pled to be adopted. He hoped to avoid the plight of so many others today—spending his entire childhood in foster care. He did so in a decade that has seen well-known celebrities very publically flying around the world constructing rainbow families while governments face protests from their citizens for “giving babies to foreigners”. Christian adoption charities with decades of experience have closed rather than place children with gay couples, children with some hues of skin predictably languish without being adopted, while governments plea that red tape be reduced to increase low rates of domestic adoption and Christian churches open ministries to increase adoption rates.1 What seems certain is that the cultural and moral landscape surrounding contemporary practices of adoption are in great flux. While the last fifty years have seen especially rapid changes in understandings of the family, sexuality and reproduction, historically, adoption practices have varied widely over the centuries. How are Christians to assess and negotiate the vast complexity of this field? Any theological account of adoption faces a dauntingly broad and fluid set of social and legal trends that are reshaping modern families and conceptual disputes about what a family is today. This volume is the fruit of a five year long conversation between Christian ethicists and practical theologians from around the globe. In introducing this conversation we will set out some of the underlying theological arguments that sustained the dialogue over time. The chapters that follow can be considered attempts to read contemporary experience and the Christian tradition in light of the fact that there are precious few depictions in the biblical narratives of anything like modern adoption practices. Briefly surveying some of the main lines of the biblical witness will prepare readers for the discussions in this volume by illustrating why the theme of adoption engages Christians in theologically far-reaching questions about the relation of divine and human love, about the relation of metaphorical to literal language, and about how to understand the role of theology in judging and supporting institutions designed to uphold justice, especially for the most needy. In the face of great

1 Legacy 685 http://www.houstonsfirst.org/find-help/adoption-foster-orphan-care/.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004352902_002

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flux in contemporary understandings of adoption scripture does not offer us a single blueprint for proper practices of human adoption. Nevertheless, a stability is observable in the biblical metaphors used to describe God’s caring for humans. We will suggest that it is this metaphorical stability which offers us entry into a theological account of adoption. We will consider the claim that the primal adoption is God’s huiothesia of Jesus, a divine act which establishes the status of “adoption” of humans through which every human being can experience themselves as God’s child. In Christian theology all discussion of taking care of children, whether biological or not, is grounded in the gift of being made a child of God. This is the matrix of metaphorical meaning that allows Christians to negotiate practical and ethical questions about the practice of adoption today. Because humans have been adopted by God through Jesus Christ they are freed to love children freely which means to love them for their own sakes. This is not yet to have an answer to what sort of adoptive practices Christians should be supporting today, but it is to indicate how a theological account of adoption can orient supple and contextually sensitive engagement with human practices of adoption. But it is on these premises that the authors of this volume seek to discern afresh what adoption might look like in our age.

1

A Brief Overview of Adoption in the Ancient World and Christian Scripture

The English term “adoption” (like the French) is derived from Latin. “Ad optāre” means “to choose for one’s self,” which explains why one can adopt a policy as well as a loanword from another language, though in Latin as well as in English the term has always been strongly associated with the voluntary taking of children into a relationship with an adult.2 The breadth of English meanings obscures the fact that the Latin applied strictly to a formal legal procedure in which the paterfamilias designated an heir. 1.1 Greco-Roman Practices of Adoption In Greek and Roman societies this legal transaction notarized a choice by the paterfamilias to bestow rights of succession and property. Greco-Roman practice presumed that if the paterfamilias refused to hold a newborn child, it was

2 The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd vol. 1, J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner eds., (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 171.

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not accepted into the family and was to be abandoned. A reverse form of this procedure inducted a non-biological child as a legal heir. The legal ceremony was typically conducted in the presence of biological parents and with their consent, and did not assume the complete severing of ties with the adoptee’s birth family.3 Very early on Christians rejected the right of the paterfamilias to reject a biological child, and were publically known for liberally taking in children abandoned by Roman families. They did this without the concern for legal ties that concerned the Romans. Thus at the height of late-medieval Christendom the practice of legal adoption had entirely disappeared from the statute books, and when the word was used, it designated the relation to a child’s godparents after baptism, not their family or the household that had become their home (here paralleling the Eastern Orthodox emphasis on the baptismal relation being more fundamental than the biological relation).4 Historical evidence suggests that the fluidity that characterized the adoptive practices in Christendom as it sifted out what was to be taken from Roman practices and law, as well as the drift toward the baptismal act as determining core aspects of adoptive relationships, reflect the configuration of the language of adoption in the biblical traditions. 1.2 Old Testament Practices of Adoption The Old Testament sharply diverges from Greco-Roman practice in its total disinterest in the legal forms and definitions of adoption. No Hebrew term is plausibly translated with the modern term adoption, and no instances are depicted of the adoption of individual children in Israel’s canonical narratives. The three examples of adoption often adduced from the Old Testament, of Moses (Ex. 2:10), Genubath (1 Kings 11:20) and Esther (Est. 2:7) take place in foreign societies (Egypt and Persia) and indicate various forms of taking a child as one’s own, rather than indicating any legal procedure indigenous to Israelite society.5 In Israel parenthood or fatherhood was a biological concept rooted in the creation narratives, and therefore any care provided to children by those other than their biological parents would not change the legal status of the child in relation to their biological father.6 The recurrence in the 3 The Oxford Classical Dictionary, M. Cary, A. D. Nock, J. D. Dennison, W. D. Ross, J. Wight Duff and H. H. Scullard eds., (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), 7. 4 Sarah L. Charlton, The Creation of Families: Christianity and Contemporary Adoption, doctoral thesis, Durham University, 2009. 5 William E. Brown, “Adoption,” Baker Theological Dictionary of the Bible, Walter A. Elwell, ed., (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 11. 6 Leo G. Perdue, Joseph Blenkinsopp, John J. Collins, and Carol Meyers, Families in Ancient Israel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), ch. 4.

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Old Testament of the blessing and command to “be fruitful and multiply” indicates that Israel understood fertility to be one of the prime indicators of divine pleasure in Israel’s obedience. Within such an understanding of human fertility, adoption as the need of a faithful people could not arise (cf. Gen. 29-30, 1 Sam. 1-2:11). Nothing in the Old Testament suggests that the Israelites could conceptualize anything like modern or Greco-Roman accounts of adoption. The assumption in Israel was that the care of children at risk was the responsibility of the extended family, and where that was not possible, an informal arrangement most comparable to the modern practice of foster care was the only possible response of Israel to the plight of the orphan.7 Practices like the legal duty of levirate marriage (Deut. 25:6) and the concubinage of a wife’s slave (Gen. 30:3) were not concerned with the reception of individual children already born, but, as in Roman practice, with securing a legitimate male heir. In the beginning of Israel’s story God is depicted not as begetting or bearing but as making or forming humanity (Gen. 1:26-27, 2:7), setting the stage for some humans to be taken into a special relationship with the Creator. This special relationship is often described in terms that resonate with adoptive relationships. The seminal moment in the paternal claiming of Israel as offspring appears in the divine rescue of Israel from Egypt, in Moses’ announcement of God’s words to Pharaoh: “Israel is my firstborn son” (Ex. 4:22). The repeated stress in the Pentateuch that the first issue of the womb is the Lord’s militates against reading this formula as a straightforward adoption formula. Rather, as the prophets stress, Israel is literally the child of Yahweh in being created and formed by his steadfast love. As the prophet Hosea puts it: When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. … Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. (Hos. 11:1-4, cf. Is. 1:2, Jer. 3:19-21, Ezek. 16:3)

7 David Bartlett, “Adoption in the Bible,” in Marcia Bunge, ed., The Child in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 381-382.

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God’s love is here is depicted as like a parenting relationship with Israel. No hint of legal adoption is implied from which some right might be asserted to claim rights as an heir. This may go some way in explaining the seeming disinterest in setting out legal forms for adoption in Old Testament law while at the same time indicating why Israel had an enduring interest in the welfare of orphans: the dominance of the metaphor of divine parenthood placed a strong but not practically over determined emphasis on human attendance to the institutions that foster the care of children (cf. Ps. 65:8 Hos. 14:3). Something closer to the Greco-Roman practice of adoption as the formal establishment of legal heirship does appear, however, in the Old Testament in relation to the Davidic kingship. In 2 Sam 7:14 (prominently quoted in Psalm 2:7) the Lord promises David a patrimony that will not be removed using the language of making David’s children God’s own sons: “I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.” In this promise (commonly taken to be a royal enthronement formula) God commits himself to protecting a Davidic inheritance down through the ages. The suggestion seems to be that the parenting to which God has committed Godself in rescuing Israel from Egypt is to be upheld through this special divine bond with the Davidic line. 1.3 New Testament Practices of Adoption In the New Testament this emphasis on the intimacy of divine parenting meets the Roman world, in which “Adoption was not nearly so much a matter of affection as it was of pragmatic distribution of wealth and power.”8 The Greek word that is most often translated as adoption (huiothesia) is used five times in the New Testament, and only by the Apostle Paul. Some of his usages are noteworthy in their reliance on the Greco-Roman conception of legal adoption which re-narrate Israel’s conception of the divine parenting of the people of Israel as a whole and of the Davidic line in particular for first century readers. These features are particularly clear in Galatians 4:1-7: My point is this: heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property; but they remain under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. So with us; while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption [huiothesia] as children. And

8 Bartlett, “Adoption in the Bible,” 384.

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Swinton and Brock because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

This reference to the processes of inheritance by minors makes the point that the condition of humanity is one of slavery, which casts the work of Christ to be the elevation of the social status of believers by emancipating them from their slavery to the spirits of the age (literally, the chthonic powers of the earth). God’s own Son (real, not adopted) has been sent so that humans might be freed by being given a share in his inheritance. The Spirit of Jesus evokes the Abba prayer (Mt. 6:9, Lk. 11:2) in believers, the prayer of familiarity and intimacy with God, vouchsafing their status as heirs. While this formulation does not explicitly draw on Old Testament ideas of God’s parental solicitude to all Israel and the Davidic line in particular, it does extend the Hebrew sensibility that the adoption of all Israel is not a heritage that can be claimed by legal right, but is wholly dependent on God’s loyal adoptive-love toward them. It is this love which Paul suggests is extended through Christ to all the world. For Paul, then, the primary reference of the language of adoption is Trinitarian; those who are adopted become one with the true Son through the Spirit, a union made evident through lives lived in evident freedom from the lords of the age. His account directs our attention to the form, steadfastness and intimacy of divine love as the core feature both of God’s adoptive work and the types of behavior generated in humans by it. Put more sharply, it can only be through the divine work of the Spirit that God’s love for humans comes to animate genuine human love toward other humans. Of the five uses of the term in the Paul’s writings, Romans 8:12-14 offers the most pregnant description of the contours in practice of this divine work of claiming human lives for God’s own love of humanity. Therefore (oun) brothers and sisters we are in debt not to the flesh… (v.12), for (gar) if you live according to the sinful nature you will die but if you put to death the misdeeds of the body you will live (v. 13), for (gar) those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God, (v. 14) for (gar) you have not received a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear (pneuma douleias) but (alla) you have received the spirit of adoption (pneuma huiothesias).9

9 Trevor J. Burke trans., in, Adopted into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor (Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 137. The next two paragraphs interact with Burke, 137-150.

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The long string of connecting participles sets up a sharp contrast between living by the flesh and the redeemed state of living as “sons [or children] of God”. The contrast is a qualitative one, distinguishing ways of living which tangibly manifest different spirits. When the “Spirit of adoption” governs human lives they are not characterized by the slavish and fearful adherence to the patterns of this world. We propose that Paul’s move here maps quite nicely onto our earlier suggestion that much of the contemporary discourses surrounding accounts of the family and adoption are trapped in sterile antimonies. There are spirits of fear afoot in the cultural space that is adoption in the west, whether of scarcity, loneliness or national decline, spirits which threaten the peace of children, adults and whole societies. This is why it is central to our inquiry to try to understand what is entailed in this Pauline antithesis. What is life in the spirit of adoption? To receive the Spirit of adoption is a synecdoche for the redeemed life, and names its inner content and direction. Here form and content are absolutely entwined. A powerful new link emerges with human practices of adoption which can now be understood as a being caught up into rather than an imitation of the divine work. To receive the Spirit of adoption will manifest in practices that seek to bring in the orphan from the highways and byways, as in fact they have done from the very beginning of the Christian era.10 Theologically such practices can be read as entailments of a Trinitarian understanding of the church’s mission: “Go ye…I will be with you” (Mt. 28:19-20, cf. 25:31-46). It is thus a sign of the Spirit of adoption when believers cry out at the plight of the orphan having received God’s heart as their own: “Father of orphans and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. God gives the desolate a home to live in” (Ps. 68:5-6a). The ending of Romans chapter 8:19-21 suggests the backdrop to Christian hope when encountering the plight of the orphan: “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” Though children and parents often experience searing suffering and loneliness because of the breakup of birth families, the new desires given to those freed by being taken up into the working of the Spirit of adoption are not designed to staunch the blood from a primal or personal tragedy, but flow from a divinely given hope that the children of God will be revealed. In Christ this hope beams from every human child. The human action of loving an orphan in any form is

10

John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (London: Penguin, 1988).

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only secure if it grows from and defers to the loving care which pursues that child even should the human parents no longer be able or willing to love. The Spirit of adoption, then, is a Spirit who opens a new time, a time in which wonders happen, in which the blind are made to see, the lame walk, and most importantly for us, the orphan is given a stable, loving home. It is this adoptive Spirit that rules the practical discernment of Christians about appropriate and inappropriate adoptive practices. In the course of our studies our working group therefore discovered a thick theological account of how human parental promising and covenant making can only be grounded in God’s prior promising, covenant making and bestowal of an inheritance. But we did not do so without facing a core methodological question: How do human cultural or legal forms relate to what looks to us like a “metaphorical” description of divine action? It is clear that for Paul the adoption that is determinative is a divine rather than a human action, leaving us with a question about how divine adoption relates to or illumines human practices. Is Paul’s knowledge of Roman adoption practices an interpretative grid he projects into his beliefs about divine action (as historical critical scholarship often assumes)? Or does he draw on his contemporary experience of Roman adoption because he believes it can at least partially communicate something he has experienced about divine love? These questions provoke exegetical dilemmas with direct relevance for contemporary concerns. To what types of human activity do we properly attach the term “adoption”? The apostle Paul has made entering this question easier by explicitly using a term that might be translated adoption, but has made our task much more difficult in using it exclusively of divine action. But perhaps other examples of adoption are depicted in the New Testament? Here we must face the methodological problem squarely: any other examples of adoption we might adduce in the New Testament will betray our presuppositions about what constitutes the core content of the concept. Take for instance Joseph’s decision to embrace Mary’s nascent child as his own. What Matthew clearly tells us is that Joseph accepted the child by naming him, but only at the behest of an angel of the Lord (Mt. 1:24-25). Bartlett’s reading is typical of many contemporary theologies of adoption in moving quickly to call this adoption in a quasi-modern sense: Just as in Exodus 2:10 Pharaoh’s daughter claims the child as her own by giving him his name, Moses, here Joseph claims the child as his own family by naming him Jesus. If Matthew wants the reader to recognize the parallel between the two adoption stories, it will not be the only time where Matthew uses Moses as a type for Jesus (see Matt. 2:16; 5:1). It is

Introduction

9

this adoption that makes possible the claim that Jesus is not only son of God but also (still) son of David, Messiah, through his adoptive father. In this sense Joseph follows the pattern both of Old Testament and of first-century Greco-Roman adoption: he claims Jesus for his own and by claiming him makes him part of his patrilineal family—son of Joseph, son of David.11 But as we have seen, Israel had no conception of or practice of the adoption of individual children, and so Moses is, on Israel’s terms, only dubiously and anachronistically referred to as an adoptee.12 Nor is it clear how Joseph’s naming of an infant can be said to conform to the Greco-Roman practice of adopting adult children with the permission of the birth parents. All that remains of Bartlett’s analysis is the observation that Joseph’s obedience lies in his naming Jesus and so entering into a relationship of parental faithfulness to him, an obedience that, within the scope of the overarching biblical narrative, facilitates the completion of God’s promise to David to care for David’s heirs. Matthew emphasizes the role of divine activity in provoking Joseph’s identification with Jesus, but has no interest in any visit to the magistrate to “make it official”. It seems that, once again, we are not made privy by scripture to an example of human adoption in the sense that we think of it today, but are rather shown yet another example of God instigating human behaviors toward children that advance God’s interest in adopting all humans as God’s own children. The most we can say about Joseph is that God’s love toward all humanity has the effect of commanding this human being to embark on a path of committed love for an infant, in the face of personal embarrassment and potential mockery. Understood Christianly, then, human adoptive practices are explorative ways of seeking out and awaiting the divine love for every child that expresses the Christian freedom for love. Having known the power of this Spirit, believers await the power of this Spirit in the lives of every child. To baptize a child is to lay claim to this promise and to formally declare one’s self, as a parent and as a member of the church, the first of many in the ecclesia who will point this child to the pre-existing reality of their containment in grace, and the promise which attaches to them that they were created to be holy and blameless. 11 12

Bartlett, “Adoption in the Bible,” 387. In addition to Moses’ being taken into Pharaoh’s family being set in an Egyptian legal context, the Pentateuch as a whole could never be construed as depicting the taking of any Israelite into a gentile household to be raised in a pagan religion and cultural tradition as anything other than a foreboding event that only God could rescue.

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The common contemporary conception of a child being legally adopted into a nuclear family primarily to serve the child’s need for belonging and love and the parent’s desire for offspring or the experience of childrearing stands at quite a distance both from the Greco-Roman world and that of scripture. Any theological account of adoption will need to articulate the relationship between divine action toward humans and human adoptive behavior toward other humans. And it will need to do so in the face of the complex dynamics of contemporary understandings of adoption. It is this task which the authors of this volume undertake.

2

Chapter Summaries

The book falls into two main sections. In the first section we concentrate on theological ethics. Brian Brock begins by providing us with a deep and thoughtful exploration of the power of naming. Working outwards from the Genesis account of Adam’s naming the animals, he presents a powerful case for perceiving naming as a moment within created time wherein humans take responsibility for other creatures. Adoption is deeply tied in with naming and as such is a primal human task which is paradigmatic in the articulation of human understanding of their place before God and God’s creatures. Jana Bennett develops another perspective a perspective on adoption that also urges us to move beyond viewing adoption as a legal concept, towards an understanding within which Christians perceive adoption in terms of Christian practice. Baptism provides the bridge between the culture and the family. In baptism we come to realise that relationships with God are the product of Divine rather than human will. This theological dynamic opens up adoption as a Christian practice that is deeply tied in with the trinity. Brent Waters asks us to reflect on the ethics of belonging, highlighting some profound problems with adoption as it is carried out within what he describes as: “a culture of procreative liberty.” Whilst affirming the relevance and appropriateness of procreation and adoption, Waters warns us that the reasons why we pursue our parental calling or vocation and how we go about doing that is a matter of theological and public concern. Hans Ulrich, in line with the thoughts of Henning Theißen, urges us to perceive families as an expression and reflection of the social nature of humanity. Families are places of belonging where our inherent relationality is nurtured and revealed. It is here that we learn what it means not only to be with others, but to belong to one another. Ulrich and Theißen in different ways begins to open up space for perceiving children as gifts that are given to families and indeed to the church as part of God’s redemptive mission in, to

Introduction

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and for the world. This giftedness is not based on biology, but on calling and grace. Children, Hans Ulrich indicates, are not primarily defined by their biology. Such a thin understanding of children belies the rich depth of families and the vocational significance of parenting. Rather, as Brock makes clear, children are the bearers of the next generation; a generation which will encounter fresh ways of living out God’s redemptive story; a story that tells us that the adopting God is with us and for us in all things and at all times. Karin Ulrich’s chapter functions as a bridge between ethics and practical theology by reflecting on the vital question of origins and asking what the significance of where one comes from is for understanding and effectively responding to the experience of adoption. Working with the critical tension between biological and adoptive families, she picks up on Jesus words: “Who are my mother and brothers?” Effectively answering this question in practice is the key to successful and faithful adoption. Taken together these essays help us reflect in depth on the question: what and how do children and parents encounter God and one another within the purview of God’s coming Kingdom? Section two moves into the area of Practical Theology and begins to pick up and reflect on some vital aspects of what it means to practice adoption. John Swinton reflects autobiographically on the process of adoption and makes a case for parenting to be seen as a vocation that is not based on biology but on calling. Bill McAlpine and Dale Andrews begin to open up the practical issues by reflecting on the difficulties of drawing diverse children into already established family units. Both, in different ways, wrestle with the deep tension between offering a stable home that truly is the child’s home, whilst at the same time, in line with Karin Ulrich’s thoughts, help the child to feel connected with its origins and roots. Being with children “in the now,” means recognizing where they have come from. The question as to how an adopted child can find and sustain its identity and develop a shared narrative with past and present is complicated. These complexities are compounded, as both McAlpine and Sarah Shea point out, by the clash of cultures between the new family and the old life. This clash, as Shea points out, is particularly sharp when it comes to inter-country adoptions. Overcoming the inevitable cultural dissonance requires time, patience and awareness. In their chapter Ruard Ganzervoort and Marco Derks offer some important theological reflections on the issue of homosexuality and adoption, an issue that is both topical, controversial and vital. They present an empathetic critical theological framework that enables us to see the ethical, theological and practical dimensions of the issue. Kirsten Oh offers a rich and powerful theology of adoption. Through reflection on her own experience of barrenness,

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lament, grief and expectation around issues of adoptive parents she presents profound insight into some of the key issues that surround being a prospective adopting parent. The power of her story is made even more poignant by the fact that since writing this essay she has become the proud mother of an adopted child! sadness has turned int dancing in her essay. Heather Walton offers a meaningful and moving reflection on adoption in the context of infertility. By opening her own story to embrace the issues presented in the volume, Walton helps ground the book in a very personal experience and in so doing, presses all of us to remember that theology includes bodies. In the concluding essay Paul Shrier shares his personal story of fostering and adopting children whose needs differ from some other children. As he opens up about the complexities of his experience, so we are drawn into a world that is sometimes difficult, but always marked by an undying desire to love. In many ways Paul’s story embodies the love and grace that sits at the heart of practice of adopting children. Taken together the essays presented in this book offer a rich and deep practical theological and ethical reflection on the experience of adoption. It is our hope that the spread and depth of the essays presented in this volume will act as stimulus and a catalyst for an ongoing conversation around what we consider to be a vital area of practical theology and ethical reflection.

3

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Amy Joy Erickson one of our PhD students for her invaluable assistance with the referees for the book. You not only saved us time, you increased the quality of the text. We are grateful to you.

Part 1 Adoption: A Theological Account

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Chapter 1

On Language, Children and God: Naming, Dominion and Domination Brian Brock

In this essay I would like to engage several apparently unrelated themes taken up by the contributors of this volume.1 Brent Waters, followed by Henning Theißen, has proposed that we understand families as an expression of the social nature of humanity, a space where we belong with rather than to other people. In families naked human life is socialized into a cultural unit, and in a Christian home, this is done within an understanding of the child as a divine gift. Hans Ulrich advances this line of discussion by theologically situating the human refusal to leave a child as a “bare” “unenculturated” biological entity as a welcoming of the next human generation through whom God’s story with humanity will continue. In framing the discussion this way, Ulrich exposes a fundamental question: How does the Christian tradition understand children and parents to encounter one another within and upheld by a divine promise? The question is asked in full awareness of the legal headaches, financial cost, heartache and difficulty adoption often entails, all of which press Christians sharply to articulate the reasons for their hope that good will come from entering adoptive relations. Thiesßen, Bill McAlpine, Dale Andrews and Paul Shrier wrestle concretely with the poignant practical difficulties that often accompany the work of adoption, especially the complexities of enculturating children into adoptive families in a manner that offers them a secure home and family life but without cutting them off from those with whom they share a biological or cultural inheritance. In the course of these investigations they uncover another fundamental question: How should adoptive parents and children discover and articulate a shared identity and narrative? As McAlpine and Sarah Shea point out, these questions are exacerbated the greater the apparent distance between the culture of origin and the new home culture of an adoptive child, a tension that is most evident in the context of transnational adoptions. 1 I would also like to thank Brian Williams for his theologically astute comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and his frankness about his experiences as an adoptive parent negotiating questions of naming and culture-keeping.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004352902_003

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Jesus unsettles many contemporary certainties around these issues with his open ended question: “Who are my mother and brothers?” Karin Ulrich explores the complex tensions between the biological and the cultural family this question provokes, as well as the tensions between both and the community of faith which belongs together in belonging to Jesus Christ. The church has in the past negotiated this latter tension between the cultures of families and the community of the church through the rite of baptism, Jana Bennett observes, in which relationships with God and others are embraced not as created by human willing, but as recognized and received. Bennett only notes in passing the relationship of baptism to the giving of Christian names, which has been a very close one in Christendom. One of the reasons for this linkage of baptism and naming is discussed by McAlpine, who draws on the discovery of modern social sciences that in the activity of naming many traditions are negotiating questions of receipt and cultural transition in an especially transparent manner. What McAlpine frames in the idiom of the social scientist, that naming is a core aspect of identity formation in many cultures through which children are linked with one or more cultures, I would like to explore within a more densely Christian theological rationality. Because this rationality is at its core biblical, we will discover that it is not closed off from other traditions, but is distinctive enough to offer us illuminating avenues into many of the issues and quandaries faced by those engaged in adoptive practices today. We normally think of naming as the action of applying words to things. A child, however, is not a thing, but a person, who has come to us through the actions of other persons. The existence of this creature is indelibly embedded in deep webs of personal relations, including to her Creator. I want to suggest that if a child is received as most fundamentally coming from the hand of the Creator, this suggests that every child can be received as a divine address. This is to allow us fruitfully to consider the naming of a child to be an act of hearing and responding to the Creator and Lord of history, a verbal articulation of awareness of and appreciation for the work of the Creator and Life-giver in a very concrete context. My interest in this paper is not to spell out the ethical and practical implications of this insight, but to situate reflection in a range of real life situations within a theological grammar that can foster a deeper and more theological engagement by Christians wrestling with a range of dilemmas in the arena of adoptive practice.

1

Two Dilemmas of Naming

The brief mention of the naming of the animals in Genesis two has received relatively little theological attention in the modern period. Chapter 2:19-20

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reads, “And the Lord God fashioned from the soil each beast of the field and each fowl of the heavens and brought each to the human to see what he would call it, and whatever the human called a living creature, that was its name.”2 Two features of this passage are noteworthy. The first is the lack of differentiation of the origin of humans and the animals—God fashions both from the soil. Any differences between them cannot therefore be material, or ontological, but only the way that God treats them and sets them in specific relations to one another. In the Hebrew the breath given to every living thing is also not distinguishable by species, though the impartation of this breath to the human is depicted in an especially intimate way in the creation narrative (2:7). What does distinguish the human from the living creatures of the land and air is God’s configuration of this relation by bringing each animal to the human “to see what he would call it”. This formulation assumes that humans were created with the capacity to speak and to name. But the power of speech or communication is presumed of many other creatures in the Old Testament and it is therefore improbable that the author(s) of Genesis is trying to suggest that humans are distinctive among the creatures due to their powers of speech. This leaves us with only one unambiguous distinction: between the creatures that God gathers and parades, and the creature before whom this parade is held. In putting the human in the position to name the other creatures a power differential is established between the one who names, and those who receive names. This will be our first point of departure. The second is indicated by the puzzling reason given for setting up this power relation: “to see what he would call it”. In addition to the hint of their being limits to divine foreknowledge, this wording also seems to allow humans a role in the creative process: “whatever the human creature called a living creature, that was its name.” Given the interminable arguments had today amongst biologists about animal taxonomy, it seems clear that we have lost this skill, and forgotten these names, which scripture is here suggesting are the original and true names. The psalmists go so far as to depict God as stressing that God alone now knows the names of every creature as a way of reminding Israel of their fallen state and their need for repentance (Ps. 147:4, cf. Ps. 50: 9, 11). Are traditional readings correct to take this passage as a one-off act of prophetic symbolism in the pre-lapsarian world3 or a depiction of human

2 Robert Alter trans., from The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 22. 3 Augustine, “The Literal Meaning of Genesis,” in On Genesis, Edmund Hill trans. and intro. (New York: New City Press, 2002), IX.20-22, 387-388.

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powers of perception and control over the animals lost in the fall?4 The giving and receiving of names continues throughout the entire biblical witness, and in contexts which suggest that even if name-giving functions differently after the fall, it remains in the post-lapsarian world a theological weighty moment in human life. We still give names today, even if that activity faces complications that surely were not present in the garden. Two sets of contemporary moral problematics offer striking parallels to the exegetical questions we have just noted, and suggest we may still have something to learn from this passage today.

2

Naming, Taxonomy and Domination

A first problematic becomes evident if we examine the common assumption that the first human naming indicated kinds of animals—the thing that hops with a pouch is a kangaroo, the one with a long neck a giraffe, and so on. (For the sake of convenience I will be referring to this first human as Adam, though at this point the human is still non-gendered, and so properly speaking not the male known as Adam.) David Clough has recently pointed out that this type of activity is still very much ongoing, though we now find ourselves trapped in the sheer subjectivity of the exercise. “Once we have recognized that there is more than one way of ordering the differences between organisms, we encounter a plethora of possible candidates. … To embark on [listing] possible ways of ordering creatures in a unilinear way is already to appreciate the oddness of believing that any single principle for ordering different creatures could be thought of as definitive.”5 In fact, as we repeatedly observe in political squabbles over the giving of commemorative street and place names, if human naming is understood as simply a matter of social convention, it cannot but degenerate into power struggles over whose name will be applied in a given instance.6 This conceptual quandary is shadowed by a moral dilemma. How is this initial naming of the animals different than the conquistadores replacing the 4 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis Chapters 1-5, Luther’s Works vol. 1 Jaroslav Pelikan ed. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1958), 120. 5 David Clough, On Animals: Volume 1, Systematic Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 61-62. 6 Reuben s. Rose-Redwood, “From Number to Name: Symbolic Capital, Places of Memory, and the Politics of Street Renaming in New York City,” Social & Cultural Geography, 9:4, 2008, 431-452; Flavia Hodges, “Language Planning and Place naming in Australia,” Current Issues in Language Planning, 8:3, 2007, 383-403.

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local place names of conquered lands with the names of the new sovereign, so displaying or representing the power of dominion that seeks to determine all references to places and particular creatures? Is Adam showing his power over the animals by naming them, or, as Luther suggests, finding a name that is consonant with the features of the creature being recognized by naming? While Luther is clear that the naming itself was an act of perception receptive to the divine revelation of each animal, he then goes on to assert that, “from this enlightenment there also followed, of course, the rule over all the animals…since they were named in accordance with Adam’s will.”7 Sune Borkfelt is worried, with good reason, about this voluntaristic turn in Luther’s reading, leading her to conclude that such a naming of animals, “is thus an assertion of rule over them, an act whereby Man makes the animals, their actions and their use, subjects to his power, appointed to him by God. A process very similar indeed to Columbus’ naming of islands God has enabled him to discover, and indicative of the same power relations justified by reference to the divine will.”8 In her view an act of naming is always a signifier of inequality and dominance, a claim corroborated by animal names that uncritically perpetuate the human tendency to project our views of the world, such as when we call something that is not a “river horse” a hippopotamus, or an animal that is clearly not a pig a “guinea pig”.9 But this tyranny is by no means confined to animals, warns Borkfeldt: For us as humans, the vast majority of other animals seem to have fit nicely into generic categories, and our use of these categories may say quite a lot about the ways in which we regard other species. Bundling together a number of individuals in order to create hierarchies and assert power relations is a practice that has of course been applied to humans time and again throughout history, whether through reference to race and ethnicity, gender or other shared features of those being categorized and put at the lower end of a hierarchy. Through all ages, those who have physically resembled us the most have been those most willingly admitted into our communities and those, who we have wished to keep beyond the moral pale, have been categorized generically by reference to the features perceived to mark their difference from us. With categorizations 7 Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis Chapters 1-5, Luther’s Works vol. 1 Jaroslav Pelikan ed. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1958), 119. 8 Sune Borkfelt, “What’s in a Name?—Consequences of Naming Non-Human Animals,” Animals, vol. 1, 2011, 118. 9 Borkfelt, “What’s in a Name?”, 119.

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Brock of non-human animals, however, we might argue the practice has been taken to its extreme.10

Given these criticisms of the problems associated with generic naming, it seems worthwhile considering the thought that Adam was not so much labelling generic features of kinds of animals, but was giving particular names, as we often do with pets. Borkfeldt points out that it is no accident that in an age of factory farming, in which naming an animal forms attachments that raise questions about its treatment in life, the giving of particular names to animals seems to cross a moral divide between animals for whom we accept some personal responsibility and with whom our own stories intertwine and those who we dare not extend this sympathy, destined as they are for a factory slaughter. In previous eras, when animals worked alongside humans in many vocations, this divide was more easily crossed, because to train a horse to plough or a dog to herd sheep demands they be spoken to with a name to which they can respond.11 The basic assumption that Adam was naming kinds, ironically, thus ends up inverting the surface meaning of the biblical text by insisting that what Adam is doing in naming is discovering himself and his powers by way of distinguishing the differences of the human from the animal and exploring the control of the human over the animal realm. Thinkers as divergent as Aquinas,12 Calvin,13 Herder,14 John Paul II15 and Leon Kass16 have agreed that Adam’s naming is best understood as an exercise in human self -discovery, arguing that without this exercise Adam would not have been able to appreciate the woman in all her creaturely distinctiveness. On this account, in the guise of asking the human to name the animals, God is in fact asking the human to attend to the generic aspects of animals as a means of human self -discovery. Clough suggests that from the beginning all the way up to contemporary thinkers like 10 11 12 13 14 15

16

Borkfelt, “What’s in a Name?”, 120. Borkfelt, “What’s in a Name?”, 121. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Fathers of the English Dominican Province trans. (London: Burns and Oates, 1922),Prima Pars, q. 96 a. 1 r. 3. John Calvin, Genesis, Alister McGrath and J. I. Packer eds. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), 38. Johann Gottfried von Herder, The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, vol. 2, James Marsh trans. (Burlington: Edward Smith, 1833, reprinted by Charleston: Bibliobazaar, 2000), 15. John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, Michael Waldstein trans. and intro., (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), “Man in Search of His Essence,” 148-150. Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, (New York: Free Press, 2003), 100.

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Barth and Kelsey, Christian theologians have been trapped in an anthropocentric account of adamic naming by this tendency conceive naming as related to formal categories. He suggests, therefore, that the antidote lies in the opposite direction; “Adam’s naming of the animals brought before him suggests his attention to their particularity rather than concern to order them.”17 But in saying this Clough never answers his own question: How are we to understand such a particularized adamic naming?

3

Renaming, Tradition and Church

Here a second cluster of contemporary questions about naming becomes relevant, which, once again is prefigured in the scriptural witness and the theological tradition. When Adam first meets the woman, he does not name her, but verbally expresses delight at her distinctive being and presence and “says to (or proclaims) her” (yiqqārē’), woman (’iššāh), a variant of his own selfdesignation (’īš).18 Only later, after the fall, does he “call her” (same word) a proper name “Eve” (ḥawwāh) (3:20) which, tellingly in light of the discussions above, is to rename her by reference to a generic characteristic of women in general—their capacities as life-givers. We must leave aside for now the question of the relation of the sexes implied in Adam’s naming of Eve in either instance. My interest is the later renaming of “the woman” as “Eve” by Adam. Renaming has a long history in scripture and Christianity, from the divine giving of new names to Abraham (Gen. 17:5) Sarah (Gen. 17:15) and Israel (Gen. 35:10) as a symbol of their being claimed in a special way for God’s purposes, through Jesus’ renaming of the disciples (Jn. 1:42) to the giving of new names upon being inducted into monastic orders, a practice still kept publically visible in the re-naming of popes on their investiture. Traditionally Christian renaming has been tied to a sacramental moment, especially the baptism of a child. In Christendom baptism has been understood as not only a bath in water, but as also being remade by immersion “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 8:16, 19:5).19 This immersion had implications for the naming of the

17 18 19

Clough, On Animals, 63-64. This is the word used when God renames Abraham (Gen. 2:23), and Isaac (Gen. 21:12) and Jacob (Gen. 36:10). Lars Hartman, ‘Into the Name of the Lord Jesus’: Baptism in the Early Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), ch. 3.

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one baptised. “It could be argued,” writes historian Will Coster, “that the service of baptism in early modern England was not…so much a religious rite as a naming ceremony. Not only did it induct the infant into the spiritual and temporal communities, but also, paradoxically it gave them their individual identity, carried in their forename.”20 This was so because the practice in medieval England simply reproduced traditional practice in Christendom, as inscribed in the baptismal liturgy. A child was named after a godparent in the baptismal rite as recalled in the confirmation ceremony, which included the lines: What is your name? N or M. Who gave you this name? My Godfather and Godmother in my baptism.21 Nor was this practice modified by the Reformers, as we are reminded by an acrimonious post-reformation dispute. The dispute in question arose in Calvin’s Geneva during the years 1546-1554. Calvin had strongly asserted that children’s names ought to reflect the reality that children are a gift from God. The ministers in Geneva believed, reasonably, that this warranted their pastoral oversight of parental naming, and therefore took to refusing to recognize some names at baptism—names considered superstitious, or names associated with local shrines, the godhead or feast days—names that were by no means rare as children were usually given names of their godparents, and many popular local names ran afoul of these rules. There were cross-cultural sensitivities at stake here, given the presence of a large refugee community, as well as church-state issues, since the magistrates eventually had to wade into the dispute. “Children thus became a public battleground in disputes over ecclesiastical power, parental rights and obligations, and “ethnic” resentments between Genevans and French,” comments Barbara Pitkin. “For some parents, their right to name their children as they wished conflicted with their duty to present them for baptism and raise them in the reformed faith. In such cases the ministers and, ultimately, the magistrates felt the need to step in and resolve the conflict, even if this meant sacrificing familial to Christian identity.”22 Within the context of 20 21 22

Will Coster, Baptism and Spiritual Kinship in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 167. Coster, Baptism and Spiritual Kinship, 172. Barbara Pitkin, “‘The Heritage of the Lord’: Children in the Theology of John Calvin,” in Marcia Bunge ed., The Child in Christian Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 178.

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modern Protestantism this renaming dispute seems not only outdated, but even a little perverse, smacking as it does of authoritarian ecclesial or political governance. But it does reflect the movement of Christendom away from the Roman account of adoption as primarily a manner of establishing a legal heir and toward an understanding of the baptismal moment as the place where the true identity of the child is both revealed and definitively solidified in social space. A secular version of this debate has recently re-emerged in the context of transnational adoption. Since the 1990’s transnational adoption rates have soared, with the United States the greatest recipient country in trans-national adoptions.23 The top sending nations during this period have been China, Russia and Guatemala.24 Social scientific research tells us that most of these children are given names different than the ones given by their birthparents, with the percentages rising the more the adopted children are perceived to “look different” than their adoptive parents.25 In some countries, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand there has been a growing consensus that children adopted out of indigenous people groups by parents in the majority population should retain their given names in the interest of keeping children in contact with their cultures of origin.26 After surveying discussions taking place on websites devoted to the swapping of information about transnational adoption, one commentator noted the strong influence of media portrayals on trends in adoptive practice in North America, which, coupled with a few high profile celebrities building rainbow families through trans-national adoption, has raised the profile of trans-national adoption as a legitimate social choice.27 It has done so, however, at the cost of fanning attitudes and

23

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26 27

The case is discussed in more detail in William G. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), ch. 5, “The Company of Pastors: Ministers or Masters?”, 144-153. US international adoption rates rose dramatically since 1990 when a little over 7,000 children were adopted. “However, by 1998 the number more than doubled, and it tripled by 2003. Today [2007] there are over 22,000 international adoptions per year.” M. Engel, N.K. Phillips and F.A. Dellacava, “International Adoption: A Sociological Account of the US Experience,” The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 27:5, 2007, 257-270. See Sarah Shea’s article in this volume, and Quiroz, “Cultural Tourism in Transnational Adoption”, 529. See Quiroz, “Cultural Tourism in Transnational Adoption”, 530; and Cardell K. Jacobson, Lelia Nielsen and Andrea Hardeman, “Family Trends in Transracial Adoption in the United States,” Adoption Quarterly 15:2, 2012, 73-87. For a discussion of this premise, see Bill McAlpine’s chapter in this volume. Engel, et. al. “International Adoption,” 257.

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practices that are better described as tourism than genuine bilateral cultural engagement, leading to the child’s sending culture being “appropriated without being embraced”.28 This appropriative relation to children from other cultures is wrapped up with a widespread sense that such children are not only being rescued from orphan status, but also out of a primitive or broken home culture. The resulting irony is this, concludes Raka Shome, “our hatred of the conditions that have produced the native child always interrupts our capacity to seriously love the child on an equal cultural level, for to love the child with dignity and equality is to love its nation and culture with dignity. Thus, romantic internationalism mobilizes our love in the west as conditions of attachment to underprivileged nations but it simultaneously reifies our underlying disgust for these nations.”29 If such children are to know their culture of origin at all, a cultural identity must be artificially staged by adoptive parents living in a very different culture who will be forced to pick and choose which cultural representations will be passed on to their children. The risk is that this will produce thin representations of the sending culture that are likely to alienate children in the long term. Pamela Anne Quiroz relates the following experience to illustrate the problem. A striking example of this occurred in an international adoption workshop in which the facilitator provided a moving rendition of her adoptive family’s successful negotiation of culture. The [white, middle class, North American] mother and facilitator offered examples of what she deemed culture keeping, such as learning about the history of India and enrolling her daughter in Indian folk dance classes. After this discussion the facilitator’s daughter (in her late 20’s) participated on a panel with three other adult adoptees and completely contradicted her adoptive mother’s narrative. The adopted daughter assessed her experiences as lacking real cultural understanding and her disposition as generally unhappy. She also contradicted her mother’s positive version of the cultural activities in which she was placed and described them as difficult and isolating. Far from feeling accepted, the daughter claimed that the other Indian children in her folk dance class regarded her as white, and therefore, she

28 29

Pamela Anne Quiroz, “Cultural Tourism in Transnational Adoption: “Staged Authenticity” and Its Implications for Adopted Children,” Journal of Family Issues, 33.4, 2012, 532. Raka Shome, “‘Global Motherhood’: The Transnational Intimacies of White Femininity,” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 28:5 2011, 388-406, quotation from p. 402.

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was socially ostracized from the group. Struck by these contrasting narratives, I observed the mother while her daughter spoke but witnessed no surprise regarding the discrepancies in their narratives and little obvious concern.30 Quiroz identifies renaming as a prime indicator of cross-cultural adoption practiced as cultural tourism in distinction from adoption practiced as a deeper culture-keeping approach in which children’s original names are kept and adoptive parents’ own self-identification is reoriented.31 This observation throws uncomfortable light on the findings of social scientists that in US adoptions, less than one third of adoptive children and one fifth of Chinese children were called by their names of origin.32 At the same time, the reasons parents gave for this renaming are also theologically interesting—the new names are often intended to honour family members and thus to embed children in adoptive families. The quandary is that the means of doing so distances the child from their biological family and culture. “Deculturalization refers to the historic process of how dominant groups literally stripped away the culture of dominated groups in the United States through enslavement, displacement, and abolishment of language. … Culture avoidance is the silence surrounding the child’s culture, race, and nation of origin; the anglicised name removes the last connection to that culture.”33 Renaming, then, is an arena in which parents very publically display their hopes and fears, the boundaries and affinities that often unconsciously shape their decisions about which relationships are worth forming and maintaining, and which should be left behind. Once again, it seems, naming appears at a crucial node in the processes of human creatures forming material and moral bonds with other creatures within traditioned human societies. Naming seems still to be a special point of convergence in which humans express the configurations of separation and binding that they perceive or hope for between different creatures. Perhaps counter-intuitively for a Christian theologian, I want to suggest that the thinker who offers us the most fertile theological entry point into the whole constellation of questions I have raised happens to have been a modern quasiatheist Jew, Walter Benjamin.

30 31 32 33

Quiroz, “Cultural Tourism,” 548. Quiroz, “Cultural Tourism,” 536. Quiroz, “Cultural Tourism,” 542. Quiroz, “Cultural Tourism,” 543.

26 4

Brock Benjamin on Adamic Naming

Benjamin’s reflections on naming develop a strand of early modern puzzling about the question of the origin of language,34 discussions which provide the backdrop of Benjamin’s essay “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man” (1916).35 I will be reading this essay as offering Christians a way to understand ourselves embedded in, and the recipient of, divine, kenotic selfcommunication that is tangible enough to orient our living. In engaging this earlier discussion about the origin of language, Benjamin finds himself driven back to fundamental questions about speaking, naming and God. He advances our investigation in starting where Clough ended— by repudiating the search for “transcendent essences” of creatures which can be categorized in the activity of naming. In his view the most basic form of language does not name generic features, but identifies particular features of objects and so constitutes them as humanly perceptible entities. I am reading Benjamin’s account of language as a representative of what Ian Hacking calls “dynamic nominalism”, an understanding of language in which the real properties of the created realm both shape human naming, but become perceptible in conjunction with human observation and the giving of names.36 Whereas Clough stands within the language of universal truth to show us the problems inherent in understanding our relation to creatures with the categories of generic universals, Benjamin begins with a very Hebrew premise, as Hanna Arendt has pointed out. For Benjamin to quote is to name, and naming rather than speaking, the word rather than the sentence, brings truth to light. …Benjamin re34

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Cf. Oswald Bayer, A Contemporary in Dissent: Johann Georg Hamann as a Radical Enlightener, Roy Harrisville and Mark Mattes trans. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), ch. 5; Isaiah Berlin, The Magus of the North: J. G. Hamann and the Origins of Modern Irrationalism, Henry Hardy ed. (London: John Murray, 1993), 72-87; Michael N. Forester, After Herder: Philosophy of Language in the German Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). The parallel discussion in the English speaking world comes slightly later and is outside of Benjamin’s perview. Cf. Roy Harris ed., The Origin of Language (Bristol, Thoemmes Press, 1996). Walter Benjamin, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings vol. 1, 1913-1926, Marcus bullock and Michael Jennings eds., (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press, 1996), 62-74. Ian Hacking, “Making Up People,” in Thomas C. Heller, David E. Wellbery and Morton Sosna ed., Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), 222-236.

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garded truth as an exclusively acoustical phenomenon: “Not Plato but Adam,” who gave things their names, was to him the “father of philosophy.” Hence tradition was the form in which these name-giving words were transmitted; it too was an essentially acoustical phenomenon.37 Though a secular Jew, Benjamin did not give up the idea that traditions are carried by words: the act of naming puts words to things in a manner that can form a tradition if they are handed on and explained. Names, therefore, are communicable and ground human communication, making them the condition of human communion.38 Before outlining Benjamin’s reading of Adam’s naming, let me now at least indicate why I take his position to be important for Christians today. Benjamin offers us the idea that God asks Adam to name and waits to “see what he will name them” because God is entrusting to a grateful humanity the task of putting appropriate words to the created world— appropriate in recognizing and handing on to their children and neighbors their recognition of the divine working. In Adam’s naming of the animals we are offered both an account of the beginning of tradition, but also a vision of what naming is, theologically understood: naming is a verbal recognition of the material and historical works of the Lord which are simultaneously praised in real time and handed on to future generation in both the activity of naming and the preservation of names. This is, as Alexander Schmemann puts it, a way of engaging with creatures that allows their nature as a divine gift to determine our understanding of them (and notice here that it is their essence as a divine gift, not as an alienated substance that is determinative). Now in the Bible a name…reveals the very essence of a thing, or rather its essence as a gift… To name a thing is to manifest the meaning and value God gave it, to know it as coming from God and to know its place and function within the cosmos created by God. To name a thing, in other words, is to bless God for it and in it.39 Benjamin presses the question of what this theological insight reveals about language itself. He begins his discussion of the origin of language with the flat

37 38 39

Hanna Arendt, “Introduction: Walter Benjamin: 1892-1940,” in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, Harry Zorn trans. (New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 49. Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 66. Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (Crestwood NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973), 15.

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assertion that all creaturely entities are “linguistic”—are possessed of intrinsically communicative properties. Whether or not anyone “hears” the languages things utter, “this cannot alter the fact that we cannot imagine a total absence of language in anything.”40 When humans speak language, this speaking does not invent words and grammar, but is always proceeded by and responsive to what Benjamin calls the “linguistic being of all things.”41 Each creature speaks in its own language, and, as the Genesis account suggests, a significant aspect of human language is expressed in naming. “It is therefore the linguistic being of man to name things.”42 Who then is the addressee of human speech-as-naming? To hold that the only addressee of human naming is other humans, is to affirm the pragmatic utility of naming activity but at the cost of giving up any reference that would allow names to be judged more or less appropriate to their object. This suggests, says Benjamin, that it is finally to God that humanity as the “naming creature” speaks.43 God wants to, “see what he would name them” because in the self-expression that is Adam’s naming of specific creatures, creation addresses itself (creature to creature) while at the same time addressing God.44 Thus, suggests Benjamin, a human act of naming can finally be adjudged as a human expression of what a specific human has heard, in this concrete creature, from God. This leads Benjamin further, to suggest that the true origin of human language is the divine breath of life. Human speech and naming are the returning of God’s gift of life/breath (the Hebrew nephesh entailing both) as sound given a new density. A crucial passage reads: In the word, creation took place, and God’s linguistic being is the word. All human language is only the reflection of the word in name. The name is no closer to the word than knowledge is to creation. The infinity of all human language always remains limited and analytic in nature, in comparison to the absolutely unlimited and creative infinity of the divine word.45 To give proper names then is to approach the “frontier between finite and infinite language” because “of all beings, man is the only one who names his 40 41 42 43 44 45

Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 62. Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 63. Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 64. Italics in original. Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 65. Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 65. Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 68.

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own kind, as he is the only one whom God did not name.”46 Naming then, of children or any other creature, is a communing of the human word with the creative and anterior word of God which gives every being its existence and form. Because God said “Let there be…” human speech is put in the position of needing to articulate a response when engaging with every creature.47 In naming we both recognize creatures as distinct, and bind them into the traditions in which we live and have learned to think and speak. Though Benjamin does not often mention his sources, one he does mention by name, J.G. Hamann, is clear that the proper orientation of human language is found in echoing back to God recognition not only of God’s creative work, but also of the divine redemptive work in historical occurrence.48 This understanding of

46 47

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Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 69. [This raises the question of the Fall directly, because God did name Israel, Is. 43:1.] It becomes apparent at this point that Benjamin’s account develops a Lutheran understanding of the relation of divine creation and speaking. In a characteristic passage Luther writes, “He [God] wills to speak, then, namely, when we, almost despairing, decide that He will keep silence forever. But what or in what manner will He speak? Here we must observe the Hebrew way of expression. For when Scripture says that God speaks, it understands a word related to a real thing or action [verbum reale], not just a sound, as ours is. For God does not have a mouth or a tongue, since He is a Spirit, though scripture speaks of the mouth and tongue of God: “He spoke, and it came to be” (Ps. 33:9). And when He speaks, the mountains tremble, kingdoms are scattered, then indeed the whole earth is moved. This is a language different from ours. When the sun rises, when the sun sets, God speaks. When the fruits grown in size, when human beings are born, God speaks. Accordingly the words of God are not empty air, but things very great and wonderful, which we see with our eyes and feel with our hands. For when, according to Moses (Gen. 1), the Lord said “Let there be a sun, let there be a moon, let the earth bring forth trees,” etc., as soon as He said it, it was done. No one heard this voice, but we see the works and the things themselves before our eyes, and we touch them with our hands.” Martin Luther, “Psalm 2,”in Luther’s Works, Selected Psalms I, Vol. 12 Jaroslav Pelikan ed. (St. Louis, Concordia, 1955), 32. “Did scripture not seek out this most despicable of people, one of the smallest, and its worst, even its most sinful actions, in order to clothe God’s providence and wisdom and to reveal him in this lowliness of images? Nature and history are therefore the two great commentaries on the divine Word, and this Word is the only key to unlock a knowledge of both. What does the difference between natural and revealed knowledge mean? If I understand it aright, the difference is no more than that between the eye of a man who sees a picture without understanding the least thing about painting or drawing or the story that is represented, and the eye of a painter; or between natural hearing and a musical ear.” In Ronald Gregor Smith, J. G. Hamann: A Study in Christian Existence, With Selections From his Writings, (London: Collins, 1960), 166.

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naming is regularly displayed in scripture as when Hosea names his children to reflect their being born in the context of the divine judgment on Israel (Hos 1:2-10), or Job’s naming of his divinely given new children in in recognition that their very being attests a saving act of divine generosity (Job 42:12-15). Benjamin now turns to the question of what all this might mean in light of the Fall. Because the world is an artifact of divine speech, it is much richer than humans can capture in their partial names. This is the condition that makes the multiplicity of languages after Babel possible, each of which can in principle name true aspects of the multiplicitous creative word of God. In this sense, human language is “a single great experiment that is conducted in as many laboratories as there are peoples.”49 Less positively, however, the Fall is also the slippage of human naming as a labor of recognition and praise into a register of naming as denoting possession. In sliding from naming before God and among creatures to merely an intercreaturely exercise of human co-option, language is rendered a mere flag of possession like the flag the conquistador plants on lands he claims rather than a mode of communing with place and God within the traditions of our and other peoples. The Tree of Knowledge, on this view, is not to be understood as a warning sign set up to communicate information, but the one creature whose divinely given name was designed to keep humans aware that they are not the origin of the names of things.50 Similarly, the story of Babel is not an example of how a legitimate human obedience to the command to have dominion and subdue the earth can reach a little too far, but displays God’s faithfulness to judge self-justifying but nevertheless totally inverted performances of dominion. The negative biblical association of Babel with the first empire issues a clear and damning judgment on human attempts to organize creation (inventing bricks) in the service of raising human-constructed names (“to make a name for themselves”) (Gen. 10:8-14, 11:2-3). This attempt to name in order to take (self-) possession is presented as the antithesis of more appropriately attentive dominion. Benjamin suggests that we can spot dominating naming by way of its tendency to impose false unities on creatures by attaching names that are not specific enough and are also self-referential.51 Only God’s creative 49

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Walter Benjamin, “A State Monopoly on Pornography,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 2.1, 1927-1930, Michael Jennings Howard Eiland and Gary Smith, eds., (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press, 1999), 72. “The Tree of Knowledge stood in the garden of God not in order to dispense information on good and evil, but as an emblem of judgment over the questioner. This immense irony marks the mythic origin of law.” Benjamin, “On Language as Such,” 72. Benjamin, “Language and Logic,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings vol. 1, 273.

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word can serve as the index of the unity of creatures, and when we cease to listen and discern this divine unity and relationality we cannot but group and name creatures according to the use-values we dream up for them. Hamann expresses the inner linkage of naming with gratitude or idol-production: All the colors of this most beautiful world grow pale once you extinguish its light, the firstborn of creation. If the belly is your god, then even the hairs on your head are under its guardianship. Every creature will alternately become your sacrifice and your idol—subject against its will—but in hope, it groans beneath your yoke or at your vain conduct; it does the best to escape your tyranny, and longs even in the most passionate embrace for that freedom with which the beasts paid Adam homage, when GOD brought them unto man to see what he would call them; for whatsoever Man would call them, that was the name thereof…The more vividly this idea of the invisible GOD dwells in our heart, the more able we are to see and taste his loving-kindness in creatures, observe it and grasp it with our hands. Every impression of nature in man is not only a memorial but also a warrant of fundamental truth: Who is the LORD.52 In terms of theological weighting, all this suggests that naming is a more fundamental activity than is the dangerously malleable idea of dominion. The responsivity demanded by naming offers a criterion for distinguishing between appropriate attentiveness to creatures and domination, a discernment that is the condition of any true obedience to the command to have dominion. The truth of Burkhard’s critique of the human naming of animals as an expressions of the fallen tendency of humans to lump and name collectively in order to subjugate, is therefore also an important aspect of the truth displayed in the post-lapsarian act of the renaming of Eve: these are sins because they are expressions of dominating naming. Such naming no longer opens itself to receive the divine revelation of creatures but seeks power over creatures, a form of naming expressed in patriarchy and empire but extending to the exploitation of animals. This is also to indicate the core reason why Christians do well to be sensitive and resistant to the trajectories within practices of transnational adoption which tend toward what Quiroz has pejoratively labelled cultural tourism. Activities like translation are best understood as acts of trust in the unity of the creative word of God which is the source of all things, an enactment of the 52

Johann Hamann, “Aesthetica in Nuce,” in Writings on Philosophy and Language, Kenneth Haynes ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 78-79.

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hope that we will be enriched by coming into contact with a part of the multiplicitous truth of creation possessed by speakers of other languages. Thus, theologically understood, translation is a work of the translator to engage other languages in order to liberate her own language from its narrowness before God.53 Only thus can it be the “reclamation and fulfillment of languages.”54 This view offers us an initial and constructive starting point for talking about the naming of adoptive children: a theologically responsive naming will draw families outside of their cultural locale, out into new languages and so into deeper and broader knowledge of the one God’s manifold works.55 All these claims, to draw our treatment of Benjamin to a close, are elaborations of the basic affirmation that it is because all things speak God’s word in their own ways that they can be named.56 All the creatures of the cosmos are God’s art, and even Adam’s good names which expressed the nature and significance of specific animals57 because they harmonized58 with the divine word still did not exhaust the beauty and richness of the divine word from which they originate.

5

In Place of a Conclusion

Why ask about naming? Naming is the moment when human beings accept some sort of responsibility to a specific creature already present in the material world. It is thus a paradigmatic moment in which humans articulate their understanding of their place before God (if they believe), and among peoples and their histories. It is all oriented by an intense interest in the specificity of the creature being named. Even the giving of faddish names to children, typically on aesthetic grounds, is an expression of a sense of the parents’ place

53 54 55

56 57 58

Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” 261. Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings vol. 1, 257. Cf. Karin Ulrich’s chapter in this volume as well as Karl Barth, Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Creation, III.4, G. W. Bromily and T. F. Torrance eds. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), “Near and Distant Neighbours,” 285-323. “One’s own people in its location cannot and must not be a wall but a door. Whether it be widely opened or not, and even perhaps shut again, it must never be barred, let alone blocked up. The one who is really in his own people, among those near to him, is always on the way to those more distant, to other peoples.” (294). Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” 254. Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” 255. Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” 260.

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in the social landscape and an attempt to situate the child in it in an advantageous manner, while more traditional modes of naming after relatives situate a child within the grammar of genealogy and heritage. The reality that the naming of children is always an attempt to locate them within a cultural historical judgment is again indicated by the widespread resistance to giving children names like “Fifi” which are typically pet names.59 We cannot, therefore, evade the reality that naming is an act of emplacement, both culturally and historically, and of response, responsibility and receipt of a given being. It is an act of memory (retrospective) and of hope (prospective) that expresses a discernment about what is at stake in our current relations to this given being. Virtually all human naming practices express this logic, even if unconsciously. This suggests that across human cultures practices of naming express an awareness of the importance of the act that often is not explicitly understood, which is certainly true of modern western Christians. If they did, they might be better able to see the sense of other, especially nonwestern naming traditions, in which people’s names change in light of developments in their life-histories,60 as at least incipiently recognized within western cultural space in the taking of a spouse’s name and other acts of renaming that occur in sacramental moments of the church’s life. It is by reconsidering the dynamics at work at this locus that Christians could most productively engage with the criticisms of renaming of adopted children presented by Quiroz. They would do so asking the theologically reoriented question, “How can we publically recognize the work of God in this child’s life as present in both their birth and adoptive contexts?” All human naming activity, Benjamin has argued, stands under the truth of the origin of things in God’s speaking them into existence, and is therefore only properly understood as a human response to this prior divine Word. This Word has become present to the mundane senses of those humans who respond to it by giving names. In the case of humans, scripture offers every parent the hope that the names we give to locate our children in cultural space and genealogical descent will prepare them to hear from God the name God has given them (Rev. 2:17). This account thus assumes a specific account of the materiality of revelation and the permeability of human epistemic capacity for revelation. My suggestion is that this whole modern discussion is a long reflection on Luther’s insistence that we cannot know God’s nearness in a way we 59 60

Borkfelt, “What’s in a Name?” 122. Peter P. Schweitzer and Evgeniy V. Golovko, “Local Identities and Traveling Names: Interethnic Aspects of Personal Naming in the Bering Strait Area,” Artic Anthropology, 34:1 (1997), 167-180.

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can cling and respond to in faith solely in our imagination or recollection.61 It is a “sure and infallible rule” that God makes Godself manifest to humans “by some definite and visible form that is…within the scope of the five senses.”62 The externality and tangibility of the divine presence through creatures is therefore both the condition of faith and God’s chosen mode of speaking to humans. In the case of children, Christian parents recognize them as a gift from God in naming (Ps. 27). This reality, Barth notes, frames the parental task as a whole: “We make the simplest yet at the same time the most comprehensive statement when we say that it is the parents’ responsibility to give their children the opportunity to encounter the God who is present, operative and revealed in Jesus Christ, to know him and to learn to love and fear him.”63 Naming is the first act through which parents can formally recognize this as the reality of their situation before God and humans, as the pastors in Calvin’s Geneva grasped. For a human to name a child is an act which dares a comprehensive pronouncement on the locale of a human being and so exposes parental hopes for the end and context of this new life which “will be wholesome and effective only when it consists in training up the children to the point at which all parental disciplines fall away and God Himself takes over the work of adaptation and individual realization,” Barth concludes.64 Thus this original act of parenting is a pledge of parental awareness of that which alone can make an act of naming good: “The Holy Spirit is the true author of the good to which [parents] as [humans] can only direct their children.”65 We have discussed the worry that transnational adoption can decay into cultural tourism because in this realm of human life as in every other, Christian freedom is displayed not in appropriative naming but in an evident openness to being remade by and responsive to concrete divine gifts. The adopted child therefore presents in a special way the divine demand laid on every parent that they challenge and repent of their sinful desires to have children who conform to their idols of success rather than the child’s own flourishing.66 Children, like every neighbor,

61 62 63 64 65 66

Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis Chapters 15-20, Luther’s Works vol. 3 Jaroslav Pelikan ed. (St. Louis: Concordia, 1961), 109, 117-8. Luther, Lectures on Genesis Chapters 15-20, 122. Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4, 283. Barth, CD III.4, 280. Barth, CD III.4, 284-5. Stanley Hauerwas, “Abortion, Theologically Understood,” in Stanley Hauerwas, The Hauerwas Reader, John Berkman and Michael Cartwright eds. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), ch. 31.

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are God’s invitation in love to be drawn out of our self-absorption. The case of trans-cultural adoption simply makes it clear how the “spirit of adoption” that is given to those adopted by the Spirit of Jesus Christ does not solidify and seal languages, families and cultures off from one another, but enriches human lives, languages and cultures by drawing humans beyond the confines of the languages and communities in which they live and in which only aspects of the divine plenitude are evident. A child is a link or a door to others and to future generations, not an object to be secured. Receiving, caring for, and “culture keeping” for a child might therefore be seen as one inflection of the human vocation to serve creation’s flourishing, the “tilling and keeping” of a garden which defined the pleasing work of the original couple. A community learning this lesson in a tangible way will be well situated to engage in debates about public policy, and will gravitate toward adoption and fostering policies that do not seek overly restrictive matches between prospective parents and children in need of care67 and are also resistant to all commodification language68 as well as refusals of the rights of children to know their birth parents.69 Having approached the theme of adoption through an investigation of the theology of naming has given us a hint of why the church today might consider adoptive parents to be especially well-situated to remind all believers that the existence of every child is a work of divine grace. 67 68 69

See chapters by Shea and Theissen in this volume. Craig Gay, Dialogue, Catalogue, Monologue: Personal, Impersonal and Depersonalizing ways to Use Words (Vancouver, Regent College Publishing, 2008). See the chapter by Karin Ulrich in this volume.

Chapter 2

Why Christians Should (Not) Choose Adoption Jana Marguerite Bennett

I do not know of any Christian theologian who responds to the idea of adoption as an abjectly terrible idea.1 In the past decade, adoption as an idea has come to have near universal appeal and approval among the numerous theologians who have written on the topic.2 The questions that ethicists raise most often in relation to adoption – how to “normalize” adopted children so that they feel “really” part of their family, and whether gay and lesbian couples or single parents or (a longer while ago) interracial couples might able to adopt – all arise from the central assumption that adoption is a good. Thus, the central question in the several books, articles, and collections of essays has not been “Whether adoption?” but what is meant theologically by the act of adopting and how that relates to the questions posed above. For example, is adoption a way to maintain the primacy of a biological family ideal, even in the midst of a broken and imperfect world where sometimes biological mothers and fathers find they cannot raise their biological children, and infertile couples find they cannot conceive? So Catholic moral theologian Lisa Sowle Cahill writes about natural law and the understanding of the common good as ways to articulate what we do when we adopt.3 Natural law directs us toward the good of biological families as sources for identity and belonging; the common good directs us toward love of and hospitality to the 1 Indeed, Jeffrey Stout makes a similar statement about people’s views of adoption, generally. See “A Conversation We Ought to be Having About Adoption,” Timothy P. Jackson, ed., The Morality of Adoption: Social-Psychological, Theological, and Legal Resources (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 117. 2 This has not always been the case. In her essay, “Adoption and the Goods of Birth” for the Journal of Moral Theology 1:2 (June 2012), Holly Taylor Coolman notes that “In 2001, it made sense for one theologian to note that ‘Christian theologians have neglected the doctrine of adoption, with few exceptions,’ and as recently as 2005, Stephen Posted noted that adoption ‘is seldom discussed in theological circles.’ That appears to be rapidly changing. In July of 2010, Ted Olsen, managing editor of Christianity Today authored a brief editorial, “Adoption is Everywhere: Even God Is Into It,” in which he noted increasing attention to the theme of adoption at evangelical gatherings—both scholarly and popular.” 3 Lisa Sowle Cahill, “Adoption: A Roman Catholic Perspective,” in Timothy P. Jackson, ed. The Morality of Adoption (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), especially pp. 163-165.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004352902_004

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stranger, which then leads us to incorporate non-biologically related people into our families. On another view, is adoption instead a manifestation of agape love, a kind of extraordinary activity that Christians do that manifests the love of Christ? Such an emphasis shifts focus from biological families toward a differentlyunderstood and perhaps even more Christian kind of family, one that recognizes that Christian bonds go beyond familial ties. So Stephen Post maintains, “Adoptive love is resonant with agape in Protestant thought…”4 Elsewhere he writes, “The successful practice of adoption is proof that parents can transcend the ‘selfish gene’ of the evolutionary psychologists, and that children can prosper without the narrative of a biological lineage (which can easily be idolatrous).”5 Post’s ultimate point, following that of Jean Bethke Elshtain, is that “it is the love of a mother and father that, hinting at the image of God, holds out hope for the child in need,” regardless of biological or adoptive ties. These kinds of theological considerations are important in a culture whose language still makes adoption seem inferior, for even though Christian theologians argue in adoption’s favor, many of them also note the ways in which people use language that suggests adoption is an inferior choice: because the child is not the “real” one, because a birth mother seems cruel for “giving up” her baby, because it seems somehow impossible that humans might be able to love a child who is not biologically their “own”. Theologies focusing on natural law and biological links make adoption an equitable relationship to biological parenting ties; theologies focusing on the common good and agapaic love make adoptive families look potentially superior. I worry, however, that the theological visions offered about adoption are not able to go far enough in their critique and engagement with contemporary prejudices about adoption, precisely because they already presume adoption is a good. This has the effect that theology is a mere add-on, a reflection on and christening of a practice that may, in fact, not be good. When something has such universal appeal that it seems we need sprinkle a bit of theology on top, I worry about what then remains hidden and unspoken. For example, the very idea that we might not be able to love a child who is not biologically ours seems to stem from a practice of adoption (and a whole vision of children) that is steeped in consumer mentality. So in this essay I question that nearly universal assumption that adoption, at least as practiced in contemporary so4 Stephen Post, “Adoption: A Protestant Agapaic Perspective,” in Timothy P. Jackson, ed., The Morality of Adoption, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) 173. 5 Stephen Post, More Lasting Unions: Christianity, Family and Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 121.

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ciety, is a good, and raise the question of whether Christians ought, after all, adopt. In an attempt to avoid the problem of theology as an add-on in this discussion, I examine adoption in relation to the sacrament of baptism, and vice versa. I focus on infant baptism especially, in relation to my Roman Catholic tradition, but I suggest that in traditions where infant baptism is not practiced, dedication and naming ceremonies may provide similarly helpful analogies. In some ways, baptism functions as an analogous Christian practice to adoption, precisely because of the origins of the Christian sacrament. My use of baptism as analogy is done on purpose, recognizing that analogies provide similarities; they suggest both more and less than what is being compared. This is to say: in suggesting an analogy here, I hope to highlight some fruitful directions of thought in adoption, especially in relation to whether Christians ought to adopt; I do not, however, pretend that this analogy will do everything needed in an adoption/baptism discussion. To highlight an example: much of the content in Paul’s letter to the Romans is suggestive of both baptism and of adoption by way of analogy. Romans 6 explicitly discusses sin and salvation in the context of baptism, which is followed in Romans 8 with the notion that Christians have “received a spirit of adoption” making them children and heirs of God.6 Even Jesus’ own baptism in the Jordan River raises questions about what it means to be adopted, though this comes through in voices that have been deemed heretical. A voice comes from heaven and names Jesus as the “Beloved Son.” (Luke 3:21-22) A few second and third century thinkers developed this into what some contemporary historians name as adoptionism, suggesting that Jesus was the adopted “Son” of God, by which was meant that Jesus was human but God, a strictly non-trinitarian god, chosen by grace to elevate Jesus to the status of Sonship, similar to the ways people might be adopted (by grace?) to be legal heirs of thrones, estates, and so on.7 Thus adoption and baptism are linked as ideas, if not as practices, in Christianity. One of the difficulties, then, is in determining how much to make of such a link. It would be relatively easy to find parallel discussions in Jesus’ baptism and human adoption, a kind of one-to-one correspondence. Gilbert Meilaender wrote a poignant series of “letters” for the Christian Century, in 6 Romans 8:15-17, NRSV. 7 On this earliest version of adoptionism, see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vols. 1 and 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). See also Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, revised edition (London: Penguin Books, 1967), 86-7.

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which he discusses the ways in which all Christians are adopted via baptism.8 Yet, while I see baptism as a necessary entry point into a theological discussion of adoption and while there may be benefit in doing this kind of comparative work, I fear that such a one-to-one correspondence once again articulates theology as a mere add-on and once again presumes adoption as an obvious good. A more deeply-thought discussion of analogies might also highlight mysteries and difficulties for Christians, when it comes to adoption. Brent Waters articulates a discussion of baptism that more deeply probes what is at work in our baptism rites. He suggests that “baptism discloses a triangular relationship between children, parents, and community”9 that enables us to understand a child-parent relationship as one that is unfolding, by grace, toward our eschatological end in God. Foster, adoptive and biological care of children are seen in the same theological light of baptism, as one in which God entrusts care of children to family and community. Waters focuses largely on the beginning of the baptismal rite and the presentation of children, however. My own aim is to consider other moments in baptism liturgy. Through reflecting in this paper on baptismal practice, especially by thinking about baptismal liturgy, as analogous to adoption, I argue that there is a particularly negative rhetoric of “choice” in adoption makes contemporary adoption practices unwise for Christians. However, especially given some of the links between adoption and baptism for Christians (because, despite theological differences about what baptism means, baptism is part of being Christian), I do not ultimately deny adoption as a practice, but instead I suggest that Christian practices of adoption should be seen as distinctive, in very concrete ways, from the largely secular practice of adoption.

1

The Idol of Human Adoption? “Do you reject Satan? And all his works?”

Toward the beginning of the baptismal liturgy, the catechumen, or appropriate people responding on her behalf, answer the question, “Do you reject Satan? And all his works?” In some early Christian baptismal liturgies, this rejection of Satan was physically enacted, as naked catechumens entered the baptismal pool from the west and departed it on the eastern side, signifying that they 8 See especially “Adoptees One and All,” The Christian Century (September 6, 2003), 9. 9 Brent Waters, “Welcoming Children into Our Homes: A Theological Reflection on Adoption,” in The Scottish Journal of Theology 55:4 (2002): 424-437, 427.

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had turned toward God. Alexander Schmemann comments that in doing so, the catechumen, deprived of “all that concealed from him his status as a slave, that made him appear to be a free man, not even knowing his enslavement, his misery and his prison,”10 now puts aside what was hidden from him, recognizing now that there is a tension between Christian life, and life outside the baptismal pool. To renounce Satan and all his works requires knowing what those works are, identifying, if possible, “the idolatry that permeates the ideas and the values by which [people] live today and that shapes, determines, and enslaves their lives much more than the overt idolatry of ancient paganism.”11 Baptism therefore involves making a truly free choice, one only possible when the catechumen has learned to see the world rightly. A one-to-one comparison between baptism and adoption might see the rejection of an old world as akin to a rejection of one’s birth parents and birth narratives, and as a decisive choice for a new life. Indeed, adoption sometimes functions this way, as seen in Russell Moore’s book Adopted for Life. Moore writes, Imagine for a moment that you’re adopting a child. As you meet with the social worker in the last stage of the process, you’re told that this twelveyear-old has been in and out of psychotherapy since he was three. He persists in burning things… He ‘acts out sexually’…She continues with a little family history. This boy’s father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather all had histories of violence… Think for a minute. Would you want this child? If you did adopt him, wouldn’t you keep your eye on him as he played with your other children? Would you watch him nervously…? Well, he’s you. And he’s me… That’s why our sin ought to disturb us. The ‘works of the flesh’—jealousy, envy, wrath, lust, hatred, and on and on—ought to alarm us the way a tightness in the chest would alarm a man whose father and grandfather had dropped dead at the age of forty of heart disease.12 On Moore’s account, God’s grace is offered to us in baptism in ways similar to that of adoptive parents, such that Christians adopted as God’s children are 10 11 12

Alexander Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit: A Liturgical Study of Baptism (New York: St. Vladimir’s Press, 2000), 27-8. Schmemann, 29. Russell D. Moore, Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families and Churches (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2009). Cited in Holly Taylor Coolman, “Adoption and the Goods of Birth”, Journal of Moral Theology 1:2 (June 2012): 96-115.

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impelled themselves to adopt. Moore’s argument is rooted in baptism, just as mine is, but his conclusion is that birth narratives and all that happens prior to adoption is, effectively, evil. Rather than teach his sons about their Russian heritage, he and his wife focus on their adoptive family heritage, because to do otherwise is to suggest that they do not really belong to their adoptive family. Yet on Moore’s account, none of us really belong to Christ unless we reject the old world of our birth parents. Adoption, on Moore’s account, is made a choice that takes on a particularly imperative character for Christians. Yet for Schmemann, the catechumen’s rejection of idolatry was not so neat and simple; rejection of the world meant realizing the often hidden distinctions between old life and new. Rejection of Satan and all his works does not mean wholesale rejection of the world, but rather it means having wise eyes that can see the world for what it is. When it comes to adoption, the danger is that we see it as altogether too good, without seeing its hidden idols. Because adoption seems to be a choice made toward constructing a family, it uniquely suggests the possibility of a perfect family, and reinforces the notion that family saves. After all, doesn’t every child need a good (if not to say perfect) family to call their own? Don’t childless couples who yearn for babies deserve to adopt a child and make their families complete? And once complete, have these families not then constructed for themselves the perfect societal dream of family? For example, consider the ways in which adoption has been conducted in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and how the subtext for adoption was exactly on being the perfect family, as defined by a culture that identifies certain race and class stratifications as perfection. Brian Paul Gill notes how, eighty years ago, agencies “assumed that the ‘best’ families were those who were most ‘normal.’ A 1933 pamphlet of the US Children’s Bureau declared that all children should have ‘a chance to live in a normal family group’; a quartercentury later, the National Conference of Catholic Charities echoed that sentiment, stating that ‘the objective in adoption procedure is to provide a normal home life for a child.’”13 Normal families are those that mirror our perfect sense of what a biological family is: a mother, a father, an amount of children which is not too large nor too small; on Gill’s account, it also meant typically white and middle class families. Elizabeth Bartholet has recently discussed the issue of race in adoption, particularly in relation to the long-held idea in the United States that “black 13

Brian Paul Gill, “Adoption Agencies and the Search for the Ideal Family, 1918-1965,” in Families by Law: An Adoption Reader, eds. Natalie Cahn and Joan Heifetz Hollinger (New York: New York University Press, 2004).

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children belong with black parents” just as “white children belong with white parents.” On her view, such an idea upholds racial standards to the detriment of children and parents, because it prevents children from having the permanent homes they need. As she says, “Race matching is the direct descendant of white supremacy and black separatism.”14 Moreover, such racial exclusions have led to a stark racial differential in foster care; black children find themselves far more on the receiving end of abuse and mistreatment in foster systems, due partly to lack of stability in their living situations.15 And to the contrary, Bartholet suggests, sociologists suggest that race matters far less, in terms of health and well-being, than a stable home. Thus, Bartholet rightly shows how particular views of normalcy underwrite racial perfection operating to the detriment of children. Her views, written from an American legal standpoint, might also direct Christian theologians toward seeing some of the idolatrous ways in which construction of adoptive families occurs. In Bartholet’s cases, it is a specific form of family, conveniently undergirded by certain societal standards that claim to “save” children rather than harm them, that keeps children from being placed in adoption. That move to see certain kinds of families as capable of salvation demonstrates idolatry. Of course, by the same grounds, I am somewhat suspicious of Bartholet’s conviction that race does not matter; such a view could also be idolatrous. Likewise, racial perfection has not been the only concern in adoption cases; financial perfection and religious perfection, among others, also come into play. The current favored adoption practice of having potential adoptive parents make a portfolio about their lives, which birth mothers then use to make choices about which families to give their babies into, is telling in this regard. A perusal of an adoption website, such as americanadoption.com, shows how carefully crafted a couple’s photos and profile are, written in an adoptive couples’ vulnerable moments and crafted to entice birth mothers at vulnerable moments, to make a choice for them. One couple writes, “Choosing adoption for your child makes you an angel and that you have selected our family as part of your search makes you are angel.”16 Many couples allude to the difficulties they are sure the birth mothers must be facing; most envision their 14

15 16

Elizabeth Bartholet, “Commentary: Cultural Stereotypes Can and Do Die: It’s Time to Move On with Transracial Adoption,” Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law 34:315-320 (2006), 320. See Elizabeth Bartholet, Nobody’s Children: Abuse and Neglect, Foster Drift and the Adoption Alternative (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999). “Find a Family: Our Waiting Families.” www.americanadoption.com. Accessed May 21, 2012.

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future families as ones of constant love and laughter and “tickles”. Family takes on a very idealized sense, propelled by the catalogue genre itself, for just as the Pottery Barn depicts perfect bedrooms and kitchens and outdoor living spaces, so these spaces depict perfect families, perfect because untested. One writer of such a profile has noted to me the sheer folly of writing such a statement, because he recognizes that he and his wife are never as perfect as their statement makes out to be; he knows how odd it sounds to envision constant laughter and fun and family jaunts to museum, as though somehow adoptive families never experience the tantrums, boredom and piles of dishes of other families.17 And yet, this profile is the means to fulfillment of a dream. The key difficulties here are not in the as-yet-unrealized gratitude, nor in imagining themselves as families, but in the fact that family is commodified like so much else. As one (Protestant) vowed celibate I know puts it: “Through popular movies, songs, and TV shows, we’re told that if we just find the right product (oops, I mean ‘mate’), our soul will be satisfied. But even though romantic love is a great good, our culture’s logic prompts many to wonder if perhaps they shouldn’t have shopped a little longer.”18 Even something that seems objective and unconstructed (to many) as biology can become a commodified and potentially false choice. Many authors writing on adoption in the past few decades focus on kinship ties and the problems adoptive parents and adopted children might have relative to kinship. For example, theologian Don Browning concludes after many years of following sociological research that children generally do far better when they are placed with intact families along the lines of biological models. Adoptive families do better when they look like biological families; not just any person who wants to adopt will do and so, where a choice must be made, that choice must be made in favor of biology. Indeed, Browning would have significant concerns for my own consideration of baptism in relation to adoption, for it is all too easy for Christians and the church to look like “a big superfamily ready to receive and accept all disrupted families and all lonely individuals.”19 Browning is concerned that on this superfamily view, all that is needed is “therapeutic acceptance” of all people; such “spiritual adoption” becomes a Christian code word that really means that Christians can sit back and not really

17 18 19

Adam Sheridan, personal correspondence. March 2010. Tim Gish, sermon delivered at the Church of the Sojourners, February 2009. Don Browning, “Adoption and the Moral Significance of Kin Altruism,” in The Morality of Adoption: Social-Psychological, Theological and Legal Perspectives, ed. Timothy P. Jackson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 53.

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have to work on real problems that exist, one being that Christians do not pay enough attention to the importance of biological and biologically-based families. Lisa Cahill draws somewhat similar conclusions in her argument about natural law in relation to adoption. While she sees that other principles such as altruism might be reason for beginning an adoptive relationship, Cahill also suggests that “adoptive families cannot thrive without the strong bonds and mutual benefit that create healthy families by birth and marriage.”20 One of Cahill’s concerns is that she understands adopted children often feel unmoored, disconnected from biological roots and cultural and ethnic heritage. Cahill finds therefore that the biological ties we care for so deeply via natural law are not obliterated because of adoption and so she advocates for open adoptions, where children can when possible have access to their biological parents as well as to their cultural and ethnic heritage. Browning’s and Cahill’s discussion of biology in relation to adoption speaks to the fact that adoption, by any one, of any kind of child, is always in some way already a disruption of cultural sensibilities about families, precisely because people must work so hard to make a family look ideal. Psychologists have often written much about how to help people smooth over the wrinkles caused by adoptions, precisely because someone who is not biologically related – who is truly a stranger – is now going to be part of a household.21 Yet once again, this ideal should make us question who it is that gets left out in the cultural interplay of what “ideal” means. Idealizations become idolizations, particular because of the almost-eschatological significance achieving the ideal family has taken in some quarters, as I have discussed elsewhere.22 So, if adoption is chiefly a personal choice, similar to the cola or clothing we choose, then adoption can also seem to be something to un-choose, as in the well-publicized case of the adoptive grandmother in the United States who sent her grandson back to Russia on a plane by himself, because they just felt they couldn’t handle him.23 In addition, hidden in the presumption

20

21 22 23

Lisa Sowle Cahill, “Adoption: A Roman Catholic Perspective” in The Morality of Adoption: Social-Psychological, Theological and Legal Perspectives, ed. Timothy P. Jackson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 149. See, for example, David M. Brodzinsky and Marshall B. Schechter, eds., The Psychology of Adoption (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Jana M. Bennett, Water is Thicker than Blood: An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singleness (New York: Oxford, 2008). Alan Duke,“Grandmother: Adopted Boy Sent Back to Russia Was Violent,” http://www. cnn.com/2010/US/04/09/us.russian.adoption.return/index.html, accessed April 12, 2010.

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of picking a child from a book or a website is exactly that looks (whether the child’s or the presumptive parents’ looks) can tell you something about character, what this child will be like. It also affords a potential parent or birth parent the opportunity to avoid picking the children with noticeable defects, like cleft palates, wide spread eyes, children who are somewhat euphemistically known in foster-care systems as “hard-to-place” children.24 We do not like to think about the ways in which choices, even choices about children, become commodified.25 When it comes to choices, making a distinction between idolatrous and non-idolatrous visions becomes quite a tricky proposition in adoption, precisely because the concern is for making sure that children be placed with good families and does, in fact, involve choice. This is a good impulse not to be rejected outright, for surely children should be placed in homes where parents are able to provide food, clothing, shelter, care and love. Yet alongside all these good concerns looms the fact that idolatry can be made of any of these goods, for example, by favoring families with high incomes under the guise of suggesting that a wealthier family seems (objectively) to be able to provide food, clothing and shelter more than one with a lower income. By many counts, theological and otherwise, we have created a culture of perfection stemming from adoption, and indeed, adoption seems to be the “perfect” solution for creating a happy world. The very fact that Western cultures in particular raise questions about whether international cross-ethnic adoptions work, whether gay and lesbian couples, single people, families with “too many children already,” can adopt, speaks the truth about what we generally think adoption is – the making of an ideal family, circa modernity. If my above insinuation is correct, that rejecting Satan and his works involves having wise eyes to see the world for what it is, then part of the necessary work here is to recognize that an individual’s, couple’s or community’s apparent “choice” for adoption cannot be seen as an unmitigated good. Nor, as I shall suggest further in the next section, can it be seen as a wholly free choice, or perhaps more precisely, it must be seen as a choice among a background of non-choices.

24 25

See, for example, a discussion of subsidies for disabled children in New York state, at http://www.ocfs.state.ny.us/adopt/subsidy.asp. Accessed May 21, 2012. Indeed, if such diverse scholars as Vince Miller, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture (London: Continuum, 2008), and William Cavanaugh, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008) are to be believed, it is impossible to get away from such commodification.

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Bennett A Few Trinitarian Reflections on Adoption “What do you request of the Church?” “Faith.”

The question about individual choice and autonomy, particularly in connection to commodification, is one of the roots of the idolization of family, including adoptive family. While I do not want to make a case that humans make no choices or decisions when it comes to adoption (or indeed, other kinds of decisions in our lives) it is instructive to reflect on the kinds of choices and decisions that are made, and the ways in which the choices depicted above in the section on idolization might differ from, say, a choice to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Some kind of recitation of a creed figures in baptismal rites, and from the orthodox point of view, Christians need to be baptized in the name of the Trinity for it to be a “valid” baptism. Christians have believed that public profession of one’s belief is a necessary part of becoming a member of God’s own household. The matter of an individual decision rises up here, for a public but personal confession of the creed is exactly the kind of argument that proponents in favor of adult baptism have named. Infants cannot recite the creed and cannot therefore make a free choice for God in the ways that we often mean that free choice. Coming from a tradition that makes a practice of regularly baptizing infants, as I do, I think it is important to see that the strands of the tradition that baptize infants do so out of a sense of recognition that Christian formation, like other kinds of formation, never happens entirely or mostly because of our will. The creed that the catechumen affirms is not “my creed,” but was traditionally given to her at the beginning of Lent, as she began the road toward Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and baptism at the Easter Vigil. To say the creed is then to be incorporated into Christ’s own life, which is to say that a catechumen’s body is no longer quite her own. Again, following Schmemann, “How truly noble, truly human and genuinely free are those who still know what it means to bow before the High and the Holy; the True and the Beautiful…. To join the Church always has meant to enter into Christ’s obedience and to find in it the truly divine freedom of [humanity].”26 This does not happen once, for all, in the same way that Christ’s death is, in a sense, once for all. Human capacity to receive God’s grace and obedience is parsed over many moments. The theological distinction made between justifying and sanctifying grace, however, recognizes the sense in which all Christians are always entering into Christ’s obedience. 26

Schmemann, 34.

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So, too, consider the further way in which this lack of free, liberal, autonomous choice works out in infant baptism. The child does not choose the family, but rather “belongs to the family. It has no autonomous existence of any kind; its life is totally shaped and determined – in the present as well as in the immediate yet truly formative, truly decisive future – by this belonging.”27 Where the family belongs to the church, the child does also, by virtue of the fact that it belongs to the family, and so “already receives a life sanctified by and open to grace.”28 Yet then, what does this statement about family suggest about the creed, and about life already sanctified by and open to the grace of the Triune God? Of more importance than precisely who is saying the creed is what is being said in the creed, or rather who is being spoken in the creed. God ought to be a rather confusing subject for us to think about. Because God is not human, by definition, theologians have been plagued with even how to name God or talk about him/her. The language we use about God is irrevocably human because it is our language, and so in that context, given that we believe God is not a mere human like us, our language instantly fails. God tends to be made into an object in our universe, a concept that our minds can grasp, but those who do the hard work of thinking theologically, as the Catholic and Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe suggests, can begin to realize the sheer inadequacy of these ways of discussing God. As he writes, “We always do have to speak of our God with borrowed words; it is one of the special things about our God that there are no peculiarly appropriate words that belong to him, as with the language of carpentry or computer-speak. He is always dressed verbally in second-hand clothes that don’t fit him very well. We always have to be on our guard against taking these clothes as revealing who and what he is.”29 God is of a different order than we are, as Thomas Aquinas continually insists in the Prima Pars of his Summa Theologica. Part of the point of mentioning all this is to reiterate just how absurd it is that God might have any connection with or relationship with human creatures. The utter chasm between creature and God is so great that no real relationship can be established. And yet, Trinitarian doctrine insists that the relationship is there, precisely because of Christ, God incarnate, who bridges that gap and shows how humans might not only have a relationship with God, but be heirs of God and participants in God’s life. Again, following Herbert

27 28 29

Schmemann, 145. Ibid. Herbert McCabe, God Still Matters, ed. Brian Davies (New York: Continuum, 2002), 3.

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McCabe: “The story of Jesus is none other than the triune life of God projected onto our history, or enacted sacramentally in our history, so that it becomes story.”30 By sacrament, McCabe means the reality that the triune life of God signifies, but which nevertheless we see and live imperfectly because our world can only be “second-hand clothes” when it comes to God. Yet we do have this revelation in Christ about which we have some inkling and recognition via baptism. Moreover, God in Christ “adopts” our life and makes it his own; the God-human gap still becomes apparent, though, in the fact that Christ is crucified and that human life cannot quite contain or make sense of the fact that God has adopted us. We much prefer, instead, to have our safe idols rather than the utter lack of safety that life in this relational Trinity suggests. After all, it would not generally seem to be a “rational” choice that we might follow someone who advocates taking up our cross too. The Adoptionists of the second and third centuries suggested that the Father chose Jesus to be an adopted son. Jesus was the adopted “Son” of God, by which was meant that Jesus was human but God, a strictly non-trinitarian god, chosen by grace to elevate Jesus to the status of Sonship.31 This view is particularly attractive given that Jesus had no human father, so God takes on this role. More historically accurately, adoptionism is attributed to Spanish thinkers in the eighth century who posited that there were two Sonships, one by generation and one by adoption. The problem these later thinkers encountered was the question of how God could be eternal and yet, at a moment in time, take on mortal flesh. The human Jesus was adopted to be the Son of God but the Second Person of the Trinity maintains eternal sonship.32 In terms of baptism, the implication was that we mere humans could also become adopted sons and daughters of God, in place of the sons and daughters of Abraham, who had ultimately rejected God’s new covenant with them. In either case, it seems that choice of relationship is of paramount importance. Or, somewhat similarly, the idea that baptism incorporates people into a new family, a new household, is analogously at odds with the way contemporary culture conceives of marriage and family. 30 31

32

Herbert McCabe, God Matters (London: Mowbray, 1987), 48. On this earliest version of adoptionism, see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vols. 1 and 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). See also Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, revised edition (London: Penguin Books, 1967), 86-7. See Rachel Muers, “Adoption: Is Jesus Christ the Son of God by Nature or by Adoption?” in Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why it Matters What Christians Believe, eds. Ben Quash and Michael Ward (London: SPCK, 2007).

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Here, I seem to be in the same place, insisting that in a sense, God has chosen to have a relationship with us via the second person of the Trinity, with whom in turn, the Father has a particular relationship. One of the distinctions, though, is in the eternality of the Trinitarian claim. The Second Person of the Trinity is always the Son, always begotten by the Father and so the Trinitarian God has always (though in an incomprehensible way to humans because of our uniquely human sense of time) chosen to bridge the gap between humans and God. The “always” is what provides the key distinction because it shows, first of all, the vast difference between adoption, on God’s terms, and adoption, as choice, on human terms. God does not “choose” a relationship with the Son in the way that we think of choosing a relationship with other human beings. God’s essence is always one of relationship, as several theologians writing on the Trinity have noted,33 For similarly, the Holy Spirit is known via the relationship with Father and Son. Herbert McCabe argues that for Thomas Aquinas, the Holy Spirit must proceed from both the Father and the Son; otherwise there would be no intelligible distinction between Son and Holy Spirit. To maintain both the unity and the distinctiveness of the persons of the Trinity, then, a kind of “filioque” understanding ensues.34 The eternal choosing of God indicates the limits of human choice and the incumbent notions of individuality and autonomy. We cannot eternally choose relationships; we choose only in the moment, just as we commodify things and so “choose” them as well. As well, because we can only choose in a moment, we also have limited choice; we do not willfully choose everything about our lives each day or in each decision, but only some things, and it is likely to be the case that the things over which we have some choice, in the free, autonomous way that is often meant, are far fewer than imagined. The point here, however, is to name that the recitation of the Trinitarian creed prior to being baptized serves as a contrast between ourselves and God. It recognizes, on one hand, the sheer impossibility of a relationship with God who is not part of our universe at all, and yet names precisely that this God does have a relationship with us, “for us and our salvation.” A one-to-one correlation to adoption would raise the rude question that sometimes gets asked of adoptive parents: “Do you love him as if he were your own?” It presumes a kind of adoptionist understanding of Christ, transferred to an adoptionist view of adopting children. 33 34

For example, Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (New York: HarperOne, 1991). Importantly, McCabe does not think that Aquinas’ view of procession necessarily pits him against the concerns of Eastern Orthodox in relation to the “filioque.”

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More analogously, however, it would seem that Christians ought to affirm the fact of choices, however limited. We are a bit like God, in that we are made in God’s image, but we are also not God. However, and more importantly, Christians ought to affirm their lack of choice and live life in such a way that recognizes that whatever choice we perceive is also likely not to be a true choice. In other words, a focus on God’s eternal choice means recognizing the importance of stability and the fact that God does not reside “elsewhere.” Idols are moveable, and the mark of people consumed by idolatry is therefore to chase after those moveable gods, seeking God’s perfection but never finding rest. A culture’s quest for the perfect family inevitably shows up in that grandmother who sent her adopted grandson to Russia, for if it was a choice she made, then she could also un-make the choice. On the other hand, practicing faith in God’s eternal choice for us means that we make our apparent choices as they present themselves to us, but we never give the choice the status of God. No choice can appear to be perfect, and therefore no unexplored choice can be deemed perfection, including that of choosing an adoptive family or a child.

3

Life in Christ’s Body “May you live always as a member of this body…”

Thus, baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit incorporates us into the mysterious life of Christ, as adoption incorporates one into a mysterious life. Even if we presumed that baptism was an act done about an individual’s free choice to accept God, the post-baptismal story prevents us from going too far with that kind of choice. Now comes the more difficult part than even the decision: living the life to which we have been called. Baptism marks the beginning of, and makes, the Christian’s vocation. We are always called to live into baptism and to be baptismal people, to be “a living sacrifice” to Christ.35 To believe that the moment of baptism means something is quite distinct from 35

See, for example, the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, which discusses several ways baptism forms the people of God, and shapes their ministry and discipleship. On the laity in particular, the document suggests, “These faithful are by baptism made one body with Christ and are constituted among the People of God; they are in their own way made sharers in the priestly, prophetical, and kingly functions of Christ; and they carry out for their own part the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the world.” And further, “They live in the world, that is, in each and in all of the secular

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the realization that the meaning of baptism takes shape over a lifetime, and not just simply in a moment. In similar fashion, a “decision” to adopt, the signing of the adoption papers, or any of the several other “decisions” that must be made in the course of the adoption process says very little about the way life will and must change in recognition that another person is now present in a family’s corporate life. In Western culture much emphasis is put on “decisions” and “choices” to the point that the significance of the daily life we must live together, which tends to feature more habits than explicitly-willed choices, is lost. We see the high and low points, the moments of crisis, without recognition that life is a continuously unwinding thread and that events are connected together. This is one of the points Stanley Hauerwas makes about Christian ethics to his introductory classes: that a person’s character precedes the decisions one has to make, so what is far more important than “the decision” is the kind of formation that one has received so as to make decisions wisely and well. On this point, he finds Iris Murdoch to be a good guide: “If we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over…”36 To attempt to live adoption in a non-commodified, non-idolatrous way means recognizing the ways in which one’s community, Christian or otherwise, forms a person already to make choices about adoption before they ever get to the point of making a “decision” about adoption. I have already suggested some of the ways contemporary Western communities form thinking about adoption. So I focus here on alternatives, those Christian communities that have seemed, in some way, to show better ways of looking at and living in our world. I know churches in Chicago, for example, that form their members to think about pregnant teen-age girls as people in need of adoption. This is not legal adoption, by the way, and nor does it need to require legal adoption. But each time the pastor hears of a young woman whose parents have thrown her out because she is pregnant, he will call on members of his congregation to

36

professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven. They are called there by God that by exercising their proper function and led by the spirit of the Gospel they may work for the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven. In this way they may make Christ known to others, especially by the testimony of a life resplendent in faith, hope and charity.” Section 31. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/ documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html Accessed November 12, 2010. Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good, (London: Routledge, 1970), 36.

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take the girl in, and then furthermore, to help the girl raise and care for the baby for as long as necessary. For the congregants to be able to live and embrace this kind of life, however, requires a particular kind of schooling in hospitality and generosity, among other things. It also requires a kind of flexibility toward the movement of the Spirit toward accepting what is given. Thus, the practice of adoption needs to be seen in the context of the Christian’s general vocation. Roger Mehl writes in Society and Love that “The most reliable callings are born from reflecting on a situation that is more or less imposed on us. A vocation is nearly always a way of accepting a situation that was first of all considered a limitation.”37 Living into Christian vocation means recognizing, for example, the many ways Christian traditions have named and discussed how to live in and order one’s household and that means embracing a certain amount of strangeness, precisely because both baptism and adoption already name strange relationships. We may not like some of the other people we meet in the pew on Sunday, but there is a relationship present, not forged in choice, but in the necessity of being Jesus’ disciple. Baptism and adoption both can school Christians into seeing an alternative vision of marriage, family and households; Christians do not need to be married and have children. Jesus actually does something different with respect to marriage and family; that which was old is now new. The old forms of marriage and family as given in Genesis still serve as reference points for what the Christian’s new family is, and yet it is quite clear that the gospel shows a new family and new kind of household. This is particularly evident in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, which relates an analogy between human marriage and the relationship between Christ and the Church; it is also evident in the New Testament use of marriage as an eschatological state for the Christian Church (for example, Romans 7:4, Revelation 19:7-9, Matthew 22:1-14, John 3:29). Patristic scholars such as Ambrose and Augustine took up the Pauline texts, among others, and showed that, however paradoxical it seemed, Christians are meant to be spiritually both married and single. The spiritual sense of marriage did not make sense without the physical incarnation of marriage, but neither did the spiritual sense of virginity make sense without its physical incarnation. Each state is necessary; in particular marriage is not only necessary because it was God’s commandment in Genesis, but because it also has eschatological import.

37

Roger Mehl, Society and Love: Ethical Problems of Family Life (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1964), cited in Rodney Clapp, Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional and Modern Options (Chicago: IVP, 1993), 89.

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If marriage becomes somehow reconfigured because of Christ, what of family? Here is where New Testament use of the word “adoption” is specifically helpful because it shows just exactly how disruptive Jesus’ vision of family is for the old order. In his letter to the Ephesians, for example, Paul writes, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved.38 The means by which Christians become adopted in Christ is found in subsequent verses, when Paul writes about being sealed by the Holy Spirit, words often thought to refer to the sacrament of baptism. (See also Ephesians 4:30; 2 Corinthians 1:22). So early Christians often referred to themselves as brother and sister, mother and father, though they were not biologically related. This Christian reconfiguration of family did not go unnoticed by the non-Christian population; Christians were sometimes accused of incest to the point that apologist Minucius Felix depicts his pagan interlocutor believing that, “They know one another by secret marks and insignia, and they love one another almost before they know one another; everywhere also there is mingled among them a certain religion of lust, and they call one another promiscuously brothers and sisters, that even a not unusual debauchery may by the intervention of that sacred name become incestuous…”39 The results of Jesus’ overturning “the way things are” have been many and varied. Eremeticism and monasticism developed forms of households that clearly formed non-biological bonds, in the ways that such communities tended to have a father or mother figure (or both), as well as sibling figures in the rest of the inhabitants of the community. Contemporary evangelical Christian movements such as the New Monasticism Movement in the United States explicitly attempt to do likewise with regard to creating households that reflect the radical fact of Jesus’ new creation, though with a view toward less paternalistic structures. People of usually the same sex take vows of stability, chastity and poverty in relation to a particular community. Under the old order, family ties might provide security, food and shelter, but part of the Christian point 38 39

Ephesians 1:3-6; NAB. Octavius, chapter nine, at http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/octavius.html, accessed May 4, 2010.

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of monasticism is that it, too, provides those things, without blood ties being the main tie. Rather our ties exist because of Christ. Adoption, too, might be seen as a Christian practice in line with the sensibilities of monasticism that insist that for Christians blood ties provide insufficient reasons for acting well toward each other and ensuring each other’s’ well-being. Just as Jesus’ new creation is disruptive to the old order of marriage and family, so adoption is disruptive to any false senses of family. Historian John Boswell pinpoints further examples in an essay titled, “Expositio and Oblatio: The Abandonment of Children and the Ancient and Medieval Family”40 in which he compares non-Christian practices of “exposing” children who could not be raised by their parents, to the Christian practice of making children an “offering” at monasteries. Among both groups, he finds that parents were concerned about the welfare of their children and made what he determines was a difficult decision for the parents, based on the literature, to leave or offer their children. What is distinctive about the Christian practice of oblation, however, is the way in which these putative adoptions become described, endorsed and blessed by the church. Early Christians speak of children who are raised by non biological people as “alumnus” and “projectus,” terms used as distinctive from biological relationships of “son” and “daughter” but terms that were also discussed as “symbolic of nonbiological, loving relationships.” Christian writers also specifically referred to biblical passages such as those above in discussing these relationships.41 Christians’ acknowledgement of new relationships established through Jesus Christ in baptism are also relationships that suggest an “otherwise” about choice, as well as about adoption. Against views of choice and family, both, that privilege autonomous, individual rationality, Christian practice rooted in baptism and the choice/non-choice that we have simultaneously, seems to suggest that Christians are always about the task of adoption. This is not a Christian imperative to adopt in Russell Moore’s sense, in which because of our very baptisms, we are called to adopt children and create adoptive families. Rather, the sense of adoption I mean is perhaps best understood as “adoption in the background.” As a practice, it means always being ready to receive a person into one’s life, in ways that (hopefully) display the nature of human relationships, seen in the light of Christian baptism. This means understanding adoption as about family, but not only about family, a point I raise further in the next section. 40 41

In Carol Neel, Medieval Families: Perspectives on Marriage, Family and Household (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 234-273. Neel 252-3.

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A Non-Idolatrous Eschatology? “You have become a new creation…”

Eschatologically, the practice of baptism suggests a now-then relationship: we are baptized into a cohort of relationships made strange; we live into those strange relationships now, and in a strange way; but we also recognize, especially relative to God, that any of those human relationships will scarcely scratch the surface of what it means to live a full life in God. That life we can only know eschatologically. In the in-between times as Christians wait for the eschaton, there is also the sense that what we experience here will be imperfect. What might this mean for a contemporary theological conversation about adoption? It means, I think, being extremely careful about the extent to which marriage, family, and the adoptions which we appear to “choose” in a variety of ways really do or can reflect something ideal or perfect. It means also that proper witness to one’s baptismal calling comes not by trying to map adoption onto structures that even theologians have seen as ideal, perfect forms in relation to natural law and kinship ties, which too much focus on human creation rather than human re-creation. Rather, looking at adoption from a different point in salvation history, from one’s life and death and future life in Christ, enables us to name the very changes and instability to normative families that adoption brings, as a witness to the vocations we share in baptism. What is called for, I maintain, is a much fuller vision, and therefore practice, of adoption. There is the kind of adoption most of us think about: legal adoption in relation to families. But this vision, intertwined as it is with largely modern, liberal, consumer views about families and children, needs a more robust and perhaps strange vision of adoption in order that Christians can participate in its legal forms more rightly. Christians need to understand adoption as a whole practice in Christian tradition. There are less formal “adoptions” and incorporations into a way of life: Rutba House, a New Monastic community in Durham, North Carolina provides the example of “adopting” those in the neighborhood who need places to live and sleep, and who often become a permanent part of the household. Could even less permanent, less stable arrangements be seen in this spectrum, as in a family that “adopts” (perhaps) an elderly widow, giving her rides to church and the store and inviting her to participate in mealtimes? This new focus might lead to more examples like the following: one of my graduate students, himself adopted from Korea (picked out of a catalogue no less) determined that he wanted to adopt children, from the very beginning.

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He knew that when he was considering marrying his fiancé, that they would therefore need to have a conversation before they ever got married about having a vocation to adopt children. In part, his reason for wanting to discuss adoption before marriage was similar to mine: he does not want to see adoption as the solution to being unable to procreate, but rather to understand adoption primarily via virtues like hospitality and love. Over two thousand years, Christians have, in various ways, learned to see each other as bound by ties that are not biological, because Christ tells them so himself; and adoption can offer a unique witness to this new way of being. My words might suggest that just any sort of arrangement involving children that need to be raised absent their biological families might do. I do not mean just any kind of arrangement however, and in fact, my account here does not go any distance at all toward answering the pressing questions that people raise about legal forms of adoption, including single parent adoption, gay and lesbian adoption, and so on. Rather, as I mentioned at the beginning, my aim in this paper was to raise a question about “whether” adoption at all, in contrast to views that saw adoption as an almost wholly unexamined good. My answer is a guarded “yes,” guarded in part because I do not think that viewing adoption primarily as a “choice” is helpful, as I have discussed above. My answer is also guarded because I also think that the main avenue Christians have toward understanding adoption in non-idolatrous ways is to see adoption in the background, a kind of constant disposition somewhat in the way that virtue is. There are so few examples, though, so as to make me hesitate even to put forth the idea. Yet, faced with continued commodification and false choices presented children, birth parents, and adoptive parents, and contrasted with the analogous practices seen in becoming an adopted heir of God in baptism, I cannot help but hope for something different afoot (however occasionally) in God’s church.

Chapter 3

Belonging: A Theological and Moral Inquiry into Adoption Brent Waters

This essay is an experiment. My purpose is not to conduct a formal theological assessment of the morality and moral ordering of adoption. Rather, I examine why adoption is an act that might and should capture the attention of practical and moral theologians; hence the emphasis upon inquiry rather than exposition, and why the tone is more pensive than argumentative. Adoption is a fluid word connoting a variety of meanings. One may, for instance, adopt a new lifestyle, ideology, or pet. One can also be adopted by a new circle of friends or colleagues. Yet when contemplating the act of adults adopting children, a more restrictive and precise meaning is required.1 Normally a person does not happen to stumble upon an orphan while on a walkabout, and determine something to the effect of “I think I shall take the urchin home and raise her as my own.” A formal, often legal, process is undertaken establishing that one or two adults have accepted and will exercise the moral and legal privileges, duties, and responsibilities of providing parental care for a child that cannot be regarded as their natural offspring.2 There is a public recognition that these particular adults are now the parents of these particular children. Consequently, there is no need to append the modifying “adoptive” to these parents other than to provide a shorthand reference to their intent and action. Why this need for public recognition? Because human beings have what may be described as a social nature. They possess an innate desire, or even necessity, to seek the company of others. Johannes Althusius, despite his antiquated language that grates the late modern ear, captures this precept well in 1 I am not going to address the issue of an adult adopting an adult as was practiced by Roman patricians, or as portrayed in an episode of Foyle’s War in which an eccentric Englishman wants to adopt a prisoner of war so he can remain in England. As an aside, the eccentric Englishman is murdered before he can pursue the adoption, and Foyle solves the case in his usual indomitable manner. 2 Adoption does not preclude biological relatedness in such circumstances as grandparents, older siblings, or aunts or uncles adopting orphaned or abandoned relatives.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004352902_005

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insisting that “no man is self-sufficient (αύτάρκης), or adequately endowed by nature. For when he is born, destitute of all help, naked and defenceless, as if having lost all his goods in a shipwreck, he is cast forth into the hardships of this life, not able by his own efforts to reach a maternal breast, nor to endure the harshness of his condition, nor to move himself from the place where he was cast forth. … Bereft of all counsel and aid, for which nevertheless he is then in greatest need, he is unable to help himself without the intervention and assistance of another.”3 In short, human beings belong with each other. These periods of mutual belonging may be brief, extended, or lifelong. An ill patient belongs with a physician; a student with a teacher; a husband with a wife; a child with a parent. These belongings are prerequisite if the respective purposes of medicine, education, marriage, and childrearing are to be achieved. Moreover, the operative word in these relationships is with rather than to. Physicians do not own their patients, nor teachers their students, husbands their wives, parents their children, or vice versa in each instance. Unlike obtaining an object or purchasing a service, a stronger sense of public recognition and sanction is required, for adoption establishes a relationship rather than acknowledging ownership.4 The public recognition of adoption serves to confirm, delimit, and contextualize parental authority. Parents are particular adults who are authorized to exercise certain specified duties and responsibilities in rearing particular children. A parent is responsible for overseeing the health, education, and welfare of a dependent child. Exercising parental authority, however, is limited rather than absolute. Parents are not authorized, for instance, to neglect or abuse children, or to treat them as disposable property. In addition, parental authority is exercised within broader social and political contexts. Parents cannot adequately fulfil their duties and responsibilities in isolation from the civil community; hence the provision, for example, of supportive institutions such as schools, the indirect support of taxation policies, or direct financial assistance for impoverished families. This public recognition, however, acknowledges that parental authority is derived from the inherent nature of the parent-child relationship and is not given or granted by the civil community. Contrary to Kant, parents are not

3 Johannes Althusius, Politica (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1995), p. 17. Althusius further notes that this dependency continues throughout an individual’s lifetime (see pp. 17-18). 4 In this respect, the legal documentation recognizing an adoption is neither a receipt nor a formal contract.

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agents of the state who are licensed to produce a new generation of citizens.5 Rather, in recognizing parental authority the civil community acknowledges a prior and more basic form of human association, namely, the family, that precedes and predicates broader and more differentiated forms of association. Since children, for example, require an extended period of care before reaching maturation, it is natural that women and men are drawn to each other in cooperatively pursuing these tasks, and are in turn drawn toward larger networks of kinship and associations with strangers in pursuing common tasks enabling their perpetuation across generations. This natural proclivity is expressed through the early formation of the institutions of marriage and family, and later and derivatively the supportive institutions provided by civil community. This act of acknowledging, delimiting, and contextualizing parental authority is, perhaps, clarified by the theological understanding of the child as gift. Parents should perceive and receive a child as a gift given by God. This bestowal, however, does not confer ownership but custodial care. Children are entrusted to the care of parents, again emphasizing that children belong with but not to parents. Moreover, the gift itself stipulates how it should be cared for. To use a crude analogy, if an artist entrusts me with a cherished sculpture that she has crafted, there is presumably an expectation that I will display it instead of using it as a doorstop. God entrusts children to the care of parents which entails certain normative expectations regarding their care and upbringing. Additionally, receiving the gift of a child is an act subjected to public view. If the broader community is to support parents in exercising their requisite duties and responsibilities, then there must be some public knowledge that the gift of a child has been bestowed. The birth of every child is (or should be) recorded, making it a matter of public record. In many respects, the rite of baptism encapsulates the parental receipt of the gift of a child entrusted to their care, the public acknowledgment of such bestowal, and subsequent support of parents in providing the requisite care that is expected of them.6 Given this public recognition of parental authority, adoption may be regarded as, following Oliver O’Donovan, an act of replacement and representation.7 Adoptive parents provide substitute care for children whose natural parents are dead, incapable, unwilling, or otherwise unable to do so. In this respect 5 See Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), “The Theory of Right,” 2. 2, p. 53. 6 See Brent Waters, “Welcoming Children into Our Homes: A Theological Reflection on Adoption,” Scottish Journal of Theology, 55 (2002), pp. 425-430. 7 See Oliver O’Donovan, Begotten or Made? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 34-40.

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adoptive parents replace natural parents. Yet this act of replacement also suggests that the adults represent something to the children they are adopting. Within the Christian tradition, we may say that they represent the parental calling or vocation that is grounded in a normative ideal or understanding of marriage and family. This ideal family consists of a mother and father married to each other, and who are the parents of a child or children to whom both are genetically related.8 Christian normative accounts of the family have admittedly changed over time. Up until the early nineteenth century, for example, most of the literature included extensive chapters on the roles of household servants. What has never varied, however, is the insistence that the procreation and education of children should be restricted to married couples. Based upon and growing out of their one-flesh unity, the marital fellowship of a couple is opened and expanded to include children. The parental vocation or calling presupposes and builds upon a prior marital calling or vocation. It may be asked how adoptive parents can possibly represent this norm or ideal since they do not possess the requisite genetic relationship, and in many instances it is one rather than two adults adopting a child? Replacement, however, does not require exact replication in order to be effectual. Variations from the norm do not necessarily invalidate the parental care being provided as witnessed by widows, abandoned spouses, and single parents. Yet supporting each of these instances is not synonymous with commending them as being equally preferable. In the absence of an ideal standard, adoption is effectively rendered inexplicable, ranging from, at best, idiosyncratic acts of pity or compassion, to, at worse, exploitation or abuse. It is a given and prior norm that determines what constitutes good parental care, and consequently a standard to determine whether or not prospective adoptive parents can fulfil, and therefore represent, these moral and social expectations. Adoption, then, serves as a reminder that the familial association consists of a complex nexus of natural (or biological) and social bonds of affinity. Marriage, parenthood, and family are social constructs,9 but they are not institutions invented ex nihilo, but are structured to order natural reproductive and parental inclinations. Attempts to reduce these institutions to either their natural or social pole would only serve to distort this moral purpose and task. If, on the one hand, affinity is reduced to biology, then it is hard to imagine

8 For a more detailed description of this normative account of the family, see Brent Waters, The Family in Christian Social and Political Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), esp. chs. 5-7. 9 Hence their cultural variability.

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how a differentiated society could emerge beyond the constraints of genetic kinship. In such a scheme strangers would be regarded as prima facie competitors or enemies and treated accordingly. In such a scheme, adopting the orphans or abandoned children of strangers would simply be unimaginable given the natural constraints of kinship.10 Only blood matters. On the other hand, if affinity is reduced to the social, then any natural bonds between parents and children are irrelevant. The unity of the procreation and education of children is effectively divided and redistributed as discrete tasks as seen in Plato’s11 and Bertrand Russell’s12 respective proposals. For the former, all natural bonds between particular parents and offspring are denied since all adults are collectively the parents of all children, while for the latter the state pays some women to gestate and other women to provide care, effectively becoming the husband of all women and father of all children. Blood does not matter. Adoption resists reducing affinity to either its natural or social pole by insisting that blood does matter, but is not determinative. Adoption does not deny or negate the fact that the woman and man providing the gametes are the parents of a child, but they are not the parents with whom the child belongs. Through the necessity of replacement, adoptive parents represent to the child the assurance of mutual belonging. To return to Althusius, it is natural that people in general belong with one another, and that children and parents in particular belong with each other. It would be unnatural to deny children this most basic affinity simply because they had the misfortune to be born in circumstances in which their natural parents were unable or unwilling to provide such mutual belonging. We may ask, then, what are parents expected to provide to children. At the most basic level they meet their physical and affective needs. Parents are expected to provide an environment in which children receive sustenance, shelter, rest, affection, discipline, emotional support and the like. More importantly, parents provide children with a place of familial belonging. Although children belong with their parents, the resulting association does not consist of a series of parallel relationships between spouses, parents and children, and siblings. Rather, they are a family which is based upon but also greater than the sum of these relationships. It is the family that provides the structural context in which the natural and social strands of affinity are woven together. Moreover, the family is the given moral context in which the marital and parental 10 11 12

Preferred options in this scenario would presumably range from orphanages to indentured servitude, or worse, extermination. See Plato, The Republic, various translations. See Bertrand Russell, Marriage and Morals (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1929).

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vocations are performed, and in which the related virtues and practices are embedded. In this respect it is difficult to imagine how the parent-child and sibling relationships would have much moral significance in the absence of this familial context, even (perhaps especially) in cases deviating from the ideal standard. Why? We may say that the orderly practices of parental responsibility and fidelity are based upon and disclose an unfolding and enfolding familial love. Ideally, when a woman and man are called to the vocation of marriage, a new and more expansive space unfolds in their exclusive affection and mutuality. Their one-flesh unity embodies their shared being as a couple. Should this couple be called to become parents, a further unfolding of their love occurs in extending their fellowship to children entrusted to their care. The two who have become one bring into being a new life. There is a continuous thread in the unfolding of such familial love, originating in marriage and extending through the procreation and rearing of children. The birth or inclusion of a child does not, to reiterate, initiate a series of parallel relationships; a family is not a container for its discrete spousal, parental, filial, and fraternal relationships. Rather, they are aspects of their mutual belonging and common love as a family. Marital love unfolds into parental love, and a consequent unfolding of a familial love in turn enlarging, enfolding, and transforming the forms of love preceding it, as well as forming and orienting the requisite vocational virtues and practices. Although the family, again ideally, includes marriage, procreation, and parenthood, they are not its sum total, nor can it be reduced to or determined by any one of these constitutive elements.13 Karl Barth’s curt dismissal of the family as devoid of any “interest at all for Christian theology” is perplexing.14 His allergic reaction to the family stems from his fear that such units as households, clans, and tribes corrupt social and political ordering. Consequently, he attempts to offer theological accounts of marital and parental relationships in the absence of any reference to the family.15 It is not clear, however, why he severs the relationship among marital, parental, and familial forms of love rather than attempting to recover and explicate a Christian understanding of family. Yet if, as he wants to argue, the re13

14 15

James Gustafson, for example, argues that “marriage and family are more than the sum of their individual parts, more than the aggregate of the persons who belong to them.” The good of the parts and the whole are “intricate” and “reciprocal,” so that one cannot be sacrificed or diminished for the sake of the other (see Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, vol. 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 162-163). See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1961), III/4, §54.2, p. 241. See ibid. §54.

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lationship between female and male, and the fellowship of woman and man, are disclosed in marriage and provide the normative foundation for parenthood, then why is the resulting familial association not an object of theological interest? More importantly, it is difficult to imagine the types of marital and parental relationships he propounds without presupposing a familial context, much less relating them to broader forms of human association that he undertakes in his discussion of near and distant neighbours.16 In stripping the family of any theological significance, Barth effectively removes the natural, social, and moral grounding in which the vocations of marriage and parenthood are properly embedded. And in doing so does he not strip the family of its providential witness that it is well suited to bear and embody? If the history of creation is, at least in part, an account of the providential unfolding of a vindicated created order over time, does not the family bear witness to the goodness of that order in ways that marriage and parenthood alone cannot bear? For is not the unfolding of this created order also an unfolding and enfolding of divine love?17 And does not the family thereby orient itself toward its penultimate end, in turn preventing its loyalties from mutating into the kind of corrupt social and political ordering Barth fears? In the absence of a normative and teleological account of the family we cannot know how the marital and parental vocations should be practiced and delimited, and therefore cannot differentiate between good and bad actions. More broadly, the providential, and therefore penultimate, witness of the family can only be fully understood and borne in relation to the eschatological witness of singleness.18 In short, the family does not bear witness to itself as the end of creation; a destiny based on the loyalties of flesh and blood. Safeguarding the creational nature of marriage and parenthood prevents procreation and childrearing from dissolving into a series of unrelated acts, while evoking a teleology of familial belonging prevents the family from collapsing in upon itself. Theologically, the family may be said to exist within a constructive and fragile tension between the centripetal pole of its providential affinities, and the centrifugal pole of its eschatological destiny. The unfolding and enfolding character of the familial association becomes stunted and distorted if either pole collapses. If the former pole is ignored, procreation and 16 17 18

See ibid. §54.3. Which is triune and thereby relational in character. For a discussion of this relationship see Jana Marguerite Bennett, Water Is Thicker Than Blood: An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singleness (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); see also Waters, The Family in Christian Social and Political Thought, ch. 7.

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childrearing become a series of episodic events, strung together by the will of autonomous individuals pursuing their so-called reproductive interests. If the latter pole is ignored, the family becomes a secluded enclave, cut-off from broader forms of human association. It is in preserving the tension provided by these complementary attractions that the core of familial love may be established and in turn expanded. And it is within this tension that the family bears its providential witness. Consequently, if the family is to bear its witness faithfully, then a restrictive definition is required. In common parlance, “family” is coming to designate a group of people sharing a common abode or set of experiences or interests. “Family,” for instance, is often invoked to characterize a dormitory, tradeunion, profession, or congregation, and more expansively, the “family” of nations or human “family.” Yet if the term is so elastic that it can cover virtually any voluntary or involuntary group ranging from quarrelsome students sharing a room to the entire human species, then it is also stripped of descriptive or normative meaning. Rather, family connotes a unique ordering of natural and social affinities that is not present in any other form of human association, for its existence is not constrained by customary limitations of time, proximity, and consent. A family exists over an extended period of time which is intergenerational in character. A family, for instance, does not come to an end with the death of a parent, for she remains part of a lineage that links her with past, and presumably, future generations. Although most families live together for a period of time, their continuous proximity is not a necessary condition. A family does not cease to exist when children become adults and leave home,19 or if they become homeless refugees, or are separated because of parental incarceration or work requiring extensive travel or temporary relocation. A family is not dependent upon the ongoing will of its respective members. Although spouses consent to marry each other, parents do not choose their offspring20 or children their parents, and although parents and children may disown each other that does not obliterate the fact that they are nonetheless bound together regardless of their withdrawn consent. It is not surprising, however, that many forms of association often draw upon a familial vocabulary in a descriptive manner since the family is the most basic form of human association. Quarrelsome roommates are similar to petulant siblings; union members and professionals regard each other in a fraternal 19 20

Although it sometimes seems as if children these days never leave home, or have any intention to do so. Admittedly the prospect of parents choosing their children is becoming increasingly problematic as exemplified by certain uses of reproductive technologies and adoption practices.

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manner; church members are sisters and brothers in Christ; every person is born into civil communities and political regimes not of their choosing. Despite these similarities, family remains a unique association that is dedicated to differing purposes. This difference may be illustrated by contrasting the family with a boarding school.21 Both meet the physical and affective needs of children, but with different goals in mind. A boarding school provides a place of cohabitation, but is not a place of timely belonging; a homecoming to alma mater is not the same as coming home. A school produces generations of students, but it does not generate offspring. Teachers may function as in loco parentis, but they are not parents with children. A school may etch itself upon the identities of its graduates, but it does not embody a lineage. A school may engender deep and abiding friendships, but it is not a place where individuals become loving spouses, parents, and siblings. A school may in many respects resemble a family, but it cannot serve as a surrogate without distorting its own, as well as the family’s, inherent purposes. It should be noted briefly that the closely related term “household” also requires some definition. As the Christian tradition has recognized, the family is associated with the household but the former is not coterminous with the latter, for a household is comprised of both family members and strangers.22 Some relationship with strangers is needed to prevent the family from distorting itself into a secluded enclave or haven in a heartless world.23 Consequently, “household” has a more malleable descriptive and normative meaning than family, but its malleability is not infinite. Given its origin within the family, varying household structures and purposes retain certain features that are familial in character and therefore limited. It is fanciful, for example, to speak about a household of mechanics or accountants,24 but evocative to refer to the church as the household of God. Even a household devoid of any formal familial bonds nonetheless shares certain common purposes and practices that are organized in a familial-like manner, and retains a residue of parental-like authority in pursuing these ends and ordering its daily life.25

21 22

23 24 25

The following summary is drawn from Waters, The Family in Christian Social and Political Thought, pp. 201-202. The Puritans provide an exemplary case study in this respect. See, e.g., William Perkins, “Christian Oeconomy,” in Ian Brewrad, ed., The Works of William Perkins (Appleford, UK: Sutton Courtenay Press, 1970), pp. 411-439, and Richard Baxter, Practical Works. See Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York and London: Norton, 1995). Althusius’ “collegium” is a more accurate designation. See Politica, ch. 4. For a fictional account of the difficulties entailed in ordering such a household, see Iris Murdoch, The Bell (London: Penguin, 1958).

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A restrictive definition of the family (and derivatively household) is needed for two reasons: first, it helps resist the intrusive proclivities of late modern political association. It is tempting to regard the nation-state as a family writ large. Succumbing to such a temptation, however, may prompt a desire for restricting membership in the civil community along racial or ethnic lines, resulting in ill-fated attempts at purification or cleansing, or less egregiously but more commonly, asserting paternalistic control and manipulation. It is interesting to note in this regard that in the final chapter of Marriage and Morals Russell rejects his own proposal, arguing that familial bonds are needed to resist the warlike and tyrannical tendencies of modern nation-states until such time that a peaceful and benevolent world government can be established. Second, and more importantly for the purpose of this essay, a restrictive and normative understanding of the family is needed so that parents have something to represent to the children they adopt. These parents embody a theological and moral tradition of what is required and expected to provide children with a place of familial belonging, acknowledging the fundamental need of children to belong with parents. In this respect, it is important to remember that parents adopt children into their families rather than admitting them as strangers or guests residing in their households for a prolonged period of time. Yet what might, or better should, motivate a couple or individual to adopt a child, particularly in those circumstances in which they share no immediate natural or social familial affinity? What prompts adoptive parents to create familial bonds with unrelated children, extending to them the fellowship of their familial households? Is not the short answer, at least for Christians, caritas? Christians are commanded to love their neighbours, and following Barth, there are many different kinds of neighbours such as friends, enemies, and strangers.26 Each of these neighbours have particular needs that are to be met in particular and fitting ways. The needs of friends are not identical with those of strangers or enemies, thereby requiring differing and appropriate responses. Children who do not have parents with whom they belong are neighbours in need. And the charitable response is to provide a place of mutual and familial belonging. As an act of charity, however, it is not a singular act of disinterested benevolence as might occur with a stranger, enemy, or friend. Rather, it entails a lifelong commitment of mutual and unconditional belonging. It entails accepting the parental calling and vocation, complete with its requisite practices, duties, responsibilities, and privileges that such parents replace and represent. Such parents, then, regard the children they adopt not as if but as

26

See Barth, Church Dogmatics, III/4 §54.3, pp. 285.323.

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their own. Although most people are called to the parental vocation through procreative means, some are called through an equally valid adoptive means. Yet having said this it should not be assumed that anyone claiming such a calling or vocation is necessarily suitable. In this respect, it should not be surprising that many people seeking to adopt a child are infertile or childless couples. In many, if not most, of these instances adoption satisfies this parental longing while also providing the child with a place of familial belonging. But the particular needs of a child, especially in cases of severe physical and mental disabilities, need to be identified and assessed in respect to the abilities of potential parents to meet those needs. The needs of the child should take precedence over the parental longing of adults. The modern practice of adoption was, after all, invented or reformulated for the sake of children and not as a remedy for childlessness. This is why, in part, the civil community has a legitimate interest in regulating adoption. Consequently, the most pressing ethical concern is to preserve and protect adoption as a uniquely moral act of replacement and representation that is motivated by caritas. Why the urgency? Increasingly the late modern moral, social, and political culture within which intergenerational bonds are being formed may be described as that of procreative liberty.27 In short, the basic precept is that every competent adult has inherent reproductive interests that are expressed by either obtaining or refraining from obtaining a child. Individuals seeking to obtain a child therefore have the right to avail themselves to whatever natural or technological means are necessary in achieving this goal so long as they can secure the free consent of willing partners, and no person is wilfully harmed. A child is the outcome of a collaborative reproductive project which is commissioned by the one wanting to obtain a child but requiring the collaboration of others. By definition any means of obtaining a child entails some form of collaborative reproduction, ranging from a fertile couple engaging in sexual intercourse to an infertile man securing gametes, IVF, and a surrogate. The only difference in these extremes is the scope of the required collaboration to achieve the same result, namely, obtaining a child. Within this scheme adoption is simply one reproductive option among many in which the principal collaborators are social service agencies, or lawyers negotiating with natural parents. To perceive adoption as a reproductive option, however, is to corrupt its very purpose, for it is reoriented toward satisfying the reproductive interests of adults instead of protecting the best

27

See, e.g., John A. Robertson, Children of Choice: Freedom and the New Reproductive Technologies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

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interests of children. This move transforms the imagery of a child entrusted to the care of parents into a parental possession or artefact, effectively reinforcing the notion of children belonging to rather than with parents. The resulting family is not so much place of mutual belonging as it is a relationship between the creator and the created product, a relationship predicated upon the inequality between commissioner and the commissioned product. In this respect, O’Donovan is correct to insist that children should be begotten and not made, a moral and theological principle that adoption affirms rather than negates. At a more practical level, preserving and protecting adoption as a uniquely moral act of replacement and representation prevents the act from becoming an oblique form of surrogacy, particularly in respect to private or gray market adoptions. In making this plea to preserve and protect, there is no need to impugn the motives of adoptive parents. I assume that the vast majority of people seeking to adopt are not wicked, but are motivated by a natural and wholesome parental desire. Purity of desire, however, is not sufficient to address the morality of adoption. If the culture of procreative liberty is as pervasive as I claim, then we do not face an obvious or overtly evil situation, but more a subtle distortion that will take its toll of unintended consequences over time by reshaping our moral perception of children. We face a situation that Hannah Arendt might describe as thoughtlessness, or St Augustine might decry as disordered desire. There is nothing wrong with the desire to become a parent, whether it is through procreative or adoptive means, but why and how one pursues the parental calling or vocation is a matter of public concern and significance. The Christian theological and moral tradition has much to contribute to a thoughtful conversation regarding the proper ordering of parental desire.

Chapter 4

Entrusted for Creaturely Life within God’s Story – The Ethos of Adoption in Theological Perspective Hans G. Ulrich

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Introduction

“Children are our Future” was the working title proposed for a public statement that was under preparation for publication by the German Lutheran Church some years ago. I was charged with writing a suitable text for presentation to the public under that title. A cursory knowledge of the biblical and Christian traditions, however, will immediately alert us that this title fails to articulate essential aspects of those traditions concerning what children are dedicated to be and their vocation. I therefore could only refuse to write something under this title, which elicited the compromise title: “To go with children into the future”. This alternative was little better, not least because it was still not clear what the message was supposed to be within the larger general rubric of speaking to the public in order to motivate people to consider having children. This example is exemplary of the problem and necessity of figuring out what the church’s message should be in the realm of having and receiving children. The issues at stake are not confined to moral or ethical implications but, as we will see, open up into the whole of the biblical message about God’s story with his human beings, as we may find summarized in Psalm 78:1

1 The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Ps 78:5-8). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers: He established a decree in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our ancestors to teach to their children; that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and rise up and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God,

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004352902_006

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Ulrich For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments: And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not steadfast with God. (Ps 78, 5-8).2

Here children are depicted as participants in God’s story to which others must witness in order to encourage them, “to set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God.” The concern of the Psalm is the continuation of God’s story which should be remembered and continued by all children to come. Every question concerning the position of children is here given a specific answer, which is based on the continuous praxis of “testimony” from generation to generation. What other context could there be for children born within God’s people? The testimony established by God is the basic ground on which any welcoming of children must rest—there is no other purpose or telos. This suggests that we can expect the adoption of children to be related to this grounding in a way that is theologically significant and illuminating. 1.1 Towards a Positive Ethos of Adoption There is a body of literature in which insights into the praxis and institution of adoption are pursued that describes “adoption” within the context of a Christian “morality”.3 In this literature adoption is clearly related to the needs, interbut keep his commandments; and that they should not be like their ancestors, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God. 2 King-James Version. 3 See Jackson, Timothy P. (Ed.), The morality of adoption: social-psychological, theological, and legal perspectives (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 2005).

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ests and rights of children and is not subordinated to other purposes, interests, and demands, not even parental hopes and wishes surrounding procreation, a point nicely put by Brent Waters: My intent is instead to illustrate the need for religious, moral, and legal forms of discourse that portray adoption as an act grounded primarily, though certainly not exclusively, in charity rather than reproduction. The fact that adoption is driven by a complex set of motives is readily granted; I am not arguing that only saints should be eligible to adopt. But there should be a public perception that the actual performance of adoption is a uniquely moral act that is sanctioned by both religious conviction and legal approbation.4 Waters draws attention to considerations surrounding questions like: “who” and in what respect is someone considered prepared to adopt; who will government legitimize for adoption: what are the prospective adoptive parent’s perspectives, gifts, duties, abilities, sources and resources to adopt on the one hand – and what are the needs and rights of children who are to be adopted by approved parents on the other. Many insights and distinctions in this discourse are theologically significant5 and helpful in critically sifting the immense market of interests and options connected with adoption. They thus may be considered an expression of public conscientiousness embedded in language regarding this crucial practice. One main line of argument that appears in this literature accords in a sense with the Kantian categorical imperative that every human being be treated as an end in themselves and must not be subordinated to the aims or even interests of others. In Kant’s words: “Act in such a way as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of anyone else, always as an end and never merely as a means.”6 In transforming Kant’s critical moral reflection into a positive ethos, the ethical discourse draws attention to a differentiated spectrum of

4 Waters, Brent, The family in Christian social and political thought. (Oxford; New York: Oxford Univ. Press 2007), 50. 5 See especially for those insights: Hall, Amy Laura, Conceiving parenthood: American Protestantism and the spirit of reproduction. Grand Rapids, Mich: W. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co 2008. 6 Kant, Immanuel (a 2003), Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1. Aufl. 1781). Prolegomena. Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaften. Studienausg., Nachdr. der Ausg. 1968. Berlin: de Gruyter (Kants Werke, AkademieTextausgabe; Bd. 4), 429. Engl.: Kant, Immanuel, [1785] (1993), Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals transl. by James W. Ellington, 3rd ed. Hackett. p. 30.

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needs, interests and rights (human rights) of children and the corresponding demands this places on parents and the institutional procedures for adoption. This far reaching ethical context includes a range of moments which are in a sense identified as “religiously” grounded, and which have their theological meaning in Christian traditions, even though the Christian ideas may be compounded with various philosophical traditions concerning the understanding of parenthood, childhood, education, identity etc. There obviously remain many aspects which are not yet fully developed within this still developing framework of an “ethics of adoption” or an “ethos of adoption”. There are also many aspects of the discussion which remain controversial in touching on fundamental presuppositions of our understanding of the conditio humana – such as the question of the meaning of “birth parents” for a human existence, which includes the question of whether “identity” should be seen as related in any way to someone’s “natural” origin.7 1.2 An Evangelical Message? My own question within this differentiated and still developing discourse concerns – as already indicated – the message of “adoption”, i.e. the “evangelical” message related to the practice of adoption. This question seems to me important, not because we need an additional and better source of motivation for adoption nor a new “grounding” or legitimation for current practices of adoption practices and ethical reflection on them, but because it pursues the question of what aspects and perspectives on our human existence and condition the practice of “adoption” discloses. Put otherwise: In what sense is adoption a “gift” to human beings that opens particular moments of our human condition and confirms those moments so that we may understand better who we are and what belongs to us? To ask such a question is not to trap ourselves in a cynical reading which must overlook experiences of suffering within this context. On the contrary, to ask about the sense in which adoption is a gift may open our eyes to such suffering in its connection with the loss of “natural parents”, and also of foster parents with their extra sorrows and responsibilities. We need to become clearer what this suffering is about, and therefore about what a consoling message to those who suffer in such contexts could be. “Consolation” and “comfort” are not, of course, to be understood as alternatives to real help and care, but are a core aspect

7 See also Karin Ulrich-Eschemann’s contribution. See for the discussion in Germany: Schmidt-Bott, Regula (Hg.) (1995), Adoptierte suchen ihre Herkunft. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (Transparent, 16).

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of care connected to the message which bears this help and care. Such an understanding of the basic message of adoption may indeed open our eyes to the core meaning of parenthood and childhood in its marvelously given relation. The question therefore is: What message bears and provokes our practice? Or: What is the “promise” that actualizes adoptive practices? These questions immediately include another: What is the promise given to parents and children, for suffering children and for suffering parents – and who is authorized, destined or asked to bring that promise to the children, to witness for it and to stand for it?8

2

Children and Human Rights

In various articles about “the child in the Bible”9 and “the vocation of the child”10 we find important insights into the preeminent position children have in the biblical and (to a certain extent) in theological traditions. This position is of course not indicated with the statement that children are someone’s “future”, or that a child guarantees the future of a family. Nor is the “position” of a child fully comprehensible within the language of rights and dignity. The biblical narratives focus an intensive awareness on the needs of “orphans” to receive justice and “just judgment” (mischpat). Thus we read in Psalm 82 about God’s judgment on unjust “powers” whose injustice is manifest in their not judging justly in relation to orphans and widows. Justice for orphans and toward widows is throughout the biblical ethics a fundamental demand. It is no less than a paradigmatic example of what must be demanded of just judgment, because it touches those who are totally dependent and need to be able to rely on something more than some individual’s private moral reliability or virtues etc. and therefore must find themselves supported by just conditions and institutions. Here again the question arises of what the promise is that can bear this much needed justice for orphans. What promise can be detected within the command, to do justice to orphans (Isa 1:17)?

8 9 10

See for this issue: Karl Barth, CD III/4, §54. pp. 277f. Bunge, Marcia JoAnn (Hg.) (2001), The child in Christian thought. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans. Brennan, Patrick McKinley (ed.) (2008), The Vocation of the Child: William B Eerdmans Publishing Co.

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To “give justice”11 (mischpat) means within the biblical context to be faithful and loyal to a relevant relation and community.12 Orphans are unquestionably members of that community. It is not an issue of their becoming a member or being acknowledged as an equal member. Orphans, like widows, belong self-evidently to this political community, the community of God’s people. “To give justice” means to respond to this reality. There is, however, a danger that they will be neglected, oppressed and treated unjustly, and – most importantly – will lose their entitlement to an inheritance, and scholars such as Walter Brueggeman have indicated that the adoption of orphans was primarily a confirmation of their “security” and “inheritance”.13 What is central is that no doubts are allowed to emerge about whether or not an individual belongs to the community of rights – it is the given and fundamental context of everyone living with Israel, including the stranger (Deut 24, 21; Deut 26, 12). It is this given form of a – political – coexistence that is mediated and realized by doing justice (mischpat). This justice does not rest on personal virtues to guarantee the status of the stranger. Nor is “hospitality”14 considered a “virtue”, but is a self-evident response to a given status. The message this biblical strand implies, then, is a fundamental one. It concerns the indispensable institutional medium of a community, which is the practice of justice.15 If this medium is destroyed (Ps 82) then God himself would have to re-establish it. “Father of orphans and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation” (Ps 68:6). There are many ways of recognizing this divine reality—including particular forms of adoption—in the institutional forms created and sustained by a given community. What this reality does not allow is the existence of any “displaced persons”. We find no grammar of inclusion and exclusion or of acceptance and rejection here. On the contrary, orphans remind us that every human being belongs a priori to a community constituted by rights and maintained by justice, lest it would be thrown back to a mere “natural” or “biotic” status (the status of a “homo sacer”). This is not to suggest that “community” is

11 12 13 14

15

The NRSV translates: “Give justice”. Rad, Gerhard von (1975), Old Testament Theology: v. 1: The Theology of Israel’s Historical Traditions: SCM Press, 371-372.375. See: Brueggemann, Walter. Vulnerable Children, Divine Passion, and Human Obligation. In: The child in Christian thought (ed. M. J. Bunge, 2001), pp. 399-422. See for the meaning of “hospitality” in the Jewish tradition: Derrida, Jacques (1999): Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press (Meridian, crossing aesthetics). See for that tradition: O’Donovan, Oliver (2005), The ways of judgment. The Bampton lectures, 2003. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publ.

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a “natural” given reality (in the sense of a “nation”) but a given common ground of coexistence that has been recognized in the formation of institutions. It was Hannah Arendt who insisted on the basis of this logic that there is only one single indispensable human right: the right to have rights, i.e. to be part of a constitutional community, and not to be reduced to a bare human being.16 To be an orphan in this view must also mean, therefore, to have a defined, legal position within the community, related to others mediated by rights. There must not be people who have no legal status within any community. This is also the reason for the practice and right of asylum as we again find it in the biblical tradition.17 In this sense orphans remind us of this fundamental presupposition of our human existence. This presupposition has been theologically related to a modern theology of rights in texts like Barth’s “Justification and Justice” (1938). It is therefore significant that “adoption” (or its equivalents in the biblical tradition) is for the purposes of granting inheritance (and security) to those children who have lost their parents. The analogous talk about God’s positioning all human beings as His children (Greek: “hyiothesia”) is again centrally concerned with the issue of the believer’s inheritance in relation to the community of God’s people: “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.” (Rom 8, 17; see also: Eph 1, 11-14; Gal 3, 15-18; 4, 4-6) “Hyiothesia” guarantees the ongoing story of God by His further heirs. The concern of “hyiothesia” is the participation of the believer in the heritage to which God has given testimony. This heritage then, and this is the central point, consists in the common story that we, all human beings, share with Israel. The crucial point concerns how this heritage is mediated by the Torah, which is given in the first place to Israel and which organizes the particular relation between God and Israel, His elected people. The Torah is not the “Law” (Nomos), but the context in which the coexistence of God and Israel takes places. Hyiothesia, then, indicates how this wonderful relation is inherited, according to God’s will. The dramatic story of this transfer – the story of God’s mission of Jesus Christ – is reflected within the notion of Hyiothesia. Hyiothesia indicates the inheritance of a privileged

16 17

Hannah Arendt, ‘The Perplexities of the Rights of Man’, in The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958/1961), pp. 290-302. See for the Jewish tradition: Emmanuel Lévinas, and about Lévinas on this issue: Derrida, Jacques (1999), Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press (Meridian, crossing aesthetics).

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status which is mediated by God’s first born child, Jesus Christ. In him there is established a way of “hyiothesia” for all human beings by adoption. Ephesians 1:5 NRSV He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, NKJ having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, GNT proori,saj h‘ma/j eivj ui‘oqesi,an dia. VIhsou/ Cristou/ eivj auvto,n( kata. th.n euvdoki,an tou/ qelh,matoj auvtou/( LUT hat er uns dazu vorherbestimmt, seine Kinder zu sein durch Jesus Christus nach dem Wohlgefallen seines Willens, The upshot is that we cannot immediately translate the Greek “hyiothesia” (ui‘oqesi,a) as “adoption”. Here it clearly is referring to the heritage that is the continuation of Israel, and to the children of Israel, God’s people. It is therefore related to the urgent question of how God’s story will continue. It includes then many further fundamental aspects which signify God’s relation to his people as a “family” and a “household”.18

3

Children – God’s Heritage

Given this condition of an established status for all human beings within God’s story with His people, the conditio humana, the basic reality of the human which cannot be subverted by a logic of inclusion or exclusion, our question concerning children and the practices of “adoption” remains as follows: In what sense do children encounter – a moment that is paradigmatic for every human being – their “parents” within a specific promise? Here we would need to understand the promise that undergirds this encounter as the one that God utters in confirmation and fulfillment of that conditio humana within God’s real, explicit story with His people and all human beings taking place. What is the promise which is given to children and given together with children,

18

See for a broader exploration especially: Burke, Trevor J. (2006), Adopted into God’s family. Exploring a Pauline metaphor. Nottingham England, Downers Grove Ill.: Apollos; InterVarsity Press (New studies in biblical theology, 22).

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what is their vocation or dedication – and how can parents correspond or respond to that promise? How do they become parents by their response? Such a question is not equivalent to asking what parents by themselves are able or confident to pledge faithfully. Any adoption is a promise to the child that follows God’s promise in the way that “procreation” does, if “procreation” is not reduced to “reproduction”. Who is in what respect entitled, who is authorized or blessed to follow that promise? If it were based on the parent’s confidence then its security would depend on their steadfastness, rendering children dependent on the insecure ground of their parent’s continued willing. If we are not to ground the promise here then the parent’s “promise” must be rooted and grounded in a promise given to them. Their promising can then be understood as a response to what is divinely given or entrusted to parents. This touches the question of the sense in which children19 are God’s “heritage” as we read in Psalm 127:3 (“Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord”).20 We may also recall Gen 1:28—”be fruitful and multiply”—but what is the promise here? It is certainly not a guarantee of the “future” of mankind, nor is it a (new) categorical imperative (Hans Jonas:21 “there shall be a mankind”). It belongs, rather, to a context of living, within which children play a quite specific and indispensable role. 3.1 Post Christum – the Continuing Story and the New Beginning We may here refer to Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics (III/4) where he (as Dietrich Bonhoeffer did in his “Ethics”) points out that in Jesus Christ God’s story with His creatures and His people is fulfilled. There is no need to hope for any more development or progress of humankind beyond that fulfillment. What has been fulfilled is the basic condition of human life: no longer will humans be forced to live apart from God’s faithfulness and therefore to lose the freedom of God’s creatures and children and their experiences of God’s gracious gifts. Therefore – because of that fulfillment and not because of a skeptical view of the future of mankind as we find it in Hans Jonas’ categorical imperative – the question arises “why children?”. Before Christ no standpoint was available 19 20

21

In the Hebrew text we find “Sons”. Luther translates “children”, also the King James Version. See for Calvin’s understanding: Pitkin, Barbara (2001), ‘The Heritage of the Lord’. Children in the Theology of John Calvin. In: Bunge, Marcia JoAnn (Hg.), The child in Christian thought. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans, pp. 160-193. Jonas, Hans (1984), The imperative of responsibility. In search of an ethics for the technological age. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

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from which this question could meaningfully be raised. Post Christum, however, the question “why children” points to an answer already given. That answer is: “Post Christum,” children still are most welcome gracious gifts of God. God’s story is already fulfilled and children are destined to participate in that story and so to verify the testimony of this story. Is there more to be said than that? Karl Barth notes: In the sphere of the New Testament message there is no necessity, no general command, to continue the human race as such and therefore to procreate children. That this may happen, that the joy of parenthood should still have a place, that new generations may constantly follow those which precede, is all that can be said in the light of the fact which we must always take into fresh consideration, namely, that the kingdom of God comes and this world is passing away. Post Christum natum there can be no question of a divine law in virtue of which all these things must necessarily take place. On the contrary, it is one of the consolations of the coming kingdom and expiring time that this anxiety about posterity, that the burden of the postulate that we should and must bear children, heirs of our blood and name and honour and wealth, that the pressure and bitterness and tension of this question, if not the question itself, is removed from us all by the fact that the Son on whose birth alone everything seriously and ultimately depended has now been born and has now become our Brother. No one now has to be conceived and born. We need not expect any other than the One of whose coming we are certain because He is already come. Parenthood is now only to be understood as a free and in some sense optional gift of the goodness of God. It certainly cannot be a fault to be without children.22 In one of his essays on education Martin Buber raises a point that coheres with Barth’s, but also sets up an important tension with it: that the human race is beginning every hour, and every child is a new beginning. There is a “grace” in this beginning. In every hour the human race begins. We forget this too easily in face of the massive fact of past life, of so-called world-history, of the fact that each child is born with a given disposition of “world-historical” origin, that is, inherited from the riches of the whole human race, and that he is born into a given Situation of “world-historical” origin, that is, produced from the riches of the

22

Barth, CD III/4, 266.

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world’s events. This fact must not obscure the other no less important fact that in spite of everything, in this as in every hour, what has not been invades the structure of what is, with ten thousand countenances, of which not one has been seen before. With ten thousand souls still undeveloped but ready to develop—a creative event if ever there was one, newness rising up, primal potential might. This potentiality, streaming unconquered, however, much of it is squandered, is the real child: this phenomenon of uniqueness, which is more than just begetting and birth, this grace of beginning again and ever again. What greater care could we cherish or discuss than that this grace may not henceforth be squandered as before, that the might of newness may be preserved for renewal? Future history is not inscribed already by the pen of a causal law on a roll which merely awaits unrolling; its characters are stamped by the unforeseeable decisions of future generations. The part to be played in this by everyone alive to-day, by every adolescent and child, is immeasurable, and immeasurable is our part if we are educators. The deeds of the generations now approaching can illumine the grey face of the human world or plunge it in darkness. So, then, with education: if it at last rises up and exists indeed, it will be able to strengthen the light-spreading force in the hearts of the doers—how much it can do this cannot be guessed, but only learned in action.23 We find here tensions but not a contradiction of Barth’s insistence that God’s story is fulfilled. After the coming of Christ there is no need to hope any longer for new conditions of human life, beyond His coming. And yet we nevertheless must also say with Martin Buber, that every child nevertheless brings a new beginning within that new story which is already fulfilled in its telos – if the child is given the opportunity to experience this story, to have a witness borne to it, in order that he or she might find a specific role in this story and to become again a witness. Here we touch the “mandate” – as Buber and Barth pointed out – of teaching and education. The child will not be forced into supporting and shoring up ongoing processes that preceeded their existence but are still happening. Instead, every child is, after Christ, offered the opportunity to be part of the “new creation”, is offered the opportunity to experience the new creation in Christ, instead of being doomed to confirm the old reality, its processes and modes of progress. This is the freedom of a new beginning – the position inhabited by children. Therefore, to

23

Buber, Martin (2002), Between man and man. With an Introduction by Maurice Friedman. Unter Mitarbeit von Ronald transl. Gregor-Smith. London, New York: Routledge (Routledge classics), 98f.

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receive children is not a matter of extending ones’ own story, but of the affirmation of God’s new beginning within the continuity of His story with us, human beings. It is in this way that we can understand the force of Jesus’ promise: Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God. Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it” (Mk. 10:14-15). The witness of the new creation includes in itself a new beginning with every child in accordance with God’s story and His coming kingdom. Children are destined to be heirs and witnesses of God’s work (see also Psalm 8), and they are paradigms of a creaturely existence in their waiting for the encounter that is promised to them through God’s work in His story with them. The question “why children?” must not be answered with an appeal to our own desires for offspring. It is properly answered by reference to the promise of the new creation that is part of God’s story with us, human beings. On what other basis could we explain to our children why they are born? They are God’s heritage. The story of this heritage concerns God and His honor – which is secured by His continuation of His story with His people. It is to this end that God sent His son, who was both Jewish-born and at once equal to all human beings, who are the heirs of God’s story with His people. Within this perspective of the divine adoption “parents” appear – like prophets, apostles and witnesses – in their true theological meaning, which is not to be taken to be metaphorical but includes birth-parents as well as other forms of parenthood. Enclosed within this theological grounding we find a fundamental meaning of parenthood. If we talk about “parents”, we are in fact talking about those two who are together a new beginning – in a common life, a common “body”, an “individual”, singular existence. Their child begins in this new beginning, this singular reality which is a new story. In this sense birthparents remain present in every human life. But this does not make their story the only one that will determine the life of the child and they must allow space for God’s very own story with the child. The only question has to do who will take up this heritage or who will be able or called to take it. In various forms of cooperation between birth-parents and other parents this perspective is fulfilled. It is a cooperation we may find realized in some forms of adoption (as they are practiced e.g. in hospitals, in order to avoid abortions). Such a cooperation, which includes giving up a child by birth parents, can be understood as a recognition that God has his very own story with every child “given” by him.

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3.2 God’s Heritage – an Eschatological Reality and Our Response The human longing for children is rooted in a range of dispositions, each of which offer their own answers to the question “Why children?”. This is why the question must not be articulated or answered within the abstract realm of philosophical or theological speculation without an interest in or hopes to encounter the human desires, hopes and self-understanding that permeate discussions of childbearing and adopting. These desires need a word from outside, a testimony (Psalm 78) that is promising. Children are God’s heritage— this is the core of the biblical promise, as Psalm 127 stresses and as we have seen Karl Barth to explicate. God “molds” children and God promises children, the biblical narratives tell us, for the sake of His ongoing story with His people – paradigmatically in God’s committing His son to Mary. This is a paradigmatic handing over of a child if we read Psalm 127:3 (“Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord”) as the proclamation of “Jesus” as “the child” entrusted to Mary (as it appears in Monteverdi’s “Vespers for the Blessed Virgin”, 1610). It is when we face such an “encountering reality” (as Buber called it) that we are asked how we will respond to it, how we should understand it – and only in this sense are we prepared to ask: “Why these children?”, “For what purpose is this wonderful heritage entrusted to us?” What then is our mandate as we enact it? The appearance of children does not lay on any adult the imperative to fill up an empty “not yet”, since God’s story is already fulfilled in Jesus Christ. But still there remains a real sense of a “not yet” that is presented by the encountering reality that is the child, but this “not yet” is a positive one. Rather than understanding the eschatological as a kind of delay of Christ’s coming, we touch a wonderful space in which we can anticipate an experience of God’s story of reconciliation in the beginnings that are the life of the child. God’s reconciliation with human beings within their earthly and worldly life will appear for every human being and becomes abundantly real in every human life. It becomes real for the sake of God’s glory on earth, confirming His story with his people as His very own story. This confirmation is enacted with every child. This claim is not to be understood within the logic of a theodicy as a statement of something that is inevitable, but is an expression of faith in the inexhaustible content God has in store for all human beings called to be His people, as we read in Rom. 12: the good, the pleasant, and the fulfilled. God’s will is that we, human beings, should be given time to try out, to probe this promise—and so to encounter messianic time. By implication, where people are not in the place to look for this messianic appearance they should be helped and supported by others. This need for witnesses is an expression of the tension between the time of God’s fulfilled story and God’s own testimony

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to that story, and our engagement in the open-ended progress of that story as it unfolds.24 We are given the time to respond to that promising heritage of God: the present time of waiting for the coming Christ. We can therefore say that children are an eschatological reality. With them comes a task, a mandate, to respond, which is the paradigmatic task in receiving God’s heritage. This need to receive the heritage presented to us constitutes our “human condition”. Without this divine offer we would have simply to affirm that there is no “human condition” or nothing indisputably “human”, which could be addressed as such. This promised heritage thus makes it possible to describe what is essential for the whole of humanity: that humanity remains within God’s story with His people. It remains not because it keeps a heritage of norms or ideals which have to be fulfilled in order that it does not become “inhuman”, but because of the objectively given reality of children. The appropriate response to that given reality is to recognize it as a mandate laid on all. This mandate therefore is not morally grounded, but presented with the heritage of children. What then is this mandate about? 3.3 The Promising Task of Raising Children In Barth’s chapter on “parents and children” we read about the task of raising children and education: that they should have the opportunity to encounter the gracious God. The mandate of parents consists in facilitating this encounter.25 They must act in a way that serves the work of God in the lives of children. Barth writes: This, then, is our interpretation of the meaning of parental responsibility. We make the simplest and yet at the same time the most comprehensive statement when we say that it is the parents’ responsibility to give their children the opportunity to encounter the God who is present, operative and revealed in Jesus Christ, to know Him and to learn to love and fear Him. The greatest and smallest things, the most serious and the most trivial, which can happen between parents and children, can become for parents an occasion to present to their children this opportunity. No one else has so many manifold and intimate occasions over what is normally so long and continuous a stretch of time to put this opportunity before

24 25

See her again especially: Amy Laura Hall, Conceiving parenthood, pp. 398-400. See for this point also: Pitkin, Barbara (2001), ‘The Heritage of the Lord’, especially p. 193.

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another human being as do parents in relation to their children. And no one again has these occasions at a period which is so formative and usually so decisive and fundamental. This time and its opportunities must not be missed.26 The suggestion here is that children present in a special way a form of life ripe for the experience and encounter with God’s work. In this sense all human beings are destined to be “children of God”, not per se, but through God’s calling each into His story and His further life with Him. God’s children are called to “have a part in the history in which God is their partner und they are his partners”.27 The mandate of parents is therefore focused on responding to the essential contours of this form of life. Parents cannot produce the divine encounter for a child, but must, on the contrary, act in a way that God’s calling, his very own creativity and cooperation, can be experienced by children and entrusted to them so that they may be claimed by that divine determination. Again we read in Barth’s Dogmatics: While themselves doing everything which they can and must do within the compass of their responsibility, they can only commit him to the hand of the God from whom they have received him, to the Holy Spirit of God who alone is able to make their weak testimony efficacious to him and to ward off the influence of evil spirits, some of which may well be parental in origin. And in the last resort the best that parents can do for their children is to remember, and to direct their conduct in harmony with the fact, that the Holy Spirit is the true Author of the good to which they as men can only direct their children.28 3.4 Adoption – According to God’s Will Within this fundamental distinction and connection between God’s work and human responsibility the possibility also arises that parents are not able to follow their mandate. Here again God’s own fatherhood comes into view: …it may be they themselves who for some such unusual reason are led away from their children and can no longer fulfill towards them the de26 27 28

Barth, CD III.4, 283. ChL, 104. See: John Webster (1995), Barth’s ethics of reconciliation (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press), pp. 116-173. Barth, CD III/4, 284-285.

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Here a “good work” comes into play, one in accord with God’s will (Eph. 2:10), which is to not insist on a given birth-parenthood, and to entrust children to other parents to care for them and to raise them. Children are entrusted to every potential parent who hears this mandate and becomes aware of the promise of this gift, choosing not to ignore it but re-cognize what is entrusted to them. Recall again Jesus’ promising command: “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” (Mt. 19:14). Children are destined to encounter Jesus Christ within the story of God’s people and of the coming kingdom. To encounter Jesus Christ is to encounter the gracious God—it is this encounter which constitutes human life as creaturely life within God’s story. The sole concern of the mandate of parents grows from this constitutive reality.

4

Unfolding Creaturely Life as Encountering God’s Work within His Story

Creaturely life within God’s story with all human beings must always be unfolded within that positive “not yet” of God’s presence. The response of the human to this presence cannot be explicated from any outside standpoint, but must be witnessed by those who have experienced this living with God. We do have witnesses to such a life throughout the biblical texts and within the stories people tell of their lives.

29

Barth, CD III/4, 285.

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Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? … But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well (Mat 6:25.33). This describes creaturely life within God’s story as it appears from the perspective lent by the coming kingdom. This is the way of life that appropriate for God’s people, and which should therefore be paradigmatic for their children. Within the eschatological reality that children are, and within the divine mandate with all its promise that claims parents, any parents, faced with the mere existence of children, stand before an invitation to make a new beginning with Christian witness; to embark on a new story lived out probing, and verifying, the veracity of God’s promise. To adopt children means then to share that creaturely life within God’s story, to participate together in that eschatological reality. Adoption is a practice by which the continuity of the story in its new beginnings is explicitly enacted – as it appears with the adoption of Moses by the daughter of Pharaoh. Despite the fact that English Bibles use the term “adoption” for a variety of Hebrew words, within the biblical grammar “adoption” does not directly refer to an institutionalized practice for a specific purpose. In the biblical witness praxis of “adoption” and the praxis of doing justice to the orphans are important responses to the divine promise to provide consolation for all human beings. No human being will be lost – as a sheep in God’s flock. The whole soteriological message of the story of salvation history is about the drawing of humans back into God’s story with His people as it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ— and about their call to remain in it as God’s creatures. This consolation is thus related to the story which God is to enact with every child on this earth. 4.1 Why to Point Out This Perspective? – Some Practical Perspectives My considerations here are developed with a sharp focus on the perspective of children and their position within God’s will and plan as it is related to His people and is not, in the first instance, engaging with other discourses that cross the territory of adoption, various ethical contexts, contexts of justification and biographical strategies. The perspective I have explored does, however, raise the central question of whether concrete practices of adoption are adequate responses to God’s heritage and mandate. For all parents are – whatever their motives and desires may be – challenged by the question concerning their mandate and their authority in relation to a child, and also to realize a given “good work”. How can they respond and correspond to that entrusted heritage and mandate? What do they have to “offer” to the child other than their grounded confidence that God’s gracious work is for them, and less

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confidently, that they too are ready to receive God’s promising heritage and to follow His mandate? This perspective may relieve some potential parents from entering into the project of moral self-justification by which they believe that they will be made fit to parent if they take on the burden of a “responsibility” related to moral norms. More importantly, this account focuses their attention on the “telos” of adoption, which is to allow children to experience their life within God’s story as it is promised to them. When this telos is recognized, all sorts of cooperation between parents according to their different mandates for the child may be part of the “good work” in being a common work with regard to God’s heritage. The cooperation between adoptive parents, also perhaps with birth-parents, is equivalent to the cooperation between God and every parent in that its core concern is to provide a secure place for children to experience their life within God’s story with His people. Adoption appears to be the form of following the promising mandate – the form of a “good work” prepared by God (Eph 2:10), which makes the mandate of parenthood explicit. This mandate is not an expression of a morally grounded way of life which must be shouldered by an act of will, but concerns a paradigmatic living out of the human condition in the context of God’s story. And this story is about God’s heritage in its eschatological presence.

Chapter 5

Adoption in Christian Social Ethics: Reflections from a German Perspective Henning Theißen

In what follows I will try to give a brief outline of the contribution which I think I as a German theologian can make to a symposium on adoption that takes place in the English speaking world. As this “I” suggests on the one hand, the following considerations will be given from the perspective of a person who is involved in the issue. My wife and I have adopted three daughters since 2001, all of them as home country adoptions of healthy newborns. On the other hand, the “I” in my first sentence is explained as “a theologian”, which means that my interest in the adoption issue is not so much that of somebody involved but rather that of a systematic theologian whose profession it is to argue rationally for the truth of the Christian belief. Thirdly, my argument is to be developed out of the situation that I – and here “I” means both the adoptive parent and the theologian – have experienced in Germany. So I will start the first part of these reflections with some observations (both practical and theoretical) concerning the situation in Germany. The second part will develop my own argument in three steps.

1

Adoption in Christian Family Ethics Thesis #1. The first thing theology should learn about adoption is that it is not necessarily a topic for a Christian family ethics.

The topic of adoption obviously belongs to the field of family ethics. I should mention that the first piece of family ethical information I ever gained about adoption was that it is a thing a Christian family can do without. This was in 1998 when my fiancée and I started planning our future together, making up our minds about the possibility of having children. It was a great relief to find that the family our expected marriage was going to form did not really need children in order to be a family in the Christian sense of the term. Of course a family is by definition a life form that comprises at least two generations, but as we will see later on, the Christian understanding of family

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004352902_007

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is not confined to procreation as a means of weaving generations into that life form. When I took my exams in theology in 1999, I came across a passage in Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Anthropology which said that a married couple was an end in itself even without bearing and rearing children.1 To hear this from an author whose attitudes on family ethics are closely linked to the traditional values of marital offspring as the source of a Christian society2 opened for me a fresh approach to the whole family issue. My thesis therefore is that though physical offspring may be desirable through the eyes of Christian ethics, a Christian family can do without, and therefore adoption is not necessarily a topic of such an ethics, either. This may sound trivial to the ears of an ethical tradition which is analytical rather than normative, and certainly the German tradition in family ethics is more of the normative kind, which means to compare certain life forms to others. This “spirit of comparison” seems to be of German origin, and in the case of adoptive families, it is usually biological families they are compared to. In such a comparison the adoptive child-parent-relationship can only come up second best as a substitute and cannot therefore be understood as a child-parent-relationship of its own kind. The German legal terminology speaks volumes in this respect, because until 1976 the legal term for adoption was “acceptance in place of a child” (“Annahme an Kindes Statt”), but since that year it has been referred to as “acceptance as child” (“Annahme als Kind”), which means that adoption is uncomparable to other family forms and irreplaceable by them. This is my second thesis. Thesis #2. Theological discourse on family ethics, especially in Germany, should be freed from the “spirit of comparison” which evaluates adoption by comparing it either to biological or to medically assisted parenthood. Instead, the adoptive parent-child-relationship should be considered a life form of its own kind. I believe that the relief I felt when reading Pannenberg was precisely the relief from the spirit of comparison. I should emphasize, though, that this relief is 1 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Anthropology in theological perspective [1983], transl. by Matthew J. O’Connell, Edinburgh: T&T Clark 1999, ### [German original: 426f.]. Pannenberg’s point here is that marriage as an end in itself pays adequate respect to the individual personality of either spouse which is not the case if marriage is embedded in larger family structures like in tribal cultures. By no means does this argument turn down the significance the family has within a Christian ethics. 2 Just cf. Pannenberg, Anthropology, ### [German orig. 429].

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a negative experience in that it means to accept that I will not have children that are biologically my own. When my wife and I applied for adopting a child in 2000, one of the most important things to learn was to become conscious of the reasons for our desire to adopt, and this included saying good-bye to the alternative desire of biological offspring. Of course this is easier for couples who know from the start that they will never beget children than for those who come to find out so only after years of successless, perhaps medically assisted, efforts in procreation and at an age which almost rules them out as adoptive parents (in Germany, the rule of thumb is that adoptive parents should not be more than 35 years older than the adoptee). But in either case the gateway to adoption is, negatively speaking, to surrender the desire of biological offspring, or, put in positive terms: the insight that a family does not need biological children in order to be valued as a real family. I have dwelt on this issue a bit longer, because it is what I miss most in the German family ethical discourse. My third thesis concerns this discourse and runs as follows. Thesis #3. The quest for an ethically preferable life form, which is characteristic of the German discourse on family ethics, results in an unproductively competitive comparison of biological and social parenthood. To give an example, I was most upset by a lecture about love and marriage which Eilert Herms, one of Germany’s best known social ethicists, delivered at the university of Bonn in January 1998. His aim was to evaluate different life forms by measuring how much responsibility they take for mankind as a whole. His result was that only marriage with realistic chances to raise children fully met this criterion. Thus following Herms’ socio-ethical argument, infertile or elderly couples cannot necessarily claim the legal status of marriage for their partnership.3 In its original context, Herms’ presentation was a contribution to a workshop dealing with heterosexual and homosexual life forms, and of course his criterion ruled the latter out as couples taking responsibility for mankind. What is interesting about this event is that not only Herms as was one of the leading Protestant theologians, but even more the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) build their attitude toward family ethics implicitly on an assessment of homosexual life forms.

3 Eilert Herms, Liebe, Sexualität, Ehe. Unerledigte Themen der Theologie und der christlichen Kultur, in: Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 96 (1999) 94-135, cf. 119f.

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I am referring here to a memorandum the former EKD Commission for Marriage and Family published in 1997.4 This text, which is the most fundamental on our topic in the history of the EKD, states that marriage and marital offspring constitute the model which is preferable to any other form of family life. The crucial argument for this is borrowed from a smaller memorandum published one year earlier and dealing with the problem of homosexuality and ecclesial life.5 This earlier text, which owes much to Wilfried Härle, is well aware of the fact that the Christian love commandment can be lived out in any life form, and therefore makes a difference between the life form and the way people shape this form.6 As far as the form itself is concerned, the text argues that only marriage offers the opportunity to live out the maximum of the Christian love commandment since it includes the possibility of raising children, whereas homosexual life forms do not. Therefore, the text concludes, the life form of marriage is preferable to homosexual ones.7 What strikes me about this conclusion is not its normative character, but rather that it draws on an argument which is not about quality, but quantity: A life form which is love plus the opportunity of raising children is ethically preferable. How can you evaluate ethical preferences by mere quantity features? The self-contradiction in this argument becomes obvious when it is applied to the issue of adoption. This is not mentioned in the memorandum

4 Gottes Gabe und persönliche Verantwortung. Zur ethischen Orientierung für das Zusammenleben in Ehe und Familie, ed. by Kirchenamt der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland [1997] (Die Denkschriften der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland 142), online: http: //www.ekd.de/EKD-Texte/44601.html (accessed Sept. 11th, 2012). 5 Mit Spannungen leben. Eine Orientierungshilfe des Rates der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland zum Thema “Homosexualität und Kirche”, ed. by Kirchenamt der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (EKD-Texte 57) [1996], online: http://www.ekd.de/familie/ 44736.html (accessed Sept. 11th, 2012). 6 Mit Spannungen leben, ed. by EKD, ch. 2.3 (dealing with biblical statements concerning homosexuality) uses the German expressions “Form” and “Gestaltung” and concludes that the biblical reprobation of homosexuality refers only to the practice as such, i.e. its form, not its actual shaping which can take place according to the love commandment (“Die negativen Aussagen […] beziehen sich […] nur auf die homosexuelle Praxis als solche, nicht jedoch auf deren ethische Gestaltung.” – “Der im Liebesgebot ausgesprochene Wille Gottes gilt [auch] für die Gestaltung homosexuellen Zusammenlebens”). 7 Mit Spannungen leben, ed. by EKD, ch. 3.4 lists a number of functions of human togetherness and states that only marriage and family allow for the entirety of these functions, which makes them preferrable to other life forms (“Die Fülle dieser für das menschliche Leben wesentlichen Funktionen ist so nur in Ehe und Familie möglich. Das zeichnet sie als Leitbilder aus”).

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on homosexuality – adoption rights for gay or lesbian couples were not yet a big issue in 1996-, but it plays some role in the more fundamental memorandum one year later, because this text tries to spell out the Christian family ethics from a child-centered perspective.8 Here again we find the quantitative argument, this time saying that the best family for a child will be one where biological and social parent-child-relationship coincide, whereas social minus biological parenthood is appreciated as the best way of family life available under certain circumstances, but generally worse than the combination of the two.9 Of course this argument also applies to adoption, which regularly excludes biological parenthood. However, it is noteworthy that in a more recent text (2002) on bioethics the EKD Commission for Public Responsibility has suggested the quantitative argument in favour of adoption. Here its counterpart is in-vitro-fertilisation, and the suggestion is that fertilised embryos that are left over after IVF procedures should be available for adoption by childless couples.10 Obviously embryo adoption is favoured here as a life saving device, since fertilised embryos are considered human beings even if their status in terms of personality may be questionable.11 But apart from the huge legal difficulties such an embryo

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Gottes Gabe und persönliche Verantwortung, ed. by EKD, ch. III.1 speaks of a “kindzentrierter Ansatz”. However, the EKD Council particularly considered this child-centered perspective too unclear to recommend the entire memorandum (cf. its preface). Gottes Gabe und persönliche Verantwortung, ed. by EKD, ch. III.5 states that although (mere) social parenthood of adoptive, foster or step-parents may provide loving and reliable child-rearing, biological parenthood cannot simply be disposed of (“Es ist eine gute Erfahrung, dass soziale Elternschaft durch Adoptiveltern, Pflegeeltern oder Stiefeltern gelingen kann und vielfach auch tatsächlich gelingt. Dennoch ist die primäre leibliche Elternschaft nicht beliebig ersetzbar”). Im Geist der Liebe mit dem Leben umgehen. Argumentationshilfe für aktuelle medizinund bioethische Fragen, ed. by Kirchenamt der EKD, Hannover: EKD 2002 (EKD-Texte 71), ch. 3: “Da nach dieser Auffassung allen Embryonen gegenüber eine Pflicht zur Lebenserhaltung besteht, ist zu erwägen, ‘überzählige’ Embryonen aus der In-vitro-Fertilisation zur Adoption freizugeben” (online: http://www.ekd.de/EKD-Texte/30653.html, accessed Sept. 11th, 2012). The personality approach seems to be typical of the German discourse. It differs from the substantial contribution Darlene F. Weaver, Embryo Adoption Theologically Considered. Bodies, Adoption, and the Common Good, in: Sarah-Vaughan Brakman/Darlene F. Weaver (eds.), The Ethics of Embryo Adoption and the Catholic Tradition, Dordrecht: Springer Science + Business Media 2007, 141-159 has made to the issue. She argues cautiously for the permissibility of embryo adoption from the standpoint of Roman-Catholic moral theology. Her basic argument is to detach embryo adoption from its background in

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adoption would meet in Germany,12 it is puzzling in terms of ethics, since to adopt an embryo by carrying it to term would mean to unite adoption with something it excludes by definition, namely pregnancy.13 The result would simply be that parents who adopt an embryo unite biological and social par-

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the sacramental sphere of matrimony and to locate it instead in the sphere of the common good, in which the human will is free. Adoption, according to Weaver, principally means that “adoptive families make children their own by making themselves parents” just as God’s “adoption of us occurs by virtue of his free decision in Christ to be Father to us” (155). It is odd, however, if embryo adoption, a technology so loaded with the risk of failure, is referred to as a simple “means” (144, original Italics) of the free will. The text from 2002 is not unconscious of these problems when stating that a legal procedure of the genetical parents’ surrender was mandatory for embryo adoption (Im Geist der Liebe mit dem Leben umgehen, ed. by EKD, fn. 20: “So wäre die Freigabe zur Adoption seitens der Eltern, von denen die Ei- und Samenzelle stammen, eine zwingende, rechtlich eindeutig zu regelnde Voraussetzung”). But even this statement clearly underestimates the legal dilemma. If one argues that a fertilised embryo is a human person, then the only legal device to entrust such an embryo to other parents’ care is indeed adoption, but according to the German laws the surrender of an adoptee is impossible until eight weeks after birth (§1747,3 BGB), which excludes embryo adoption. On the other hand, if one denies the personal status of the fertilised embryo, then its adoption constitutes a surrogate motherhood which is prohibited in Germany. Even worse, the ethical dilemma only begins when the legal one is solved, cf. the next footnote. In a study for the Diet of Rheinland-Pfalz, some of the leading theological ethicists in Germany have advised the deputies to enact a law concerning prenatal adoption (Bioethik-Kommission Rheinland-Pfalz, Fortpflanzungsmedizin und Embryonenschutz. Medizinische, ethische und rechtliche Gesichtspunkte zum Revisionsbedarf von Embryonenschutz- und Stammzellgesetz. Bericht der Bioethik-Kommission des Landes Rheinland-Pfalz vom 12. Dezember 2005, 21 [online: http://www.justiz.rlp.de/ icc/justiz/nav/634/binarywriterservlet?imgUid=09620dd6-e553-d801-33e2-dcf9f9d3490f &uBasVariant=11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111, accessed Sept. 11th, 2012]). The shift in terminology (prenatal instead of embryo adoption) indicates that the legal dilemma (cf. the previous footnote) is supposed to be solved by making sure that the surrender of an adoptee may take place even before their birth. In practice, prenatal adoption would be organized as an informed consent process according to this study (Bioethikkommission, Fortpflanzungsmedizin, 55: “so sind bei informierter Zustimmung und unter der Voraussetzung einer freiwilligen Einverständniserklärung der leiblichen Eltern gegen die Freigabe des Embryos an Eltern, die sich auf das Kindeswohl verpflichten, keine grundsätzlichen ethischen Einwände zu erheben”). The ethical dilemma, which is much more serious than the legal one, is however that this solution takes the adoption procedure back to the times when it was legally a more or less simple treaty. This would be hazardous for the progress in guaranteeing the rights of adoptees and genetical parents since the legal reform of adoption in Germany (1976).

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enthood by adopting their own biological (though not genetic) offspring, which is absurd since it dissolves the concept of adoption altogether. Let me stop here for a minute. I have discussed two influential statements on family ethics by Eilert Herms and the EKD, and the result was in either case that their methodological interest in establishing an ecclesial model of family life led to a certain dissolution of the underlying life form concepts. At least it does not look very sound to draw the decisive arguments for marriage as family model from its contrast to homosexual life forms, nor is it convincing to reduce adoption to the quantitative relationship between biological and social parenthood.

2

Adoption as a Theological Metaphor

The problem with the examples of German family ethics I have been referring to was their “spirit of comparison”. The underlying question of this spirit is what life form is preferable for Christians. But we cannot even be sure whether there is such a thing as a form of family life which Christians should choose simply because they are Christians. This would imply that Christianity was itself a certain form of life, which would again entail that it was only adequate for people who fit that life state because they are Christians. In other words, the universal claim of a Christian ethics to provide orientation both within and without Christianity is abolished if our ethical key question is what form of life to adopt. Happily it is not the only question to start a Christian family ethics with. From a theological standpoint, this question needs to be spelled backwards: Instead of asking what form of family life God tells us Christians to choose, we might also ask what it tells us about God if Christians choose a particular form of family life like. This is my fourth thesis. Thesis #4. The ethical key question concerning adoption is not what form of family life the Christian faith is meant to choose, but what it means for the Christian faith to choose the family form of adoption. Trying to explore a few possible answers to this question, I will now turn to my theological argument, which is made up of three steps. The first will be to show that adoption is a metaphor which discloses a deepened understanding of the family beyond its biological range (2.1). Therefore – this is the second step – adoptions do not constitute families, but are rather themselves constituted by the families they combine due to certain family resemblances between them (2.2). Family in the sense of a Christian ethics, so the third step goes, is only

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constituted by adoption in the sense of a theological metaphor for God’s ways with humanity (2.3). This is what I would like to develop in the second part of my presentation, but at its beginning, I will get back to the end of the first, namely to the example of embryo adoption. 2.1 Adoption as a Disclosure of Family Perhaps the idea of parents adopting their own biological offspring is not so absurd any more if it is understood metaphorically in the light of our ethical key question (th. 4). Adoption then would not literally constitute a family, but it would point to the meaning a given family state has in the light of the Christian faith. To adopt a child would then mean to consciously reaffirm a given parent-child-relationship as independent of any means that I as parent have to build this relationship. Adoption would rather mean to gratefully accept my child as a gift from God. Adoption in this metaphorical sense is not restricted to adoption in the legal sense of the word, rather it is also applicable to biological parents in relationship to their offspring.14 There are some observations to make at this point. Obviously the term adoption has a twofold meaning here. It does not only denote the family form as such, but also a certain religious perspective (“acceptance”) of that family form. An obvious corollary of this twofold meaning is that adoption in the second sense is not restricted to adoption in the first sense of the word, i.e. the religious perspective of accepting children as God’s gift is open to both biological and adoptive parenthood, and in contrast to the example of embryo adoption, this time the adoptive parenthood is not dependent upon the biological one. The reason why it is not is that the two meanings of adoption are not on the same level and cannot therefore compete with each other. The second meaning (i.e., adoption as a religious perspective of a given family form) presupposes the first (the family form as such) and gives it an additional meaning, thus deepening, not replacing it. It is this deepened understanding which makes adoption a theological metaphor. My fifth thesis is:

14

In his groundbreaking study Brent Waters, The Family in Christian Social and Political Thought, Oxford: University Press 2007 (Oxford Studies in Theological Ethics) says with reference to Oliver O’Donovan that “there is an adoptive element in every parent-child relationship” (199), since the purpose of the family is to provide a “place of mutual and timely belonging” (200). In an article published five years earlier in the Scottish Journal of Theology (cf. n. 15), 430, Waters was more reluctant toward that “element of adoption”, which at that time he quoted as Ted Peters’ position. It seems that there has been a slight shift in Waters’ position to which I will get back later (cf. n. 40).

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Thesis #5. In a theological understanding adoption discloses family resemblances between the birth family and the adoptive family which contribute to a deeper understanding of family in general. As Brent Waters has shown, the concept of adoption certainly does not do away with the biological concept of family, but unfolds it into “wider spheres of affinity”.15 Being open to such wider spheres which integrate people into the family that do not belong there in terms of biology – especially through foster care –,16 presupposes the deepened understanding of family my fourth thesis has been referring to. It seems to me that Jana Bennett has a similar intuition when she speaks of “households expanding”, stressing that our understanding of family and household is both reconfigured and expanded by the way Christ speaks about them.17 I believe this point to be crucial for a theological understanding of adoption as a topic of a Christian family ethics. What adoption has to contribute to such an ethics is that it opens new horizons for understanding family in general. David Bartlett has provided a very helpful list of some of the most powerful ethical features of adoption. Adoption, according to him, reminds us that familial bonds cannot be restricted to biology. It reminds us that the true belonging of people even within a family is in the community with God. It reminds us that to live together as Christians means to unite disparate origins.18 All these virtues of human community are not valid in spite of, but in extension to the concept of family. The Augustinian concept of familia dei is the classical term for such a deepened understanding of family. Of course familia dei is a metaphor and does not denote a family I could point to in the same way

15

16 17

18

The axiomatic theological argument in the brilliant essay by Brent Waters, Welcoming children into our homes. A theological reflection on adoption, in: SJTh 55 (2002) 424-437, 429 is that love has a “teleological structure” (like the biblical covenant) which unfolds from marital to parental to familial to social love, thus “seeking more expansive social spheres of affinity” (428). This example is discussed by Waters, Welcoming children, 431-434. Cf. esp. ch. 5 (“Households expanding. Eschatological Visions of Christ”) of Jana Marguerite Bennett, Water is Thicker Than Blood. An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singleness, Oxford: University Press 2008, 116-134, e.g. “The church […] has an entirely new relationship with Christ, which reconfigures the meaning of marriage” (120); “Daily households are not done away with in the light of becoming Christians; those daily households themselves are caught up in this reconfiguration” (123). David L. Bartlett, Adoption in the Bible, in: Marcia J. Bunge (ed.), The Child in the Bible, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 2008, 385-398, 394f.

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I might point to the Jones family. But that metaphorical character is precisely what is at stake in a Christian understanding of family. Adoption, too, is a metaphor, and what characterizes a metaphor in contrast to an allegory is that it gives one and the same reference a second meaning, whereas the allegory is a change in reference and has therefore only got one meaning.19 How important the difference between metaphor and allegory is for our adoption issue, it can be learned from the Augustinian background of the familia dei metaphor, since Augustine is a master of allegorical interpretation of biblical metaphors and similes. As Bennett’s struggle with the Roman-Catholic ethics of marriage and singleness shows, there is a sort of Augustinian theology which lets the new meaning of the family metaphor (i.e. the familia dei) override the old one. The result is that celibatory singleness, understood as spiritually familial bonds with Christ alone, is estimated higher than marriage.20 In this case, the reference of the familia dei metaphor is no longer to the family in the primordial, biological sense of the word, but only to its spiritual meaning. In short, the family becomes an allegory for the church – and this is precisely what prevents families from discovering the wider spheres and ecclesial dimension of their familial bonds.21 A similar thing can be said about adoption. Adoption, too, is a metaphor from the semantic field of the family, but it will only work as long as its twofold meaning is balanced. Since in a metaphor the reference stays the same, the new (metaphorical) meaning it adopts cannot dismiss the original one which it deepens. What happens in a metaphor is that two semantic fields are brought together that appear disparate at first sight,22 but disclose family resemblances (as Ludwig Wittgenstein would put it)23 during the metaphorical process. It is these family resemblances that allow for a portable metaphor. Moving, as Martin Luther does, from the metaphor of words (metaphora verborum) to the metaphor of things (metaphora rerum),24 we can apply this 19

20 21 22

23 24

Here I am following Paul Ricœur, Symbolism of Evil [French original 1960], transl. by Emerson Buchanan, Boston, MA: Beacon 1969, ### [German transl.: p. 23], who emphasizes that the allegory is obsolete once it has been understood as such. Cf. Bennett, Thicker Than Blood, 129 with reference to Pope Paul VI. I fully agree with Brent Waters’ short statement during our conference: “I don’t want the church to be a family. I want the church to be a church.” According to Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art. An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett 21976, 69 the metaphor is “an affair between a predicate with a past and an object that yields while protesting”. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical investigations/Philosophische Untersuchungen, Oxford: Blackwell 21968, No. 67. Cf. Martin Luther, WA 8,86,7.

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hermeneutical consideration to the topic of adoption, since the metaphorical process is that a certain term adopts a new and deeper meaning. In an adoption, too, there are two families, the birth family and the adoptive family, and the metaphorical insight disclosed through adoption is that they both belong to the family in the deepened sense of “households expanding” or “expansive spheres of affinity”. In other words, the birth family of the adopted child must not drop out of our theological consideration of adoption. Adoption discloses a theological reconfiguration of the family which deepens our original understanding. But this reconfiguration can hardly be effected without the birth family, if we do not want the metaphor of adoption to turn into an allegory again. Therefore if we, as theologians, consider adoption as gratefully accepting our children as God’s gifts, we can do so only in respect to the origin of these gifts. Of course if we admire them as God’s gifts we imply that they originate in God, but there is hardly anything in an adoption to be admired as God’s gift unless the adoptee’s way from their birth family into their adoptive family is recognized. At least this is what I think many adoptive parents have experienced after weeks or months or even years of hope and anxiety until the adoption procedure is finally settled.25 What we thank God for in particular is that this child has been entrusted to us as adoptive parents, although we know that it is at the same time the birth parents who entrust them to us. The result of this is that the theological reconfiguration of the family effected by the adoption metaphor must include both the birth family and the adoptive family. It cannot do with the renewed meaning of the family alone. The reason is a very practical one, namely that “it is important to know where you come from”, as Karin Ulrich-Eschemann stresses.26 If there is one thing my wife and I have really been trained in while applying for an adoption, it has been how to tell our children where they come from. The courses applicants for adoption have to take in Germany do not seem to care much about people’s attitudes toward child-rearing, but there is one thing which I found was mandatory for the applicants, and that is to inform the adoptee about their adoption as soon as possible. During our courses we have learned that adoptive children have got two families. This is obvious in the case of so-called 25

26

It should be noted here that the adoption placement practice in Germany differs from that in England. While English newborns will not be placed into an adoptive family immediately, German adoption agencies will try to place a baby adoptee into their adoptive family as soon as possible, even if there is a legal term of eight weeks after birth before birth parents can declare their surrender (§1747,3 BGB). Before that declaration there is a (continuously decreasing) possibility of replacing the child if birth parents desire so. Karin Ulrich-Eschemann, cf. in this volume pp. ###.

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open adoptions where the adoptive family know the personal data (names, addresses) of the birth family and vice versa. But it also applies to incognito adoptions,27 since children who have been adopted as babies and have been informed about their adoption are likely to seek contact with their birth family when they have grown up. A considerable amount of sociological and sociopsychological research on adoption in Germany has been dedicated to this topic of adoptees looking for the roots of their own identity.28 I cannot be very detailed here, but what seems fairly certain is that despite such contacts the birth family and the adoptive family should be considered two distinct families with the adoptee as the closest link between them. That is to say we should not infer that the wider spheres of affinity which a deepened understanding of the adoption metaphor discloses merge birth family and adoptive family into one big family, because this would in fact confine the range of the family concept to only one meaning and would thus not lead to a metaphorically deepened or widened, but to a narrowed understanding of family. Therefore if the adoption metaphor opens wider spheres of affinity for our understanding of family, we still need to distinguish the birth family from the adoptive family. Whether the Wittgensteinian family resemblances can be transferred from linguistics to the world of “real” family ethics remains an open question. However, if we are to think that ‘the world is everything which is the case’, then the fact that we can speak of adoptions in the way I have suggested hitherto will enhance the assumption that there are family resemblances between the birth family and the adoptive family involved in a “real” adoption. I am turning to this question now. 27

28

The insight that it is a human right to know one’s ancestry has fostered so-called semiopen adoptions in Germany. In this case the adoption agency organizes an anonymous meeting of birth parents and adoptive parents during the placement. In practice they normally meet at the hospital where the child has been born (in case of newborn adoptees) or on the premises of the agency (if the child is a toddler) and agree upon exchanging letters, which may take place every year at the child’s birthday. In conversation and letters, they will only use their Christian names. Though all these elements are helpful to protect the basic rights of ancestry knowledge, semi-open adoptions belong to the incognito adoptions in legal terms, which implies that there is no exchange of full names and residence. This applies in particular to the works of Christine Swientek, Adoptierte auf der Suche nach ihren Eltern und nach ihrer Identität, Freiburg: Herder 2001 (Herder-Spektrum 5199). She works mainly on the basis of interviews with adopted people. However, the most comprehensive empirical study on adoption in Germany is a 5-volumes-work entitled Adoption zwischen gesellschaftlicher Regelung und individuellen Erfahrungen, ed. by Egon Geller/Helmut Golomb, Essen: Westarp-Wissenschaftsverlag 1992. Vol. 2 (ed. by Mechthild Geller) deals with the biographies of adopted adults.

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2.2 Family as Constitutive of Adoption I have discussed the disclosing nature of the adoption metaphor so far. Now if this metaphor discloses a Wittgensteinian family resemblance between the constituent concepts of that metaphor (biological/social family), then it is likely that there are also family resemblances between the birth family and the adoptive family that constitute the adoption. I will explain that drawing on my own experience with adoption practice in Germany. It is a popular error to think that applying for an adoption simply means to wait for a child to be placed into my family. This is not only wrong because it is up to the applicants to commemorate themselves to the adoption agencies, but also for reasons of the adoption placement procedure.29 People often asked my wife and me how long we had to wait until our children came into our family. To be exact, there is no waiting. At least with German home country adoptions the procedure works in a totally different manner. How long a couple has been waiting to adopt a child is completely irrelevant. The principle idea is rather to find the best possible accordance between the adoptive parents’ idea about the personal situation of their future child and the birth parents’ idea about the family situation their child will be placed in. Of course, the birth parents’ desires count more. If they want their child placed in a Roman-Catholic family with no children of their own, it will happen this way. So we can say that the adoption procedure is based on disclosing resemblances in the way birth parents and adoptive parents understand family – family resemblances not only in a Wittgensteinian sense, but in the full sense of the meaning. Adoption placements in Germany will be arranged where the highest degree of resemblance is achieved. On the other hand, this procedure demands of both birth and adoptive families to accept each other’s attitudes even if there is little resemblance between them. After this short outline of the procedure let me propound another thesis coming out of my experience with this procedure. Thesis #6. Adoption is not rooted in charity for the adopted child, but in the family resemblances between the birth family and the adoptive family which a theological understanding of adoption discloses. An important advantage of the German adoption placement procedure is that it can easily be standardized by means of qualitative interviews (with birth

29

Cf. vol. 3 (ed. by Angelika Wittland-Mittag) of the aforementioned Adoption zwischen gesellschaftlicher Regelung und individuellen Erfahrungen.

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parents) and application forms (for adoptive parents). This fact is interesting in terms of ethics, too. My wife and I had to answer a questionnaire dealing with all kinds of physical and mental handicaps or elsewise special needs our possible adoptive child might have. This was a most salutary experience for me. In the beginning, I had thought that my love for the child we longed for would be strong enough to cope even with dire disablements. I changed my mind after a visit to a couple who were adopting three children suffering from various ailments, such as foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Ever since this experience I would advise adoptive parents to do what biological parents normally cannot and what medically assisted parents must not do, at least not in Germany: to make a selection in order to rule out certain physical disablements of a future child I feel I will not be able to cope with. There is obviously a lot of reckoning with the properties of the adoptee in this procedure, and one might not expect love for a future child to be reckoned in this way, since the principle idea of love in a Christian ethics is that love for somebody is not for their properties, but for their personality and is therefore unconditional.30 However, the ethical problem with this love principle is that it is too abstract to achieve ethical judgments resulting in a definite action. In other words, love cannot be exercised without considering lower principles coming out of the situation the loving person is in. This is why it is good in terms of ethics to urge adoption applicants to make up their minds about possible situations their future child might be in even if such a procedure seems to be far from the reality the applicants are in when filling in application forms. E.g., the aforementioned selection of children particular couples can cope with in contrast to children with disablements that would ask too much of these parents is not a selection of children in the sense of discriminating against the lives of disabled children, but rather a selection of parents or of parenting.31 If there were no such selection, no family resemblance between the birth family and the adoptive family could be disclosed, either. Again these family resemblances are not between the birth parents and the adoptive parents as persons, but only between their ideas of the adoption procedure.32 30

31 32

In the German ethical discourse this line of argument has been adopted by Johannes Fischer, Hat die Ehe einen Primat gegenüber der nichtehelichen Lebensgemeinschaft?, in: Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 101 (2004) 346-357, esp. 353. I am emphasizing this after fruitful discussions at the 2012 symposium which convinced me that adoption is not a choice in the usual sense of the term. I am grateful to John Swinton who has helped me clarify this issue of selection during our conference.

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I find it necessary to be aware of this procedure because it can do away with another popular error, namely that adoption was rooted in charity or even pity for the adoptee. Among others, Timothy Jackson has argued that charity which suffers the sufferings of orphans or other children in comparably miserable circumstances was a strong Christian motivation for adoption.33 I consider this argument some kind of romanticism. The problem behind it is highlighted by the case of an American Baptist group who were arrested in January 2010 on the borders of Haiti when trying to take children out of the country for possible adoption some weeks after the devastating earthquake. Admittedly this is an extreme case,34 but it can help make things clearer. Let there be no misunderstanding: Adoption can never be a Christian duty. Of course there is a moral duty within a family to help other family members, especially children who are otherwise helpless. And of course I might argue that since in its Christian understanding the family is not limited to its biological bonds this duty can also be extended to helpless children in some remote orphanage, but it certainly does not consist in adopting these children into my family, since in the same theologically deepened sense (but only in that sense!) they already belong to the family. Devices for fulfilling the Christian duty to help in such a case include support of charity campaigns, donations, intercessory prayers, perhaps networking for political and social stability in the related country – but adoption of orphans after an earthquake is not among these devices. In terms of my argument we might say that in such cases the family resemblances between the birth family and the adoptive family are far too weak. A Christian feeling of love and charity toward victimized children is a high-flying ethical principle, but it is far too abstract to support the decision to adopt an orphan from Haiti. This is why the legal standards of intercountry adoption include the lower principle that adoptive children should be placed in surroundings that meet the customs of their home country wherever possible before being

33

34

Timothy P. Jackson, Suffering the suffering children. Christianity and the Rights and Wrongs of Adoption, in: Timothy P. Jackson (ed.), The Morality of Adoption. Socialpsychological, theological, and legal perspectives, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 2005 (Religion, Marriage, and Family), 188-207, 203 speaks of the “rights of suffering children to be adopted” pretending that adoption could warrant the end of all suffering, which clearly overestimates adoption. Cf. the background information provided by Andreas Mink in one of the most important Swiss journals (NZZ): http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/politreport/erdbeben_ in_haiti/hintergrundartikel/kinderraub_im_auftrag_gottes_1.5040146.html (published in print Feb. 21st, 2010, accessed online Sept. 11th, 2012).

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subject to intercountry adoption.35 It is these lower, context-rooted principles that turn abstract principles like love and charity into concrete decisions and actions. In the case of adoption this does not only apply to the adoptive parents and their selection of what child they feel ready to adopt, but also to the birth parents. Their decision to surrender their child to adoption must not be measured in terms of abstract principles like love and charity, either. In 2010 the German novelist Peter Wawerzinek was awarded the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for his book “Bad love” which merges his own story as an adult adoptee looking for his birth mother with contemporary spectacular incidents of insufficient parental care leading to children’s deaths in several German cities.36 I think that at least part of the book’s success is due to the interest it raises in the almost unimaginably pressing situations that parents who surrender their child to adoption experience. Taking these circumstances into consideration, the decision to surrender a child can be a deed of real Christian love, not “bad love”. I dissent here with many prominent voices from the German adoption discourse who have stated that surrender to adoption could never be more than second best37 or was even an initial “no” against the child.38 So turning again to the ethical discourse, I would stress that it is not an abstract principle like charity or love of the neighbour which constitutes adoption, but rather the lower principles of family resemblances between the ideas that the birth family and the adoptive family have about adoption. It is these lower principles that materialize the abstract ones. Of course the principles of love and charity are not superfluous in a Christian theology of adoption.39 But 35

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38 39

I am referring to the Hague Convention of 29 May 1993 on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php? act=conventions.text&cid=69, accessed Sept. 11th, 2012). Peter Wawerzinek, Rabenliebe. Roman, Berlin 2010. Until now, only some short sections of the book have been translated for the internet presentation of the Bachmann Award (http://bachmannpreis.eu/en/texte/2634, accessed Sept. 11th, 2012). The translator, Stefan Tobler, decided to render “Rabenliebe”, which would literally be the kind of love ravens have (or have not) got for their offspring, as “bad love”. So the EKD in their aforementioned memorandum Gottes Gabe und persönliche Verantwortung, ed. by EKD, ch. III.5: “Erfahrungen von Müttern, die ihr Kind zur Adoption gegeben haben, oder von Menschen, die in ihrer Kindheit von ihren leiblichen Eltern getrennt wurden, belegen durch ihre lebenslange Suche nach ihrem Kind bzw. nach den Eltern die Unentrinnbarkeit aus der leib-seelischen Verbindung zwischen Eltern und Kind. […] Dem steht nicht entgegen, daß soziale Elternschaft für manches Kind das Beste ist.” So Swientek, Adoptierte auf der Suche, in the first chapter of her book. In this respect there is a difference between Waters’ principal thesis “that adoption is rooted in charity” (Waters, Welcoming children, 424) and Jackson’s praise of charity

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we have to be careful to put them in the right place in the framework of such an applied “theology of …”. The final section of my paper is dedicated to this problem. 2.3

Divine Adoption and Human Families Thesis #7. The Christian understanding of the family is rooted in God adopting humanity in the adoption of Jesus at his baptism. Therefore if Christians choose the family life form of adoption they walk in the footprints of God’s graceful and forgiving ways with humanity.

The first thing I have learned about adoption was that a Christian family can do without it. No adoption is required to turn a childless couple into a family.40 But of course their marriage as such does not make them a family, either. It is the disclosure of some metaphorical meaning their marriage has that turns such a couple into a family, their mental or spiritual integration and engagement in some wider “spheres of affinity”. So we can argue that it is the blessing they receive in their marriage which constitutes their life form as a family. Brent Waters has suggested that the constitutive divine action of the family in the Christian sense of the word is baptism, because in baptism God entrusts a particular child to the care of particular parents.41 I find it very convincing to root the Christian concept of family as deep as this, though I would perhaps not stress baptism as an occasional office, but rather baptism as a sacrament. This, I believe, will root the family concept even deeper because the original divine entrusting of a particular child to particular people’s care is in God’s sending His son into the world of humanity, and this takes place in the sacramental act of baptism – Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan.

40

41

for orphans as a motivation for adoption (cf. fn. 33): While Waters leaves room for a metaphorical understanding of charity both as divine and as human love, Jackson confines it to the human sphere, thereby neglecting any possible theological dimension of adoption. Ch. 6 (“The Teleological Ordering of the Family”) of Waters, Family in Christian Thought, 192-229 gives a more comprehensive account of the argument sketched in Waters’ 2002 article in the Scottish Journal of Theology. It is due to the teleological nature of his argument of “spheres of affinity” into which love unfolds that he denies the family status to the narrower sphere of a mere married couple: “Although the family is based on marriage, it does not itself constitute or inaugurate a family.” (197) My suggestion is instead that the metaphorical deeper understanding or reconfiguration (J. Bennett) of family can be unfolded even on the narrower range of life form which marriage constitutes. Waters, Welcoming children, 425.

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What is exciting in the biblical renderings of Jesus’ baptism from the standpoint of a Christian family ethics is that particularly Matthew portrays the baptismal event as an adoption. The heavenly voice high above the river Jordan speaks the same words from Ps 2 the Davidic kings were supposed to hear on the occasion of their enthronement: “You are my son” – a phrase which has often been considered to denote an adoption, since it is very unlikely for an Old Testament text to adopt possible Ancient Near Eastern mythical ideas of kings as being physically begotten by some deity.42 James Scott has started the present debate among biblical scholars about adoption by arguing in his doctoral thesis (1992) that the standard meaning of υἱοθεσία in the GraecoRoman world surrounding the New Testament writings was adoption (as a legal process).43 Even if this was uncertain in this or that particular instance, it is important to note that Scott’s thesis has initiated a paradigm change in understanding the biblical notion of adoption. Traditionally scholars used to focus on the adoption metaphor in the context of enthronement rites and their possible influence on understanding the majesty attributed to Jesus Christ in several passages of the New Testament, Rom 1:3f in particular, in order to explain how the man Jesus came to be thought of as son of God.44 Adoption in this traditional vein of Old and New Testament exegesis does not relate to the ancient social practice of adoption, but is confined to outstanding persons (royal and messianic) in a metaphorical relationship to God. We might say that this traditional discourse turns the adoption metaphor into an allegory. Scott’s

42

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More recently it has been argued that the biblical passages referring to the king’s sonship (esp. II Sam 7, 11-15) have a political rather than a mythical background: the Ancient Near Eastern practice of kings adopting loyal vassals (cf. Bartlett, Adoption in the Bible, 378f.). James M. Scott, Adoption as Sons of God. An Exegetical Investigation into the Background of υἱοθεσία in the Pauline Corpus, Tübingen: Mohr 1992 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament II/48), 3-57. It should be noted that Scott is almost silent about Ps 2 (but cf. 101f.). His overall thesis includes however, that although there is no such clear Jewish terminology of adoption as in the Graeco-Roman world, still the Pauline idea of υἱοθεσία is along the lines of Old Testament and Early Jewish thought about the people’s relationship to the God of Israel (269). This scholarly tradition is critically mirrored by Ulrike Mittmann-Richert, Magnifikat und Benediktus. Die ältesten Zeugnisse der judenchristlichen Tradition von der Geburt des Messias, Tübingen: Mohr 1996 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament II/90), 224, who follows Hartmut Gese in claiming the gospels’ records of the divine birth of Jesus to represent the earliest stage of Christological tradition in the New Testament. However, her implication (226) that passages like Rom 1:3 must therefore also be interpreted in the light of the divine birth tradition (and not by use of the adoption metaphor) is less compelling.

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book has given this discourse the original reality back that is articulated in the adoption metaphor. Since this important change has taken place, it is no longer advisable for any theologian to speak about adoption without referring to the ancient practice of “welcoming children into our homes”. The impact of this change is more than obvious in the case of Jesus’ baptism. Of course the heavenly voice still refers to a divine adoption by addressing him as son of God. However this statement does not refer to Jesus’ superhuman nature of deity, but expresses God’s commitment to Jesus which is literally identical with His commitment to David. If we render Jesus’ baptism along these lines of argument, we are in perfect harmony with another important trait of Matthew’s account. Matthew alone reports Joseph to name Mary’s son Jesus (Mat. 1:25). Bartlett believes this to be an adoption formula45 which means that Mary’s newborn son is not only the divine Emmanuel (God-with-us) as the angel announced him to be (Mat. 1:23), but he is also of the Davidic offspring by virtue of his adoptive father Joseph. This is affirmed by Matthew’s rendering of Jesus’ Davidic pedigree which clearly runs through Joseph, not through Mary alone (Mat. 1:16).46 In sum, at least Matthew’s idea seems to be twofold. Firstly, regardless of the heavenly voice at his baptism, Jesus is not adopted into divine sonship, but into a particular kind of human sonship in that he is considered the Son of David. Secondly, that Jesus is acknowledged as Son of God in the same way the Davidic kings used to be means that God is with him in his earthly ways just as he was with David when he confessed the sins of his adultery and murder of Batseba and Uriah. We can therefore understand Jesus’ adoption at baptism as a sacramental image of the justification of sinners which is in the centre of the Christian faith. This also explains why the Pauline scriptures frequently describe justification in terms of adoption, as David Bartlett stresses.47 Of course the adoption of Jesus is not the same as the adoption of justified sinners, since theirs is not related to their humanity like his, but rather to the state of being God’s children which Jesus holds without adoption. But here again the adoption metaphor creates a family resemblance between Jesus and the believers in that Jesus is made to be sin for their sake (II Cor 5, 21). And this again is decisive for a Christian ethics. Although adoption is not necessarily a topic 45 46

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Bartlett, Adoption in the bible, 386f. While Luk 3:23 says reservedly that Joseph was “thought” to be Jesus’ father, Matth 1:16 refers to Joseph as “Mary’s husband”, which means that despite acknowledging the wondrous conception and birth of Jesus Matthew emphasizes the significance Joseph has for Jesus’ pedigree since it is him and not Mary who links him to David and Abraham. Bartlett, Adoption in the bible, 392.

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for a Christian ethics, we can say that if Christians choose this life state, they can be sure to do so blessed with the promise of God who has himself taken the risk of adopting humanity once and for all in Jesus and continuously in every believer. It will be helpful for a Christian ethics to keep the promise of the adopting God in mind especially for the many instances where our human efforts in adoption fail.

Chapter 6

The Importance of Knowing Where You Come from Karin Ulrich-Eschemann

1 Where do I come from? Is this existential question satisfactorily answered if I can say from whom I descended? Where is my real provenance? What are my origin and heritage? Do I come from a God who has shaped me and wanted me? Do I come from father and mother, who in turn, come from their father and mother?1 What is it that we humans have in common? What makes we humans equal? Certainly we can say that we are all God’s creatures, but this is to give a certain interpretation to the fact that we are co-originary—we all come and should come into this world in the same way, as Jürgen Habermas has pointed out.2 The 139th Psalm gives an even richer content to the observation that humans are all of the same shape, because God has made and formed us, every single human being. We are co-originary in that each and every one of us comes from father and mother, as they come from their mothers and fathers, bodily and socially, having been named as a daughter or the son by their father and mother. All of us stand in a chain of generations and are embedded in a chain of generations. This shared beginning of the shared beginning of each human being can be understood as a universal fact which we can call paradigmatic and on which we can therefore base the equality of human beings’ political coexistence. But to talk about the foundations of political rights does not answer why the question of origins is so important for a human’s self-understanding. Can we simply ignore it if it cannot be answered? In light of these initial questions and considerations, I would like to proceed by way of a report on a practical example from Germany and the ethical debate it has sparked. This debate will open the door for the theological reflections that are our main interest.

1 See Ulrich-Eschemann, Karin (2000): Vom Geborenwerden des Menschen. Theologische und philosophische Erkundungen, Münster: LIT-Verlag. 2 Habermas, Jürgen (2003): The future of human nature. Cambridge, UK: Polity. 114-115.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004352902_008

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2 A little over a decade ago so called “safe havens” (Babyklappen, literally “baby hatches”) were established in Germany in order to help mothers in desperate, hopeless situations by giving them the option of anonymously giving their child up for adoption. This was accompanied by the creation of procedures in hospitals so that mothers, or rather mothers and fathers, can give birth anonymously and they can leave the baby anonymously. The aim of these new policies and procedures was to prevent the killing or abandonment of newborns, to save the lives of these children. In the early years of these “baby hatches” providing the option for this anonymous childbirth became almost socially and politically prestigious. Everyone wanted to have such a “baby flap” to show off, and countless advertising campaigns touted their availability. One advertising poster showed an anonymous pregnant woman, and addressed her anonymously: “We will take your child, if no one wants it, without names, questions, or penalty.” This advertising campaign was sponsored by Caritas, the Roman-Catholic aid organisation in Germany, and by “Diakonie,” the Protestant aid organisation. Yet its message begs for much further reflection. Shouldn’t the first aim of aid be to bring mother and child together? Is this something that can be addressed by general advertising? Such questions are obviously ruled out in the message as it stands, in that what is being offered is only anonymous adoption. It quickly became apparent that such targeted advertising had at least found its mark insofar as it had awakened a more widespread desire to consider it a live option to anonymously donate newborn children. In 2003 staff in counselling clinics observed that mothers had begun to consider the anonymous offers as alternatives to adoption. Having created a new choice, this choice had now given parents the sense that they were facing a menu with several options for receiving and dispensing with a new-born child. One critic, Christine Swientek, suggested that Germany was under the sway of a “baby hatch hysteria” and the “hatch or no hatch” discussions became so highly emotionally charged that people’s embrace or rejection of it became something they held in the manner of a confession of faith. As more information has emerged, however, we now know now that anonymous donation procedures did not eradicate infanticide and child exposure, but instead generated a new landscape in which there were simply more options for anonymous childbirth and the handing over of newborns. Meanwhile many empirical studies have now revealed highly problematic implications and consequences.3

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The main problem has turned out to be that these services exist without legal basis. German civil law (Personenstandsgesetz) stipulates that any person who witnesses a birth must report it within seven days – a report which includes the identity of the parents. Activists for women’s causes have repeatedly called for a legislative amendment to correct this oversight but it has not been realised to date. The anonymous donation of a child is a form of giving up a baby for adoption. Critics have noted, however, that advocates of the “baby hatch” have overlooked the reality that “baby hatch” and anonymous childbirth are not issues confined to the period of the delivery of a child, of a matter that begins two weeks before and is concluded some eight weeks afterwards. Rather, it is a form of adoption i.e. an issue which occupies all persons involved in a lifelong investment that cannot leave even further generations untouched. This critical question remains imbedded in the legal institutions surrounding this situation in the sense that for the first eight weeks of life one cannot finalize an adoption in which the parents have to give up their right to regain the child. Ethical concerns therefore remain around the issue that neither the consequences for the child, nor the consequences for mothers are considered. It is the latter who will never have any access to her child. Anonymity has also taken away from her all rights and obligations. Mothers (and fathers?) ought to be prevented from committing an error through haste that will have far-reaching effects they cannot anticipate. Also, for such decisions consultation is important since it is better not to allow an assumed or actual moment of distress to become the criteria for a decision with lifelong consequences.

3 In November 2009 the German Ethics Council published a report on the anonymous donation of children. It confirmed that the practice is ethically and legally very problematic, most egregiously because such a procedure violates a child’s right to have access to information about his or her origins and any capacity to initiate a relationship with its birth parents. As events have unfolded it also now seems such offers are unlikely to reach women who are at risk of killing or abandoning their new-born.

3 See Schillinger, Christina (2007), Wissen um die Herkunft des Menschen. Ethische Problem im Zusammenhang mit Babyklappe and anonymer Geburt, Nürnberg 2009; terre des hommes (Hg.), Babyklappe and anonyme Geburt – ohne Alternativ?, Osnabrück 2007.

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The Ethics Board recommended dismantling anonymous donation infrastructures in favour of publicly explaining in more detail the already existing legal offers for support. The Board suggested that supporting one’s child is when parents who desire to give up their child for adoption take responsible steps in order that their child have the opportunity to grow up in a stable family of its own. It insisted that the social acceptance of responsibility in this way must be encouraged. The Ethics Council did, however, offer a compromise in order not to offend defenders of anonymous child donation. They allowed that there might remain the option for a sensitive child donation which was temporarily, but not indefinitely anonymous, and had to be reported to the authorities. If the woman wants to give up her child for adoption, the data about the child will be transferred from the government office to the adoption agency, who must hold it for one year. All anonymous child donation had been criticized by adopted adults who often had been searching for their birth parents for their whole lives and who were supported by adoptee support groups, such as BAGA and adoption agencies such as “terre des homes”. This resistance to the policy highlights the importance of a core ethical and legal criticism regarding anonymous child donation: people need to know their bodily, biological parents (birthparents) in order to develop as human beings, particularly if they have for whatever reason been denied the opportunity to live with their birthparents. The answer to the question of who I am is intimately related to the question who I am related to, who I look like and who I don’t; with whom I can identify common features and with whom I can’t. The issue is, Who belongs to me physically? Who do I see to look like me? With whom can I discover something that seems familiar to me? How will I identify my identity? What is it that constitutes me and is peculiar to me alone? The claim that children need the knowledge of their biological, bodily origin in order to develop into a character is relatively uncontentious. The question “Who am I?” is related to the question “Who are my parents? Who are my siblings?” In the end, in the form of the Ethics Commission, the German legislature has reflected and absorbed this reality.

4 The preamble to the Children’s Rights Convention of 1989 states: The States Parties to the present convention … are convinced that the family, as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment

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for the growth and well-being of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community. Recognizing that the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding … Article 7: The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right, from birth on, to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents. Article 8: States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference. This document also now makes it clear that the same lesson has been reflected and absorbed by the aspirational legal and ethical frameworks that have been coalescing at the level of international governance.

5 Where am I from? Is this existential question satisfactorily answered if I can say from whom I descended? From whom have I come? What is my origin? Do I come from God, who has wanted me and formed me? Do I come from father and mother, who in turn come from their father and mother? Every human being is a child of human beings, mother and father, as the psalmist recognizes in Psalm 8:5: “What is man, human being, that you remember him (take notice of him) and the child of human beings, that you should be mindful of him.”4 We encounter here the limits of the horizon of the human in the works of God. What role does God play in human beginnings? What role does God play as Creator and as Redeemer and Saviour? Are we adopted by God when our own parents die or fail or refuse to accept their parenthood and send the child into anonymity, into life without a name? Though Psalm 27:10 says, “If my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up”, it may be a little too quick to suggest that God adopts those who are forsaken by their birth parents. The same reservation should also probably expressed of applying such a reading to Psalm 10:14: “You have been the helper of the orphan”.

4 Author’s translation of the German Luther Bibel.

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How then should we understand God to be involved in adopting humans? When he first created us and began his story with each of us? Christians can certainly affirm that God has formed humans as his children who he has not in the end sent away into the wilderness. God has created because he wants to have his children close by. Every human’s creation is not from nothing, however, because God has created before and has brought us into being through a mother and into a family.5 Were we to say too quickly that God adopts those who are abandoned, that would suggest that he is taking the place of someone else who is responsible for us. This is why when Paul says in Galatians 3:26, “For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith,” we cannot understand this as happening in the same register as human institutions of adoption. To be a child of God and to belong to God’s family by name is an original legal status, not an adoptive status, as if God had adopted me. This is why it is also problematic when theologians like Gerhard Sauter say, “By adopting us God cares for the future of his blessings”.6 Here the appropriate reply is: If God created us and blesses us (see Gen 1), then, he does not need subsequently to offer us again another version of his blessing. This would be to allow a salvific history perspective to usurp the perspective of a theology of creation. If we make the processes of redemption theologically primary it becomes difficult to find the co-ordinates to define any “shape” at all for family life. When working out of the Lutheran theological tradition one can say that parenthood is not an entity which naturally exists, but is a divine mandate,7 a commission by God to humans to accept parenthood and the related tasks that accompany it. God’s work is not to step in and act when parents do not, but to teach and enjoin parents to act in God’s place.8 Parents are thereby instructed to act. Should they refuse this commission, this divine charge can be reassigned to other parents who then act on behalf of God and representing the original parents (birthparents). This then is what adopted children share with all other children, that they all are co-originary, having the precise same origin (‘gleichherkünftig’), they

5 See Ulrich-Eschemann, Karin (2005): Lebensgestalt Familie: Miteinander werden and leben (Münster: Lit Verlag). 6 Sauter, Gerard (1998), Predigtmeditation zu Röm 8, 18-23 (24-25), Göttinger Predigtmeditationen, 52 (1998), (495-503), Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 502. 7 Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2005), Ethics. Minneapolis, Minn: Fortress Press (Dietrich Bonhoeffer works), translated from the German edition/general ed. Wayne Whitson Floyd; Vol. 6, 68-74. 8 Martin Luther, Large Catechism, The Fourth Commandment.

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are of similar shape, of the same generic kind, (‘gleichgestaltig’) and are cooriginal, arriving in the same way (‘gleichursprünglich’). In all these ways every human is identical. All are absolutely equal in the sense that every person’s life is imbedded in the story of a family and can open a new story with another spouse; everyone can have children and can become father and mother. Thus everyone can be the origin of his or her children. Adopted children too desire to live in a family story (history), where everyone is named as a person and has a distinctive place and where God has a place. In such a situation the original family (birth family) has its place as well as the adopted family. Within the theological presuppositions I have set out, this means that to live in a family story, any family’s story, is to be lifted with one’s own family history into the story of God. This larger divine family story does not change the domestic family history, but it does envelop and exceed it. When adopted children look for their biological, bodily parents and relatives and perhaps find someone, then their own family history is extended. All the parties involved have their sympathies extended by this connection, and take part in the sorrows and joys of the family members who are part of their own familiar story. It is possible to imagine families negotiating together this process of bound openness in which the adoptee’s real family (the one which has given the adoptee their identity as a person) finds its own story reshaped by the linkage of their story with the dual story of one of their members as they discover their place in another story of their family of origin. This is possible for the adoptee, as for everyone, because to be a unique and distinctive individual means to have a story, my story that only I have and am able to tell.

6 The uniqueness of Jesus’s story ensures the uniqueness of his identity: born of his biological, bodily mother, standing in the genealogy of Joseph (see Matthew 1.16: ‘and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah’), he was also provided sustenance and education by his parents. His mother mourns and cries at his death and later gathers with his brothers in the congregation in Jerusalem. The place of Jesus’ father is reserved for God the father. This is the earthly Jesus who is called Christ, with his unique story. It is also this Jesus Christ who in a sharply specified sense rejects his birth family in his preaching about what it means to do the will of God—naming as his brothers and sisters and mother those who do the will of God. My sugges-

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tion is that this is not, in fact, a repudiation of his birth family but a metaphorical overlay, as I hope this sermon makes clear. Sermon: Mark 3. 31-35 Then his mother and his brother arrived; they stayed outside and sent in a message asking him to come out to them. A crowd was sitting round him when word was brought that his mothers and brothers were outside asking for him. ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ he replied. And looking round at those who were sitting in the circle about him he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’ Dear sisters and brothers, in the Luther Bibel this text is entitled: “The true relatives of Jesus”. The title Luther supplies might well be mistaken if not flat out wrong, but Luther can always provoke us. Let us then ask this morning, everyone of himself: Who are my true relatives? Or: With whom do I have a good relation? Who belongs to me? Who stays on my side and helps me and whom I help? Some of us may have blood relatives spring to mind, while others may think about the family of God (familia dei) since we are now all here together. Is this the true family? We can ask this question in all seriousness, and everyone can ask privately, personally: Is this my home? Everyone, of course, faces their own circumstances, their individual situation. Some do not have a family yet and others no longer have one and are really alone. Some have an adoptive family. Some don’t like to remember their family because their memories of them are not so good or are indeed bad. Some feel comfortable in their families, others do not. Some regret their lack of contact with their children. Some feel left alone by their relatives. Families are experienced in very individual ways. Surely every one of us could tell a long story about our relation to our families, and I would like to hear you talk about your family. The topic of the family is now even on the agenda for discussions in government and in society at large, especially now during the election campaign. Many people think that they have important things to say on this issue, and many want to help families, to do their best so that families can succeed. And indeed everyone has his own experiences with family. Dear brothers and sisters of God’s family, together we have heard the story about Jesus and his family. His brothers and his mother were named. Jesus’ bodily family members are out looking for their son and brother and want to get in touch with this one who is walking around and preaching to the people

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of God’s kingdom and inviting them to God. What this bodily family receives is a rejection. Is his own family now worthless to him, since Jesus clearly has better things to do, important things? This question can still arise today between family members. Maybe children ask this when a father or mother has a lot of very important things to do and has no time for the children. Parents, too, can have this question of their children, who have no time for them because they love their own life, friends and jobs and really do have a lot of important things to do. Or perhaps they have a great task or a great calling to do something special—like Jesus in this story. But let us not forget too quickly that Jesus’s bodily family remained with him until the crucifixion, where his mother was with him. I’m sure you have seen the famous pieta images in which the suffering mother holds her deceased son in her arms. This has stimulated many artists to create pictures which I am certain have consoled many people who have suffered in families. In the Acts of the Apostles we learn that Mary and the brothers of Jesus are members in the first church community in Jerusalem. Jesus also has Joseph as his bodily father, though the place “father” is reserved for God as Father. I believe we need to put things this way to draw out, along with the observation that Mary and his brothers became part of the Jerusalem church, the reality that Jesus’ bodily family is acting, not only in confrontation but in convergence with Jesus’ spirit family, God’s family. In this story we never really find out what Jesus’ bodily family wanted from him. It looks like they are standing outside carefully and with respect, but are scared to go inside. Do they need something very badly? Why don’t they just go inside as would normally be done in such family affairs? Why are they not already with the other people and with Jesus? Is Jesus too great for them, unapproachable—the son of God? He must not be approached! The people around Jesus tell him that his family is outside. Jesus answers them with a question: “Who is my mother and my brothers?” Notice that he does not answer them directly, saying, perhaps: “You are my mother and my brothers, my true family, I belong to you only and no longer to my bodily family.” Some critics, including theologians, have interpreted the story in this way, taking Jesus to here be destroying the bodily family. Once there was a university seminar which had a difficult student in it who agitated the other students. He often voiced his opinion and in a stubborn manner. But when he later told us his story, about his hard childhood, his bad father, and his drug addiction, his time in prison and more, I could understand him a little bit better. He spoke about his conversion to God and about his admission in loving care into the Adventist church. The student often said,

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“God is my Father and I no longer have to look after my bodily father. God is my Father so I can forget my bodily father even exists and I can forget all the trouble he gave me.” On hearing his story, at this very moment, the other students were able to accept him. So it can be for people who love their church as a good family, and feel intensely that they belong together as brothers and sisters. Others may also like their church, but find themselves standing with a bit more distance from other members, more to themselves. Jesus Christ, the Lord of the church, ties us all together. While we belong to him we also belong together. That is what most people want from church, especially those who criticise the church: We want to feel good in church, to be accepted, to be loved, to have a home in church. These are wishes of the heart we can understand. There are many active people who do all sorts of good things in the church, but the longing being expressed here is a hope for the church to be a home for the people who cannot act in world, who have no home and find no other place to live in peace and freedom. That is good and fine, and yet we still have to ask: Can church be a home in such a manner, and nothing more? Is its reason for existence realized when we are here in community and feel good and everyone loves each other? Is the church of Jesus Christ, God’s family, necessarily a “feel-good-parish”, a home characterized at all times by a relaxed atmosphere and familiarity? Or perhaps it should be a “conviction-parish” where all brothers and sisters hold the same conviction, whatever their levels of affection for one another? We see the phenomenon in the United States of America in which people often change churches in the quest to find a community whose convictions they can share. Everyone decides on his or her own what to do, which parish is the right one. There are even churches which are one-offs, great megachurches that don’t belong to a definite denomination, but establish their own brand of faith. The question “What is my home, and can church really be a home for people?” is surely the right one, but congregations and the experience of worship can also present challenges for people. God’s word is heard by them there, and this gives them faith, consolation, peace and freedom, sending them out into the world to act and to ask after the will of God for their lives and for the world. “Feel-good-parishes”, “conviction-parishes”, “home-parishes”— in fact each does partake of a part of the truth, but we must also notice the critical implications of the words of Jesus “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” This word pushes us out from our dreams of home with their familiarity. On one hand Jesus does promise the people around him that they are his brothers and sisters. At the same time it seems that he puts a condition on this promise with the words, “Whoever does the will of God….” For Christians

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today it is becoming ever stranger for us to speak about God’s will, although we pray it every Sunday in worship: “Your kingdom come, your will be done”. Jesus too prayed, “May your will be done!” We often speak these days about our will, the will of a patient, the strong will of a small child, about autonomy—but of God’s will? The will of God is not a mystery or a fate that acts behind our back. It is always determined and clear. To do the will of God means therefore, to accept what God has planned for me. It is the will of God to do good works and live out the concrete commandments here and now in the world and in everyday life. The story of the compassionate Samaritan makes this abundantly clear. Jesus answered the question of the scholar “Who is my neighbour?” with an example, drawing the questioner into the story. He then ends with an appeal: “Go and do likewise in this manner. Let someone be the nearest and clearest claimant on you, a neighbour, and you by yourself be the nearest and clearest for someone else, here and now. In such a moment the good news of Jesus becomes clear as crystal: “Anything you have done for one of my brothers here, however insignificant, you have done for me.” In this sense every Sunday, when we leave the Sunday service, we are sent out into the world to accept the will of God for us and that we are servants of what God wants. Every single person is meant to do good works, whether they have their own bodily family or not. Every day offers occasions for doing good works—as Martin Luther insisted—not only, but also in our families. The parish and the worship service, then, are certainly the place where we assemble around God and Christ, and feel we belong together. That can really be an experience that feels good, like home, and is much more than a theological thought. This is a consoling reality, no matter the state of our bodily family and relatives. We all as individual people and as families belong to the family of God as the children of God and have the one Father in heaven and Jesus Christ as our brother, who is the King of our church. In the light of these considerations we should also hear the words of a catholic theologian: “The church as the people of God is on the way and should not remain satisfied with its own domestic sociability. The members of the body of Christ do not exist in the first instance to gather warmth together, but to look to Christ who is their standard. The first priority of the Holy Spirit is not private spirituality. The Spirit pushes Christian people across all borders out into the highways and byways.” Amen 6.1 Two Encounters on the Plane – Two Adoptive Stories When returning with my husband from the symposium in Aberdeen I had two wonderful encounters that deeply enriched and rounded off my experience of the discussions we had been having regarding adoption.

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On the flight from Aberdeen to Amsterdam a woman was sitting beside me and asked me if I was a writer, noticing that I was making notes on a piece of paper. This question was the beginning of a lovely encounter. I told her about our conference and the importance of the issue. She immediately began telling me her “story of adoption”. We both knew we had only a short time on the plane. Deirdre Anne is now living in Switzerland and working as a language teacher. She is married to an Italian, and has grown up children. She was returning from a visit to her home in Scotland, where she stayed with her adoptive brothers and their families. She had waited nearly fifty years to discover who her birthparents had been: a woman from Ireland and a man from Germany. Her father had left she and her and her mother without leaving a name or address and so her mother had given her up for adoption. A Scottish family with four sons but who were longing for a daughter as well adopted Deidre. Her birthmother then moved away, to lands very distant. Later, much later, very late in Deirdre Anne’s life—as she approached fifty years old—her long, long search for her birthparents succeeded and a tenuous communication began. She concluded: “I have been very happy with my adoptive family, and now my life is incredibly enriched, because I know my birth-family too. I feel like my life now has a structure – like points and commas.” Then the plane landed and we said our goodbyes. After a short layover in Amsterdam we boarded the flight to Nuremburg, and I was seated next to a small, delightful, African little girl. Her German adoptive mother, Andrea, was sitting next to her and told me their story and the story of Lotta, the little girl. Andrea was in Capetown for eight years working as a social worker developing the project “Preventing violence in primary schools” (Gewaltprävention in Grundschulen). Now she was bringing Lotta with her back to Germany as her adoptive child. She said with a smile, Lotta is perfectly okay The life story of the small Lotta has hopefully just begun.

Part 2 Explorations in Living out Adoption

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Chapter 7

Why Would I Look for My Parents?: Living Peaceably with the Only Family I Have John Swinton

It’s Just What We Do…

∵ I confess that I rarely think about being adopted. It just hasn’t been a big deal in my life. I have friends and colleagues for whom the fact of adoption seems to fill their horizons, but while it sits within my horizon, it is simply nothing more (and nothing less) than an important moment in my life, the cadence of which sometimes resonates gently, but rarely forms much of a driving melody. So when a couple of years ago Brian Brock suggested that we do some thinking on adoption it was quite challenging for me to begin to reflect on an aspect of my life that seemed to be important to others, but upon which I rarely reflected.

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A Culture of Adoption

I was struck by an article I came across recently on the rising tendency to abandon children in certain areas of South Africa.1 There are currently over 2-million orphaned, abandoned and vulnerable children in South Africa with the number expected to increase to over 5.5-million by 2015.2 The article highlighted some horrible cases where babies had been abandoned in storm water drains or left lying in the streets of Pretoria. The article related to a new 1 Andrea Nagel (2012) ‘Adoption: Imagine being loved’ http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/ 2012/06/18/adoption-imagine-being-loved Times Live. Accessed 16.05 on 14/11/14. 2 Gift ov Life Egg donor programme. ‘New Campaign to Combat SA’s Adoption Crisis.’ http: //eggdonorsblog.giftovlife.com/campaign-combat-sas-adoption-crisis accessed 06.28 pon 8/12/14.

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adoption program that was being introduced to deal with the situation. It was titled: Imagine Being Loved. It is a huge sadness that so many people in our world may well imagine what it is like to be loved, but will never be loved, at least not on a temporal level. The program called upon potential adoptive parents to turn imagination (their’s and potential adoptees) into concrete reality. As management consultant Dee Blackie put it: “There’s a culture of abandonment in this country. We need to change that to a culture of adoption.” This statement resonated deeply with me. ‘A culture of adoption;’ what might that look like? It resonated with me in general terms, but it also resonated with me personally because I live my life within such a culture. I am adopted, my brother and sister were adopted, my cousins are adopted; pretty much all of our immediate family are either adopted or have a close experience of adoption. I have five children, four of whom are adopted, the other who was a most welcome surprise. The problem for my youngest is that she has to live with the unusual fact that she is the only one in our extended family who only has one set of parents! She will probably be in therapy forever! I and my family have therefore always lived our lives within a culture of adoption. Adoption is simply the way in which we have learned to do family. It is the context within which I met and came to know my parents and my children. It is the experience within which I have learned what it means to be both a father and a son. It is the environment where I have learned to imagine what it means to love and to be loved. I wouldn’t say my family were in any sense exemplars of a radically new culture, but we do model something of importance. For that reason it might be useful to focus our conversation around adoption on my story or at least a small part of it. It’s an unusual story and like all stories, I will more than only tell you the bits that I want to. There is, of course, much more to be said. Nevertheless, even a fragment of my story will take us to some helpful places. 1.1

Stranger in a Strange Land?: Growing up Black in a World of Whiteness I was born in Liverpool. My mother was from Glasgow and my father was from the West Indies. I never knew them and I can’t say I have ever had any desire to find them; not because I am cross with them or because I feel abandoned. I am not and I don’t. I simply don’t know them. I only lived in Liverpool for three weeks before I was moved up to Glasgow in Scotland. My adoption happened very quickly. My adopted father was a parish minister. The head of the local social work department happened to be one of the leaders of the church that he led. During a conversation between the two of them after church, the fact that I was available for adoption came to light. The social work chief went back to his office, made a few phone calls and a day or so later I was with my new mum and dad. They did things slightly differently in those days.

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Growing up, my family had an unusual constituency. My younger brother and sister are also adopted. They are white, as were my adoptive mum and dad. I imagine that the construction of such a family would be pretty difficult these days. Today there is a great emphasis on placing children with parents who have a similar ethnic origin. Back then, such issues of political correctness and cultural competence were not yet really on the agenda. In the experience of our family, the issue of race, ethnicity, blending and its possible significance for the process of adoption never raised its head. So my mum and dad became my mum and dad for no reason other than that they chose me and seemed to quite like me irrespective of my colour. I am not trying to make a case for abandoning issues of race and ethnicity as significant criterion in the adoption process. Mind you, being the only person of colour in all of the various schools I attended did bring its own challenges. On the up side, it is quite difficult to be perceived as a threatening minority group when there is only one of you. On the downside, kids aren’t too keen on difference. There were times when the presence of a few more black bodies would have made my life much easier. I didn’t really discover the importance of my ethnicity until quite late in my life. In a sense I had to learn what it meant to be black. Some of that learning was good, creative and formative; some of it was dark and quite brutal. My sense of blackness was emergent and dialectical rather than ontological; it was carved out in an intense space between acceptance and opposition that was certainly intensified by my adoption, but not in a way that drove me to resent it. I was always very proud of my colour. The blessing that emerged from such a history is that I am always at home with all shades and colours. My kids tell me that they are much blacker than me. They may not be wrong.

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People Say the Strangest Things

One dimension to being an adoptee that is quite difficult and often goes unnoticed is that people say the strangest things! It is fairly frequent for people to talk about our youngest as our real child and for folks to say things such as “you must be special people to take in other people’s children. I could never do that. I take my hat off to you.” I usually ask them to put their hats back on and wise up! I have the deepest respect for charity workers. I just don’t happen to be one. But there is something odd about such a way of framing the process of adoption and thinking about the relationship between adopted children and their parents as radically different from biological family. People don’t seem to realise that in a very theologically concrete sense: adoption is natural parenting. We will come on to this point shortly. For now one more story will

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help draw out some of the implicit and explicit difficulties that adoptees and adopted parents have to live with.

3

You Must be Grateful?

A few years ago, 2003 to be precise, I was invited to do the Joint Institute of Theology Lectures, a cooperative venture between Princeton Theological seminary, St. Andrews University and the Church of Scotland. My topic was the problem of evil. The lectures turned into my book Raging With Compassion: Pastoral responses to the problem of evil.3 The audience was a combination of theologians, ministers and interested lay people. After one lecture a minister from up north came to talk with me. He told me that he had enjoyed the lectures. Then he asked me how old I was. What an odd question I thought, but I told him nonetheless. Then, he asked me where I came from. I told him I came from Aberdeen. He smiled and said “yes, but where do you really come from?” Ah! I thought. I understand. … “I come from Aberdeen!” I repeated. I of course knew exactly what he was asking. Apparently if one’s skin is brown it is one’s country of origin that counts as one’s real home. This is so even if you happen to be in your own country of origin! Psychological homelessness follows mixed race people around like iron filings to a magnet. Having disenfranchised me from my home country, he moved on to explore my adoption. He knew who I was and he also knew my dad. “Ah yes, your real father was probably one of the air force boys that were stationed around the central belt in the 50s!” I looked at him and smiled, amazed at his apparent supernatural powers of retrospective clairvoyance. “I know your adopted father,” he said. “You are lucky. You must be very grateful to him for taking you in.” Presumably my minister colleague thought that adopting a child, particularly a mixed race child in the 50s, was a particularly admirable, brave and charitable thing to do. Perhaps it was? I smiled and thought to myself. “I wonder why you think I should be grateful to my father for adopting me?” Is gratitude a normal response of a child to its parents? Perhaps it is. But he clearly meant something other than a natural sense of gratitude of son towards father. The implication was that I should be grateful for my father’s charity. I am of course not at all grateful in that sense. I am grateful for my dad’s love and his and my mum’s willingness to take the time to try to love a strange little baby that popped into their lives. I am “lucky.” But is that not so for all children and all 3 John Swinton (2006). Raging With Compassion: Pastoral responses to the problem of evil.(2007) Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

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parents, at least those parents who carry out their vocation faithfully? People say the strangest things. 3.1 Adoption as Life in the Spirit: Natural Parents as Spiritual Parents This very brief reflection on my adoption raises some interesting theological issues, chief amongst them being precisely what we might mean when we talk about our children being “natural.” What exactly do we mean when we talk about natural parents or natural children? In Romans 8 we find this statement by Paul about adoption: So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.4 Adoption in its Divine form is a work of the Spirit. It is the Spirit that binds our spirits together and affirms us as part of God’s family: God’s children. As part of that family we come to realise that in the Spirit, human barriers are broken down. In the world revealed by the Spirit there is “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”5 In this strange new world, the nature of one’s birth is not the criterion for becoming a child of God. We are God’s children because the Spirit joins with our spirit and enables us to cry “Abba, Father.” That which is deemed natural about our origins is not the way that we came into the world, but rather the gift of becoming a child of God that the Spirit bestows upon us. Natural, understood in this way, is defined not by biology or social convention, but by the Spirit. The realm of the Spirit is the real world: the natural.

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Re-imagining the “Natural”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it in this way: …the most fundamental reality is the reality of the God who became human. This reality provides both the ultimate foundation and the ultimate 4 Romans 8: 15-17. 5 Galatians 3:28.

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For Bonhoeffer, there is only one reality; the ultimate reality of God’s selfrevelation in Christ. It is that which is ultimate. Everything else may be important, but it is always penultimate. Within such a frame “the natural” takes on a quite specific shape and form: the form of Jesus. Bonhoeffer’s concern was with the rise of Nazism and state initiated eugenics. Within such a context the term “natural” had become distorted into a tool to justify the taking of innocent life. Bonhoeffer proposed that we need to retrieve the gospel meaning of the term ‘natural.’ The natural, he argued, is that which, after the fall, is directed towards the coming of Jesus Christ. The unnatural is that which closes itself off from the coming of Jesus Christ. Life is an end in itself but also a means to a greater end which is the coming of Jesus.7 That which is natural is not simply that which is biological. The natural relates to the ways in which things relate to Jesus and God’s purposes for the world. What is natural is that which remains true to its divinely given vocation. Christian parents are natural, not because they are biologically equipped to have children, but because they have a calling to parenthood and a willingness to be faithful to that vocation. Children are best understood as gifts given to us in the Spirit, rather than possessions that are defined by their biological origins. In this way human adoption can be seen to be analogous with the divine adoption that Paul presents to us. Within such a frame, adoption is seen to take place within the sovereign realm of the Spirit; that place where the grammar of vocation and faithfulness are the primary modes of speech. If this is so, the dynamic of Christian parenting in all of its forms, has to do with responding faithfully to the calling to love the children that are gifted to us. Faithful parenting is thus natural parenting. 6 Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2009) Ethics. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress p. 223. 7 Within natural life, bodily life bears the intrinsic right to preservation “Bonhoeffer argues that human bodies; all bodies are created, are created and inherently valuable. He comments: ‘There is no worthless life before God, because God holds life itself to be valuable. Because God is the Creator, Preserver and Redeemer of life, even the poorest life before God becomes valuable, even the poorest life before God becomes a valuable life.’ Bonhoeffer does not want to romanticize the challenge caused by incurable genetic diseases. It must, however, not be seen as an attack on the existence of the community.” “the sick must not be treated as guilty.”

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4.1 Reclaiming the Vocation of Parenting In his reflections on Christian parenting Stanley Hauerwas makes an astute observation that helps to develop the observations presented thus far: The fundamental mistake regarding parenting in our society is the assumption that biology makes parents. In the absences of any good reason for having children, people assume that they have responsibilities to their children because they are biologically “theirs.” Lost is any sense of how parenting is an office of a community rather than a biologically described role. In contrast, Christians assume, given the practice of baptism, that parenting is the vocation of everyone in the church whether they are married or single. Raising children for Christians is part of the church’s commitment to hospitality of the stranger, since we believe that the church is sustained by God across generations by witness rather than by ascribed biological destinies. Everyone in the church, therefore, has a parental role whether or not they have biological children.8 Hauerwas’ focus here is not specifically on adoption. His point is intended as a commentary on parenting in general and the role of the Christian community in such a task. Nonetheless, in opening up the communal nature of parenting, Hauerwas de-emphasises the significance of biology for parenting. If parenting is principally a biological function its primary aim is simply to enable children to survive, to grow up and to have more children: to propagate the species. Within such a framework there is no need for God, neighbour or the Christian community other than as aids to help individual families look after their children simply for the sake of looking after their children. The general approach might be something like this: “our children are our children and we will do whatever we think is best for them!” Why? “Because they are our flesh and blood!” However, the Body of Christ is not held together by biological bonds of flesh and blood,9 but rather through Graceful movements of the Spirit that draw us into God’s heart and teach us how to live together as children of God: as disciples. Hauerwas reminds us of the way in which our adoption into such a divinely oriented and Spirit inspired family impacts upon the ways in which 8 Stanley Hauerwas (1995)Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 182. 9 Romans 8:9: “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.”

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Christians should come to perceive themselves as children and as parents. The biological process of bearing children is only one aspect of the overall vocation of parenting; a task, or perhaps better, a practice that is intended to be carried out by the whole of God’s people as they bear witness to the God who adopts. The problem with prioritising biological parents as the ideal or even as the norm is that it tempts us to think of children as personal possessions rather than purposeful gifts which have a divine goal and for whom we are communally responsible for. In “the world,” parenting is perceived as a personal skill carried out primarily by individuals or couples who bear “their own” children and who are solely responsible for “their own” children. In this world, the suggestion that someone’s adopted children are “not their own” and that adopting parents are “special people” because they care for “other people’s children” makes perfect sense. However, in the natural world of the Spirit, the place where Jesus reigns and where the people who comprise the Body of Christ seek to flourish together, it makes much less sense; in fact it makes no sense at all. 4.2 Parenting as Vocation The question then is not: what does it mean to be an adoptive parent as opposed to a natural parent, or what does it mean to be an adopted rather than a natural child. The key question is this: what is parenting for? The answer is deceptively simple: parenting is for the glory of God. It is not simply for the betterment of the species or the personal fulfilment of the parents. Parenting in its fullest sense is for Jesus. Put slightly differently, parenting is a vocation, that is, a particular form of God’s calling wherein men and women are called to care for and nurture children in ways that are designed to bring glory to God. A useful ally in pursuing this idea is Martin Luther and his theology of vocation. Luther’s doctrine of vocation was central to the Reformation’s teaching on the priesthood of all believers. The idea of the priesthood of all believers does not mean, at least for Luther, that the role of the minister/priest has been surpassed or replaced by the laity. Rather it means that the particular vocation of the minister is no longer considered to be the only or even the primary place where God’s work is done. The role of the ordained person is a distinct vocation. However, the role of the shoemaker, the nurse, the parent or the shop assistant are also vocations, that is, places within creation where God’s gracious providential love is worked out for the benefit of our neighbour. Luther’s intention inter alia, was to move the spiritual power of vocation away from the monastery and to relocate it in the everydayness of human life. The picture he offers is of a highly complex matrix of interacting human vocations all focused on glorifying God and manifesting the love of God towards our neighbours. As George Veith puts it:

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… God is graciously at work, caring for the human race through the work of other human beings. Behind the care we have received from our parents, the education we received from our teachers, the benefits we receive from our spouse, our employers, and our government stands God himself, bestowing his blessings.10 The multiplicity of vocations gives one’s individual and corporate life a sense of meaningful direction within which common purpose is carved out in a shared focus on the ongoing sanctifying work of God in Christ. Vocation is always for the benefit of the neighbour and is always viewed within the context of God’s redemptive movement in the world. Vocation is the matrix within which the Christian fulfils Christ’s injunction to love one’s neighbour (Matthew 12: 30-13). Though justification has nothing to do with good works, vocation does involve good works. The Christian’s relationship to God is based on sheer grace and forgiveness on God’s part; the Christian’s relationship to other people, however, is to be based on love. As Wingren puts it, “God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does.”11 Vocation then, is the physical location of sanctification; it is an act of grace designed to reveal the graciousness of God and the providential movements of creation. If Luther is correct, and if parenting is in fact a vocation, then faithful Christian parenting may include biological origins, but cannot be defined by them. Parenting is a particular form of witness to the God who adopts. Natural parenting is not determined by origins, but by faithfulness to the presence of God. Irrespective of how we come to receive our children, parenting has at its heart an intention and a desire to glorify God and to participate faithfully in the processes of redemption. As parents our vocation has to do with accepting the gift of children and helping to shape and form them into the kinds of people who will, over time, come to recognise the rhythms of the Spirit and understand their natural identity as children of God.

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Parenting for Jesus

All of this opens up Christian parenting in helpful ways and allows us to see more clearly the nature of adoption and adopting. If the primary object of parenting is to bear witness to the glory of the adopted God, then the particular 10 11

Gene E. Veith (1999) ‘By the Sweat of Our Brow.’ Modern Reformation. May/June 1999 Vol. 8 No. 3 Page number(s): 4-7. In Gustaf Wingren. (2009). Luther on Vocation. Evansville, IN: Ballast Press. p. 10.

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vehicle that initiates the vision of is not in and of itself particularly important. As my good friend Peter Neilson puts it in his reflections on church and mission: “we must never confuse the vision with the vehicle.”12 The vehicle is simply a mode of transport. It is the role that such a vehicle plays in the fulfilment of God’s imaginative vision – the Gospel – that is God’s joy and delight. If that is so, then parenting that is truly Christian does not require biological ties. Rather it requires faithfulness to the task and calling that parents are given. Our cultural imagination may inform us that biological family ties are of the utmost importance. However, our eschatological imagination, whilst always respectful of that particular way of doing family, shifts our thinking to embrace the fullness of God’s desire as it is embedded in the vocation of parenting. When we begin to think in such ways, the idea of a culture of adoption makes perfect sense. 5.1 Why Would I Look for My Parents? Parenting then is a vocation that transcends biology and pulls us graciously into the realm of the Spirit, a place where God calls parents, children and families to quite specific tasks. Having children is not an end in itself. Within the realm of the Spirit it is easy to imagine being loved. Christians belong to a culture of adoption within which we are called to counter a broader culture of abandonment that often rules supreme within our societies. Reclaiming the breadth and thickness of natural families is a step in the direction of faithfulness. I titled this paper Why would I look for my parents?: Living peaceably with the only family I have. I hope now that you might be able to see why I chose such a title. I wouldn’t look for my “natural” parents because I already know who they are. They are the couple who brought me up and introduced me to Jesus. What more can a parent do? So, I live very peaceably with my adopted family because they are my family in the deepest sense of the term; the only family I have ever had, the only family I have ever wanted. I can understand how and why people might not have the same sense of homefulness within their adopted families. I can understand the curiosity and desire to seek out one’s biological parents. But for me, biology isn’t really what makes the difference. As a parent there is no discernible difference between my youngest daughter who for some would be classed as our “natural” child and the others who have been gifted to us and now live in their natural home. Why would there be? They have all been gifted to us in different ways; they are all part of our mysterious but very natural calling. Different modes of delivery don’t determine levels of love. 12

Personal correspondence. December 2013.

Chapter 8

Why is Adoption Such a Difficult Choice? A Practical Theology Inquiry Dale P. Andrews

How do parents choose to become parents? The divine gift to co-create life, to know and share in families new capacities of mutuality and responsibility, is a deeply personal one though shared with and for humanity. Adoption shares in the divine formation of family life, empowered by the gift to parent life. Yet, the discernment to adopt is a far more communal or societal judgment than is typically the case for most entries into parenting. The motivations vary, but the power and discernment are spread among a cadre of authorities with critical judgment as their task. Perhaps we should encourage the gravitas that embroiders the decision to adopt. Becoming a parent by any means remains a daring decision. Trouble certainly comes when we enter it without healthy trepidation amid the joy. By extension, this inquiry explores the difficulties people experience that seemingly discourage or preclude the parenting choice of adoption. An array of research, literature, and recorded narratives already identify the issues shaping informed practices of adoption. The primary goal of this essay is to engage analytically with what theological criteria or critical dialogue people weigh in considering adoption. Practical theological methods of mutual correlational criticism guide this inquiry into the research question, “Why is adoption such a difficult choice?” Several years ago I had an opportunity to conduct a workshop on adoption at a seminary conference on family ministries. I elected to focus upon the possible tumult of adoption that the child might experience in any encounter of the adoption “moment.” The decision was not focused on any theatrics of workshop antics, but rather I sought to wrestle with the predominant attention directed typically, and appropriately most often, on the joyous success of the event, or the relief of the breakthrough. While our social services surrounding adoption clearly fathom the care needed in order to guide a fearful or angry child into a new home, one of my presuppositions for this workshop was that the understandable drive to joy displaces or overwhelms even our empathic efforts. All of the adoption “classes” or encounters I had experienced—from both sides of the process as a professional and pastoral care provider, as well as a prospective parent—seemed to move through this attention to the tumult

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of the event with little more than a nodding appeal or referral to treatment. In turn, this workshop would focus upon the potential trauma of the “joyous tumult” or “traumatized joy” of many adoption moments for children resisting or simply aware of the imposed transition. The oxymoron was, and is, intentional; an insight that to my surprise was dramatically lost on at least one person attending the workshop! I elected to show a clip from the movie, Losing Isaiah, based on a novel written by Seth Margolis, about an abandoned drug-addicted baby adopted by a social worker, Margaret Lewin. The selected scene was the devastating trip in a car’s back seat for the now toddler Isaiah as he was removed from his adoptive home for these few years of his life to be reunited with his birth mother, Khaila Richards, who was now doing well in recovery. The irony here of course was the transition out of an adoptive family and home and into a foreign household and birth family of origin. This stark paradox helps us to raise the critical questions of parent-child relations and family formation at the fulcrum of our theological inquiry. Perhaps the greatest irony was how little did I perceive that my wife and I would literally experience much of such an actual event just a few years later, only without the gentle ending the movie provides, per se. It was indeed a wrenching scene even for a workshop and yet still I was unprepared for the angry outrage from one of the attendees who charged that this was an abusive action in such a setting. After letting him expound freely until he felt he was fully heard. I responded by agreeing that it was indeed terribly overwhelming and then asking him and the group why might a workshop begin with such a disturbing experience. Why would a workshop on adoption begin with the trauma of transition, not to mention this chapter’s inquiry in kind? While I certainly do not wish to pathologize adoption, arguably most scenarios leading to adoption involve some trauma, oftentimes felt in dramatically different ways among the children, birth parents, intervening foster parents, and adoptive parents. The struggles with bonding, attachment, trust, vulnerability, passive resistance, and violent resistance in the loss, transition, and family development in adoption are well documented. Additionally, an upheaval of distrust in the very least lies in wait between the birth parents, adoption care providers, and adoptive parents even when all are seeking the welfare of the child. How we might understand the life experiences of each member in the “adoption circle” are critical to this investigation.1 We often lose sight of the intense, emergent, re-emergent, unanticipated, and protracted terms 1 Elinor B. Rosenberg, The Adoption Life Cycle: The Children and Their Families Through the Years (New York: Free Press, Macmillan, 1992), 5-6.

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of disruption or trauma for the child and parents across the various forms of adoption. The questions are many, even if confusion blocks articulation. Much of the adoption process is designed to protect the participants from having to face the pain or shame of the other, or expose our own. This observation is not an indictment of these adoption practices. Instead, the point is that the nature of our own trauma is not clean from guilt, fear, accusation, or duplicity. And though this protection is undoubtedly necessary, the word is out! Adoption seldom escapes trauma; nor does the need for care really relent, despite the eventual ebb and flow. Actually, the character of the trauma mutates even with emotional growth. Sometimes the best we can envision is for the mutations to defuse incrementally the degree of despair or debilitation. Elinor Rosenberg exposes that our cultures at times waffle between portraying the relinquishing birth parents as continual threats and the adoptive parents as exploiters. Society holds parental rights as natural rights, and therefore tolerates a good deal of dysfunction before discerning any required intervention. It helps adoptive parents to convene with social workers or agencies around the needs, neglect, or abuse the birth parents present. Frequently, the perceived threat, both real and contemplated, may only become latent even if seemingly removed. Alternatively, our society is suspicious and iconoclastic of adoption motives. In whose interests do adoptive parents operate? Debates vary between domestic and international interests, between adoptive parents’ emotional needs and exploitation, or between philanthropic commitment and enduring bonding, to name only a few. Even with parental rights vetted and appointed, adoptive parents live with the prospect of challenge to those rights, even if only emotionally or relationally. With both birth and adoptive entries into parenting, communal and even public accountability is necessary to safeguard the welfare of marginalized victims. Rosenberg examines the cycles of adoption for both sets of parents, respectively. She underscores that both sets of parents face lifelong developmental tasks. Legally coerced cessation of parental rights carries obvious struggles with rage or violation, even if acknowledging one’s own culpability. Alternatively the personal decision to relinquish parental rights typically incurs internal conflicts no less dreadful. The life-long effects of removing or relinquishing a child carry developmental tasks of acknowledgment, loss, mourning, recovery, and resolve. The dynamics of these developmental tasks are particularly taxing in that the trauma process is recurrent within each of the parents’ own successive life stages, that is within the respective normative tasks or dominant challenges prevailing in each psychosocial developmental stage of life and the concurrent parent relations.

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Similarly with adoptive parents, successive developmental tasks predominate within each stage of the adoption process; but here again even after successful family formation, the parents still wrestle with extraordinary relational threats or challenges. With the adoptive family these developmental changes converge between the psychosocial life stages of the child, the parents themselves, and the psychosocial family developmental stages. The recurrent emotional demands of bonding and attachment make the legal, political, and social wrangling rather overwhelming when your care really needs to be focused on the child’s experiences of the same. The bonding and attachment challenges involve core identity formation of self and others through developmental needs of belonging, which are derived from family identity and mutual communal care.2 Raising children is difficult enough without the relentless and recurrent issues adoption incurs in family life. The formation challenges of bonding, attachment, and belonging do not make adoptive families simply unique or gifted, but rather create disbelief that the adoptive family life is “natural.” The turn to spiritual family formation only confirms the disbelief and distrust. The language of natural family formation is difficult to employ here. Natural family formation suggests normative ordinal values—that is, birth parenting is the primary value with other forms of parenting falling in line thereafter. Certainly societal laws predicate and protect the natural rights of parental authority, along with strident laws increasingly seeking to protect the natural rights of child to nurturing home life free from harm. We therefore weigh critical demands of care against the rights of parenting. Even the available “choices” into parenting today face political rights and theological rights debates. The adoption choice does not escape the rather “unnatural” debates in the selection processes around placement of children by social agencies or even in “choosing” particular adoptive children. Choosing “which” child to adopt raises difficult theological challenges over divine agency in the gift of life for many would-be parents as it does in the natural rights of parenting for society. Religious traditions jump into the foray of parental rights and prohibitions, often proposing divine sanction for a natural order of creation and procreation within socio-religious constructions of family. The debates expand into religious sanction for marital and parental relations based in dogma of divinely elected natural order in creation. My point here is not to challenge marital or

2 Kenneth W. Watson, “Bonding and Attachment in Adoption: Towards Better Understanding and Useful Definitions,” in Families and Adoption, ed. by Harriet E. Gross and Marvin B. Sussman (New York: Haworth Press, 1997), 159-174.

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parental relations. Rather, the debates reflect the hegemonic dogma around both forms of relations creating a hierarchy of divinely sanctioned subjectivity of self-fulfilling “unnatural” partnering and parenting, if not condemnation. Much to my confusion, I once encountered through any apparent observation a “loving” adoptive parent, with birth children as well, for whom no matter how sure she was over her adoptive love, she unremorsefully confessed that her love for her birth child was simply more deeply rooted. The difference between her biological love and adoptive love was simply the truth of life for her and she attributed theological roots to this “spiritual truth.” If I may risk minimal privilege to explain her argument, this birth and adoptive parent felt her biological love was God’s intended natural love for mutuality and relatedness. The natural, and therefore spiritual, rootedness of biological parenthood was indeed reflective of God as parental Creator. The natural and spiritual source of this belonging provided the power to bond and attach, to remain in relationship through hardship, to gather a sense of selfhood and mutuality. If we reflect critically on these claims, I believe we find parallels in the extraordinary sacrifices persons make in pursuing medical options to become birth parents. Is there a spiritual drive to birth parenting? Women have taught that the biological experiences of pregnancy and birth are deeply ontological and spiritual. Literature reveals likewise for men the earnest drive for natural progeny involves an existential fulfillment of some seed legacy. Biblical literature seems to substantiate both accounts. Biblical figures desperately bemoan the barrenness of one’s womb or the impotence of one’s seed. The turn to adoption and surrogacy in biblical narratives often seek to fulfill these divinely sanctioned drives. Ironically there are occasions when these options reflect lapses of faith in the pursuit of natural fulfillment. We seldom pause long enough to reflect critically upon the injustice to others these biblical figures wreaked in pursuit of their own promised blessing. Others have tallied and studied rather well the biblical accounts of infertility, surrogacy, and divine intervention in both the natural order and adoption.3 We need not rehearse these accounts at length. Instead, what is at stake here is the natural and spiritual drives to parent. Clearly, I do not wish to create an alternative hierarchy of valued children to counter the aforementioned claims of a bifurcated birth-adoptive mother. Actually I would be less perplexed if she actually had indicated some enduring internal conflict. Parents of multiple biological children recognize the distinctive characters or distinguishing relationships they have with each of their 3 Cf. Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenges of Womanist God-Talk (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993).

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children. That a parent may feel more deeply connected with one child than another need not result in second-class citizenship in the family, nor a hierarchy of spiritual or emotional belonging. How we reconcile the differences may be through cognitive, emotional, and/or spiritual reflection. Parenting can feel quite unnatural and require continuous critical reflection to sustain some level of sanity, sobriety, or solicitude. I dare charge that in most cases the children should never learn such detailed differences from some misguided parental confession, unless family therapy requires some form of redress. In many cases the children eventually question it; and perhaps most sibling groups fathom it even if not warranted. For the conflicted parents, however, I am not sure either cognitive or emotive reasoning can be sustaining without theological criticism. How then do we reconcile our inadequacies to love effectively, to sustain our relatedness or mutuality among our children? This line of questioning seemingly inverts the insecurities of belonging that frequently preclude the adoptive choice for many persons. If theological criticism is needed to deal with different characters of bonding and attachment among one’s natural children, perhaps we gain insight into the distinctions persons make between biological and adopted children. We experience different forms or depths of relatedness to our children. The struggle is to resist placing ad valorem judgments between those relationships or persons. Our understanding of God’s love for us as children of God’s creation and people of faith shape our nature and aspirations in parental love. We face extreme difficulties to reconcile the relational differences our faith traditions construct with divine favor and election. In turn, notions of divine favor drive in us the character of our faithfulness to God, our Parent. Our own sense of being a child of God relies heavily upon the divine favor felt. To be sure our theologies resist any cognitive reasoning that would proffer God’s love is dependent upon the character of our own attachment or bond. Even with the human or natural drives to parent that claim divine sanction, most of our theologies hold that divine agency is a priori. Yet emotional and spiritual reasoning seem entangled in the confusion over our belonging to God and God’s own attachment or bond with us. The questions of belonging are therefore tied deeply to just whom we are to God or with God, as children of creation or as children of faith. Hence we weigh what is the nature of God’s impulse toward us. To translate the question more explicitly between biological and adoption drives, to what extent do the predominantly natural drives to biological parenting reflect of our divinely conceived humanity or otherwise preempt adoptive impulses? The birth of humanity is shrouded in God’s pleasure in being Creator and blessing creation; “it was good.” Createdness is our being. The creature “belongs” to the Creator only in so far as God’s being and desire for

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humanity defines our being. Is therefore our drive to create life from our very natural being part of our desire for relatedness, or part of our createdness? Does being and relatedness lead to bonding and belonging? What is the discerning distinction between natural bonding and developmental or relational bonding? Why do not the claims from adoptive parents that the adoption process bears parallel gestation to natural pregnancy and biological birth4 have greater traction in the discernment to adopt more broadly? The responses we glean relate the ontological and spiritual impulses for a relatedness tied intimately to our a posteriori experience within the Creator-created family. This argument of course assumes that the decisions to adopt for most persons are related either to satisfying the preemptive drive of fertility or to resolving its loss. At least one extraordinary strength of the adoption process is the incredible degree of critical reflection, intentionality, and perseverance it typically requires of the prospective parents. The biological path into parenting arguably lacks anything close to this required deliberation and scrutiny. The lack of an enforceable, requisite scrutiny to the biological path of parenting appears to be based in our natural and spiritual claims of individual human rights and divinely gifted free will. Theological claims upon fertility as divine blessing issue divine sanction and divine will as well. Despite the high stakes of liability and moral exigency to do no further harm, we should still ponder why the exigencies or moral responsibilities to scrutinize, grant, or deny adoption do not apply preemptively to biological parenting. This is a dangerous, slippery slope into natural and civic rights, no doubt. Still, natural questions of divine sanction and divine will consistently reemerge for the infertile, even biblically. Infertility becomes divine judgment or divine abandonment, by default if not intent. Many socio-cultural factors need to be considered in spiritual and folk values of fertility and infertility. However, at the roots, our theological constructions of “blessing-judgment” and divine “will-call” require our redress in more than just theologies of adoption, I propose. Can we redefine fertility theologically without destroying the gifts of createdness and the call to procreate, or perhaps better yet to co-create? It is not difficult to perceive that the drive to create life is deeply rooted in the very gift of created life. How is it that adoption does not fulfill the drive to create life? Is the theology of creation limited to biological procreation? The uncompromising drive to biological parenting seems to flow from some divine spark of life in relationship. Our fascination reflects a mystery of life as a gift of loving relations intrinsic to our createdness. And yet the uncompromising .

4 Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner, The Spirit of Adoption: At Home in God’s Family (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 45-56.

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exclusivity of that same drive seems to reflect a narcissism that may betray that divine gift. Being created creates a powerful bond itself. When adopted young children express some desire to be inside their mother or to be from their father’s legacy, do their desires indicate a theological relatedness of life that adoption cannot sustain? If adoption cannot acquire this spiritual or existential power, is the theological construct of charity adequate to the task? How does charity operate in bonding, attachment, and belonging? When I worked in residential clinical care for emotionally disturbed adolescents, charity was cause for distrust for many of the kids. Charity often lacked the power to create trust, to risk vulnerability because it lacked the assurance of relatedness. Our religious practices risk another potential impediment to trusting charity. We give predominantly from our disposable goods. Theologian Sally McFague argued publicly that philanthropy was not a problem. The problems lie more so from the theology and character of our philanthropy. If I understand her argument well, the questions we face in charity are in how we love and of what substance do we share. Frankly, do we love and share from our substance or from our disposables? Biblical teaching behind tithing may attempt to redress this question with the concept of our “first” tenth. Still we do not escape notions of the disposable fringe. With the commodification of biblical theology in the prosperity gospel, we give so that we may be blessed,… fourfold even. One ironic refrain I have heard in some church circles, when you might hesitate to accept a gift, is: “Don’t steal my blessing!” I would argue this perception is a distortion of God’s faithfulness, which in reality reduces God’s “empowerment to give” to an equation wherein God does not really bless, but is obligated to fulfill a contract. The challenge facing charity in a theology of adoption is the lack of vulnerability in our standing religious practices, wherein those receiving care are marginalized by the actual power and manipulation of giving, instead of sharing in relationship. Can charity on these terms be trusted outside of episodic crisis intervention? To what extent does Christian charity require presence, community, relatedness, creation, restoration, or transformation? Even in the transforming discovery when the giver claims to be changed by giving, what is recovered or revealed in sharing? Are the lives of the givers vulnerable to the receivers? If caritas is to be trusted, what does it create, or transform? Does the exchange of vulnerability and trust create covenantal relatedness, communitas? For exchange to be relational, persons’ narratives are transfigured. This mystery marks our encounters with God and the transfigured faith community through biblical narratives. We often learn about the power of narrative encounters from children. One religious educator explains that children enter into the role narratives of characters they encounter in life and in

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fantasy, constantly reworking the experiences of the narratives to incorporate their own experiences, challenges, or queries. Children reframe or re-create new worldviews and world orders into which they grow.5 The exchange may be a cross-cultural one perhaps in so far as they involve different worlds of identity and multiple roles; but more so, they involve both the micro-culture of one’s immediate experience and the mystical culture of the transforming experience. Do prospective parents lose sight of this powerful exchange of emergent narratives leading to reframing and transfiguration in family formation between the biological and adoptive? Is it possible that the creation of family in the often-cited creation narratives of Genesis is not narrow in framing procreative sexuality alone, configuring a golden standard? Admittedly the biblical creation narratives reflect the dominant, even normative, experiences of being created and called into relatedness? Human sexuality, family constructs, and human relations may have normative narratives, but these do not necessarily constitute divinely immutable meta-narratives. In other words, is it possible that the reconfiguration of biblical paradigms like the creation narratives or the covenantal narratives constitute also a transfiguration of our struggling relatedness to and under God, and our mutual partnerships continuously emerging with God? In constructing a theology of adoption, pastoral theologian Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner argues that the mutability of God is critical to understanding theological discourse in biblical revelation. Not only is God’s mutability important to Trinitarian formulae of God’s identity (who God is with us), but also demonstrates throughout human history that while God’s character might be immutable, how God is with us is not indifferent to the exchange of encounter, challenge, needs, and the vulnerability of humanity. God’s activity to reclaim or restore humanity in relationship transforms how God is with us and who we are. The biblical traditions of naming and renaming reflect the transfiguration of our relationship to God and with one another.6 Perhaps here we may learn from children’s active re-working and reframing role narratives. Renaming in the biblical narratives did not anathematize the name of one’s formation, but sought to illumine the transformation wrought by divine encounter and exchange. 5 Karen-Marie Yust, “Creating a Spiritual World for Children to Inhabit,” in Family Ministry: Empowering through Faith 18 no. 4, Winter 2004, 24-39. See also, Sandy Sasso, “The Role of Narrative in the Spiritual Formation of Children,” in Family Ministry 19, no. 2, Summer 2005, 13-25. 6 Stevenson-Moessner, 89-100.

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Cultures have reformed and transformed Christianity through the mutability of God to meet humanity in their narratives and reframe human narratives together. Ann Streaty Wimberly proposes the concept of story-linking wherein we pursue an exchange between our personal narratives and biblical narratives. The biblical narratives become fluid mirrors through which we can revision our narratives within a divine one. The exchange is aided by the experiences and exchanges of our ancestors, exemplars, and community. Systems of adoption and kinship in black family life and black churches reflect this exchange in what one pastoral scholar calls an “absorption mechanism.” Absorption practices have many vestiges re-creating and transfiguring family structures of mutuality to meet the exigencies of human life and meaning-making.7 In kind, Wimberly derives her story-linking process from African American liberation traditions and spiritual vocation transforming black life in identity, interpersonal relationships, and meaning-making8—and I would add transforming American Christianity, en route to transforming Western Christianity with other marginalized narratives. Perhaps adoption narratives are best seen within this paradigm of story-linking. Biblical traditions reflect this story-linking paradigm and hold particular significance for theology of adoption. For example, reconsider the creation account in Genesis 1. This creation narrative is preoccupied with the conditions, the material, and the paradox out of which God created—formlessness, emptiness, shapelessness, void, darkness and chaos. The second creation account in Genesis 2 depicts the barrenness of the earth and heavens out of which humanity would be formed and invited to name and co-create with God some order in the world. It is striking that the creation narrative of chapter 2 is very likely older than its counterpart in chapter 1. The first chapter reorders the nation of Israel’s understanding of God’s activity and sovereignty while in the midst of the Babylonian exile. The “newer” creation narrative of chapter 1 was written through the priestly sources of exile. Why not simply recount the creation origins of the established narrative (currently in Gen. 2) and move then to underscore their own national identity in divine election? Between the barrenness of the first narrative in chapter 2 and the chaotic formlessness of chapter 1, the attention of creation reverts back from the lost inheritance in exile to reframe again God’s activity of creation. Reframing, or story-linking, revealed new terms of God’s covenantal activity of creation and divine relationship 7 Wallace Charles Smith, The Church in the Life of the Black Family (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1985), 61-62. 8 Anne Streaty Wimberly, Soul Stories: African American Christian Education (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 35-48.

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with creation amidst the old covenantal narrative of creation. God’s character as Creator reaffirmed God’s sovereignty and divine promise in our created relation. The character of God’s activity and the character of God’s relationship to the people of God were not adequately rooted intrinsically in a covenant of election alone, but in a covenant of creation. What does this second creation narrative in Genesis 1 address that the first creation narrative in Genesis 2 did not do so for those persons living in exile? The message to the people of exile was that God creates out of the emptiness and barrenness. Moreover, the reframed creation narrative is not complete until humanity is called upon to co-create with God some order of life in creation. A story-link between the exilic conditions of life and divine creation reframes or establishes anew our role-narratives in our createdness or relatedness. Jon Levenson sheds some light on this notion of re-covenanting from Israelite history into a nation of God, and even then a remnant from exile. Like with the creation narratives in Genesis, a newly created covenant does not reject the preceding covenant, or even make the preceding covenant foreign or inconsequential. So the activity of God and God’s desires for humanity as revealed in the Mosaic covenant are not discarded under the revelations of divine activity and divine relationship in the Davidic covenant; and the same dynamic continues within the covenantal restoration of the remnant. However, the covenant narratives do expand, reorient, and even recondition divine activity and relationship without necessarily requiring the conflation of the covenants into one new single covenantal revelation. In essence the unfolding revelation of new covenants reaffirm the revelations of the preceding covenant even when reorienting and revealing yet a radically re-constructive revelation.9 The dynamic relevance then is that the new covenant is no less intrinsic to the original will of God than the preceding one, and the revelation of divine activity is not undone by a new covenant that both restores and transforms our lives in new directions. Nor does the new covenant simply reveal something previously hidden. It transfigures the relationships. In short, biblical history of revelation in covenantal creation narratives reflects the story-linking narrative activity suggested by Wimberly in formation of personhood or peoplehood—and, for our purposes here, family formation. Story-linking picks up where the narrative has been broken, exiled, found barren, or chaotically distorted. I propose for our critical reflection that storylinking could become a form of pastoral ritualization10 that both serves and 9 10

Jon D. Levenson, Sinai & Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1985), 187-217. See Elaine Ramshaw, Ritual and Pastoral Care (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987).

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itself reflects the transfiguration of the adoption choice and adoption family formation, and therefore also the transfiguration of biological family formation, not forsaken, in the exigencies and meta-narratives of life shaped in relationship with a wonderfully steadfast but mutable God. To argue a hierarchy of divinely preferred, normative family formation actually distorts the creative or re-creative capacity of God and our relationship to God and therefore one another. The transfiguration of story-linking reflects a theology of restoration and transformation that holds together, without an ordinal hierarchy, the unfolding creative divine activity of God revealing, reordering, restoring, reconstructing, re-creating, and yet no less re-presenting and representing God’s perfect will and desires for humanity—a being, bonding, attaching, and belonging theology of transfiguration in restoration and transformation— A Practical Theology of Adoption.

Chapter 9

Identity and the Adoption Triad William R. McAlpine

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Introduction

Much of the reflection and research that has gone into this chapter has been informed by the privilege my wife and I have had in adopting our first two children. Our eldest son and only daughter, who came to us through adoption, have not only been the source of unspeakable joy, they have taught me so much about so many issues and I am so grateful to and for them both. Therefore there is a significant autobiographical dimension to what follows in this paper which justifiably may cause one to question whether or not objectivity in this project has been compromised. What I have come to realize and accept is the fact that having the privilege of being both adoptive and biological parent does not qualify me as an expert on adoption, nor parenting for that matter. My occasional lack of patience with those who don’t share the identity of adoptive parent, but who nonetheless speak as an authority on the basis that they have ‘done the research,’ needs tempering from time to time. I have been prone to think that their lack of personal, experiential knowledge has distanced them from the ethos and pathos of adoption and that this distance serves as a major liability that limits the legitimacy of their contribution to the discussion. Such thinking belies an underlying absence of what John Swinton and Harriet Mowat identify as an integral part of any qualitative research, namely reflexivity. They describe it as follows: Reflexivity is the process of critical self-reflection carried out by the researcher throughout the research process that enables her to monitor and respond to her contribution to the proceedings.1 Expanding further they cite the work of C. Willig who writes:

1 John Swinton and Harriet Mowat. Practical Theology and Qualitative Research (London: SCM Press, 2006), 59.

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McAlpine Personal reflexivity involves reflection upon the ways in which our own values, experiences, interests, beliefs, political commitments, wider aims in life and social identities have shaped the research. It also involves thinking about how the research may have affected and possibly changed us, as people and as researchers.2

My immersion in the adoption experience, if not harnessed by intentional personal reflexivity may prove as intrusive as any researcher’s lack of personal experience. I have much to gain from listening to those who embrace different views and who represent different stories. One of the purposes of this chapter, then, is to broker a conversation between perspectives enshrined in the social sciences (identity theory in particular) and those of us whose homeland is in Practical Theology, believing that both disciplines have much to learn from each other.

2

Social Identity Theory

A description of social identity that comes close to oversimplification is a person’s self-awareness based upon the group(s) of which he or she is a member. On the global level I am a member of the human race. Nationally, I am a Canadian. On the provincial level I am an Albertan and more specifically, in certain contexts, I would emphasise the fact that as an Albertan, I am not from Edmonton, but from Calgary! However, I am not a native-born Albertan from Calgary. In fact I am not even a native born Canadian. Born to missionary parents in what was at the time of my birth called French Equatorial Africa, today known as Chad, I possess a birth certificate that identifies me as a “Canadian citizen born abroad.” The family into which I was born consisted of my parents, George and Frances, an older sister, Francette and an older brother, Bruce. At age seventeen I made a personal choice that ushered me into a group known as Christ followers. The list of groups into which I have been born or have drifted or chosen to be a member could be extended beyond what is helpful to this paper. These could include gender, age, decade, sexual orientation, athletic team loyalties, political persuasions, religious or moral convictions, eye colour or blood type, even down to a group known as cancer survivors. For the first sixteen years of my life the most important group of which I was a member, hands down was the family into which I was born. The vast majority of decisions I made were influenced by my social identity as a member of 2 Cited in Swinton and Mowat, 59-60.

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the McAlpine family. Following a major crossroad during the seventeenth year of my life, life decisions began to pass through the matrix of my commitment to and faith in Christ. At age twenty-four my life was profoundly changed and immeasurably enriched when I took Heather as my bride. My identity was altered from single to married. For the first five and a half years of our marriage, my wife and I were members of a group some social scientists chose to identify as ‘duel-income, no kids,’ the acronym for which became affectionately and unfortunately known as ‘DINK’s’! Our social identity as members of that particular group was fine and acceptable – for a while. Most of our close friends shared the same membership. But soon, according to the rhythm of the accepted norm, our friends began to enjoy the arrival of children, while we did not. They were now members of a group while we were not. Yet our desire for membership in that group, known as parents began to grow deeper and stronger, but apparently with little hope of being fulfilled. As a young pastor I began to question my call or suitability for pastoral ministry; how could I, without children, be expected to minister to families within our congregation?3 After close to five years as members of the ‘married without children’ group we explored the possibility of adoption and within less a year and the typically long convoluted process, we were blessed with the privilege of adopting our first son. And so began the journey that has led up, in a very real sense, to the writing of this paper. What I have attempted to demonstrate in this personal chronicle is that social identity to a large degree is fluid. Life changes as do we. Yet in the midst of this flux there are a few lynchpin group memberships, as it were, that change very little, some never. The focus of this paper is what I would argue is the primal group membership that is central to the self-identity and social identity within the human race, namely, the parent/child, and specifically, as pertains to adoptees. The advancement of social identity theory has been tied largely into the work of social psychologist, Henri Tajfel. His ground-breaking work Social Identity and Intergroup Relations4 was influenced to a significant degree by the fact that as one from Polish-Jewish descent he lost several family members and friends during the Holocaust, 1939-45 and was driven to pursue the question “How is genocide possible?” He concluded that people construct their own 3 Henning Thießen’s insightful reflections on Pannenberg’s comment that a married couple was an end in itself even without bearing and rearing children are extremely helpful on this point. 4 Henri Tajfel. Social Identity and Intergroup Relations. (London: Cambridge University Press, Reissue edition), 2010.

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personal self-identities from their group memberships. What membership in a group offers an individual is a sense of belonging and therefore self-worth. But not only is our self-esteem influenced by our group memberships, often our behaviour is as well. Parents’ concern that their children not hang out with those who may be lazy or have an appetite for violence can be quite easily sustained by social identity theory. We become like with whom we identify and associate. Many children have been told in no uncertain terms “This family does not behave that way, believe that way, or even support that party.” Drawing parallels between the experiences of Holocaust survivors and adoptees is not the intent here. Rather I wish to demonstrate how an understanding of social identity theory can provide a vehicle for appreciating some of the challenges encountered by all members of the adoption triad particularly with respect to identity formation. In Tajfel’s social identity theory there are three mental processes involved in determining which group we belong to and/or identifying who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out.’5 The first phase is categorization in which we use social categories such as black, white, Jewish, Muslim, Christian etc., in an attempt to better understand a given social environment. Within the world of adoption we find the same; relinquished and adopted child, birth child, adoptive parent, birth parent, each with identifiable attributes that sets them apart from others. The second phase is identification in which we identify the categorized group in which we see ourselves belonging. For the adoptee this evolves as a process or gradual awareness. One of the ways in which we identify with any given group is by taking on behaviour patterns appropriate to that group. For example certain religious groups have specific times set aside each day for prayer or other rituals. Some live by designated dietary limitations. A devout Muslim, for instance, will always pray at designated times of the time; an orthodox Jew or dedicated Adventist will never eat pork. It is at this stage that Tajfel’s social identity theory breaks down somewhat with respect to the social identity of adoptees for the simple reason that it is very difficult, if not impossible to identify behaviours that are seen universally as germane to any member of the adoption triad – birth parent, adoptee or adoptive parent. No one has successfully and convincingly demonstrated that there are any identifiable behaviours or patterns in which an adoptee always or never engages.

5 Saul A. McLeod’s article “Social Identity Theory” has provided a excellent and accessible summation of Henri Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory. See Saul A. McLeod. (2008). Simply Psychology; Social Identity Theory. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/ social-identity-theory.html.

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The third phase is social comparison. Once a person has identified or categorized themselves as a member of a specific group the tendency is to engage in comparison with other groups. Barensten observes, “Social identities take place through social comparison, which often center on stereotyped or “prototypical” representatives of these groups.”6 The maintenance of self-esteem is contingent upon our group comparing favourably with other groups. It is at this point that rivalry and prejudice often comes into play. Competing identities often result in competition even hostility between various groups. As McLeod underscores, “… in social identity theory the group membership is not something foreign or artificial which is attached onto the person, it is a real and vital part of the person.”7 Tajfel believes a person’s self-perception is directly influenced by the group(s) to which she or he belongs. Thinking along these lines I asked a number of adoptees the following “If you were asked to complete the statement, ‘If you wanted to really who I am you need to know…’ would your adoption be a part of that?” A very close friend of mine responded with “Absolutely! In fact my adoption is something I have always been proud of.” What I found in conversation with other friends or adopted children of friends, however, is that such is not always the case.

3

Social Identity and the Adoption Triad

3.1 The Adoptee: What’s Normal, Anyways? Identity has two significant dimensions, as it were, that have the capacity either to enhance or undermine each other. The one reflects a person’s own attempt to construct a self identity, that is, becoming the person they choose to be. The other is what is often referred to as a person’s social identity, which in large part, is constructed for the person through the decisions of others and life circumstance. Career/occupation, education, life partner, or recreational activities would come under the rubric of self-identity since in the majority of cases they would represent choices an individual makes by and for one’s self.8 This would be so particularly in the majority of cultures in the Global North that function under the hegemonic dominance of the autonomous individual. 6 Jack Barensten. Emerging Leadership in the Pauline Mission. (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2011), 11. 7 Saul A. McLeod, “Social Identity Theory,” 3. 8 I recognize that there are many instances in which a person’s education, career, and perhaps even life partner are highly influenced if not determined by significant others. For some this grows out of cultural assumptions, be that ethnic or familial culture.

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Membership in a particular clan, tribe or specific family, on the other hand, occurs as a result of one’s birth. The adoptee, in addition to the parents whose sexual union brought her into this world, has another set of parents who have extended ‘radical hospitality’ through adoption, providing another social unit to which they belong. “The relinquished and adopted person has two sets of parents that have to do with the formation of the person.”9 The choices of relinquishment and adoption were entirely beyond the realm of the adoptee’s prerogative or volition, yet they comprise arguably one of the most salient features of his/her social identity. The adoptee has done nothing whatsoever to deserve relinquishment or adoption. Circumstance and the choices of others have affected these realities. David Kirk’s insightful description of adoption as an ‘involuntary migration’ is well put.10 A person’s identity is seldom if ever tied up solely in one’s self but is rooted in the familial community in which one is raised. For the adopted person, there is another dimension of identity that lies outside the domain of ‘immediate family.’ Even though an adopted person has been embraced and fully accepted into full membership in a given family, a family into which they were not born, for many adoptees there remains this nagging reality that there also are two persons, the ones who gave them birth who could not see fit to keep and raise them in their family. The degree to which this issue ‘nags’ will vary from person to person. The manner in which a person becomes a member of a family, whether adoption or blood line, does not represent the sum total of a person’s identity. But to say that it is, therefore, inconsequential is to diminish the significance of a key element of an adoptee’s identity. The reality is that an adoptee is someone’s child raised by another. Thus for the adoptee the issue of identity does not revolve solely around who am I, but also asks, whose am I? The adopted child has become a part of the ‘in group’ that is they have become socially identified with their adoptive family, but for some the lingering difference that still undeniably sets them apart, even within the ‘in group’ presents a challenge to their own sense of personal identity. The fact that their existence is not the result of the sexual union of the people they call ‘Mom and Dad’ but instead two other people they may or may not even know has the potential for some disconnect, leaving some to work through what it means in their own minds to be ‘normal.’ Something shared by both the adopted child and the blood child is that they are both members of an ‘in-group’ that is, their family, by virtue of someone else’s choice. Unlike the choice to join a church fellowship, mosque, or 9 10

Nydam, 59. Cited in Noy-Sarav, 187.

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synagogue, or to declare one’s support for a football club or political party, membership in and, therefore, identity with a family is something which we all become aware of gradually. However, the adoptee’s social identity involves a compound familial membership.11 Our eldest son used to express his struggle with what he perceived to be his abnormality. On more than one occasion he vented his frustration with “If my birth dad had not taken off and my birth mom had not had to give me up for adoption, then I would be normal!” Likewise our daughter on one particular instance during her junior school days said to me “I wish I had just been born to you.” We often are tempted to soften the awareness of reality by couching the adopted child’s position or identity within the family with expressions such as ‘you are a special child,’ or ‘Mom and Dad got to choose you.’ Obviously in the context of a blended family that includes both adopted and biological children such statements need to be dropped into conversations with utmost discretion or, better still, jettisoned altogether lest the blood child be given cause to think she is less than special or that his parents were stuck with him rather than choosing them. 3.2 Identity and the Adoptive Parent Adoption also represents an identity issue for the adoptive parent(s); this is not strictly a paedo-centric issue or concern. This is particularly so for the parent or couple who have had their inability to conceive medically confirmed and for whom adoption, therefore, is more than an altruistic effort to extend hospitality to a child who would otherwise be without a home. There is as much legitimate need in their lives being fulfilled through adoption as there is for the child. And for both child and parents, identity has been affected. The child will now be identified by that critical group of which they have become a part, that is, their family. Prior to adoption, the parents’ identity included the fact that they were childless. Adoption has now rendered them parents. 3.3 Identity and Birth Parents in the Adoption Triad For too long birth parents who placed their children up for adoption were treated more or less ghost partners in the adoption process. Some, of course much preferred this arrangement. It is not difficult, however, to demonstrate that the vast majority of research has focused on the adoptee and the adoptive parent. Where it did attend to birth parents it landed primarily on legalities 11

Another realm in which the complexities of a compound social identity merit careful attention beyond what this paper can provide is located in the demographic of children in blended families in which divorce and remarriage has occurred.

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such as custodial rights, consent and access. Historically, women who placed their children into the care of others by choice or force were basically left to carry on life as though the pregnancy and birth had never happened, forcing them to pretend it was not a piece of their personal identity puzzle. How tragic! More recently scholarship has turned its attention to the role of the birth parent in the adoption process beyond procreation.12 However, more work has yet to be done in the area of self-identity issues confronted by parents who relinquish their children for adoption.

4

Identity, Stigma and Loss

Much of humanity still has a difficult time overcoming the stigma attached to difference on many planes including race, politics, age or gender and the discrimination that all too often accompanies it. Stigmatization on any level has the potential to change the nature of a person’s social identity. Adoptees and adoptive parents are also faced with the challenge of a stigmatized identity that can come from a variety of sources, external and internal. One couple who had the privilege of adopting three girls identified what they called ‘blood-line conceit’ even within their own family circle. Although never stated explicitly due to the restraints of political and social correctness, nonetheless my wife, as an adoptive Mom encountered insinuations that she was not a real Mom since real motherhood involved carrying a child through to delivery and birth.13 In a similar way our daughter had to deal with the perception of one of her classmates in Bible School that her brother (one of our two biological children) was not her ‘real brother’ since she was adopted. I recall the joy of taking our new-born adopted son for the first time to the weekly prayer meeting of the church where I served as pastor. Amidst the joy and celebration expressed by those we were privileged to shepherd and who loved us as a family there was one expression in prayer for which I was not prepared. One of the dear senior ladies in our group in her prayer for us and

12

13

See for example, Ann Stanton’s chapter “Adoption Law and Controversies” in Timothy P. Jackson, The Morality of Adoption (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), 246-261; Ronald J. Nydam. Adoptees Come of Age. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999). Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner in The Spirit of Adoption (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003) is one of the few who addresses the emotions of the birth parents specifically. One adoptive parent was told by a friend of hers that she had her children ‘the easy way,’ that is by adoption!

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our son prayed “And Lord we pray he will not give Pastor Bill and Heather any trouble.” Any trouble? I had never heard that expressed in any previous prayer for any other new born! Was this a prayer based on an assumption characteristic of my parents’ generation that anticipated that adopted children were typically more likely to be “troubled kids”? Although there are some studies that would suggest that adopted children tend to have more challenges in a variety of areas from identity formation to social and interpersonal relationships, one has to be careful to consider the fact that with any adoption there are numerous aspects that factor in to how adoptions those involved. “The construct of identity stands at the interface of individual personality, social relationships, subjective awareness, and external context.”14 What Neil found in her research was that children placed as infants appeared to be better equipped cognitively and emotionally to deal with life issues later on including social and personal identity.15 She also found that attachment to adoptive parents faced fewer challenges among infant adoptions. As in any realm of research, exceptions to these tendencies can be found. Adoptive parents who, for whatever reason, have been denied access to accurate or complete information regarding their child’s familial or medical background are placed in the awkward position of not being able to answer questions raised by their child. This in turn can and sometimes does foster a strained relationship between adoptee and adoptive parent. Furthermore, adoptees have been found to respond differently to the acquisition of the same kind of information making it difficult to determine how much influence a person’s adoption history can or will in fact have on his or her social or personal identity. A piece of personal history information that surfaced on numerous occasions among surveyed adoptees related to the reason for the relinquishment and adoption.16 Responses to this kind of information varied and provided little grounds on which to identify patterns or predictability with respect to identity issues. For instance, for some adopted adults knowing that their birth parents were very young or dealing with emotional or other personal issues during pregnancy or around the time of their birth made relinquishment and placement easier to accept and less a matter of personal rejection or abandonment. Others, however, found this knowledge more difficult to process and even reported a lower self-esteem as a result. Some adopted adults also talked 14 15 16

Dorit Noy-Sharav. “Identity Concerns in Intercountry Adoption-immigrants as Adoptive Parents.” Clinical Social Work Journal. Vol. 33 No. 2 Summer 2005. Neil, “The reasons why children are placed for adoption.” Child and Family Social Work (2000), 5, 311. Neil, 310-11.

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about experiencing concern over whether or not any mental health issues or addiction their birth parents struggled with may become a part of their own personal identity as well. Unfortunately too many adoptees find themselves in the unenviable position of feeling they have to justify their adoption, which is tantamount to being asked to justify their existence! As Elsbeth Neil points out, “Being adopted adds a layer of ‘difference’ to one’s identity and explaining this difference is difficult without adequate information.”17 However, the acquisition of that information does not always result in happy resolution especially when it collides with previously held fantasies. Triseliotis,18 for instance, discovered that among the adult adoptees interviewed a number who discovered they had been born out of wedlock experienced a sense of shame or inferiority believing they were illegitimate. Most wanted to know that they had been relinquished and adopted due to circumstances beyond the control of the birth parents. Thus others who discovered that their birth parents were married at the time of their adoption had to deal with deep feelings of rejection or abandonment, since it would appear there was no good or pressing reason for their relinquishment. Most adoptees have also possessed images of what they think or hope their birth mom was like in the hope that she was attractive, intelligent, perhaps athletic or artistic, maybe a musician. When the reality of who their birth mother was failed to live up to the image hoped for, the self-esteem of the adoptee not uncommonly suffered. Yet despite the fact that many adoptees reported being shocked or confused upon the acquisition of this kind of information and the fact that integrating this new knowledge with their previous dreams and hopes proved more challenging than imagined, the majority considered the pursuit and acquisition of the truth more important and compelling than the mystery of not knowing. This information enabled them to craft their self and social identities, to tell their story with integrity. Frequently, relinquished and adopted persons have difficulty in seeing any logical link between a mother’s love for the child and her willingness to give the child up for adoption. Thus the sanitized, perhaps more palatable term, relinquishment, still seems more like abandonment, which is something no loving person would do to another, right? Some quietly, some not so quietly think along the lines of, ‘true love would have found a way to keep me – somehow.’ Yet the exact opposite is true for others. My friend, Dave, for instance, who was adopted when he was approximately four months old was motivated

17 18

Elsbeth Neil., 304. Cited in Neil, 304.

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to find his birth mother primarily, if not solely so he could thank her for caring enough to place him in the care of a couple who could and did love and provide for him. 4.1 Identity and Self-Worth The development of an adopted person’s self-identity often reflects a degree of fantasy due to the fact they do not have all the information about their beginning and are thus left to imagine. This is particularly so in the case of an adoption in a closed system. “Clarity about one’s identity makes for smoother sailing in life. But for the relinquished and adopted person, such clarity is hard to come by because some of the primary sources of identity may be unavailable for useful internalization.”19 In other words, how can one assemble one’s identity without access to all the pieces?20 Where questions remain unanswered, particularly as it pertains to self knowledge and social identity, the human mind, rather than tolerating such data gaps will fantasize in an effort to complete the puzzle. It is not uncommon for such fantasies to lead the adoptee to the conclusion that they are of little or less value. This connection between identity and personal worth is an element that cannot be ignored since for most of us they are intricately interwoven. Historically this was part of the rationale behind secret or closed adoptions, orchestrated in a manner that ostensibly was intended to protect the child from the shame associated with their birth, that is, if the birth was out of wedlock. Unfortunately in many cases the result was a reverse affect. Rather than minimizing or concealing, it exacerbated a sense of shame in the adoptee. Nydam says it well: If parents are primary sources of identity, as well as self-esteem, and if adoptees are faced with little information about birth parents except the negative fragments of information that often accompany a relinquishment story, then we can understand why adoptees face serious struggles in identity formation.21 One adoptee struggled with a disconcerting degree of uncertainty around the question if my birth mom gave me up, what guarantee do I have that those who adopted me won’t do the same? Such a concern understandably undermines the potential for a strong sense of trust and therefore belonging for the 19 20 21

Nydam, 55. Nydam, 56. Nydam, 57.

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adoptee, which in turn, provides rather unstable footing on which to develop a social identity. In light of this, Nydam observes: Therefore, adoptees and adoptive parents may be at a disadvantage from the beginning in terms of bonding and attachment. If so, then the process of identity formation for the relinquished and adopted child may be incomplete, compromised by difficulties in trusting the new arrangement of the adoptive family.22 Adoptees may have to deal not only with their own insecurity but also with that of their adoptive parents, who like themselves may also struggle with identity issues. This kind of insecurity may manifest itself in a couple of ways. One, they may be so intent in proving themselves to their adopted child as being more than capable parents that they overindulge in the provision of ‘things.’ A second way this insecurity may be played out is to swing out on the overprotective side of the pendulum, fostered in part by a latent fear that the child’s birth parent may someday arrive on the scene intent on retrieving their relinquished child or that the child may want to leave on her own. This, of course, is not limited to adoptive parents. Parents of their own progeny can indulge in the same excesses generated by similar insecurities. The sense of loss an adoptee often and understandably experiences through the awareness of relinquishment is not unique to the child in the adoption triad. Birth parents who relinquish their children obviously report an emptiness or sense of profound loss as do adoptive parents who go through the relinquishment of the anticipation and hope of bearing children. Infertility is a significant piece of the adoptive parents’ identity. Unfortunately we in the Christian community have not entirely removed ourselves from the mind-set that considers infertility a shame, if not a curse. As mentioned above, historically pregnancies out of wedlock have been maintained as well guarded secrets and often the subsequent adoptions were as well. One of evidences that our Western culture is moving far beyond this is the production of a reality television show that features during prime-time viewing called ‘16 and Pregnant.’ The broadcast follows the life of a different teenage girl each episode during the last few months of her pregnancy. It is interesting to note that by far the vast majority of young women featured in the show chose to keep their child with only one or two electing to consider adoption. The fact that a pregnancy, typically unplanned, has occurred outside or

22

Nydam, 58.

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marriage in the life of a young woman who has yet to complete her high school carries little or no shame. Adoption, on the other hand, is clearly presented as a last resort, leaving one with the impression that the choice to place a child in the care of an adoptive family is the less desirable option.

5

Identity Beyond Cultural Lines

Noy-Sharav identifies some of the challenges and complexities faced by parents who enter the world of international adoption that I would argue are not unique to the international scenario. For example, “In addition, the parents have to overcome their own initial hindrance to bonding with a child who is not their own flesh and blood, and who is different from them in his external appearance and probably also in various genetic traits and abilities.”23 Although physical/racial differences may not be apparent in some adoptions, the adoptive parents still faces the potential challenge of bonding with the child regardless of ethnic or cultural differences. The challenges of social identity experienced by those who are adopted across cultural and ethnic lines can and often are more acute. Adoptive parents who extend ‘radical hospitality’24 to children from other countries must be prepared, not only to allow their children to pursue as full a comprehension of their background as possible, but to do everything within their power to assist them. Part of identity within a family group, of course is physical resemblance. An impressive amount of research and scholarship has been produced that addresses such related issues as the impact of inter-racial adoption on a person’s sense of personal identity.25 “Cultural background is not just history, it defines a person.”26 One of my friends and colleagues I am privileged to work with is a member of the Plains Cree Nation, one of the many First Nations within Canada. 23 24 25

26

Noy-Sharav, 182. John Swinton. Raging with Compassion: Pastoral Responses to the Problem of Evil. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2077), 205-210. See, for instance, Celia Beckett. “The importance of cultural identity in adoption: A study of young people Adopted from Romania.” Adoption & Fostering Vol. 32 No. 3, 2008, p. 9-22; Helena Grice. “Transracial Adoption Narratives: Prospects and Perspectives.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism April, 2005, Vol. 5 Issue 2, p. 124-148; Tony Xing Tan and Michael J. Nakkula. “White Parents’ Attitudes Towards Their Adopted Chinese Daughters’ Ethnic Identity.” Adoption Quarterly, Vol. 7 (4), 2004, p. 57-76. Ronald J. Nydam. Adoptees Come of Age. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), 61.

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In conversation with him on one occasion I mentioned our daughter was part Métis. He was very quick to correct me by saying, “Your daughter is Métis, not part-Métis. We don’t have ‘half-breeds’ among First Nations people.” Assigning a fractional element to an Aboriginal person’s identity (“she is half Cree” or “he is a quarter Mic Mac”) is a white man’s imposition on a First Nation person’s social identity. Both of our children who came to us by adoption have an ethnic dimension to their personal heritage of which they are both proud and should be. My wife and I have not contributed to that dimension of their social identity. Yet one of our roles as their parents is to encourage them to embrace the totality of their social identity with no shame. As Dorit Noy-Sharav has insightfully observed: So it seems there may be a certain conflict between honoring the child’s right to keep a link with his heritage and honoring his right to feel safe and to belong. Parents have to deal with these issues with sensitivity and empathic attention to the child’s needs at different stages of his development.27 The opposite of this approach is what has been labelled as the ‘melting pot.’ This is not a recent idea but has been imposed on many people throughout history. The book of Daniel in the Old Testament provides a prime example in the lives of three young men from Judah who were included among the captured and deported Israelites by powerful nation Babylon. These men received education in the language and literature of the Babylonian nation and trained for three years for entrance into the service of Nebuchadnezzar. A key aspect of this complete immersion into the melting pot of Babylonian culture was the replacement of their birth names Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah to Babylonian names Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego respectively (Daniel 1:1-7). In essence, every effort was made on the part of the Babylonian powers to eradicate the history of their captives and replace it with a new and exclusively Babylonian identity. In more recent days changes in political and professional views regarding immigration have fostered a shift in emphasis from assimilation (melting pot) to integration, particularly in jurisdictions such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.28 It is not difficult to demonstrate that similar or

27 28

Dorit Noy-Sharav. “Identity Concerns in Intercountry Adoption-immigrants as Adoptive Parents.” Clinical Social Work Journal. Vol. 33 No. 2 Summer 2005, 181. Noy-Sharav, 186.

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parallel adjustments in thinking regarding the world of adoption have also occurred. What is clear, however, is that on both sides of the Atlantic concerns regarding the development of healthy social identities have lead towards a greater openness in terms of information and even contact between the various parties in an adoption triad. Longitudinal research on the effects of various degrees of openness is developing but remains limited and inconclusive as this point.29 Yet in Western culture we are not that far removed from the time when closed adoptions were the norm and, for all intents and purposes, when the melting pot prevailed. In such cases adoptees were denied access to key aspects of their personal and social identity and were left with the impression that the person through whom they entered this world was to be forgotten and replaced. Mercifully such mind-sets are changing. “In order for the adoptee to develop an internal sense of self that is good, lovable, and stable enough to endure conflict and strong enough to cope with derogative attitudes from the outside, she needs the support and acceptance of her adoptive parents.”30 5.1 Name and Identity For the majority of cultures on planet earth, children are named on purpose! Fads or trends impose little or no influence on name selection, except, that is, more and more in Global North or Western families. A name not only identifies a person so as to distinguish him or her from others, it also intentionally establishes a link between that person and a history and culture or it may express a sincere desire, prayer or wish of the parents on behalf of the child. Names have meaning and they represent more than a moniker or tag; they represent the identity of that person. Being cognizant of and sensitive to the culture into which a child has been born is one simple yet very significant way in which adoptive parents can assist their child’s identity formation. By honouring such a significant piece of the child’s puzzle they may well defuse some of the unnecessary and often disconcerting mystery inherent in many adoptees discovery of the reality of who they are.

6

Adoption and Identity through a Theological Lens

What theological implication does this have, if any? For the Christian, the whole adoption motif provides an extraordinary window into what it means to 29 30

Elsbeth Neil. “The reasons why children are placed for adoption.” 305. Noy-Sharav, 182.

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be adopted by the God who created us in the first instance. There are few if any images of the Fall of humanity more vivid than the separation of a child from his/her mother through relinquishment. The consequence of the entrance of sin into human history was felt by Creator and creation alike. God identifies with all three principle players in an adoption – the parent who relinquishes His son; the son who is relinquished, and the parent who adopts a child. As a Christian my identity is deeply embedded in the fact that I am an adopted child. That is where I must begin. The apostle Paul underscores this wonderful fact three times in his writings (Eph. 1:5; Rom. 8:15 and Gal. 4:4-5). I have moved from being an outsider, one who did not belong, to one who has been embraced fully as a child of God to the point of being made a joint heir with Christ himself. A major difference between this relation and the one I have with our adopted children is that I had a choice in accepting or rejecting God’s offer to adopt me as his own child; our children did not. We made that choice for them. Furthermore the difference between our adoption as children of God and the experience of an adoptee on the human plane is that whereas in the latter, a child is embraced by a family outside that primal relationship of birth mother and child, in our adoption by God we are being reunited with our parent, that is God.31 Just as an immediate impact is made on a person’s social identity through the act of hospitality in adoption, so too our identity is transformed through God’s adoption of us. We are no longer alien or adversary; we are adopted as full members of God’s family. 6.1 Jesus’ Social Identity The cultural shame that historically has been attached to the birth of a child in the absence of a father finds a parallel in the birth of Jesus. The fact that he was later identified as the ‘carpenter’s son’ (Matthew 13:55) could be seen to support the suggestion that Joseph had taken steps to formally adopt Jesus as his own son even though he himself was not involved in Jesus’ conception. Interestingly, Mark’s account of this episode does not include the word “son” and instead reads simply “Is this not the carpenter? Is this not Mary’s son?” The absence of direct reference to Joseph as Jesus’ father in the gospel of Mark could possibly be attributed to the fact that Joseph could have passed away by this point. One can only surmise. What is clear in both Matthew and Mark’s accounts is that Jesus’ social identity is clearly linked to Mary and to his siblings.

31

See Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner. The Spirit of Adoption. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 93.

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This public wondering about Jesus’ social identity was preceded by a rather unusual incident that has proven somewhat perplexing to interpreters of Scripture. In Mark 3:21 we read of Jesus’ family being concerned that Jesus might be losing his mind and so came to rescue him from the relentless pressures of needy people. When notified that his Mother and brothers were outside looking for him (Mark 3:31), Jesus asks a strange question and follows with an intriguing statement. His question was this: “Who are my mother and my brothers?” and his statement – “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” Was Jesus’ intent to distance himself from a social identity that held him as a member of Joseph and Mary’s household? Was he introducing a new conception of what a family was or insinuating that familial ties are inconsequential to the work of God’s kingdom? I would argue no in both instances. But I do believe that through the incarnation Christ entered into the ambivalent experience of many adoptees; of belonging yet not belonging. Scripture states that “He came unto his own, and his own did not receive him.” (John 1:11)

7

Conclusion

As an adoptive parent the reality of our first son and daughter’s adoption is never the first or dominant qualifier in my thinking about or reference to who they are. He is our son and she is our daughter – period. Likewise it is highly unlikely that at any point during an initial conversation I may have with a new acquaintance I will serve notice that I am an adoptive parent. However, to conclude from this that their relinquishment and adoption are, therefore, insignificant, or worse, to pretend that neither occurred is tantamount to launching an assault on their identity. Having said that, our son and daughter’s relinquishment and adoption does not represent the sum total of their social identity. The development of an adoptee’s personal and social identity without question will be directly and profoundly impacted by their adoptive parents. NoySharav has argued convincingly that adoptive parents who have immigrated to another country or culture, either by choice or by force, have a plank of empathy into the lives of the children they are privileged to adopt that is not always available to those who adopt from within their own race or culture. What adoptive parents have to realize is that we cannot construct our children’s self or social identities for them. Although we will, no doubt, influence their development, our children must navigate these waters themselves. We can but provide the wholesome environment in which their journey of dis-

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covering who they are can unfold with the least amount of resistance. For the adoptee it is a matter of making sense of the story in which they find themselves but with the knowledge that God has personally entered the experience of adoption at every level.

Chapter 10

Theological Reflection on Inter-country Adoptions of Special Needs Children from Mainland China Sarah Shea

The practice of intercountry adoption of special needs children is a unique case for theological reflections on the condition of disability. One reason for this is because children with special needs are increasingly the focus of attention in the practice of international adoption.1 A critical examination of the procedure of adoption, in fact, enables us to unveil cultural forces that might have been detrimental to the well being of people with disabilities. By studying the practice of intercountry adoption of children from Mainland China by American parents, this paper intends to show how the professional matching of a child with special needs to prospective adoptive family operates according to principles of risk calculation and management. It is argued that the calculative rationality presumed in the decision of adoption is in conflict with the practical rationality of the biblical command to love our neighbours. As a Christian practice, it is suggested that adopting a child with disabilities should be a gesture of seeking justice and loving one’s neighbour, which are fundamental communal obligations to the socially unwanted who are gathered by God for the coming age.

1

Cases of Special Needs Adoption from Mainland China to the United States of America (USA)

Mainland China and the USA are two major players in the international adoption arena. Their practices in placing children with special needs with prospective adoptive families are exemplary of the conventional international protocol of special needs adoptions.2 Mainland China has been the main source of 1 Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH), Implementation and Operation of the 1993 Hague Intercountry Adoption Convention: A Guide to Good Practice (Bristol: Family Law, 2008), 91. 2 Both countries are the contracting states to the Convention of 29 May 1993 on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. See HCCH, “Contracting

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004352902_012

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Table 10.1 Percentage of special needs adoptions in intercountry adoptions originated from Mainland China, 2005-2009.

Year

Number of special needs adoptions

Total of intercountry adoptions

Percentage of intercountry adoptions

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

1285 2131 2365 2604 2583

14221 10646 7858 5531 5294

9.0% 20.0% 30.1% 47.1% 48.8%

Source: HCCH, Annual Adoption Statistics for States of Origin: People’s Republic of China 2005-2009.

children involved in intercountry adoptions since the 1990s,3 while the USA is the top receiving country of international adoptees.4 In recent years, special needs adoptions have been growing quickly despite a steep fall in nonspecial needs adoptions. In Mainland China, during the period from 2005 to 2009, the number of intercountry special needs adoptions was doubled while the number of non-special needs adoptions fell by two thirds (Table 1). Currently, nearly one in every two Chinese adoptees5 going abroad has special needs (Table 1), and most of them are destined for families in the USA (Table 2). The conventional practice of matching a child with special needs to a suitable adoptive family is the focus of this paper. It is required in the Convention States to this Convention,” (The Hague: HCCH, n.d.), http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php? act=conventions.status&cid=69 (accessed December 30, 2011). 3 Peter Selman, “Intercountry Adoption in the New Millennium: The ‘Quiet Migration’ Revisited,” Population Research and Policy Review 21 (2002): 214. 4 Selman, Population Research and Policy Review, 211. 5 Chinese adoptees do not include those resided in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, a territory of People’s Republic of China where the socialist system and policies are not practiced. In Hong Kong SAR, all adoptees sending abroad are of special needs. See HCCH, Annual Adoption Statistics for States of Origin: China (Hong Kong SAR) 2005-2009 (The Hague: HCCH, 2010), http://www.hcch.net/upload/wop/adop2010pd05_hk.pdf (accessed June 10, 2011).

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Table 10.2 Top three receiving countries of Mainland Chinese adoptees with special needs, 2005-2009.

Year

Number of Mainland Chinese adoptees with special needs sending abroad

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Acc. total

1285 2131 2365 2604 2583 10968

Number of Mainland Chinese adoptees with special needs received by countries USA 1099 1857 1975 2135 1848 8914

Netherlands

(85.5%) 87 (87.1%) 96 (83.5%) 138 (82.0%) 159 (71.5%) 197 (81.3%) 677

Sweden

(6.8%) 24 (4.5%) 43 (5.8%) 62 (6.1%) 93 (7.6%) 177 (6.2%) 399

(1.9%) (2.0%) (2.6%) (3.6%) (6.9%) (3.6%)

Source: HCCH, Annual Adoption Statistics for States of Origin: People’s Republic of China 2005-2009.

on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (1993) that the placement decision is made “on the basis in particular of the reports relating to the child and the prospective adoptive parents, whether the envisaged placement is in the best interests of the child.”6 In the following sections, I intend to show how the child’s best interests are formulated and construed in reports on the child; in the assessment of prospective adoptive parents; and finally in the actual matching process.

2

Report on the Child with Special Needs

An accurate report of the condition of a child and his/her disability is mandatory according to the 1993 Convention.7 In Mainland China, after the establish6 HCCH, Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Concluded 29 May 1993) (The Hague: HCCH, 1993), article 16d, http://www.hcch.net/ index_en.php?act=conventions.text&cid=69 (accessed June 10, 2011). 7 HCCH, Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption, Article 13.

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ment of the adoptable status of a child,8 a report on the profile of the child in question is prepared by the welfare institute in which the child resides. Apart from the child’s age, gender, photographs and reason for placement, details of medical and health conditions since the date of admission are also reported. The medical and health reports include records of the physical, language, behavioural and social growth and development of the child. For a child with disabilities, a Certificate of Disability is issued by a medical professional and is attached to the child’s file together with photos of the affected body parts.9 The Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law emphasizes that an accurate report of a child is of vital importance when it comes to protecting his or her best interests.10 Information on disability and health condition of a child is considered crucial in making professional judgments regarding the suitability of prospective adoptive parents, and particularly whether the prospective parents possess the necessary skills and desire to parent a child, where special needs are evident.11 It is presupposed that parenting a child with special needs involves a unique set of skills and temperament, which are not necessarily present in every prospective adoptive parent.12

8

9

10

11 12

In Mainland China, the term ‘adoptable’ refers to children under the age of 14 who are orphans bereaved or parents or abandoned children whose parents cannot be ascertained or found. See HCCH, Country Profile for Intercountry Adoption: People’s Republic of China (The Hague: HCCH, 2010), section 2, http://hcch.e-vision.nl/index_en.php?act= publications.details&pid=5159&dtid=42 (accessed July 29, 2010). China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA), Measures for Registration of Adoption of Children by Foreigners in the People’s Republic of China (Beijing: CCAA, 2005), article 5, http:// www.china-ccaa.org/site/infocontent/ZCFG_20051009060349546_en.htm (accessed July 29, 2010); and HCCH, P. R. of China Country Profile for Intercountry Adoption, section 5.1. The importance of an accurate report on a child is specified in paragraph 352, “it is impossible to ensure that an adoption is in the child’s best interests if relevant information about a child is withheld and consequently it cannot be determined if the prospective adoptive parents have the necessary skills and desire to parent a particular child. Failure to disclose all relevant information may result in failed adoptions or tragic consequences for the child and family.” See HCCH, Implementation and Operation of the 1993 Hague Intercountry Adoption Convention: A Guide to Good Practice (Bristol: Family Law, 2008), 86. HCCH, Implementation and Operation, 91. HCCH, Implementation and Operation, 91. An example of such a view is Judith K. McKenzie’s definition of special needs. She says the term is sued to “describe those children for whom, because of the presence of certain characteristics and conditions, it is particularly difficult to find permanent homes. Not only are these children more difficult to place in adoptive homes, but once placed, they can be very challenging to the adoptive parents and may require highly skilled and specialized educational, psychological, and medical

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However, the presumption that there are significant differences between the skills and temperament needed to parent a child with special needs as opposed to parenting a child without such needs is vague and questionable.13 The meaning of special needs in intercountry adoptions is broader than the common usage in the fields of education.14 Apart from children with disabilities, in Mainland China children above seven years of age are also said to have special needs.15 In other countries, children suffering from behaviour disorders or trauma are considered to have special needs as are those who are part of a sibling group.16 In one country, children who wet their bed at the age of four are

13

14

15

16

services.” Judith K. McKenzie, “Adoption of Children with Special Needs,” The Future of Children 3 (1993): 62. There is research evidence to refute the hypothesis that parenting children with special needs are less satisfactory than parenting those without disabilities. In terms of disruption rates (termination of adoption), Coyne and Brown find that families adopting children with developmental disabilities appear to be about the same as for other adoptive families (A. Coyne and M. E. Brown, “Developmentally Disabled Children can be Adopted,” Child Welfare 64: 607-615; as cited in Jeffrey Haugaard, Alison M. Moed and Natalie M. West, “Adoption of Children with Developmental Disabilities,” Adoption Quarterly 3 (2000), 86). Barth and Berry note that household and family characteristics rather than child characteristics are the key associates of adoption stability and disruption. See Barth, Richard P. and Marianne Berry, Adoption and Disruption: Rates, Risks, and Responses (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1988). Haugaard et. al. review studies on special needs adoption and conclude that most families adopting a child with disabilities consider their experience as positive. See Haugaard et. al., Adoption Quarterly, 92. For instance, the Education Act 1996 specifies that the term “special educational needs” applies to a child with learning difficulty. It further clarifies that no child is taken to be having learning difficulty solely because the language spoken at the child’s home is different from the teaching language. See Education Act 1996 (UK) s312, http://www.legislation. gov.uk/ukpga/1996/56/section/312 (accessed December 27, 2011). Apparently, the meaning of special needs in the context of education is strictly applied to children with learning difficulties while in the field of intercountry adoption the term is loosely defined and applies to children having diverse characteristics. For the Mainland Chinese Government Central Authority of Intercountry Adoption, the term ‘special needs’ refers to “handicapped children and children older than 7 years old.” See HCCH, Country Profile of Intercountry Adoption: People’s Republic of China (The Hague: Permanent Bureau of HCCH, 2010), Sec 2.4, http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php? act=publications.details&pid=5159&dtid=42 (accessed June 10, 2011). Children with special needs in intercountry adoptions may refer to (1) children suffering from a behaviour disorder or trauma; (2) physically or mentally disabled; (3) older children (usually above 7 years of age), or (4) part of a sibling group. See HCCH, Implementation and Operation, 91. On the discussion of the identification problem of chil-

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considered to be disabled.17 There is evidence pointing to the fact that in the practice of intercountry adoption the classification of special needs has no unifying principle, and at times the label can be ambiguous and problematic. The notion of special needs can be seen in this regard as an umbrella term, having an unusually wide coverage of children of different abilities, characteristics, social background, experiences, and health conditions. The arbitrary grouping and application of the label special needs could have unduly jeopardized the opportunities of adoption for children who are, in fact, not significantly different from other “normal” children. For instance, a young person with a transitory and curable medical condition, older children with no significant evidence of suffering from the aftermath of institutionalization, or a sibling group of two healthy young children could all be labelled as having special needs.18 The tendency to over-identify children awaiting adoption as having special needs discloses a prejudice against these vulnerable children. In general, it is expected that only young and healthy children are adoptable while others are seen as having special needs that can hardly be accommodate in general adoptive families. I will criticize the two-tier morality structure implied in the categorization of children into special and non-special groups in the second half of the essay. It would be suffice to highlight here that the child’s best interests, which is believed to be secured by having an accurate report of one’s special needs, are construed in a problematic way that involves a homogenization of many different children into an arbitrary category and representation of them as risk to families. In fact, special needs adoption has become a realistic option for many adoptive parents19 due to the shortage of perfect ‘dream children’ in the global adoption arena. The International Reference Centre for the Rights of Children

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dren with disabilities in intercountry adoption, see International Reference Centre for the Rights of Children Deprived of their Family, “Editorial: Exploring Adoption as a Suitable Option for Children with Disabilities,” ISS/IRC Monthly Review, no. 11-12, NovemberDecember 2010, 1-2, http://www.iss-ssi.org/2009/assets/files/editorial-monthly-review/ Editorials/2010/Edito%202010%2011-12%20eng.pdf (accessed June 11, 2011). International Reference Centre for the Rights of Children Deprived of their Family, ISS/IRC Monthly Review, 1. On the problem of classification of special needs in intercountry adoptions, see International Resource Centre for the Protection of Children in Adoption, “Editorial: To Promote the Adoption of Children with Special Needs,” ISS/IRC News Bulletin, no. 67, May 2004, 1, http://www.iss-ssi.org/2009/assets/files/editorial-monthly-review/ Editorials/2004/Edito.67.eng.pdf (accessed June 11, 2011). International Resource Centre for the Protection of Children in Adoption, ISS/IRC News Bulletin, 1-2.

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Deprived of their Family (ISS/IRC) suggests that professionals help prospective adoptive parents to acquire the right perspective regarding the profile of children in need of adoption. Adoption agencies in receiving countries are also advised by ISS/IRC to search actively for prospective adopters who are likely to respond positively to special needs children.20 However, a basic question that needs to be asked is: what are the criteria used to assess the suitability of prospective adoptive parents? Are they truly serving the best interests of the child? In the next section, we will briefly outline and discuss the practices of several authorized adoption agencies in the USA, with particular focus on the processes they use to identify prospective adopters for children with special needs.21

3

Assessment of Suitability of Adoptive Parents

To make a timely match for special needs children, it is necessary for adoption agencies to accurately assess the suitability of prospective adoptive parents in advance. Measures are taken at the early stage of an application for adoption to identify prospective candidates for special needs adoptions. For instance, one of the agencies required applicants considering their special needs adoption programme to complete a checklist regarding their attitude toward medical conditions that the prospective adoptee might have. The list consists of 46 items covering areas including developmental delays, facial conditions, heart conditions, anomalies with the blood, skeleton, vision, hearing, skin, genitals, digestive system, etc. Below is a sample of the checklist:22

20 21

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International Reference Centre for the Rights of Children Deprived of their Family, ISS/IRC Monthly Review, 2. Among the 71 adoption agencies authorized by the China Center of Adoption Center in the USA, three of them are specialized in the adoption of children from Mainland China. They are the Chinese Children Adoption International in Colorado, http: //www.chinesechildren.org; China Adoption with Love in Massachusetts, http://www. chinaadoption.org; and Great Wall China Adoption in Texas, http://www.gwcadopt.org. See China Center of Adoption Center, “Adoption Agencies Abroad,” (Beijing: CCAA, n.d.), http://www.china-ccaa.org/gwsyzz/gwsyzz_index_en.jsp (accessed December 30, 2011). In this paper, rather than giving a comprehensive description of the adoption procedure, I will focus on certain professional practices that are found to be subscribed to the cultural forces that marginalize children with special needs. China Children Adoption International, Medical Condition Checklist for applicants interested in the Waiting Child Program (Centennial, Colorado: China Children Adoption

168 Yes ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯

Shea No ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯

Maybe ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯

Arthrogryposis/Joint disorders Club foot/feet Missing/malformed fingers/toes Missing/malformed hands/arms Missing/malformed feet/legs Orthopedic issues (rickets/bonemalformations/etc.) Scoliosis Short stature (dwarfism) Spina bifida (meningocele/myelomeningocele)

To complete it, applicants are asked to state their comfort level (by checking Yes, No or Maybe) in taking care of children who have these conditions. Also, applicants are advised to consult relevant medical specialists, social workers and their insurance company before answering these questions.23 However, reflecting on the character of the decision making process implicit in the operation of this kind of identification tool, it represents children with special needs primarily by invoking images of various clinical conditions. The immediate effect of asking such questions is a narrowing down of the decision to a matter of degree of one’s psychological aversion and the contemplation of risk (or, more specifically, the financial implication of care). The following quotation from a prospective adopter reveals a general hesitation and apprehension in answering these types of questions: Are you willing to take a child with a deformity or—you try to be honest with yourself, I guess, as well, and when it’s just a piece of paper and you’re filling in a questionnaire and you’re not talking to someone about

23

International, n.d.), 2, http://www.chinesechildren.org/WaitingChild%5Cdocuments/ Medical%20Conditions%20Checklist.pdf (accessed June 11, 2011). China Children Adoption International is one of the overseas adoption agencies having cooperative relationship with Mainland China for intercountry adoption programme. See CCAA, “Adoption Agencies Abroad,” [Amercia, Colorada] (Beijing: CCAA, 2005), http://www.china-ccaa. org/gwsyzz/gwsyzz_index_en.jsp (accessed Decemeber 30, 2011). Similar checklist is found on the Form of Application for Adoption of the Great Wall China Adoption. It contains round 90 items covering 13 areas of medical conditions. Great Wall China Adoption, Application for Adoption (Austin, TX: GWCA, n.d.), section 7, http://www.icanwaitingchild. org/sites/default/files/GWCA-CAN-application_2.pdf (accessed December 30, 2011). China Children Adoption International, Medical Condition Checklist, 1.

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it, it’s quite, you know, it’s a hard question and just to write a simple answer—I didn’t find very easy to really explain how I felt, whether I would be happy about adopting a child with a deformity, a disability or something, so that was probably the hardest thing.24 These identification tools though meant to perform a preliminary screening might actually eliminate the possibility of matching applicants to children with special needs. Perhaps a rightful question we may ask is whether screening or identification tools formulated according to the logic of psychological aversion and the notion of manageable risk can actually serve the best interests of both the applicants and the children waiting for adoption. A rethinking of such a practice is necessary. The decision making process implicit in the above assessment tools basically follows the principle of calculative rationality commonly found in risk assessment. The requirement to check insurance coverage for each medical condition presumes that medical expenditure is the priority concern of prospective adopters. From a risk management perspective, it is prudent for insurance companies to alert their clients the financial risk involved in raising a child who has certain medical condition when making an adoption decision. In fact, the projection of resource implications on the basis of a medical label has a substantial margin of error. It is possible for two different children carrying the same label to have great variation in their actual medical expenditure. For example, some of my previous students who had profound and multiple disabilities required intensive medical care while others labelled with similar disabilities, required much less medical care. Having said that, I am not suggesting that it is unnecessary for the prospective adopters to have a realistic assessment of the needs of an individual child and the family’s capacity to sustain the wellbeing of that child. Rather, my concern is how they are presented as risk to families and how the children’s information is used to inform the adoption decision. In fact, the abstraction of a child in medical terms can hardly be equivalent to acquiring knowledge of him or her that is helpful in making the adoption decision. Experiences of parents who adopted children with disabilities have shown that the main reason for adopting a particular child is the flourishing love and warmth that emerged through personal relationship and contact.

24

Kay, Prospective Adoptive Parent; as cited in Alexandra Young, Families of Choice: A Qualitative Study of Australian Families Formed through Intercountry Adoption, PhD. Thesis (Sydney: The University of Sydney, 2009), 187.

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Interviews with 56 families adopting special needs children in Delaware between 1979 and 1987 showed that most of them were not actively looking for a child to adopt. Most of them (64%) adopted children with disabilities because of the emotional bond established with the child in a previous foster care experience.25 Similar reasons were given by four fifths of parents adopting children with severe developmental disabilities as recorded in another study in which it was the love and warmth felt for a particular child that motivated an individual to become the child’s adoptive parent.26 Reasons for adoption, in parents’ own words, are instructive: (1) “The warmth and love that generated from the first contact with her let me know that I needed her and she needed me,” (2) “Between Matthew and myself is a ‘special chemistry.’ I never in my wildest dreams thought of adopting a baby until Matthew,” and (3) “She has given us more than we could ever repay. We wanted her permanently part of our family.”27 From the aforementioned experiences of parents adopting children with disabilities, the parent’s suitability for undertaking a special needs adoption is a self-knowledge that emerges through the personal relationship had with a particular child, a child who is seen as a gift and not merely a burden to carry or a risk factor to contain. However, the conventional operation of matching a child to a prospective adoptive family in intercountry adoption hardly gives the required space and time for the development of such personal relationships.

4

Matching a Child with Special Needs to a Prospective Adoptive Family

The practice of matching special needs children exclusively to consenting applicants has been institutionalized in a dual track adoption system in 25

26 27

Penny L. Deiner, Nancy J. Wilson, and Donald G. Unger, “Motivation and Characteristics of Families who Adopt Children with Special Needs: An Empirical Study,” Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 8 (1988), 15. Ann Goetting and Mark G. Goetting, “Voluntary Parents to Multiple Children with Special Needs: A Profile,” Children and Youth Services Review 15(1993), 496. Typical responses selected by Goetting and Goetting to illustrate respondents’ expressed motives of adoptions specifically in terms of love. See Goetting and Goetting, Children and Youth Services Review, 498.

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Mainland China since 2005. Previously, the China Centre of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) was the sole legal body responsible for matching individual children with suitable families. In 2005, a trial programme called Waiting Child was launched to promote the adoption of children with special needs. With the launch of this programme the matching task was decentralized and handed over to authorized overseas adoption agencies while the CCAA retained the authority of approval.28 On regular basis, the CCAA would disseminate a batch of Waiting Children profiles29 to authorized overseas adoption agencies through a secured online system. Agencies then have the right to retain these children’s information for three months in order to finding prospective adoptive parents.30 Currently, there are two special needs adoption programmes. Children were placed into two sub-groups according to the perceived difficulties in finding adoptive placements for them.31 Children who are young and with minor special needs (or more commonly accepted conditions) are put on the Common or Shared List whose profiles are disseminated to all adoptive agencies in the Waiting Child Programme.32 Matching these children to prospective parents is sometimes operated like a semi-open bidding exercise amongst adoption agencies and making a timely decision is a key factor for prospective parents to secure the adoption right for children who are commonly accepted

28

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30 31

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CCAA, Management Procedure for Authorizing Foreign Adoption Organizations by China Center of Adoption Affairs to Seek Adoptive Families for Children of Special Needs(On Trial Basis) (Beijing: CCAA, 2005), http://www.china-ccaa.org/site/infocontent/ZCFG_ 20051009064551609_en.htm (accessed July 29, 2010). CCAA, Management Procedure for Authorizing Foreign Adoption Organizations, point A2. The Chinese Children Adoption International notes that information provided by the CCAA on special needs children includes “several photographs, a physical examination (typically including a blood test, urine test, hepatitis B panel, and HIV/syphilis tests), basic developmental information, background information, generally outlining the child’s personality, preferences, history in the orphanage, and daily routine,” Chinese Children Adoption International, “Waiting Child Program,” 4th paragraph (Centennial, Colorado: Chinese Children Adoption International, n.d.), http://www.chinesechildren.org/ WaitingChild/ (accessed December 30, 2011). CCAA, Management Procedure for Authorizing Foreign Adoption Organizations, point A2. China Adoption with Love, “Waiting Children Program,” (Brookline, MA: China Adoption with Love, Inc., n.d.), http://chinaadoption.org/index.php?option=com_content&task= view&id=26&Itemid=45, (accessed December 30, 2011). Great Wall China Adoption, “LID [Log-in Date] Edge track,” (Austin, TX, Great Wall China Adoption, n.d.), http://www.gwca.org/waiting-child/lid-edge/ (accessed December 30, 2011).

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by prospective adoptive parents. Agency staff closely monitors the Shared List day and night to look for any newly added children who are young female and have mild medical conditions.33 It is because multiple adoption agencies can access the same children’s files at the same time and any of them can lock a child’s file by typing a name of prospective family. Once a child’s file is locked, it will be temporarily removed from the Shared List for 72 hours.34 It means that the availability of a commonly accepted child may be gone in any seconds after his/er profiles appear in the database. In such cases, time allowed for a prospective family to make up their mind is very pressing. If they fail to submit the required information in order to finalize the lock in 72 hours, the family will lose the opportunity to adopt this particular child as the same agency cannot lock the same child’s file twice in the online system. However, not all children’s files on the Shared List are likely to be locked in seconds, hours or days. There are many who have been on the list for at least 60 days and have not been suitably matched to any prospective parents. They will be moved to the agency specific Designated List, together with others with more severe special needs.35 Their profiles are sometimes displayed in the password secured websites for adoptive agency’s clients who are interested to know more about these children.36

33

34 35 36

New children’s files released by the CCAA on monthly basis in the Shared List are closely monitored by agencies. The Chinese Children Adoption International describes how agencies compete for the same child, “staff may have only a few seconds to look at the child’s information and type in a family’s name to lock the file, before another agency does. In general, the children whose files are locked in this manner are younger girls with more minor conditions, such as minor heart disease, club foot, and cleft lip and palate, etc.” The Chinese Children Adoption International, “Designated vs. Shared Lists,” (Centennial, Colorado: Chinese Children Adoption International, n.d.), http://www.chinesechildren.org/WaitingChild/Designated_SharedList.aspx (accessed December 30, 2011). The Chinese Children Adoption International, “Designated vs. Shared Lists.” Great Wall China Adoption, “Special Focus track,” (Austin, TX, Great Wall China Adoption, n.d.), http://www.gwca.org/waiting-child/special-focus/ (accessed December 30, 2011). The Great Wall China Adoption selects a few of children who are not exact match for any prospective families and advertise them as “featured children” in the agency’s password secured website. If any client intends to adopt a particular featured child, he/she may ask the agency to lock the child’s file if it is still available. Great Wall China Adoption, “Great Wall’s List of Featured Children,” (Austin, TX, Great Wall China Adoption, n.d.), http://www.gwca.org/why_great_wall/waiting_child_program (accessed June 12, 2011). However, the ???.

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Apparently, the best interest of these children is represented by finding suitable families for them as shown in the aforementioned inter-country special needs adoption procedure. However, the concept of suitability is problematic in three senses. Firstly, the notion that has been built into the Medical Condition Checklist basically refers to the prospective parent’s willingness to accept the estimated risk associated with certain medical conditions in theory, rather than their willingness to accept children as they are. Secondly, the medical information about a disease or disability is regarded to be more useful than the actual condition and functioning of individual children. Finally, the margin of error in the estimation of expenditure for certain medical condition is accepted uncritically and becomes tolerable at the expense of adoption opportunities of some otherwise healthy children with sustained conditions of disability, deformity or genetic diseases. Having said the above, there should be no doubt about the CCAA’s good intentions and sincere efforts in seeking placement for waiting children. The increasing number of successful special needs adoption cases (Table 2) is evidence of the effective marketing strategy of CCAA and the affiliated adoption agencies. My concern is about the abstraction of individual child in terms of medical categories or even labels, which mean that they are being presented as potential risk to the finances of the adoptive families. There is also the need to critique the normative status of the quest for risk-free children in the adoption arena as well as the need to critique the risk assessment tools used to gauge a person’s suitability to adopt certain kind of child. Also, the practice of turning the adoption process into a bidding exercise should also be critically scrutinized. The following sections aim to show that how these conventional practices are informed by the utilitarian understanding of parenting and a two-tier morality structure, both of which are in contradiction with the Christian teachings of loving our neighbour.

5

The Dark Side of Adoption Practices

Brent Waters notes that “Christians need to be clear about what they are and are not affirming” in contemporary practices of adoption and to be critical of the dark side of adoption.37 He reminds readers that there is a risk of commodifying children in the adoption market if adoption is seen simply as a

37

Brent Waters, “Welcoming Children into our Homes: A Theological Reflection on Adoption,” Scottish Journal of Theology 55 (2002): 425.

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“reproductive option”38 or “a satisfactory means of satisfying one’s reproductive interests.”39 I think the leitmotiv of risk in the operation of special needs adoption is the mirror image of the same commodifying process. Instead of maximizing personal interests, the principle governing special needs adoption is the minimization of risk. The abstraction of children with disabilities as potential risks for the wellbeing of a family is informed by a utilitarian understanding of parenting. Such a view is doing injustice to children with disabilities to such a degree that it put their lives at risk under certain circumstances. John Swinton critically uncovers the evil forces underpinning the rather easy acceptance of aborting babies with known disabilities. The practice is considered “morally appropriate because it is assumed that the unborn [disabled] child is somehow not fully human, or at least not fully a person.”40 Under the principle of preference utilitarianism, abortion is reasonable for parents wishing to avoid the unhappiness brought about by a disabled newborn so that “they can have the opportunity to have another child that will enable them to maximize their happiness.”41 The presumed replaceability of babies is in fact treating them as “commodities whose existence is justified not by what they are in and of themselves, but by their ability to bring happiness to others by their presence, or if that doesn’t work, by their absence!”42 Disability, in turns, is considered as a risk endangering the well-being of parents and therefore should be prevented by all means including the termination of human life. Swinton notices that such view is dangerous because it denies the “value, worth and dignity” of people with disabilities who are alive.43 It is also evil because such a view “stands against God and his intentions for the well-being and transformation of human beings and God’s creation.”44 Similar problematic values are commonly found in the practices associated with special needs adoptions. The value and worth of children with disabilities and special needs are based not on what they are in and of themselves. Instead, the adoptability of a child is determined by the sum of the estimated risk that their prospective adoptive parents will be exposed to as represented in terms 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

Waters, Scottish Journal of Theology, 424. Waters, Scottish Journal of Theology, 436. John Swinton, Raging with Compassion: Pastoral Responses to the Problem of Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 191. Swinton, Raging with Compassion, 189. Swinton, Raging with Compassion, 189. Swinton, Raging with Compassion, 192. Swinton, Raging with Compassion, 55.

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of the medical condition or disability listed on a child’s report. Thus, having a disability is presented as a threat and such a view does a deep injustice to people with disabilities and their families, whether biological or adoptive. Furthermore, the utilitarian view of parenting also causes difficulty for people to make sense of the choice to adopt children with disabilities. For instance, some professionals responsible for the placement of orphans with developmental disabilities are suspicious of families who are interested in adopting multiple children with disabilities. They consider such decisions to be idiosyncratic, irrational or even irresponsible.45 For others, these adoptive parents are seen as excessively altruistic.46 The concept of supererogation in medical ethics is helpful for explaining the polarized positions of people regarding special needs adoptions. The notion suggests that “loving our family members with a disability, particularly when this involves our children, is somehow special, or more sacrificial than loving other, ‘normal’ people.”47 In this sense, families adopting children with disabilities are seen to be more sacrificial and altruistic than those adopting non-special needs children. Children with disabilities have long been portrayed as undesirable and therefore considered unadoptable.48 Brian Brock says that the notion of supererogation is derived from a two-tier morality structure comprising a universal moral obligation and a special virtue practiced by a few on a voluntary basis. In “Supererogation and the Riskiness of Human Vulnerability,” Brock explains, “why this account of medical ethics has no internal resource to stand against a rising tide of resistance to human

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46

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Laraine M. Glideen, Evelyn M. Flaherty, and Andrew P. McGlone, “Is More Too Many? Adjustment in Families with Adopted Children with Developmental Disabilities,” Adoption Quarterly 4 (2000), 68. It is common for mass media to glorify such families as exceptionally altruistic or even saintly, for example, the caption about a case of special need adoptions says, “U.S. Couple Sold Luxurious House and Cars to Adopt 26 Children with Disabilities in Fuzhou.” Fuzhou Provincial Government, “U.S. Couple Sold Luxurious House and Cars to Adopt 26 Children with Disabilities in Fuzhou, April 19, 2009.” [In Chinese .“ , 2009-04-19] ġ26 (Fuzhou: Fuzhou Provincial Government, 2009), http://www.fuzhou.gov.cn/zfb/zxbs/ cjsdh/sy1/xgxx/xgnr/200909/t20090919_33583.htm (accessed March 29, 2010). Brian Brock, “Supererogation and the Riskiness of Human Vulnerability,” In The Paradox of Disability: Response to Jean Vanier from Theology and Sciences, ed. Hans S. Reinders (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation, 2010), 128. Elizabeth S. Cole, “A History of the Adoption of Children with Handicaps,” in Formed Families: Adoption of Children with Handicaps, ed. Larraine M. Glidden (New York: The Haworth Press, 1990), 56-60.

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vulnerability in one particular field: prenatal testing.”49 Brock observes that the practice of genetic counselling operates under the principle of risk calculation. Some pregnancies are marginalized as well as deemed expendable and burdensome because they bear higher risk of producing a child with genetic defects. A woman’s decision to continue with a pregnancy in which the foetus is considered defective is seen to be irrational and risky. Under this highly medicalized and statistic-based discourse of pregnancy, the glorification of the personal sacrifice made by women giving birth to babies that are known to be disabled is in fact another way in which people have subscribed to the medicalized view that raising a child with disabilities is unreasonably risky. Hence, these women are usually portrayed as “at best making a heroic decision, at worst an immoral one.”50 In fact, the same stereotypical images are evident in the adoption of children with disabilities, a manoeuvre which is considered to be unreasonably risky. Similar to the situation surrounding genetic counselling, a medicalized and statistic-based discourse is found in the processes of assessing the suitability of prospective adoptive parents to raise a child with disabilities. The medical ethics of supererogation are also common in special needs adoption in which adopting a child with disabilities is considered to be a special virtue practiced only by a few people. The eligibility requirement for adopters of special needs children is higher than general adopters. Apart from having experience with and knowledge of caring for special needs persons, the CCAA specifies that their incomes must be higher than the average incomes of general adopters.51 Like in the field of genetic counselling, professional practices related to special needs adoption lack the consideration about the internal resource to stand against a rising tide of resistance to human vulnerability.

6

Love of One’s Neighbour as an Act of Seeking Justice

In contrast to the highly calculated features of modern medical ethics, Brock reminds us that Christian ethics is based on “the single tier morality of at-

49 50 51

Brock, The Paradox of Disability, 128. Brock, The Paradox of Disability, 135. CCAA, Measures of China Center of Adoption Affairs for Authorizing Foreign Adoption Organizations to Seek Adoptive Families for Children of Special Needs (Beijing: CCAA, 2005), section on “Basic Requirement of Adoptors,” http://www.china-ccaa.org/site/infocontent/ ZCFG_20051009065100765_en.htm (accessed July 29, 2010).

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tentiveness to the neighbour.”52 Christian neighbourly love is not a hairsplitting moral calculation that pits oneself against another. It is a practice of faithfulness in obedience to the Spirit’s guidance that transforms individual consciousness, “in which one’s own self-interest is wholly tied to the wellbeing of the other.”53 It is manifested as a spontaneous and attentiveness to our neighbour. The Samaritan in the parable has a steady and single focus on the half dead man in need without any hesitation regarding the issues of religious purity like the Priest and the Levite (Luke 10:31-32) or the social distance normally kept between Jews and Samaritans. The three of them saw the man in great need but only the Samaritan in the story did not shy away. Brock understands Jesus’ teaching in this parable as an “investigation of human fragility [which] does not begin by distancing ourselves from others as ‘subject’, but is trained to respond without excuse and without forethought to existing human need.”54 He calls it the “practical rationality” of Christian neighbourly love.55 I think of the Christian nature (if any) in the act of adopting a child with disabilities hinges on such “practical rationality” of Christian neighbourly love. It resists the conventional abstraction of children into their medical conditions and pertinent risks involved in parenting. It is also a conscious abstinence from the popular quest for a “defect-free” child by discerning how to deploy the information now available in the modern technology-assisted operation of adoption. The use of medical information in the process of adoption should not be driven by the desire to minimize financial and emotional risks. Brock emphases that “such love, as Jesus’ parable [of the Good Samaritan] suggests requires conversion, not simply information or education.”56 Furthermore, conversion is necessary in any caring relationship that involves people with disabilities. Frances Young frankly acknowledges that there is a gut feeling of unfitness related to the display of a disabled body.57 For people with limited abilities, like her son, their bodily presence easily induces grief and disappointment. To deny this dark side of life is unhelpful. To face it, Young suggests what people without disability need is nothing less than a “conversion-experience”; that is, “a re-orientation which can face and 52 53 54 55 56 57

Brock, The Paradox of Disability, 137. Brock, The Paradox of Disability, 137. Brock, The Paradox of Disability, 137. Brock, The Paradox of Disability, 137. Brock, The Paradox of Disability, 137. Frances Young, Face to Face: A Narrative Essay in the Theology of Suffering (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1990), 172.

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accommodate the challenge that the handicapped present, whether we like it or not, to our ideology of what is human.”58 She explains the conversion is a shift from the false image of “perfect human being” to a realistic one that enables the non-disabled to see how the disabled can enrich their lives. Moreover, Jürgen Moltmann points out another area that requires Spirit directed conversion. He makes a distinction between two kinds of servant love. One is liberating because it “enables the other to find his own worth and his own life,” while the other is “incapacitating” since it “hinders precisely that which it should be liberating and healing.”59 A common temptation for families and caretakers of people with disabilities is an unrestrained desire to do everything for people with disabilities; this unintentionally, leaves no room for independence. Caring responsibility could be turned into a hidden form of domination. Moltmann deems it necessary to transcend the hierarchical relationship between helper and helped into friendship. It means a joyful life together in which individuals are “genuinely interested in the world of the other.”60 If this does not happen then caring service could become simply an observance of moral obligation to an unwanted person, which is an attitude that eventually succumbs to hidden forms of domination. It is not exaggerating for Hans Reinders to say, “being the beneficiary of other people’s goods will change very quickly when it must be paid back in the form of servitude.”61 He calls it a “cold charity,”62 which is a distortion of Christian charity. Apart from the moment of repentance from sin such as the aforementioned commodification of children in the adoption market, false ideology of human being and oppressive caring relationship, conversion has a simultaneous moment of turning oneself towards a particular direction. In the situation of adopting a child with disabilities, the material content of such a reorientation revolves around the biblical command of doing justice for orphans. I call this aspect the justice seeking nature of the command to love one’s neighbour. It is helpful to use Jacqueline E. Lapsley’s clarification of the prophet Isaiah’s condemnation of people’s failure to execute justice for widows and orphans.63 She says that dealing with widows and orphans is not a matter of 58 59

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Young, Face to face, 177. Jürgen Moltmann, “Liberate Yourself by Accepting One Another,” in Human Disability and the Service of God, ed. Nancy L. Eiesland and Don. E. Saliers (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 109. Moltmann, Human disability, 110. Hans S. Reinders, Receiving the Gift of Friendship: Profound Disability, Theological Anthropology, and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 319. Reinders, Receiving the Gift, 319. Isaiah 1:17 and 10:2.

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charity, as commonly misconceived, but “a failure of justice at the systemic level.”64 Walter Brueggemann shares the same view regarding the forms of justice commanded by Yahweh. Unlike retributive justice, charity or romantic “do-goodism,”65 justice is taken seriously as an ordering principle of the polity of the Israelite community and is integral to her identity as covenant partner of Yahweh. Israel is “a community of persons bound in membership to each other, so that each person-as-member is to be treated well enough to be sustained as a full member of the community.”66 Orphans and widows are vulnerable members because of “their lack of kinship ties to a male head of family.”67 In a patriarchal society those without a male protector are “exceedingly vulnerable to violence and exploitation of every kind imaginable.”68 The commandment to protect these helpless members from exploitations is not a private ethical choice for a few, but a public and collective effort to protect the whole community from the serious and foreseeable damages inflicted by Yahweh who is the advocate of orphans and widows.69 God’s affection and care of the fatherless, the unwanted and the weak are also taken seriously by Russell Moore who uses these principles as the ground on which to propose adoption should be a priority for Christian families.70 He reminds Christians that God is described as the advocate of vulnerable children

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Jacqueline E. Lapsley, ““Look! The Children and I are as Signs and Portents in Israel”: Children in Isaiah,” in The Child in the Bible, ed. Marcia J. Bunge, Terence E. Fretheim, Beverly Roberts Gaventa (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 85. Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 421 and 423. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 421. Lapsley, The Child in the Bible, 85. Walter Brueggemann, “Vulnerable Children, Divine Passion, and Human Obligation,” in The Child in the Bible, edited by Marcia J. Bunge, Terence E. Fretheim, Beverly Roberts Gaventa (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 412. For example, Exodus 22:21-27: “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt. Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan. If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives will become widows and your children fatherless. If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest. If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, return it to him by sunset, because his cloak is the only covering he has for his body. What else will he sleep in? When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate.” (NIV ). Calling himself “pro-adoption,” Russell D. Moore proposes that adoption should be a priority for Christian families. See Russell D. Moore, Adopted for Life: The Priority of Adoption for Christian Families & Churches (Wheaton: Croosway Books, 2009), 21.

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is reiterated in Psalms 68:5 where He is addressed as the “Father of the fatherless” and Hosea 14:3 where He is the one with whom “the orphan finds mercy.”71 An imitation of God’s own way in the world is the basis of God’s commands to seek justice for the helpless in Deuteronomy 10:18-19. As God “executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing,” the Israelites are commanded to “love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.”72 Moore finds the same command in Jesus teaching of final judgment in Matthew 25:40, in which Jesus said everyone would be judged on the basis of the care they showed for the least of their brothers. Moore considers this is evidence of the general Christian call to “be compassionate” and “remember the poor.”73 The plight of an orphan anywhere in the world convicts and confronts every Christian family regarding their faithfulness in obeying Jesus’ commands. Having said the above, it must be stressed that it is not merely the predicament of orphans that makes Christians obliged to take care of them. If so, the practical reason of neighbourly love would not differ much from general welfare protection. Seeing orphans merely as vulnerable people also reopens the possibility for hidden oppression to develop in the caring relationship. The justice seeking nature of neighbourly love draws our attention, on the one hand, to the existing needs of the helpless and, on the other, to their inheritance in the Kingdom of God.74 The latter is not as visible as the former, particularly for children with severe disabilities. That is the reason why a Spirit-enabled radical change of perception is indispensable. It enables us to see God’s gift even in human vulnerability. Borrowing a phrase from Josef Pieper, Swinton points out a vital feature of the practice of love is saying “It’s good that you exist; it’s good that you are in this world!”75 It is under this unconditional affirmation and appreciation of the other’s presence that Swinton proposes adopting disabled babies is a faithful Christian practice of love and hospitality to the socially unwanted and unwelcomed. In fact, being able or not has never been a defining feature of created humanity, nor a criteria for entering the Kingdom of God. Psalm 8:2 claims that God’s strength is established “from the mouth of infants and nursing babes.” (NAS) It would be an unfortunate mistake to pass over this verse while only 71 72 73 74 75

Moore, Adopted for Life, 69. Moore, Adopted for Life, 70. Moore, Adopted for life, 82. I am indebted to Hans and Karin Ulrich of this point and the interpretation of Psalm 8:2 and Matthew 21:16. Swinton, Raging with Compassion, 198.

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emphasizing the commission for humanity “to rule over the works of Your hands” and “put all things under his feet” in verse six. It is not only that the duties are given by God, but also the strength to do so, which is not innate, but rather given as a gift. The humanity of people with profound learning disabilities is often unjustifiably considered to be inferior due to their limited ability to reason, a human faculty that has long been treated as the manifestation of imago Dei.76 Yet, the biblical image of “infants and nursing babes” poses challenge to such exclusive view. Their vulnerability, dependence and physical idleness are places in which God establishes strength. It seems rather our problem if we fail to see God’s unique way in the world. In fact, Jesus’ citation of Psalm 8:2 in Matthew 21:16 reiterated the theme of vulnerable persons being invited in the Kingdom of God. Subsequent to Jesus’ action in driving the money changers and sellers out of temple,77 the blind and the lame approached Jesus and He healed them.78 Jesus healing in the temple, as Ulrich Luz denotes, is a sign that “the gathering of people of God for the coming age had begun.”79 Instead of the economically powerful moneychangers, sellers and temple leaders, the people of God for the coming age are the sick, the disabled, the babes and infants.80 The term babe also reminds readers of their identity as the privileged receivers of the “secret of the Father and the Son” in Matthew 11: 25-27. Adopting a child with disabilities becomes a Christian practice because such adoptive parents are obeying God’s command for justice as well as seeing the child as a member in God’s gathering of His people for the coming age. Christians should be conscious that modern adoption is developing in a direction that emphasizes the providing of more detailed information about children and the use of such information to differentiate children into categories (of either more or less desirable) based on popular wants. It is even possible that the medical conditions of children with disabilities will be identified and reported in a more sophisticated manner in future, meaning that a larger and more refined diversity of choices (i.e. categorized children) will

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On the discussion of the doctrine of imago dei in Christian tradition and how its entailment makes people with learning disabilities inferior human beings, see Reinders, Receiving the Gift, 227-231. Matthew 21: 12-3. Matthew 21: 14. Ulrich Luz, Matthew 21-28: A Commentary, transl. James E. Crouch, ed. Helmut Koester (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 13. Luz elaborates further that Jesus’ healing is a commencement of the Messia. Luz, Matthew, 13.

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be available for applicants to choose from. Christians should be critical of the distortion caused by the medicalization of children with disabilities and the subsequent framing of them as risk, the commodification of the adoption process, and the popular quest for a “defect-free” child. Our desire and decision for adoption should follow the practical rationality of neighbourly love in which information and education comes secondary to the Spirit-directed conversion experience.

Chapter 11

Unnatural Ties: How Adoption Queers the Family R. Ruard Ganzevoort and Marco Derks

To speak of adoption is to speak of family. But it is to speak of family in an unconventional, disturbing, and deconstructive manner. The adoption of a child into a family not only changes the child from being a person without a family to being a person with a family – or from being with one family to being with a different family – but it also changes the family from being a natural one to being an unnatural one. We think this observation is important, because if in our view adoption does not change the family but only the child, then the child remains the excluded, mercifully accepted but always reminded of its difference. This is where our critical queer theological reflection on the family is called for.

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Origins

The subject of this chapter is not detached from our own experiences, as the story of one of us illustrates. Ruard grew up in a maybe slightly unconventional family. His parents raised five children biologically their own but that did not limit how they lived their idea of family. When they lived in Surinam, South America, a new sister joined the family, as her single mother was unable to care for her children. She has always remained part of their family. Back in the Netherlands, several other children from troubled situations lived with them for shorter periods of time, and a young woman from Suriname stayed with them for a year or two to study. Another young woman, whom Ruard’s mother met when she worked at a Surinamese boarding school, chose to ‘adopt’ his parents as her own, and she counts as family in every sense but legal. This inclusive family style is still in function, even when all the children live their own lives. Partners were welcomed and counted as own children, even expartners of the children somehow remained part of the family. Ruard started his own family from a teenage relationship, legally accepting fatherhood of his eldest son who had been born out of wedlock. During a sixteen-year marriage they had five more sons, one of whom died at seven weeks. For more than ten years he has lived in a gay relationship during which time several of his sons lived with them for some time. Their home doubles as

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004352902_013

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a small boutique hotel his partner runs, and the demarcation of the public area and their living room is no more than a set of sliding doors. In other words, the boundaries of ‘family’ have never been very clear to him. We don’t think this story is exceptional. There are many reconstituted families, built from two or more previous (nuclear or other) families. There are many families in which children are adopted. And there are same-sex couplings that are accepted in an increasing number of countries. These different types of families challenge the taken-for-granted meanings of the family as a lifelong commitment of one man and one woman with the intention to produce offspring. Although obviously this ‘procreative family’ is a very common and in some sense prototypical shape of family – at least in the Western world –, it is historically and culturally not the only one, and theologically one that needs to be critiqued just as much as it merits to be affirmed.

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Preferences

If we embark on such a theological reflection, however, we first have to acknowledge that theology’s natural preference seems to have been for a rather strong endorsement of traditional families based on biological and – more specifically – procreative connections. We think this can be shown for how the topic ‘family’ is treated in theological literature, but we are even more convinced that it is the case in the everyday performance of theology in liturgy and church life. It is not too much to say that many churches teach and embody – implicitly or explicitly – a preference for the procreative family. Whether we look at statements from the Vatican or debates within the Anglican Communion over the last couple of decades, the churches’ main concerns are not the doctrinal issues that were at stake in the Early Church or during the Reformation (e.g. Christ’s divinity/humanity, divine election and human freedom, the Eucharistic presence of Christ) or on contemporary global social issues (e.g. terrorism, collapsing economies, climate crisis), but on issues such as abortion and samesex marriage, which threaten or undermine the procreative character of heterosexual marriage. Apparently procreation is the central value for the church. The obvious exception of celibacy in Roman Catholicism doesn’t negate this preference. Whether it is taken as a rejection of fleshly desires based on an eschatological vision of sexuality, as a way of emphasising the otherness of the priesthood, or as a means of the church to exercise its power over its employees, celibacy was indeed the exception and has never become the standard for all. Procreation was and still is at the core of marriage – most clearly in

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the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, but also in teachings and practices of other churches. Churches have for a long time taught that the family is constituted by a man and a woman, leaving their parents behind to become a new unity that is bound to bear fruit in the sense of having children. Infertile families were – and often still are – considered a painful and sometimes problematic exception. In older cultures, it even counted as dramatic and shameful, a reason to end a marriage – not bearing children was tantamount to not being a good man or a good woman. This procreative family-based religion and culture is still at the forefront of church praxis. The most important life events celebrated in church are weddings and births or baptisms, and for many people these are the sole occasions to attend (apart from funerals). Ironically, the fact that many people only appeal to the church when it comes to baptisms and weddings, actually reinforces the churches’ emphasis on the procreative family. If mention is made of singles, childless families, or LGBT’s, it is often in the context of pastoral care, sorrow, and intercessory prayer. Apparently these are people in need, people missing out on the normal life that is the procreative family. The whole paradigm of living in relation with others is defined as the standard type of family with its focus on procreation.1 This may not be limited to contemporary monogamous nuclear families; procreation also plays a central role in cultures that acknowledge polygamous or multi-generational families. In this context, adoption can be seen and experienced as mutual mercy or even grace, welcoming a person into the holy state of the procreative family. In this act of mercy, the adoptee receives parents and becomes their child, whereas the couple receives a child and they become parents. This is, of course, especially true if they have no prior children biologically their own, but in some sense it is true for all cases. The point is that in this perspective adoptive family ties are always the second best option: the adoptive family mimics the ‘real’, ‘natural’ procreative family. A similar process occurs around same-sex couples. One of the often voiced oppositions is the fact that these relations are infertile by definition and, thereby, do not merit the label of marriage or family. Some go further and argue from anatomy that two males or two females cannot have ‘normal’, that is, procreative sexual intercourse, and that thereby their relation is unnatural, or – quoting the apostle Paul – ‘against nature’. This connection of ‘natural’ and

1 Derks, Marco, Pieter Vos & Thijs Tromp (2014). “Under the Spell of the Ring: The Role of Marriage in Moral Debates among Orthodox Reformed Christians in the Netherlands.” Theology & Sexuality 20 (1), 37-55.

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procreation is also illustrated by the fact that in Medieval Catholic texts the term ‘sodomy’ was not only used for same-sex sexual acts, but for any sexual act that was not procreatively functional, thus including, for example, oral sex between a man and a woman.2 If in this perspective same-sex relations are sometimes tolerated, they are accepted as second best, as a mimicking option. An illustration of this is found in the Protestant Church in the Netherlands. Although the Netherlands had opened marriage to same-sex couples in 2001, the since then adapted church order still limits ‘marriage’ to the relation between a man and a woman, which can be “consecrated” (ingezegend; Ordinance 5, article 3) after the marriage has been legally solemnised. The next article speaks of “other life commitments”, which can be “blessed” (gezegend) without legal solemnisation, but only after the local church council has consulted the congregation (Ordinance 5, article 4). The different phrasing and procedure are remarkable and suggest that the procreative relation deserves higher valued terms than the ‘unnatural’ relation. Clearly we are not denying the statistical normalcy of procreative family ties. Most people grow up in the family of their biological parents and many start families of their own in which children are born. There is not so much wrong with that. We are pointing to the problem that statistical normalcy is easily transposed into existential, religious, and/or moral normalcy, marginalising those who happen to be different. Their existence is accepted mercifully, as the exception to the rule, but not in its own right, let alone as a challenge to the unreflected bias of the majority position. It is that challenge that we want to take seriously in this chapter by providing some tentative theological reflections on non-procreative family ties.

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Natures

The first theological notion we want to consider is the concept of nature, in particular Paul’s use of the term ‘against nature’ in his letter to the Romans. Its first appearance is in 1:26, where Paul describes how same-sex activities are a token – or, actually, a result – of a life of rebellion against God. Women

2 Vosman, Frans (1999). “Zwijgen over wat goed bleek te zijn: Het spreken van de RoomsKatholieke Kerk over homoseksuele betrekkingen.” In: De ordening van het verlangen: Vriendschap, verwantschap en (homo)seksualiteit in joodse en christelijke tradities, eds. Anne-Marie Korte et al., 45-67. Zoetermeer: Meinema. pp. 47-48.

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turned to a life “against nature” and men “gave up the natural use (sic) of the woman” for inappropriate behaviour with one another. These words are often used to prove that same-sex relationships are wrong and can certainly not be considered ‘real marriages’. What is more, adoption by same-sex couples is disputed because opponents fear that the child will have a negative example in her or his same-sex caretakers, for it needs both a male and a female role model. That is, children need examples of the normal family. Interestingly, however, Paul uses the term ‘against nature’ again in Romans 11:24. Here he is also concerned with rejection and acceptance, but now the message is that God saves the Gentiles by accepting them “against nature”. Here “against nature” is not a signal of sin or damnation, but of salvation.3 We can take this characterisation of God’s grace as “against nature” as a warning against the risks of ‘natural theology’. Natural theology is not just a form of theological reflection that takes human experience and reasoning as its starting point, over against revelational theology that builds on transcendent insights or Scripture. It is rather a dangerous enterprise when the human experience and reasoning that count are the experience and reasoning of the dominant group. The problem of natural theology is not human subjectivity as such, but a power that marginalises others and resists external critique. One of the most fervent critics of natural theology has been the twentieth-century Protestant theologian Karl Barth. His rejection of natural theology should be understood against the background of the rise of Nazism in which God was claimed to be on the side of the powers that be. The Barmen Declaration (1934), which was mainly written by Barth, and the Kairos Document (1985) are examples of the same prophetic spirit against natural theologies of the powerful. At the same time, while Barth’s oeuvre can be read as a huge critique of natural theology, in his theological reflections on the concept of imago Dei – and on marriage in particular (Kirchliche Dogmatik III.4)4 – he himself in fact fails to read human bodily nature theologically or spiritually and succumbs to a natural theology of biological essentialism by arguing that the Trinitarian difference is mirrored by the difference between man and woman.5 But,

3 Rogers, Eugene F. (1999). Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God. (Challenges in Contemporary Theology). Malden etc.: Blackwell. p. 177FF 4 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Creation, III.4, G. W. Bromily and T. F. Torrance eds. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961). 5 Rogers, Sexuality and the Christian Bod. pp. 180-191. Ward, Graham (2000). Cities of God. (Radical Orthodoxy). London etc.: Routledge: pp. 189-194.

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as Graham Ward explains, reading Barth against Barth, “[w]here the true understanding of creation’s ontological order comes from a participation in the operation of God’s being, the biological – nature as it has been conceived since the seventieth century as an independent realm of self-grounding, selfdefining entities – has no value”.6 Although Paul uses the words ‘against nature’ in two different contexts and lines of reasoning, we should learn from his examples that we have to reflect critically on self-evident views of family and marriage. The natural division lines between Jews and non-Jews are not decisive when it comes to salvation. Using a botanical metaphor that parallels the language of adoption, Paul shows how Gentiles, branches of wild olive trees, will be taken and grafted onto the domestic olive tree, the Jews. Those who were not children of God will be adopted to be just that. There are various examples in the Old and New Testament that use that precise image of adoption to understand how we have become part of the household of God. The central image of human life coram Deo is an image of adoption. We – for most of us are indeed Gentile Christians – are not natural children of God. And those who are ‘natural’ children of God cannot take that for granted (Romans 9:6-7). Unnatural family ties are the hallmark of the kingdom of heaven. This perspective can easily be connected with discussions about same-sex relations – the other ‘against nature’. A major part of the religious discourse rejecting homosexuality qualifies as natural theology in the sense that it naturalises – and thereby legitimises – heterosexuality. Clearly biblical texts are used to support that position, but these texts are often isolated from their cultural context and applied directly without much sensitivity for some of the critical historical and hermeneutical issues involved. A more critical reading might suggest that Paul rhetorically uses cultural customs and views of his days to prove his point: unnatural salvation. The term ‘nature’ often actually means ‘culture’,7 like when Paul says that nature teaches us that men should not wear long hair (1 Corinthians 11:14). Paul is a master in playing with his audience to convince them of his unprecedented message, using their prejudices and consensual opinions without necessarily sharing them. It is not too far-fetched to say that the gospel is queer, turning the tables topsy-turvy, and critiquing every natural ideology in order to make us glimpse God as the utterly different. We are not concerned here with making an argument in favour of same-sex relationships. We are rather suggesting that the 6 Ward, Cities of God: p. 193. 7 Vasey, Michael (1995). Strangers and Friends: A New Exploration of Homosexuality and the Bible. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

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unnatural ties of same-sex families put into question the self-evident natural order of procreative families in a way similar to the way adoption does. Adoption, we might say, is a queer thing, just like the gospel itself. It is against nature.

4

Families

If we explore this further, we come across scores of New Testament texts decentralising the procreative family and instead focusing on unnatural ties. One of the words of the crucified Jesus binds his mother and his beloved disciple into a new adoptive relation (John 19:26-27). Jesus regularly disregards natural family ties in favour of unnatural ones, like when he says that his followers are his real brothers and sisters (Mark 3:33-35), that we should give up our natural family (Matthew 19:29), or that there will be no marriage in heaven (Mark 12:25). But most significantly, the story of Jesus himself is not one of procreation. However we understand his virgin birth, the story emphasises that Joseph was not Jesus’ biological father, and the book of the generation of Jesus Christ in Matthew 1 leaves open the name of his begetter. In turn, Jesus did not start a family of his own, except for what some obscure legends recount. His life ran against the social expectations of his time and left him living with unnatural ties. By calling their fellow believers ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’, the early Christians redefined the meaning of kinship relations. As followers of Jesus they belonged to a different kind of family, as ‘religious siblings’ of Jesus and through him as children of God the Father. Now employing the metaphor of family in religious talk about the faith community is not uncommon. Many popularised writings usually implicitly assume that the model for this is the natural family, clearly demarcated from those who are not part of it. In traditional churches this may be expressed in the exclusion of everyone who is not born into the church family. In evangelical churches it can be symbolised by the (male) pastor and his wife acting as the metaphorical parents of the congregation. We would rather suggest that the analogy should work the other way around: instead of organising the faith community according to the metaphorical logic of the natural family, the latter – as well as all ‘families’ that exist and develop in our human society – can be informed by the Christian understanding of ecclesia and koinonia, that is, the church consisting of people who are called into community, celebrating the Eucharist, sharing their lives, Christ becoming one body with all who believe in Him. This is symbolised in the ritual of baptism. “God’s extension of the covenant to the Gentiles, just be-

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cause it marks the eschaton at the (apparent? penultimate? ongoing?), end of the world, grows by baptism, which is a rite of adoption, not procreation, and promises a future of resurrection, not childbirth.”8 What matters in the church – and thus in the family – is not the celebration of the reproduction of genetic codes in a new generation, but the adoption of each new human being into the fellowship of the community.

5

Creations

How, then, can we value the natural and unnatural sides of our family lives? The book of Genesis provides two accounts of the creation of the world and of humans. In one account of creation, the focus is on the imago Dei. Humans are created after the image and likeness of God. Certainly there is a library of theological interpretations of that term that we will not survey here. But however interpreted, it at least seeks to define humanity as created in a special relation to God: to understand the essence of humanity, we have to look at God. The second account of creation focuses on the earthly, animal-like nature of our existence. Man was created from dust on the ground and breath in his nostrils, and woman was created from a rib of his body. Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh – the relation between man and woman is essentially physical and earthly. This dual account of creation places humans between God and the animals, between heaven and earth. We cannot reduce humanity to either, which is precisely where taboos are set in function. One side of taboo is found in the realm of the sacred, heaven; the other side is in the realm of the animal-like, earth. We cannot walk on holy ground, we cannot speak to God directly, and we cannot be like the angels, because we are bound to our earthly existence. But on the other hand, we cannot live out our every impulse or always follow our instincts, because we are called for a heavenly purpose. Humanity is an instable identity, warding off the much clearer extremes of angels and animals. They never question who they are. They just are. The dual account of human creation instead points to an instable identity that constantly challenges and critiques us. Any fixed understanding of humanity or of the natural order of our existence, should therefore be suspicious to us. The key to our troubles and to our joys is the dynamic dialectics of living ‘in between’, sharing both similarities and differences with both the animals

8 Rogers, Sexuality and the Christian Body: p. 208.

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of the earth and the angels of heaven. Ideological critique serves to call us from moving to the extremes and helps to keep open our identity as humans, difficult as that may be. What does all this mean for our reflections on the unnatural ties of adoption and other non-procreative family connections? We think it challenges us to maintain the dialectics between the two creation narratives. Procreative family ties belong to the realm of our animal-like creational existence. It is in that sense the natural order, not only in its commonality, but especially in that it binds us to earthly relations. Adoptive, unnatural family ties belong to the realm of the heavenly, the vocation to act and be like God. This does not imply that unnatural ties are better than natural ones, but that they help by lifting up all our relations to a higher plane. For humans the celestial dimension is equally important as the terrestrial, because we are in between. It is, therefore, not a value judgment when we interpret the procreative as earthly or natural and the non-procreative as heavenly or unnatural. It is the dialectics between the two that marks our human existence.

6

Texts

From these queer questions regarding the meanings of family and procreation, we can now look at the Biblical notions of adoption itself. The theology of adoption verges on the controversies around adoptionism, circling around the question whether Jesus was a human being adopted as the Son of God or the pre-existent Son assuming human form. The adoptionist view is usually treated as “the earliest form of Christological belief to be traced in the most primitive strata of the NT”,9 replaced by a theology of pre-existence and incarnation, and later rejected as heresy. Although we will not engage with the doctrinal debates here, it is clear from the controversy that adoption is seen as compromising the nature of a ‘real’ son. The notion of Jesus as “born of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness” (Romans 1:3-4, emphasis added) may have seemed too unstable for the identity of the Christ and soon became undergirded by notions of his eternal presence and existence. The same notion of adoption was applied to the human believer. In this reasoning only Jesus is the real Son of God, but we are adopted to be sons and

9 Young, Frances (1983). “Adoptionism.” In: A New Dictionary of Christian Theology, eds. Alan Richardson & John Bowden, 5-6. London: SCM Press: pp. 5-6.

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daughters like him. Already in the first Testament this referred to the King (II Samuel 7:14; Psalm 2:7). Then it included the children of Abraham who can become the children of God (Romans 9:4-8). The selective promise in this text is sometimes used to interpret adoption as part of the redemptive process. Ephesians 1:4-5 links this to predestination, just like the initial adoptive language about Jesus was widened to include his pre-existence. Galatians 4:4-5 states that adoption is the aim of redemption, liberating us from our natural position under the law. Romans 8:15-17 speaks of a spirit of adoption “by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” and a heritage we share with Christ. Romans 8:23 describes adoption as fulfilled only in the eschatological state of the redemption of our bodies. Smolin (2012) critiques this reading of the adoption texts in the Bible and its function in evangelical circles as the legitimisation of the practice of adopting orphans. He rightly notes that the number of texts about adoption is very small and that there are no New Testament examples of the practice of adoption. Moreover, none of the Old Testament adoption narratives “provide any Biblical foundation for the kinds of stranger adoptions, involving a complete loss of original lineage and identity, envisioned by the modern Christian adoption movement”.10 The New Testament metaphor, according to Smolin, does not refer to orphaned children, but to the Roman practice of upper class families legally accepting a young adult man as the suitable heir. Adoption did not imply the young man should sever his original family ties; like marriage it served to reinforce inter-family and political alliances and ensure succession. But it remains unclear how much of these Roman connotations were intended when Paul used the metaphor of adoption for understanding our relation with God. If anything, the adoption texts in the Bible cannot easily be connected to contemporary practices and views of adoption. They don’t restore the adoptee into a solid natural family but create an ambiguous hybridity in which the family of origin and the adopted family coexist. They struggle with unstable identities and notions of intention, pre-existence, and salvation. They speak to the loosening and widening of our familial connections rather than to the legal conditions. They invite us to be open to a new, transcending relational possibility that will be fulfilled only in the eschaton. Adoption, in short, neither rejects the original or natural family nor simply integrates the adoptee into it. Adoption queers the family by adding hybridity, transcendence and instability. 10

Smolin, David M. (2012). “Of Orphans and Adoption, Parents and the Poor, Exploitation and Rescue: A Scriptural and Theological Critique of the Evangelical Christian Adoption and Orphan Care Movement.” Regent Journal of International Law 8 (2), 268-324: p. 283.

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We have argued that adoption changes the family just as much as it changes the child. We have advocated a dialectical approach to the natural and the unnatural, hoping that that will help us move beyond a view of adoption as changing, adapting, and normalising the child. Let us conclude by pushing it one step further. If we reflect theologically on the non-procreative family, we first have to affirm the natural, the earthly, the physical. Obviously that includes procreation. Our human existence commences – depending on one’s definition – with our birth or with the merger of male and female genetic material. Becoming conceived, born, and part of humankind means sharing this physical existence. It also creates a very specific connection with the man and the woman whose bodies created ours. To overlook the centrality of that connection is to develop an illusionary theology that negates our fundamental physicality. As Eugene Rogers puts it, “[p]rocreation can be grace, as creation is grace; and since procreation is also natural, it is a good of the species – though certainly not of every sex act, and not necessarily, either, of every marriage.”11 And yet, even if this is a necessary condition for our existence, it is not a sufficient one, especially when we talk about becoming part of a family. Even when one is born into a procreative family, it is not until the parents receive, accept, and thus adopt the child that a family comes into being. Terms like acceptance, care, love, and responsibility define the family. But they are not defined by procreation; they are part of the process of adopting the child. If parents do not build that kind of relations, there is no family. In that sense, we all have to adopt our children, whether or not they are biologically our own. The defining element of family therefore is not procreation, it is adoption. At the same time, there is also a risk in the practice of adoption – as is the case in same-sex marriages – when its theological implications are not fully acknowledged. On the one hand, both adoption and same-sex marriage undermine the procreation-based character of marriage. On the other hand, adoption and same-sex marriage seem to uncritically reinforce the ideal of the nuclear family. By allowing ‘outsiders’ to enjoy the blessings of the traditional family structures, these structures remain in place. This is not to condemn individual cases of adoption or same-sex marriage, but to show how some practices can at the same time deconstruct and reinforce marriage and family ideals on a categorical or symbolic level (cf. Derks et al. 2014).12 If the reinforcing effect undoes the deconstructive, disruptive effects, this still leads to a 11 12

Rogers, Sexuality and the Christian Body: pp. 208-209. Derks et al., ‘Under the spell of the ring:’ ???.

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privileging of marriage and family over against those who are married without children or those who are not married.

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Conclusion

And so we have come full circle in critically reflecting on the natural and unnatural ties. Theology’s preference as lived out by the church may traditionally have been with the natural order, in the end it should probably be with the unnatural. A critical theological examination challenges our preference for the natural and shows that procreation as such is not theologically significant. This specifically implies that adopted children are not the exception. They are prototypical for human family life. To speak of adoption is to speak of family, we wrote in our opening sentences. But that is not because family life is constitutive for adoption. It is the other way around. Adoption is constitutive for the family. Unconventional families are not exceptional, we wrote in reference to the story of Ruard’s family. The reflections in this chapter have shed light on the disturbing importance of the inclusion of genetically unrelated siblings, the ‘adoption’ of parents and/or children, the acceptance of children born in and out of wedlock, the participation in the ‘family-of-choice’ that many gay people experience, and the struggle to have these relatively common yet often disputed family configurations acknowledged. Unnatural ties become all the more meaningful if they are not seen as exceptions but as sources of life. Yes, the non-procreative family may indeed symbolise mercy and grace, but not because solitary individuals are restored into the normal situation of family life by adoption. Non-procreative families are a symbol of grace because they show us that life depends on undeserved acceptance and love, not on any quality in and of ourselves. They are a symbol of grace, of life, because they remind us that it is not our biological origins that count, but our relational future. They are a symbol of grace because they embody that we are not determined by the limitations of natural life, but called into the unnatural freedom of loving care.

Chapter 12

Embraced in God’s Trembling-Womb Love: A Theology of Adoption Kirsten Sonkyo Oh

The possibility of becoming parents through an adoption plan has been part of the conversation ever since my now husband and I dated seriously. Our travels outside the US and experiences with children in our ministry contexts prior to meeting one another sparked our imagination for a broader understanding of family. You see, adoption was not inevitably a plan B, but a plan we had seriously considered since the establishment of our relationship as husband and wife. Our adoption journey was catalyzed even more when my internal medicine doctor said frankly, “There are other alternatives for becoming parents.” I had struggled with health issues in the past and this matter-of-fact statement from the internist allowed us to face the reality of infertility. The doctor inadvertently propelled our nascent conversation towards an active discernment as to the viability of the adoption process during a precarious year of attempting to biologically conceive. Although adoption was always part of the journey towards parenthood, we had also hoped for a biological child as well. In the midst of the grief that came with the loss of conceiving and birthing a biological child, we committed to the process of communal discernment as to whether we would adopt or not. The discernment took many turns and twists with a web of family and close friends weighing in on the decision with both tremendous wisdom and unsolicited judgments or off-handed humor about the matter. Our discernment continued as we attended a full-day education session in which recent parents who adopted, two children, a teen birth mom who made adoptive plans for her child to be placed with another family, social workers, and nurses shared their intimate journeys. The stories told of joy amidst suffering, embracing the future even if it means rejection, laughter while grieving, and healing through lament. The overwhelming complexity of emotions and paradoxical realities brought profound awareness of my own vulnerability, along with the refusal to allow shame to define or dictate our infertile status. This chapter is a continuation of the discernment process wherein the theological dynamics of adoption will be unpacked using several theological lenses

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which span a broad range of ecumenical writings. As we consider these lenses, I will also navigate the theological terrain with a specific focus on developing a Hebraic understanding of God in the feminine. In what follows, the vertical theology of adoption that is foundational to a Christian understanding of salvation, intersects with the horizontal commitment to love the vulnerable children, who are in the adoption process, in precisely that way that God loves. Throughout this process of discerning, I realize that grief and lament is a constant companion, so I acknowledge this first.

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Grief and Lament is a Constant Companion

My deep sense of sorrow of not being able to bear a child and having difficulty with the adoption process is correlative to the emotion felt in multiple narratives of adoption: grief of the parents whose journey takes them towards adoption but gets delayed in the pervasive roller coaster ride; the guilt of the birth family that makes an adoption plan; and the abandonment question of the adopted child(ren) who wonders why an adoption plan was made.1 Paul Brinich writes about the potency of parental losses: “The adoptive parents lose their view of themselves as fertile; they also lose the imaginary biological child conceived in their fantasies.”2 Similarly, “The relinquishing parents lose a real child who is replaced by fantasies that cannot be corrected by exposure to the light of reality.”3 Even more lamentable are the sharp pangs of failed adoption. Like a form of late-term miscarriage, the adoptive parents cope long-term effects of what-could-have-been fantasies.4 In all these pockets of reality, the felt losses need to be validated and mourned, however long the grief(s) remain or however often such grief(s) return.

1 K. Gribble, who has poignantly researched and published on infant feeding practices, asserts, “Adoption universally involves loss…. Newborn infants desire to remain with their mother and if removed from skin-to-skin contact with her will give a specific ‘separation distress cry/call’ as an appeal for reunion. Maternal separation is stressful for infants, and all adopted children have experienced the loss of their birth mother.” Karleen D. Gribble, “Mental Health, Attachment and Breastfeeding: Implications for Adopted Children and Their Mothers,” International Breastfeeding Journal 1 (2006). 2 Paul M. Brinish, “Adoption from the Inside Out”, 61. Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner, The Spirit of Adoption: At Home in God’s Family, 1st ed. (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003), 73. 3 Paul M. Brinish, “Adoption from the Inside Out”, 61. Ibid. 4 Ibid., 2.

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In my case, I relate deeply with the narrative of Hannah’s profound grief, among other women who were infertile in Scripture.5 Hannah’s bargaining with God strikes the core of such lament: She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord, and wept bitterly. She made this vow: ‘O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a nazirite until the day of his death. (1 Sam 1:10-11)6 If, as it often is, conceived as a procreative command, God’s imperative to “be fruitful and multiply” renders barrenness as a “curse on creation.”7 Hannah’s bitterness, flowing from the distress of barrenness and the provocation of Peninnah, is demonstrated in prayers without words with many tears. Such prayers seemed to Eli “as inappropriate” and Hannah as “a good-for-nothing”: “Eli, whose leadership role in Israel would eventually be taken over by Samuel, misunderstood the multiple (ecstatic?) prayers of Hannah. Anyone who spoke to herself, whose lips moved without making a sound, must be drunk!”8 Hannah’s position of being misunderstood is not new to barren women who desire to conceive. Additionally, the implicit bias of our general society may speciously perceive the adopted child(ren) as less desirable than a biological one. Too often, the Church and their leaders prolong this pervasive bias, failing to understand “adoption is a paradigm for the church.”9 Precarity, the “condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death” is a lived reality for many involved in the adoption process.10 One young Asian adult 5

6 7 8

9 10

Sarai, Rebekah, Rachel, Samson’s mother, Michal, Elizabeth. All of these women, except for Michal had temporary infertility and did conceive after God remembers them and opens their womb. Each time, a son is conceived and have a significant role in Israel’s story. Of these Michal (David’s first wife) is the only what did not conceive. New Revised Standard Version Bible, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989). Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, “Blessed Are the Barren: The Kingdom of God Springs Forth from the Empty Womb,” Christianity Today (December, 2007). Ralph W. Klein, 1 Samuel, 2nd ed., Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2008), 8 and 9. Consider also that “There is no indication that Yahweh’s shutting of Hannah’s womb was considered judgmental” (p. 7). Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner, “The Practice and Theology of Adoption Womb-Love,” The Christian Century 118, no. 3, 10 (2001): 10. Butler, 2009, 25.

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mournfully recalls her experience as an adopted child in a Caucasian household: The first serious question I get after I tell someone that I was adopted is whether I have any contact with my “real” parents or know them at all. While I know that people simply are referring to my biological parents, it is clear that people assume biology is the first and primary basis for reality. Adoption is not the norm for most people…. I have received questions as to whether I wish I hadn’t been adopted, as if adoption is more of a punishment than a blessing. I think people are usually curious and aren’t trying to be mean or insensitive, but if adoption is not your story, it’s hard to understand. Such socialization which continues to shape stereotypes and negative images of those who are adopted must be challenged. In order to offer an alternative, non-essentialized understanding of adoption, I present ecumenical theologies regarding adoption that holistically consider personhood of all those involved in the adoption process in light of the grand narrative of the Gospel.

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Adoption through Ecumenical Theological Lenses of Salvation

Protestants and Catholics alike relate to the care of vulnerable children through adoption as evidence of those who embrace the gospel. Both the Catholic and Protestant traditions have had robust theological understanding of adoption as a vertical relationship between God the parent and we God’s children that is reflected in horizontal relationships between human parents toward vulnerable children. The few representative theological lenses offered here are procured from Scripture’s grand narrative of God who seeks, redeems and adopts us as God’s children (John 1:12), so that all God’s children would have the spirit of adoption to cry out Abba (Romans 8 and 9, Galatians 4, Ephesians 1). The attitudes, and shifts therein, of ecumenical understandings of adoption, particularly of Christianity in the United States began with the Puritans. For the Puritans, while adoption was not regeneration, justification, or sanctification, it was considered to belong within the order of salvation “between justification and sanctification, following the order set forth by the Westminster divines,” so that “They spoke often of its greatness, excellency, dignity, and

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comprehensiveness.”11 Further, the Puritans believed that as adopted children of God and as joint heirs with Christ, all believers comprised the full household of God. As such this sense of belonging impacts all aspects of life in “our relationship to God, our relationship to the world, our relationship to the future, our relationship to ourselves.”12 However, they placed a tremendous wedge between their faith in divine or vertical adoption against their (mal)formation of human adoption. For instance, Puritan theologian William Ames’ four differences between human and divine adoption quoted below, indicates the disjointed dichotomy between divine and human adoptions from the Puritan stance: – Human adoption relates to a person, who, as a stranger, has no right to the inheritance except through adoption. But believers, though by natural birth they have no right to the inheritance of life, are given it because of rebirth [through faith in Christ]. – Human adoption is only an outward designation and a bestowal of external things. But divine adoption is so real a relationship that it is based on an inward action and the communications of a renewed inner life. – Human adoption was introduced when there were no, or too few, natural sons. But divine adoption is not from any want but from abundant goodness, whereby a likeness of a natural son and mystical union is given to adopted sons. – The human [adoption] is ordained so that the son may succeed the father in the inheritance. But divine adoption is not ordained for succession, but for participation in the inheritance assigned. Both the Father and his firstbegotten Son live forever and this admits no succession.13 This tenuous relationship between the divine and human, the sacred and profane can also be found in the theological framework of the Roman Catholic church. The Roman Catholic church held divine adoption in similar reverence, along with the Puritans. However, the Catholic church primarily advocated the importance of the biological family as primary social fabric in concert with other units of society. In the United States, the founding of the National

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Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012), 538. Ibid., 546. Stated by John Cotton (1585-1652). William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, 165-67, quoted in ibid., 544.

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Conference of Catholic Charities in 1910 to reunite children to their biological families demonstrates such advocacy.14 On the other hand, Lisa S. Cahill notes the theological shift in the Catholic church: “…Catholics emphasize that care for children in need can be a vital expression of gospel values. … It is part of the mission of families to build up the church, and also to contribute to a more just society.”15 In this vein, Pope John Paul II believed “the adoption of children whose birth families are unable to care for them is part of the mission of the Christian family as ‘domestic church’.”16 The implication of gospel values derived from Jesus as the example of caring for the poor as the basis for adoption in the Catholic church is shared by the Protestant church as well. The Protestant churches’ general understanding of adoption starts with Jesus as an adoptive son to his earthly father. Like the Puritans, theologically, adoption belongs in the order of salvation. For Stephen Post, “Adoption is a remarkable, splendid, genetically unleashed expression of parental love which approximates agape.”17 Post draws from Karl Barth: “While he [Karl Barth] rightly emphasizes that the idea that birth parents should rear their child is central to Christian thought, he goes farther than other Protestant thinkers of which I am aware in stressing that [the process of] child rear[ing] by birth parents should not be absolutized.”18 That is, the insistence of birth parents as the only viable persons to raise their offsprings may be ill conceived in certain cases. Correspondingly, the Methodists considered the circumstances that warrant adoption and lend ample support for the birth parents, the child, and adoptive parents in their social principles: We recognize the agony, strength, and courage of the birth parent(s) who choose(s) in hope, love, and prayer to offer the child for adoption. In addition, we also recognize the anxiety, strength, and courage of those who choose in hope, love, and prayer to be able to care for a child. We affirm and support the adoptive parent(s)’ desire to rear an adopted child as they would a biological child… We commend the birth parent(s), the receiving parent(s), and the child to the care of the Church that grief might 14

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Lisa Sowle Cahill, “Adoption: A Roman Catholic Perspective,” in In the Morality of Adoption: Social-Psychological, Theological, and Legal Perspectives, ed. Timothy P. Jackson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 153. Ibid., 161. In fact, Cahill claims the Catholic Social Services of Green Bay, Wisconsin, is credited with being the first American agency to promote open adoption, in 1974 (p. 154). Ibid., 143. Stephen Post, “Adoption: A Protestant Agapic Perspective,” ibid., 187. Ibid., 186, 77.

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be shared, joy might be celebrated, and the child might be nurtured in a community of Christian love.19 As its social surrounding evolved, Christian theological statements and social statements shifted from the preference for biological family, to the allowance of other family units, to the wholehearted support of those who choose the adoption route. As such, most Christian theologies no longer espouse adoption as inferior to, or merely secondary to, birth parents raising their children per se. In the words of Stephen Post, “Adoptive love is resonant with agape…”.20 The ecumenical theological lenses offer the gospel value of Christ’s care for the vulnerable as a model for human adoption, which may in fact complete the order of salvation shown in divine adoption, although not all Christian theologies may espouse such high view of adoption. Nevertheless, even if the theologies may have shifted, the experiences of people within the adoptive process continue to face the precarity of such bias pervasive in both our social and ecclesial sectors. In other words, theological understanding does not necessarily translate to a lived reality. Further understanding of God’s love and mercy in the feminine form helps us to interrogate the misunderstanding and/or the malformation that divides divine and human adoption narratives.

3

The Trembling Womb of God: Rechem

The compassion to carry the spirit of adoption of the divine into human adoption is a necessary component of the complex emotions of “anxiety, strength, and courage of those who choose in hope, love, and prayer to be able to care for a child.”21 This freedom to love connects divine and human adoption for me through the biblical understanding of adoption wherein the image of a compassionate God: God is a compassionate God. This means, first of all, that he is a God who has chosen to be God-with-us…. By calling him Immanuel, we recognize that he has committed himself to live in solidarity with us, to share our

19 20 21

“Adoption” in The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church 2012, (Nashville: United Methodist Publishing House, 2012), 114. “Adoption: A Protestant Agapic Perspective,” 173. “Adoption” in The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church 2012, 114.

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This compassionate God has an image of both birthing and adoptive parent in the Hebraic connotation of God in a feminine metaphor. Mercy ( - rechem) means not only forgiveness and compassion, but also connotes the womb.23 In her experience with the grief of infertility and the joy of adoption, Jean Stevenson-Moessner suggests, “God’s womb-love [mercy] combines compassion with suffering. I became aware that this God who cradles us is moved by all the modes of adoption. Ironically, it was the grief of adoption that thrust me most deeply into this throbbing womb, this creative center, of a tender God.”24 Jeremiah 31:20 relays this “throbbing womb” when translated, “Therefore, my womb trembles for him [Ephraim]: I will truly show motherly-compassion upon him.” This imagery of God encapsulates the generosity of love to give one’s core for another. This is the very definition Jesus evokes in the love command found in John 15: 12-13. This capacity of love as “womb-love” is not based on biology but “the tenacious compassion or yearning for the well-being of God’s children”25 where “the semantic tenor of the word indicates that the womb is trembling, yearning for the child, grieved at the pain” so that “what is being showered upon the wayward is God’s womb-love.”26 This feminine imagery of God’s love for all God’s children, regardless of biological ties liberates the preferential view of biological families towards the capacity for larger families that reverberates with the trembling womb of God. The spirit of adoption that cries out “Abba” orients us to love beyond biological ties, widening our womb embrace to reflect the life of our compassionate God. This frames the theology of adoption beyond the salvation order of divine adoption to the pathos of God’s trembling womb for all who are involved in the adoption process.

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Donald P. McNeill and et al., Compassion, a Reflection on the Christian Life (Garden City: Image books, 1983), 13, 15-16. Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 1226. Stevenson-Moessner, The Spirit of Adoption: At Home in God’s Family, 2. See also pp. 90-93. “The Practice and Theology of Adoption Womb-Love,” 12. Johnson, Elizabeth in John D. Garr, God and Women: Woman in God’s Image & Likeness (Atlanta, GA: Golden Key Press, 2011), 112.

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Embraced in God’s Trembling Womb Love

The process of discernment of divine and human adoption through ecumenical theological lenses contains hope-filled understanding of adoption as part of salvific order. As adopted children of God, the gospel values espoused by Jesus’s words, actions, death, and resurrection enlarges my capacity to love as the reimagined story of God’s trembling womb rightly forms my theology of adoption. As I understand the theological implication of God’s mercy, my grief and lament in longing to parent that seems to boomerang back at random times finds mercy and compassion embraced in God’s trembling womb love. This adoption journey through discernment communally, ecumenically, and Hebraically highlights the blessing of barrenness. Grief and lament may be a constant companion until the finalization of adoption in the hopeful future, but the enlargement of the understanding of God’s trembling-womb love has rendered barrenness a blessing, loosely corresponding to Jesus blessing “the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed” (Luke 23: 28-31).27 The stories of paradoxes of emotions – joy amidst suffering, embracing the future even if it means rejection, laughter while grieving, and healing through lament – are embodied in my womb, as it also trembles with yearning hope. As a result of our discernment journey, my husband and I have chosen a domestic adoption process with an agency in the United States that facilitates open adoption, primarily. This means that the birth parent(s) choose with whom they place the child and continue to have an on-going relationship with the child and the birth family. The human connection between the child and the birth family is an ethical process that moves away from the “as-if” policies of the “baby-scoop era” (1945-1972), where unmarried mothers either were forced or chose to “relinquish” their child(ren) for adoption.28 Open adoption 27

28

The context of this blessing is the present state with an eschatological urgency of Christ’s return. Beautifully, the author recounts this blessing: “He blesses the barren as barren for the first time. He takes their curse away. But not in granting a child—that blessing is not to be given anymore. Jesus’ blessing is a hard blessing; it is a divine blessing, for it kills as it makes alive. It does not answer the deepest longing of husbands and wives to make babies together. It does not even dignify the grief and honor the curse. It casts away the curse, and the cure to the curse, the one with the other, and instantiates a new blessing altogether. Blessed are the barren, blessed are the empty wombs, blessed are the dry breasts.” Wilson, “Blessed Are the Barren: The Kingdom of God Springs Forth from the Empty Womb,” 25. See David M. Smolin, “Thinking About Adoption” Journal of Christian Legal Thought, 2, no. 1 (Spring 2012). Provocative movies like Sider House Rules or Philomena are good depictions of mal-informed adoptive practice of that era.

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allows for a healthier development of the child(ren)’s identity formation: “The policy and practice of family placement within the UK can be understood as the archetypal separation of a person from their physical environment, yet the intersection of ‘person with place’ – both past and present – has been argued to be crucial for identity formation.”29 This challenges the previous legal understanding in the US, particularly of the “as if” clause that surreptitiously separates the child completely from the ‘person with place’ “as if” the birthmother has never carried the child and “as if” the child has not been adopted. Valuing this interdependent relationship, we chose a domestic open adoption program that is situated in the surrounding five counties of Southern California. As such, our adoption journey is not finished. We are still waiting to be chosen by a birth parent. Each time we are informed that a birth parent is considering us, complex emotions oscillate between mourning and dancing that accompany the precarity of an open adoption. However, we are ensconced in God’s trembling womb love as our wombs also tremble with hope for the fulfilment of our longing. And, I echo an Asian young adult, a twenty one year old who was adopted as an infant into a white suburban home in Orange County, California. She desperately desires for God’s salvation order to be completed by human adoption: My greatest desire when it comes to this [her adoption status] is that people realize that we are all adopted by God into his family, restored to our rightful places as God’s children because we choose his family and he has chosen us. I think if Christians realized they too are adopted, even if not by their physical and earthly families, adoption would become a more prominent part of the great story of God.

29

Victoria Sharley, “New Ways of Thinking About the Influence of Cultural Identity, Place and Spirituality on Child Development within Child Placement Practice,” Adoption & Fostering 36, no. 3/4 (2012): 112. Sharley cites “place” not just as a geographical position but a space connecting a person’s narrative with their environment” through an ecological model of child development; resilience; attachment theory; and a strengths-based perspective. (112-113). See also the longitudinal study on open communication with birth families Elsbeth Neil, Mary Beek, and Emma Ward, Contact after Adoption: A Longitudinal Study of Adopted Young People and Their Adoptive Parents and Birth Relatives (London: British Association for Adoption & Fostering, 2014). Among theses young people, four patterns of identity development were identified: cohesive, unexplored, developing, and fragmented.

Chapter 13

Between Ascension and Pentecost: A Theology of Adoption Heather Walton

1

Thursday May 14th – Ascension Day

Forgot it was Ascension Day! Remembered only mid-afternoon when I had already missed the Chaplaincy Mass. Before I came to Scotland I regularly went to my local Catholic Church to supplement the meagre feasts of my Protestant diet. I go less often here because the churches are so conservative. As a result I am definitely less in touch with the liturgical year. Felt a pang of guilt – but only a pang. I have very little investment in this particular feast. I always remember slipping into choral evensong in an Oxford college and having to stop myself from laughing out loud when I glimpsed the stained glass window representing Christ ascending. It was of a cloud with two thin little legs and two big feet sticking out of the bottom. That, I thought, demonstrates the problem we have with this. The Ascension apart, of course, from being a holy mystery, is an attempt to resolve difficult questions like how do we move from the period of Christ’s ministry, passion and resurrection into a new era? And, most particularly, ‘What do we do with the body?’ Some resolution of this issue is required to make possible the transition from Easter to Pentecost but we haven’t really resolved our many problems with the absent/present body of Christ. ‘Do not touch me’ – the intimate mystery in the garden still haunts us. Today I began reading for the Adoption Symposium but did not get very far. Became engrossed in thinking about Darlene Weaver’s meditations on the theme that ‘Christ’s body is the most real of all bodies’.1 Her reflections were humane and circumspect placing this outrageous claim in its proper theological context. However, I was struck again by that alarming tendency in much contemporary Catholic thought (and spreading) to suggest that our human embodied relations are but the shadows of divine reality. I once listened to a

1 Weaver, Darlene (2007) ‘Embryo Adoption Theologically Considered: Bodies, Adoption and the Common Good.’ In S. V. Brakman and D. Weaver (Eds) The Ethics of Embryo Adoption and the Catholic Tradition. London: Springer Science and Business Media. pp. 141-159: pp. 152-3.

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devout and tortured gay Christian explaining that for him marriage between men and women was sacred because the relationship between Christ and the Church was not like but actually that of bride and bridegroom. This was the divine reality, he believed, that instituted the shadow form of human marriage. This is what made it holy – and simultaneously excluded him from its sacred bonds. I thought, ‘How is it that we have come so far from the impulse to name God by drawing upon our experience of joyful nuptial celebrations to a position where we co-ordinate the significance of our mortal lives by mapping them onto ideal celestial forms?’ We are forever in the cave and never in the sweet fresh sunshine. I am with Bonhoeffer who thought there was something faintly distasteful about thinking of God when in the embrace of your lover. Actually I think it is worse than distasteful in a world where so many human bodies are abused, tortured, starving and shamed to imply that God’s is the most real body, the pain, struggle and passion displaced to some divine economy in which we share but at one remove. Do not touch me. You can’t touch Christ’s body. He has gone up in a cloud. The importance of this matter in theological reflection upon adoption appears to be evident throughout the literature I am encountering. We seem to approach adoption by taking norms for our own practice from those we believe/imagine are operative in the transcendent economy rather than reflecting upon what our experience of adoption might usefully teach us about God and about human flourishing. Kind of wish it were the other way round.

2

Friday 15th May

Today my daughter is working to complete the portfolio she has been putting together for her studies in Art and Design. She is working with a deep involvement and intensity I have never seen in her before. The theme she has developed in her studies and sketches is ‘At the Window.’ Her final outcome is a self-portrait of her sitting beside a large Glasgow tenement window at night-time. Her features are very clear and distinct but the reflections in the window are a jumble of silhouettes illuminated by streetlamps and headlights and intermixed with the reflection of objects inside the building. It is very effective this mixture of clarity and chaos. The night-time and the brightness. The human form distinct but the world around appearing in surreal and abstract dimensions. The figure seated is clearly deep in thought. This impression is heightened by the reflective images that dominate the centre of the work. She is painting and I am working on this paper for the Symposium. It is companionable but intense as we both struggle to address issues of self-

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representation in a manner that does justice both to our own concrete identity and the unknowns within and outside us. Today I have been reading John Wall’s work exploring the image of God in the child (2004; 2007). For Walls image and incarnation are linked concepts. The child does not merely resemble the divine but also embodies God. I think my 16-year-old daughter understands, intuitively, that the mere representation of a likeness is not sufficient to convey an image and she is struggling with other elements in the composition to convey a deeper truth about who she is. A theology of adoption that takes seriously the image of God in the child would, I think, begin to discern that this image cannot be grasped without throwing the contours of the world inside and out into confusion. The image of God as child might be hard to glimpse in a theology of adoption dominated by concerns for what is permissible (how did that word find its way into Christian ethics), normative or definitive. Recognition of the image of God in the child is always likely to throw other elements of the picture into new and strange configurations. Not least because we would be compelled to consider that the child may wear the face of God in the relation rather than the parent mediating God’s love to the child.

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Saturday 16th May

We all got up late today and sat around reading papers, eating bagels with cream cheese and talking intermittently, sharing scraps of news, enjoying the companionable intimacy of family life. This is what I would have missed I thought if we were childless. The everyday extraordinariness of it all. After a shower and a strong milky coffee it is time to sit down at the dining table spread with journal articles and get on with things. Today I earmarked to study social research related to adoption in the UK. One of the most important lessons liberation theology has taught us about theological reflection is always seek to understand the issue on its own terms before you reflect upon it. I find that I had partially and badly understood a great many things about adoption in the contemporary context. So how interesting it is that in the UK interfamily adoptions, including adoptions by blood parents, form such a huge part of the overall picture.2 This is not something I had really factored in. The reasons for this are: to make the family structure in hybrid households coherent (a version of ontological hygiene that Elaine Gra-

2 O’Halloran, Kerry (2009) The Politics of Adoption: International Perspectives on Law, Policy and Practice. London: Springer: pp. 52-76.

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ham,3 to ensure rights of decision making, access etc. in other words to gain access to legal securities, to maintain a blood link (jus sanguinis in legal terms). Apart from the interfamily adoptions a picture emerges of childless heterosexual couples seeking babies (many of whom adopt from abroad using a variety of arrangements), gay and lesbian couples who are often willing to take older children, couples who volunteer to adopt children with special needs many of whom in the past would have received institutional care etc. A complex and rapidly shifting picture and increasingly shaped by the relatively new dynamic that adopted children now often remain in contact with birth parents rendering the family leaky and porous. This is interesting – I am enthralled. I think that when I was struggling with infertility one reason I did not want to think about adoption, ruled it out in fact, was because the model of the adoptive family I had in mind (in which the parents adopt for purely altruistic reasons) did not seem to map onto my mixed, ambivalent, passionate longings. However, the picture of adoption in the UK confounds my previous view of this ‘virtuous’ family unit. If we were to make the situation of adoption as it exists the starting point for reflecting on a theology of adoption then we would come out with something quite different from that emerging in the papers I have been reading. There would need to be a new acknowledgement of ambivalence in human and divine relations. We would have cause to marvel at the heterogeneity and theological complexity of the ties that bind us: ties of blood, culture, care, compassion and desire. We would find cause to celebrate in the loving care of a gay couple who adopt the bullied teenager, the blood father who repents of previous neglect and returns in penitence to renew a covenant with his little girl, the mother of a woman who committed suicide rearing her grandchild in grief and grace and hope. So much, I believe, we could learn of the coming kingdom from experiences such as these. From this perspective I would be inclined to agree with the suggestion that Christians might see adoption as a mirror for understanding all familial relations…

4

Sunday 17th May

To church but my daughter is not with me. She is at home revising for her exams which start tomorrow. As an Elder and on duty this week I am at the door and greeting the congregation as they arrive. We are a strange and mixed 3 A version of ontological hygiene that Elaine Graham talks about: Graham, Elaine (2002) Representations of the post/human: monsters, aliens and others in popular culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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group of people – an eccentric but loveable congregation and people who I have learnt to share so much with over the past years. Yes I think we are the household of God and we learn what that means in the day to day bearing with each other and embodying forth the love of God that constitutes our communal life. So what then of baptism? That one baptism which so many of the writers I am looking at make the cornerstone of their adoption theology? Well… I took my baby to be baptised in the Catholic Church because her father was Catholic and I would probably be Catholic too if the present dispensation were not so oppressive. I took her for baptism despite the fact that I knew (and the Priest knew) her conception through IVF was not according to the rules. It was wonderful our ecumenical celebration – so many people attended that they had to sit on the altar steps and stand at the back of the Church. My Auntie Joan at 70 and a lifelong Methodist was thrilled at the ceremony. ‘They really do it well,’ she told me. ‘I think we should all have candles and anointing with oil.’ Yes and all the Angels and Saints and the Hosts of Heaven looking on and smiling I agreed with her. But what do I think now? Well of course I think that this event marked once and forever my daughter’s incorporation into the body of the Church. But also I know today she is not with me and I do not know if, at 16, she will be accompanying me to Sunday worship for much longer. This is also something I wrestle with and which challenges me and I cannot resolve with theological formulae. Marked forever sealed and signed but not here, not present right now and I am lonely for her. It’s interesting the way Baptism has become such a big issue in contemporary theologies of belonging.4 Many theologians wishing to affirm the place of gay and lesbian Christians within the ‘queer’ Body of Christ have returned to the Font to enforce their title.5 And at the same time those who advocate a normative family pattern for natural and adoptive households stand by that same Font and make claims about what we learn here about the sort of families God intended to form and what their proper bounds and ties should be. For myself, and as the kind of theologian I seem called to be, I am always interested in the ambiguous boundary points of human life and baptism is one of these. Yes it is the point of entry into the Church. Here we share in death and rise renewed 4 See for example: Bennett. Jana (2008) Water is Thicker than Blood: An Augustinian Theology of Marriage and Singleness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 5 See for example: Stuart, Elizabeth (1999) ‘The View from the Font.’ Theology and Sexuality. Vol. 6, 11. 7-8.Walls, John (2004) ‘Fallen Angels: A Contemporary Christian Ethical Ontology of Childhood.’ International Journal of Practical Theology. Vol. 8. pp. 160-184. — (2007) ‘Fatherhood, Childism and the Creation of Society.’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Vol. 75, no. 1. pp. 52-76.

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to life in Christ. But also yes. Here we say in words and symbols that the birth of blood and water from the mother is not enough. Something is lacking. It is not real birth. Let her be born by the Priest and by the Father then she will be truly a child of God. This is a troubling thought. All these conflicts and unresolved issues as we gather together this Sunday morning as the community of the baptised. As an elder on duty I stand to read from the Gospel of John the lesson that takes us beyond the blood and water to a unity established before the foundation of the world I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17:23).

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Monday 18th May

I woke in the night. I thought I heard her cry and I rushed to her room. But she was sleeping. I stood just a moment and watched her as she slept. This now nearly-woman most beautiful child there has ever been. I am an anxious parent. In my own defence I could mention the years of waiting, the miscarriage and the roller coaster of the pregnancy ending with the emergency Caesarean. I could tell of the certainty I felt as they rushed me down the corridor to the operating table that if she died it would be best to die with her. And also, in my defence, it has recently been a particularly worrying time. She has been sick this year, and we have been afraid. I have held her hair away from her pale face and I wished to the core of my being that I could bear for her the pain that gripped her body. So. Theologians such as Oliver O’Donovan (1984) and Stanley Hauerwas would tell me this beloved daughter was ill-conceived. That she is an object of my consuming desire rather than part of God’s creative and providential dispensation. I think that this is utter nonsense but you might expect me to say this bound up and blinded as I am by my own foolish and arrogant desire to possess the child I am denied. Thanks to these theologians for their sympathetic reflections upon my plight. But I must contend with you. We are back again to this issue of the child and the image of God. Most of the work I have read on the theology of adoption maintains at all cost that adoption can never be undertaken so that childless parents can receive a child. This is bad. Bad because God is the really, real parent. Biological parents, in their care for their child, make an imitative response to the love God has for humanity. Unless they cannot do so for some unfortunate reason in which case adoptive

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parents, as a more or less adequate substitutes, come in and do it for them, as representatives again but at one more stage of remove. Note that at each stage in this drama of substitutions the parent stands for God and the child for humanity. If we are to take part in this tableau of mirrors our parental love must be God-like; an act of gracious self-giving without passion, partiality or desire for self-fulfilment. But God came to me as child. As the child I ached for. I desired God deeply and God came to me as child. Nothing was unchanged. Every cell, every charged impulse of my soul and body transformed in that birth. I was broken and I was healed and I was remade and forever transfigured in that encounter. I have known such love as cannot be contained beneath the heavens. And I have held it in my arms.

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Tuesday 19th May

My daughter has now sat two exams in two days and she is tired. Tonight we ordered in a curry. She watches TV while her father and I share a bottle of wine and enjoy the sense of us all taking time out – separate but together. My daughter and her friends follow a lot of American TV and it occurs to me, sensitised as I now am to these issues, that all her favourite shows have very prominent adoptive families within them: the OC, 90210, Friends, One Tree Hill. This was not the case when I was growing up. Nor was it the case that the magazines I read featured such headline as Angelina and Brad to Adopt Again, Jennifer Anistan to become a Mother – She Has Already Visited the Orphanage etc…Of course there were some prominent adoptive families but today it seems that the family of choice for celebs is expanding to include adopted children from differing ethnic groups and various social contexts. How do we interpret this? Well perhaps children are no longer viewed as the impediments to the good life they once were (although the increasing number of partners who choose childlessness cautions us against generalising here). Maybe there is also a fashionable sense that a family can contain and celebrate diversity and represent a model in miniature of our aspirations for human society more generally. However, perhaps we need to subject this phenomenon to more critical scrutiny. Anthony Giddens6 and other sociologists have spoken of our contemporary desire for the ‘pure relationship.’ In the context of a society in which people 6 Giddens, Anthony (1991) Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press: pp. 89-98.

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are seen as creators (artists) of identity relationships with partners are viewed as a means of enhancing the reflexive project of constructing a successful self. In a pure relationship partnerships may be entered into in order to enhance the identity profile of both members of the couple. According to Giddens pure relationships have these identifying features. They are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Freely chosen, not anchored in economic or social ties Sought for what they can bring the partners involved. Reflexively organised and constantly scrutinised Commitment plays a central role. Focussed on intimacy Self-identity is negotiated through linked processes of self-exploration and development of intimacy with the other.

I think the much valorised celebrity family has many of the features of the pure relationship extended to become the ‘pure family.’ They are created as a means of self-enhancement that involves care, intimacy and commitment (these qualities are present and should not be disparaged). However, they are fragile constructions. The adjective pure is appropriately chosen. What is sought are relationships without taint, stain or flaw that enhance the identity of those who participate within them. I can understand why so many Christian ethicists feel called upon to condemn the modern social configurations that produce such unworldly aberrations. But in the pages I have been reading recently Christian versions of the pure family abound…It is a temptation that falls particularly to the religious to seek to banish dirt and mess from our human encounters.

7

Wednesday 19th May

Of all the church meetings I have attended (too many to count) this must have been the strangest of them all. The Church of Scotland has embarked upon a discernment process in order to decide whether to sanction the calling and ordination of gay and lesbian clergy. The first weird thing about this is that we are forbidden to speak in public about the issues. Strange indeed for a Church that is so peculiarly verbose. Instead we have to meet as Presbyteries and Kirk Sessions to deliberate on this topic. At our Kirk Session we watch a short DVD presenting opposing perspectives, discuss these together and then, individually, fill in a long ballot sheet (which the sociologist in me recognises as a rather bluntly constructed questionnaire) indicating where we stand on a range of

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issues. So is ordaining a gay minister merely wrong or is it heretical? Is it admissible for a minister to be homosexual/in a homosexual relationship/enter into a civil partnership or none of the above? Are different (higher) standards required of the clergy than of other church leaders including ordained elders? I can’t decide whether to answer the questions honestly or engage in tactical voting in the hope of getting a better outcome. I see this whole procedure as an attempt to deal with a moral panic. Not only my own denomination but the whole Church seems gripped by anxiety concerning our changing familial structures. We might not all take ballots but we engage in similar reductive, legalistic and ineffective processes when confronting a whole range of perplexing issues. I think the kind of consensus and certainty we achieve through these methods is far from anything I could understand as discerning the mind of Christ. Perhaps it is easy for me to say this. I feel no sense of panic. The family structures of the past I see as no more, and in some ways significantly less, just and sustaining than those we are now creating. The place of children within them is certainly no more commoditised than it has been in the periods in the past when the financial survival of the household was directly related to the economic potential of the offspring produced. The question of whether Christians should offer counter cultural witness through their marriage and family practices is rather different than whether we valorise the traditions of the past. A genuinely counter cultural intervention would look very different from this nostalgia for what is lost.

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Thursday 20th May

Today Alison Phipps7 came to speak to the Departmental Research Seminar. Her theme was translation in theological perspective. However her paper was actually about how Asylum Seekers and their befrienders translate their appeals to the authorities into forms that can be heard. This is particularly important for victims of trauma who find that language betrays them as they make their appeals. There are aspects of experience that defy articulation. It is a heartbreakingly moving session because although the debate takes place within the normal academic terms Alison draws upon her own experience as a befriender. For many years she and her partner have opened their home to be a place of refuge. For the past two years they have had a foster daughter living with them who is exactly the same age as my daughter. This

7 Professor of Translation Studies, University of Glasgow.

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girl has witnessed many unspeakable events and has been displaced many times in her young life but has found a loving home at last with Alison. And a deportation order has been issued for her removal. And the family fear at any time the authorities will come and remove her. The usual occasion for these judicial removals is in the early hours of the morning. Each night the family knows their sleep might be disturbed by a knock on the door. Alison is an academic and a feminist as well as a Christian. She is aware of the many issues involved in calling the child she has befriended ‘daughter.’ No formal adoption procedures have taken place or are indeed possible in the context. But somehow no other word ‘translates’ the relationship this family has formed in a way that is adequate. When she says the word it is sacred. There is a bond here that I can understand as holy. It is not merely that Alison has merely made an ethical response to the needs of the child. In this situation of extremis she has heard a voice that speaks out of the confusion and the darkness ‘Mother Behold Your Child.’ The pronouncement was unexpected but it is compelling. It has translated the experience of care into another dimension and shifted the theological, political and cultural dynamics of this situation onto another level.

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Friday May 24th

Got up very early and travelled to Birmingham for a meeting with colleagues concerned about the future of Practical Theology in the UK. We are working on issues relating to imagination, representation and cultural memory. My friend Stephen Pattison has prepared a working document. He studied at Cambridge as an undergraduate and the marks of a classical education pepper the language of the paper he presents. He is anxious that contemporary theology is desanguinated (how good a word is that for a lifeless, bloodless form). He believes it needs to be incardinated (given a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone). The meeting is good and positive and on the journey home I am still full of the ideas we have discussed. I look out of the window as we pass through the heart of the UK. I lived in Birmingham when I was first married. The buildings of this city are monuments to my own discovery of loving. We pass through Lancaster where I went to University. The small city looks out over the estuary and towards the wider sea. It was a place where my own horizons opened up and adventurous voyages became possible. Nearby is the place where I was born and spent my early years. It is a place of silver sands, dangerous tides and wild beauty. As night falls we draw into Glasgow. My adopted city. Home now to my family.

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I did not expect the journey I have travelled over these last days. I thought I wished to bring my own passionate experiences of mothering into dialogue with the theological literature on adoption. I thought I wished to be selfcritical but I guess I also thought that the debate should be insanguinated. That banishing the desiring relations between parents and children from the debate was dangerous when blood and water both issue from the wounds of loving. I feel now that I have learnt that many of my preconceptions need to be challenged. I need to admit that I have often felt threatened and judged when people spoke about theology and adoption together – I have to get over that. I need to understand that just as these landscapes and environments have shaped me blood and bone, there are deep forces at work in our social relationships that are not reducible to biological connections but just as powerful. I need the perspective that can only come from dialogue with others… I need to get home now and stop thinking about all this. I need some rest.

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Saturday May 25th

Yesterday I felt really positive about all I was beginning to learn in this exploration of adoption. Today as I start to edit my notes and put together the material for the Symposium I feel the opposite. I am frustrated by those ghost ideas I have not caught or begun to give form and it seems to me that the things I have not found a way to address are probably more important than the ones I have noted down. This is so hard. I had wanted to raise some issues about how we participate in God’s creative acts. I had wanted to ask what we could learn about this subject from the occluded experiences of motherhood which unites conception, formation and the labours of enfleshment, delivery and birth and the continuing relation with the child. What theological conversation should take place between this blood experience and the experience of adoption? I had wanted to speak about – but how can we begin to address – the dark backcloth against which our debates about child rearing take place. Infertility is a place from which the waste and destruction in the universe can be clearly seen. All those misconceptions that are not the result of human greed, sin and folly but seem to be the other side, the mysterious and shadow side of God’s creative and providential love. And then there are all those cries for care that go unheeded and the awful question of the Inquisitor. Is the creation of the world justified in the face of even one abused child crying out in the fear and abandonment locked in darkness and receiving no answer? There are places of pain our debates have not yet reached into and I am not adequate to bring them to the table. But in the light of them all the

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other questions I am wrestling with begin to appear shallow and of less consequence. It is a frustrating day and my partner is working an early shift leaving my daughter and I with our own appointed tasks. She interrupts me every five minutes or so it seems. She is bored with exam revision, she is fed up of me being preoccupied with something else. She hovers. ‘Would you like some tea?’ ‘Can we go shopping later?’ ‘I love you Mummy.’ There I give in. She has me. I open my arms and all 16 years of her is enfolded in them again. ‘You are naughty.’ I say. ‘So are you.’ She says. I am busy, bad mummy. No I am not. Blessed Winnicott. I am a good enough mother. I do my best. I am someone who cares and tries and if it is not perfect mothering (or theology) it will have to do. I’ll stop now. I have another life.

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Sunday May 26th Pentecost

We go to church together. My daughter is still half asleep. Actually so am I. ‘What is it today again?’ she whispers in the first hymn. ‘Pentecost. You know. Wind. Fire. Upper room.’ Where did I go wrong? Nowhere. Here she is with me and here we all are together in this place where bonds of blood and water are both blessed and this ordinary lovable congregation affirms its faith. My friend Rachel stands up to read the lesson proclaiming clearly on behalf of all of us: For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him (Romans 8: 14-17).

Chapter 14

Jonathan and Me: Constructing a Movie, Constructing Ourselves Paul Shrier

In August 2001 I finished my dissertation. My PhD was finally done! When I went to pick it up at the printer and mail it, my wife Cahleen offered to drive with me to do my final steps. I thought that was nice: my wife wanted to be part of the process of completing my dissertation. We drove to the print shop, picked up my boxed dissertation and drove to the post office where I sent it by registered mail. When I hopped back into our old, red 1994 Mustang, Cahleen turned to me and said, “So are you ready to be a foster parent now?” I was stunned. I said, “Where did that come from?!” Cahleen said: Do you remember two years ago when I told you that I wanted us to talk about being foster parents? You said that you couldn’t even think about it with your dissertation hanging over your head. You said that we could talk about it when you were done. Well, you’re done. I felt a knot in my gut. I couldn’t remember that conversation. For a minute I said nothing. At that instant a crystal clear thought came to me: “You teach your students that women are equal and can lead anything. Your wife has a vision for you both and I want you to follow her.” At that moment I believed, and I still believe, that thought was a clear message from God. This experience does not happen to me frequently. I could be wrong; but I had to judge it by it’s content and felt that it was right. After remaining silent for a minute, I said to Cahleen: We can be foster parents. I don’t have a single bone in my body that’s interested, but you’re in charge. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Just like that. No argument. No extended discussions before we decided. My life has never been the same.

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My wife and I tried to have a child for about a year. Biologically, there was no reason that we couldn’t, but we hadn’t been successful. We agreed that we weren’t going to spend money for fertility treatments. We briefly discussed adopting and I liked the idea. We hadn’t discussed foster parenting as an option. Now, we were going to be foster parents. Cahleen said she was satisfied to foster parent, like her friend Heidi. I said that I was willing to be a foster parent, but if the opportunity came I’d like us to adopt a child or children. When we consider our life experiences we think in terms of narratives. I have just written the beginning of a story. Ganzevoort, writing about the role of narratives in practical theology, summarizes Jerome Bruner’s two modes of reasoning: One is the logical or paradigmatic mode which seeks to convince by arguments and truth; the other is the narrative mode which seeks to convince by lifelikeness. The first (argument) transcends the local and particular by identifying the absolutes or the general, the second (narrative) locates experience in time and places and focuses on the particular.1 Narrative reasoning has some necessary elements. All narratives have a beginning, middle and end. Stories are told following a main character, called the hero or protagonist. All stories have conflict, either internal or external. The story develops over time as a series of conflicts. At the end, stories have a positive or negative resolution to conflict and a new equilibrium is created. We make sense of our lives, the lives of others, and the life of our community by constructing a multitude of stories. We are our stories. We make sense of our lives through stories.2 Our many stories are like episodes within the Star Wars main story, or like individual episodes in a TV series. Each of these episodes is self-contained and at the same time a part of the larger whole. The episodes in our lives are also self-contained. They create our identity, and the meaning, purpose and direction of our lives. As Ganzevoort wrote, our stories focus on the particular. The discipline of practical theology recognizes that all theology begins with the particular, with experience. As a result, if we can tell clearer stories, we can do better theology. I will use the basic methods of screenwriting in this chapter to demonstrate how the mode

1 R. Ruard Ganzevoort, “Narrative Approaches,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology, ed. Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 215. 2 Rolf Jacobson, “We Are Our Stories: Narrative Dimensions of Human Identity and it’s Implications for Christian Faith Formation,” Word and World 24 (2014), 124.

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of storytelling gives us a valuable structure for telling clearer, more honest stories.3 For a screenplay and for practical theology, the story that is told can’t just concern the writer. During an interview the Hollywood film producer Ralph Winter told me that the story we tell has to be important to the audience: “As a producer, the questions I ask are those that I’ll use to decide if a story needs to be told – if it will make a good movie, one that people will watch.”4 Likewise, in practical theology we need to construct stories that need to be told. Stories that our community will watch, hear or read. Stories that encourage us to persevere (Selma5), uncover corruption (The Big Short6), motivate us (Rocky7) or convict us (Supersize Me8). Stories, not data or research studies, challenge us to change. Good stories raise important questions that lead us into the pastoral cycle of discovering the answers from multiple disciplines. Good stories lead us to reflect on situations theologically. Good stories ultimately motivate us to make effective changes in our practices. The classic screenplay structure has three Acts. Act One begins with an “inciting incident.” The inciting incident connects with a need inherent in the protagonist and upsets the balance of her or his life. It arouses in her or him a desire to restore balance, reveals an object of the protagonist’s need, and begins the protagonist’s pursuit to meet the need.9 The first Act also establishes the theme and world of the story, introduces the characters, and reveals the protagonist’s weakness(s) that will be attacked in the second Act.10 All movies

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The author of Silkwood, the book and the screenplay, writes that all journalists ought to be screenwriters and that screenwriters ought to be journalists first. She writes that structure, the three-act play, is essential to screenwriting and that journalists need to learn screenplay structure. I believe that practical theologians also need to learn this structure, to tell clearer, more honest stories. Nora Ephron, “What Narrative Writers Can Learn from Screenwriters,” in Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University, ed. Mark Kramer and Wendy Call (New York: Plume, 2007), 98-100. Paul Shrier, “Ralph Winter: Lessons from Oscar,” Christianity Today, February 23, 2012, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/februaryweb-only/ralphwinteroscar.html. Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay (2014; Los Angeles, CA: Paramount Pictures), DVD. The Big Short, directed by Adam MacKay (2015; Los Angeles, CA: Paramount Pictures), DVD. Rocky, directed a John G. Avildsen (1976; Culver City, CA: MGM), DVD. Supersize Me, directed by Morgan Spurlock (2004; Culver City, CA: Sony Pictures), DVD. Thomas Parham, “The Big Structure Lecture: Condensed from Aristotle, Linda Seger and Robert McKee” (lecture presented at Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA, 2014). Bondi writes that the first of four elements in narrative character development is “the capacity for intentional action.” “Capacity” refers to the ability, the possibility that humans

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result in the protagonist changing, growing, or falling apart. For movies that have an “up-ending,” the character of the protagonist develops.11 A good story reveals the stakes of the story – what will happen if the character does not reach their goal, creating the tension around which the story will be built. The first act concludes when the character is “locked into the predicament, propelling him/her forward on a new quest trying to accomplish a specific goal.”12 With careful research I could write about many episodes from our adoption story. I could write them with my wife as the protagonist, or my children – Emily or Jonathan. In this chapter I will identify the main elements of a screenplay and make observations about their value for practical theology using one specific episode in our lives as an adoptive family. This narrative occurs over a period of twelve years. I will be the protagonist of this story.

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Fostering as Faithfulness

The inciting incident for our story occurred when Cahleen told me that she wanted to be a foster parent and I felt that God confirmed her desire. It established the method for us to achieve my need to have a child. Note that at the

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have to develop character as situations require it. Every protagonist has a capacity for character development, and good stories reveal that capacity as well as the struggle that ensues to reach that capacity. Good stories also allow the audience to participate in that struggle with the protagonist, to identify with the struggle. Richard Bondi, “The Elements of Character,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 12 (1984), 205. McKee writes that it is helpful to divide stories into three grand categories according to the emotional impact of their Controlling Idea. Idealistic Controlling Ideas are “upending” stories that optimism, hopes and dreams of humans, a positive vision of the human spirit, life as we wish it to be. Pessimistic Controlling Ideas are “‘down-ending’ stories expressing our cynicism, our sense of loss and misfortune, a negatively charged vision of civilization’s decline, of humanities dark dimensions; life as we dread it to be but know it so often is.” In these stories… our darker natures take control and destroy us, or in some other way the beauty and power of some human quality we admire – faith, hope, love, fairness – is overwhelmed by life’s hardness, its hardship, its coldness, hopelessness or capriciousness. Ironic Controlling Ideas are “‘Up-down-ending’ stories expressing our sense of the complex, dual nature of existence, a simultaneously charged positive and negative vision; life at its most complete and realistic.” Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), 123-125. “Act One: The Set-Up,” The Script Lab, http://thescriptlab.com/screenwriting/structure/ three-acts/55-act-one-the-beginning#.

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beginning of this story my need was superficial. I was not thinking of the child, I was thinking of me. I needed to be a father. In a good movie a need such as this will become a more formed desire. A good example of this is the way in which Ralph Winter uses Luke Skywalker in Episode 4 of Star Wars to explain how a need develops into a desire: … in Episode 4 of Star Wars, the film that sets the stage for all the future movies, we meet Luke Skywalker, a whiny teenager. He wants to get off the farm and to control his own future… for his own self-centered purposes. He wants adventure, and doesn’t care about anyone else…. Luke Skywalker is not someone you care about in the beginning, nor does he care about anyone else but himself…. The need then develops into a desire; for Luke, that became his desire to be a fighter pilot. Along the way, he meets Obi-Wan and others wanting to fight for the rebellion.13 Once Luke’s need for adventure develops into a desire to become a fighter pilot for the rebellion and he has to overcome an evil opponent, Darth Vader, to achieve his desire, we begin to care deeply about him. 1.1 Act One The setting for our story is Los Angeles County and specifically a house in Azusa, one of the many small cities that bump up against each other in the Greater Los Angeles area. We did foster parent training in the fall of 2001, moved into a family-friendly house January 2, 2002, and brought our first foster child home in mid-January – a beautiful three-year-old girl named Joy [name changed]. As we were preparing to become foster parents, Jesus’ words in Mark 9:37 seemed to jump off the page at me when I read them: “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.” When Joy came into our home I had a sense that we were indeed welcoming Jesus into our home in the person of Joy. She was with us for a month and we fell in love with her. At the end of the month Joy was suddenly taken from our home and placed in another foster home of a county social worker for some very questionable purposes as a result of arbitrary decisions. There was no notice; no transition visits. Joy was just removed. This had nothing to do with Cahleen or me. I was furious and heartbroken. Cahleen was upset. I had questions about myself and about God: Could I be a foster parent and have another child leave us? How

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Shrier, “Ralph Winter: Lessons from Oscar.”

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could we work in a system that seemed so heartless? How could I understand Mark 9:37 now? How could a loving God allow these things to happen to an innocent child who had been placed in our care? After Joy was taken from us, we decided not to give up on helping her. We called and wrote letters to her lawyer and the judge for her case. We had met her aunt and uncle and told them that she should not have been removed from their home in the first place. The judge listened to us, and within a few weeks she was returned to her aunt and uncle’s home. This is the turning point in Act One. Instead of giving up on Joy because she was taken from us, we decided to keep fighting for her. This dilemma propelled the action of the story in a new direction; instead of wanting to be a parent for my own sake something changed and now I wanted to be an advocate for Joy. Was this shift a movement from personal desire to a calling based in grace? We made a choice that raised the stakes in the story; now we would both be parents who advocated for foster children. Reflecting theologically on these scenes in the first act of our story, the scene when I heard from God to follow Cahleen and the scene when Mark 9:37 was illuminated to me were moments that, according to Andrew Root, have not been adequately considered in our approaches to practical theology: I argue that practical theology has been magnificent at articulating rich approaches to human action but has been deficient… articulating divine action in the same depth. I believe this inability to discuss divine action has happened because practical theology has erroneously seen divine action as impractical.14 Root calls the experience of God about which he writes “evangelical experience.” He defines this as… “a distinct occurrence of divine action… the centrality of the commitment to a God who comes to us… a realist sense that people have experiences of God’s coming to them, that they have experiences of Jesus.”15 These experiences of God are not intended to displace other elements of practical theology. Instead, from my perspective, in a sense they vivify them, bringing understanding, wisdom and power in experiences, questions and perspective in reflection, and love, grace, and direction in discipleship.16 14 15 16

Andrew Root, Christopraxis: A Practical Theology of the Cross (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), x. Root, xi. In 1 Cor. 12.8-11 Paul creates a list of spiritual gifts. In verse 8 he writes, “For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according

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At the turning point in Act One there was a gap created between my expectations about foster parenting and how things would go with Joy and what actually happened. In screenwriting, these gaps drive stories forward. This gap revealed what my character defects were and my need to have a child was transformed into a desire to advocate for foster children. Screenwriting focuses on gaps and character flaws of the protagonist. Without character development, there is no story. Practical theology narratives that reveal gaps between expectations and reality as well as the protagonist’s character flaws will result in better theology because they give deeper insights into the entire situation. They are less one-sided. Jacobson writes that our stories are not enough because we are finite creatures in bondage to sin. As a result, “we will twist the truth to make ourselves look better. We will tell stories from our own perspectives… we will try to make ourselves look better to ourselves and to our neighbors.”17 Prior to writing this story for this chapter, I had not considered how it revealed my character flaws and selfishness. By using screenwriting, I was forced to look for these things. One reason that I am a better protagonist than Cahleen for this story is that I was more selfish and had to grow more than Cahleen when we decided to be foster parents. We always have multiple desires and that is good. It leads to a thicker rope of reasons that we can hang on to when the going gets tough. But my primary desire to be a parent was selfish. In the face of adversity I lacked patience and perseverance. Throughout the story I added other, more selfless reasons to my selfish motivations, and as a result gained endurance. My impulsiveness and relatively short temper were also first revealed in the confrontations surrounding Joy’s treatment. The reason this is the turning

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to the same Spirit”. Words of wisdom and knowledge are considered to be words that a person then speaks out in the community, for the building up of the church. However, Gordon Fee reminds us that, “These are, after all, not only ‘gifts’; they are manifestations of the Spirit’s presence in their midst, most likely chosen because they are, like tongues itself, extraordinary phenomena.” Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), 203. Paul is reframing the meaning of the word “wisdom” and “knowledge for the Corinthians, so that it now refers to external, revelatory guidance from the Spirit rather than insights gained primarily through personal reflection. Words of wisdom and knowledge, since they are manifestations of the Spirit’s presence, can also be given to direct or encourage one or more people to act in ways that further the kingdom of God. Jacobson, 126. See also, Stanley Hauerwas and David Burrell, “Self-deception and Autobiography: Theological and Ethical Reflections on Speer’s Inside the Third Reich,” Journal of Religious Ethics 2 (1974), 111.

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point is that I began a transformational process when we advocated for Joy. I began to become a more likeable character in the story (not necessarily in real life). In the past, if I observed someone responding to these events like I had, I would not have seen it as a weakness. But reflecting on the whole of this story from a screenwriter’s perspective, the weaknesses became clear. For a practical theologian, revealing the weaknesses of a character in a story can provide rich insights into a situation. We often take a one-sided approach to situations, creating large blind spots that distort our process of discernment and subsequent changes in practices. 1.1.1 From Fostering to Adoption About six weeks later Joy’s social worker called. She said that because we had advocated so effectively for Joy, she thought of us while she was trying to place a two-year-old boy with special needs and his three-year-old sister in a home. They were not going back to their birth mom and she wanted a family to adopt them together. Cahleen and I prayed about it and agreed to adopt Jonathan and Emily. We were going to have a family. Jonathan and Emily joined us and two years later we adopted them both. Jonathan moved into our house in March 2002 and Emily joined us in April. As soon as they moved in we started a never-ending series of doctor’s visits, therapist sessions, children’s early education therapy groups, and other types of physical and mental health treatments. While Emily was doing well without psychiatric care, Jonathan needed regular, frequent psychiatrist’s visits. It’s helpful for readers to picture the characters in a story. Cahleen is about 0 00 5 1 and is petite. I am 60 100 and weigh 200 lbs. Jonathan and Emily were average size when they were younger, but as they got older they remained shorter than average. Jonathan and Emily have beautiful large brown eyes that everyone compliments them on and they have thick curly light brown hair. Jonathan is stocky; his wrists were the same size as mine by the time he was seven years old. He has a thick torso and powerful arms and legs. Jonathan’s physical strength became a serious concern over the course of our story. Jonathan and Emily were both energetic, loving, and happy. During our first 5 years together we did a lot of physical activities. We hiked up the very steep Garcia Trail often, we swam every day in the summer, played tag for hours at a time at the park, bicycled all around the city and were active in many other ways. This is the end of Act One: We are locked in to adopting our children, we have uncovered the dilemma for this particular narrative – Jonathan will need extra care to develop as a healthy young boy and as his dad I lack essential character traits to provide him with the help that he will need.

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1.2 Act Two Act Two is the Middle Act of a three-act screenplay. “The second act is all about obstacles. It elaborates in great detail and intensity on the difficulties and obstacles that the hero [protagonist] faces as he or she struggles to achieve his or her goal. Just when the situation can’t get worse, it does.”18 The second act can introduce an opponent in some movies. For a quest screenplay, which we will use in this story, the second act introduces a series of obstacles that block the protagonist’s movement toward a new equilibrium. Without conflicts and character development, there is no story. Act two also introduces the protagonist’s initial plan, which fails, and the subsequent plans. 1.2.1 The Best Laid Plans … The initial plan that we had for Jonathan in his early years was that individual and group therapy, attending preschool and psychiatric interventions would prepare him for a regular elementary school experience. During Jonathan’s pre-school and early elementary school years he was loving, kind and happy. He was also very impulsive and had a tremendous amount of anxiety. The anxiety revealed itself in Jonathan’s defiance, inability to defer gratification, temper tantrums, and other challenging behaviors. Following our initial plan, Jonathan made some progress, but ultimately our plan failed to meet our goals. From first grade to seventh grade, Jonathan had one negative experience after another at school. After trying everything in our power to help him succeed at a private Christian school, we were forced to move Jonathan to a public school. This began a long parade of classroom and then school changes. The changes included moving from a regular classroom to a special education classroom, from a regular school to a special school run by the district, then to his first non-public school and several classroom changes, and then to a second non-public school. In LA County non-public schools are the last stop before Juvenile Hall for children with serious behavior challenges. Jonathan’s transitions in nonpublic schools and classes were precipitated by or resulted in a lot of verbal and physical bullying by his peers and misunderstandings with teachers and aides, most of whom did their best but often didn’t treat him fairly. Many of the kids in these schools came from difficult homes and neighborhoods, often gang-affiliated, where violence was normal. Our home was not like that. Jonathan was different. As a result, Jonathan’s peers made fun of him, verbally

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“Act Two: Obstacles,” The Script Lab, http://thescriptlab.com/screenwriting/structure/ three-acts/56-act-two-the-middle.

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abused him, put glue in his hair, dish soap in his food, bit him, punched, kicked and physically assaulted him in other ways. When Jonathan either initiated, or more often retaliated against real or perceived slights he received suspensions, and was sometimes physically restrained with brutal force,… I could write about hundreds of incidents. During these years Jonathan also had some significant positive experiences with some teachers and staff members and for about a year he was part of an after-school program with excellent staff and therapists. Nevertheless, on the majority of days some violence was perpetrated against Jonathan – physical, emotional or verbal. In the culture of special needs education, in the world of children who need special schools to meet their special intellectual and emotional needs, violence and abuse are part of daily life. Each day that this happened Jonathan was emotionally wounded and he came home angry, sad, and suffering. When Jonathan told us about his day after school my first reaction was often strong anger, sometimes controlled rage. I stormed around the house. I emailed, called and/or drove to Jonathan’s schools. I demanded explanations and immediate changes from the teachers, principals, school counselors or anyone else that I could find. I expected them to protect Jonathan. Sometimes I experienced stonewalling; teachers, aids, and schools could not admit responsibility for many of these incidents or they would open themselves up to serious consequences. Teachers weren’t used to regular and forceful interventions by parents. They became frustrated and irritated with me and by extension, with Jonathan. For the more serious incidents, their denials made me livid. I became jaded about these schools. I felt powerless to help Jonathan. He was experiencing physical and emotional violence and then he was being punished or the incidents were being brushed under a rug. I viewed the school district and the social structure as the powerful opponent that kept defeating us. Cahleen often got frustrated with me. In these situations she was more even-tempered and methodical. Her view of my responses was that often I was sabotaging the school’s efforts, that I was putting too much weight on Jonathan’s version of events, and that my responses alienated the people who were working with Jonathan. Taking heed to Cahleen’s concerns I gradually became more careful to explore what happened, ask questions and take some time to try to discern all the circumstances. Reining in my first responses required a lot of effort. But often it was more effective, and I felt more peaceful. This was one way that I experienced character development in the second act: more patience, fewer outbursts and tirades, more calm, dogged perseverance. While Jonathan was in elementary school Cahleen and I learned from one of Jonathan’s psychologists that one significant source of Jonathan’s anxiety

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might be Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). In healthy circumstances a child develops innate trust when they receive appropriate attention from a primary caregiver during their third to ninth month of development. During this period, when a baby cries because she is hungry or afraid and the parent or caregiver responds appropriately by feeding or comforting the baby, the baby learns to trust other people. On the other hand, if the parent or caregiver doesn’t respond or responds inappropriately, the baby doesn’t learn to trust other people. This window of time is essential because there are genes related to innate trust development that turn on around 3 months and then turn off around nine months.19 As a result, if a child does not learn innate trust by his or her first birthday, they have a high likelihood of developing an Attachment Disorder. They will have to internalize trust through other means that are less complete. When a child develops Reactive Attachment Disorder they can’t distinguish the difference between primary needs like the need for food or comfort when they are sick from superficial wants such as wanting the toy that another child is holding. The desire to have a toy triggers the same level of need and creates the same level of anxiety as if the child was hungry and needed food or sick and needed comfort. “RAD is a more extreme psychiatric diagnosis for a subgroup of children with the most significant and detrimental insecure attachments.”20 Research has been done that suggests 38-40 per cent of young children who received poor care in their home of origin, in foster care, or in orphanages and were subsequently adopted domestically or internationally show symptoms of RAD.21 Evidence of this disorder must begin before 5 years of age, and it seems to be dependent on differences in individual children as well as their environments.22 While it’s beyond the scope of this chapter to describe RAD in detail,

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Chris Murgatroyd and Dietmar Spengler, “Epigenetics of Early Child Development,” Front Psychiatry 2 (2011). Magdalene C. Jawahar, Chris Mergatroyd, Emma L. Harrison and Bernard T. Baune, “Epigenetic Alterations Following Early Postnatal Stress: A Review of Novel Aetiological Mechanisms of Common Psychiatric Disorders,” Clinical Epigenetics 7 (2015). Michelle A. Stinehart, David A. Scott, and Hannah G. Barfield, “Reactive Attachment Disorder in Adopted and Foster Care Children: Implications for Mental Health Professionals,” in The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families 20 (2012), 355. D. Tobin, K. Ward-Zonna and A. M. Yezzi-Shareef, “Early Recollections of children and adolescents diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder,” Journal of Individual Pyschology, 63 (2007), 86-95. Ibid. Ibid.

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symptoms can include either emotionally withdrawn behavior or disinhibited behavior around strangers, and as a child grows older extreme mood swings, temper tantrums, lack of impulse control and inattentiveness. This list is not inclusive and the severity of these behaviors varies.23 It’s fair to say that a large minority or even a majority of children not adopted at birth will have some form of attachment issues as they mature. We learned that Traumatic Stress was another likely source of anxiety for Jonathan. When a person experiences a dangerous circumstance, the amygdala takes charge of the brain, activating the fight, flight or freeze response. When this happens, the brain structures responsible for memory processing and for verbal processing of memories are shut down. This means that the situation remains in the present for that person, until they are able to fully process the experience. If they are unable to effectively alleviate the danger and it remains or comes back frequently, the amygdala will stay activated for extended periods and the brain can be damaged. In this case, the memories are not processed and the person becomes susceptible to repeatedly experiencing them in the future. Any trigger from the senses that has been linked with the previous violent or stressful situations moves the amygdala back into survival mode as if the threat was occurring in the present moment. When a very young child experiences circumstances that are perceived by them as threatening, they are helpless to alleviate that danger. As a result, when children have prolonged, frequent or severe traumatic experiences they often develop a Traumatic Stress disorder. “When PTSD occurs, the change in the person’s brain structure prevents them from assessing current sensations as non-threatening because they have been linked to the originating traumatic situation.”24 Moreover, since these experiences occurred when the child was young, it is far more difficult to piece together the circumstances in which they had the traumatic experiences. A specific color, tone of voice, gender, temperature, or any other external environmental factors, or an internal emotional state, can trigger traumatic stress.25 Studies indicate that about 30 per cent of children who have been in foster care suffer from PTSD. The numbers in these studies vary, and this number is a conservative estimate.26 23 24

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Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM 5, (Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Paul Shrier, Cahleen Shrier and Samuel Girguis, “A Wesleyan Theological Response to Trauma for the Twenty-first Century” (paper presented at the Wesleyan Theological Society, Mt. Vernon, Ohio, March 6, 2015). Ibid. Peter J. Pecora et al., “Mental Health Services for Children Placed in Foster Care: An Overview of Current Challenges,” Child Welfare 88 (2009), 5-26.

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Once we learned that RAD and Traumatic Stress were possible sources of anxiety for Jonathan we were better able to empathize with him. We realized that Jonathan was a victim in these circumstances, and I tried to picture how I would react with RAD or PTSD. Empathy allowed me to develop more patience with Jonathan. However, it’s one thing to understand the source of extreme behaviors and another thing to work with a child when he is acting out. Jonathan’s temper tantrums continued, daily. I often felt angry, frustrated, tired and discouraged. I began to learn to act in ways that seemed to be in direct opposition to how I was feeling in the moment. In Act Two I started to realize what was required of me, a kind of patience that I have not attained but that I am progressing toward in fits and starts, as I worked with Jonathan, his schools, and his doctors and therapists. It was and is daunting. Cahleen and I tried everything we could to help Jonathan overcome his behavioral challenges. We were trained in and used a variety of parenting models and approaches. We enrolled Jonathan in therapeutic programs. We saw psychiatrists, lots of them. We were given diagnoses and corresponding medications, lots of them. Each time, we hoped that this program was going to help Jonathan. We hoped that the new diagnoses and corresponding medications would be the answer. The people, programs and medications resulted in some small incremental improvements or temporary relief, as well as fleeting hope. Nevertheless, as Jonathan grew, the incidents of violence, impulsiveness, and anxiety-based defiance became more severe. At the same time, our whole family, including Jonathan, became less and less safe. Outside of school, Jonathan and I did and still do almost everything together. We were and remain today very close. We played soccer, basketball, swam, skated and read books together. We also experienced violence, yelling and temper tantrums together. I became the main target of Jonathan’s rages. When Jonathan couldn’t control his emotions I got hit – in the legs, in the back, in the stomach, in the face, with fists, kicks, chairs, balls, hard objects, whatever was at hand. Jonathan also had violent outbursts with others. He hit my wife. At times he hit Emily, who fortunately could defend herself and hit him right back. But I was his main target. He also destroyed our stuff – we had holes in our walls, broken doors, dented cars, smashed furniture and other remnants of violence. These kinds of outbursts are not common but neither are they uncommon. I have spoken with several friends who are foster parents or who have adopted children through the foster care system and whose children act out in these ways, although they vary in frequency and severity.27 27

“The rates for delinquent behavior (15%) and aggressive behavior (11%) for children in foster care are over twice as high as the rates among children in the general population.”

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When Jonathan was violent I often got angry. After taking two or three punches I wanted to hit back – hard. Thankfully, I didn’t act on these feelings. When things calmed down I felt ashamed and like a failure. I felt hopeless, helpless, deeply depressed and discouraged. Empathy only goes so far. In the second act, I felt like after giving everything I could, I was failing. After many of his outbursts, Jonathan also felt genuine remorse. We love him and he loves us. Some other people have also become close to Jonathan and he has often felt remorse when he let them down or harmed them – Sunday school teachers, friends, teachers, educational or behavioral aids. I think what hurt me the most was when I put Jonathan to bed after a bad day and he told me, “I’m a bad boy. I’m stupid. I hate myself.” Jonathan has been as much a victim of his conditions as we are, or even more. After all, we don’t have to live with the racing thoughts, the anxiety, the feelings of rage, the rejections caused by his behaviors and the feelings of remorse that are part of his emotional life. When Jonathan was 5 or 6 years old, a series of important events occurred at bedtime. Jonathan told me several times over a four or five month time period: “You’re Jesus.” I would say, “I’m not Jesus but Jesus lives inside me, so you may be seeing Jesus in some of my actions.” His response was, “No, you’re Jesus.” We had and still have a bedtime routine where we read together each night and then I pray with Jonathan in bed. It was when we did our nightly routine that he would it say to me. I reflected on his statement afterward. What did it mean? Why did he say it? Over the following two or three years, when we were in the midst of chaos and violence, Jonathan telling me that I was Jesus often came to mind. It often calmed me. In that calmness, in the midst of violence, I remembered to pray and ask Jesus into the situation. When I began to pray, good things often happened. Sometimes I received insight about what to do next. Other times Cahleen had an insight and did something that de-escalated the situation. There were also times when Jonathan himself deescalated and became calm. If none of these happened, I weathered the storm better. I have come to believe that this was another seminal moment in our adoptive experience when God spoke to me and equipped me to live through the violence. I recognized God’s hand in Jonathan’s statement and it’s impact. I also reconsidered Mark 9:37. When Joy came to our home, I believed that this Scripture meant that the little ones who came into our house were actually or

Armsden, et al. in “Children at Risk: Optimizing Health in an Era of Reform,” Social Work Policy Institute (2012), 4.

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metaphorically Jesus. Jonathan’s statement changed my understanding. Now, I believe that Jonathan and I were experiencing Jesus in our house together. Jesus came into our house with us when we adopted Jonathan and Emily. Returning to screenwriting, the second act of a screenplay also includes a mid-point in the story. The mid-point usually mirrors and anticipates the climax and resolution to the movie. At the midpoint, the protagonist finds a solution that seems to work. The midpoint of this story occurred at the end of the seventh grade when Jonathan moved to a new class in a new non-public school. After about two months in this class we had an IEP (Individualized Education Plan – a plan created with the teachers and district representatives to meet an individual student’s special needs) meeting. Jonathan had again been experiencing bullying and just prior to his IEP three boys caught him on the stairs leaving the classroom and assaulted him. At his IEP, his teacher told us that the whole class of students had lined up against Jonathan and she was concerned for his safety. The director of the attached School for Autism and Developmental Disabilities was in the meeting, and the IEP team suggested that Jonathan might be a good fit for this program. The more we heard about it, the more hopeful we were. Jonathan moved into this program and classroom a day or two later and finally his education experience began to turn around. Jonathan was safe. He was learning. The teacher understood how to teach him. At home, we were seeing his behavior improve. We felt that finally we were making progress. The climax of the second act in a screenplay occurs when the protagonist realizes that what she or he thinks has been working will not work. “The tension is at the highest point, and this is the decisive turning point. You must convince the audience that their worst fears are going to come true. This moment will change the main character in some way.”28 At the climax of the second act of this story I was terrified. Jonathan was 13 years old, just about 14. His new classroom was good fit and we felt like we were finally making progress. Then the uncontrolled movements began. Jonathan has always had some tics, off and on. We have treated these over the years, done tests and had doctors examine him, but we never developed a clear diagnosis. In April 2014, Jonathan’s tics became worse; his legs started scissoring uncontrollably in bed at night and only stopped when he finally fell asleep. He was having trouble walking. We called his psychiatrist, who was unavailable. The office sent us to the Emergency Room, where they gave him Benedryl and told us to contact his psychiatrist. The next day the

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“Act Two: Obstacles,” The Script Lab.

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movements got worse. We repeated the process. By the third time we did this in five days, he was unable to feed himself, go to the bathroom or walk straight. His movements were out of control. I picked him up from his school and had to guide him to the car and help him get into the front seat. 1.3 Act Three Act Three in a screenplay includes the crisis, climax and resolution to the story. Act three reveals the story’s most important values, and the protagonist has a new revelation and is transformed. “In all great movies, the battle gets down to a very small place; it moves into a one-on-one finale.”29 Act three for us began when we decided we had to take more drastic actions to help Jonathan. Enough was enough. We took Jonathan to CHOC (Children’s Hospital of Orange County). In the ER, he was immediately diagnosed with dyskinesia, a known but less common side effect of one of his medications. At CHOC they took Jonathan off all his psychiatric medications and gave him a strong sedating medication. He was in bed for about four days and then we started to reteach him to walk, to feed himself, shower, etc. It was a painfully slow process and there was no guarantee Jonathan would fully recover. After eleven days he came home for a few days, then went back to CHOC for another seven days. At the beginning of his stay Cahleen and I alternated staying overnight with Jonathan and then driving to work the next day after the other person came back when he was first admitted. As Jonathan began to improve, he became more and more physically and verbally belligerent toward everyone. At this point I spent every night at the hospital to control his behaviors. During his stay at CHOC we learned that while Jonathan had dyskinesia it would not be permanent. That was the greatest moment of relief that I had ever felt to that point in my life. We did not know, however, what his new normal might look like. When Jonathan came home he was on one or two psychiatric meds but they weren’t sufficient. He was unable to care for himself and his behaviors were impulsive, violent and dangerous. We had to call the police, more than once. After a week of dangerous behaviors at home, despite the fact Jonathan was still recovering his strength and still had significant movement deficits, we drove him to the UCLA Hospital Emergency room. After spending four or five hours in the ER, Jonathan was admitted to the Adolescent Psychiatric unit. We didn’t know how long he would be there.

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Shrier, “Ralph Winter: Lessons from Oscar.”

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The Climax and Resolution

While Jonathan was an inpatient, I stayed at a hotel that prioritized families of patients at the hospital so that I could visit Jonathan each day. The climax for this story occurred during Jonathan’s second day in the hospital when I came to visit him at lunchtime. He was dysregulated when I got there and as I walked into his room he threw a pitcher filled with ice at me as hard as he could from close range. It hit me in the face. I landed face first on the floor. The rug was covered with blood. I was taken to the ER downstairs to be stitched up. This incident was the climax to our story for two reasons: (1) It was the most emotionally dramatic violent episode I experienced with Jonathan during our twelve years together; and (2) Jonathan’s violent behavior began to decrease after this incident and it has continued to decrease to this day, almost two years later. One major reason that Jonathan’s behavior began to turn around was that we worked with excellent psychiatrists who finally made accurate, or at least effective, diagnoses of Jonathan’s conditions. From a psychiatric perspective, they began to treat anxiety, ADHD and another condition. The psychiatrists said that RAD or PTSD may be causes of anxiety that psychologists needed to work through with Jonathan. Their job, however, was to treat the physiological symptoms that Jonathan was experiencing so that the other treatments could be effective. Along with accurate diagnoses, the doctors gave us the most hopeful prognosis we had ever received for Jonathan’s future. The prognoses have been confirmed as Jonathan continues to improve. During Jonathan’s sixty-two day stay in the hospital I lived in the nearby hotel for families of patients. When I wasn’t able to visit Jonathan and I wasn’t seeing doctors, I spent a lot of time alone. I did some reading, writing, and preparing for classes. I exercised regularly. I was also able to spend time in prayer and reflection. I prayed often and regularly. Once we received Jonathan’s positive prognoses and began to see progress in Jonathan’s health, I was drawn to the stories of the woman with internal bleeding and Jairus’ daughter in Mark 5: 21-43. The woman with internal haemorrhaging had been sick for twelve years and Jairus’ daughter was twelve years old. Verse 26 states of the woman, “She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet instead of getting better she grew worse.” For twelve years we too had worked with many doctors, therapists. We had spent all the physical and emotional energy we had. Still, Jonathan’s mental and emotional torment and his resulting negative behaviors grew worse, not better. Jairus came to Jesus and asked Jesus to heal his daughter, who was twelve years old. Then he had to wait while Jesus responded to the faith of the wom-

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an with the haemorrhaging. Then, “While he [Jesus] was still speaking, people came from the synagogue ruler’s house saying, ‘Your daughter has died. Why trouble the teacher any longer?’ But Jesus, paying no attention to what was said, told the synagogue ruler, ‘Do not be afraid; just believe.’” (Mk 5: 35-37) Like Jairus, we had been coming to Jesus on behalf of our son and nothing happened. We waited and prayed. Jonathan would also pray and ask for Jesus to help him. Nothing seemed to change significantly and Jonathan and our family continued to suffer. Jonathan continued to experience and communicated remorse after violent episodes. He called himself stupid, said he was a bad boy and emotionally battered himself after these incidents. He was being psychologically and emotionally wounded further by his own behaviors. In the end, the woman with the haemorrhaging touched Jesus’ cloak and she was healed. Jesus commended her for her faith and pronounced her well in front of the community. Then, Jesus went to Jairus’ house and raised his daughter from the dead. Eventually, God responded to the perseverance of the woman and Jairus. As I reflected on these stories several days in a row I began to realize that we were experiencing Jesus’ healing touch in Jonathan’s life. Like Jairus’ daughter and the woman, Jesus had heard and answered our prayers after twelve years. In a good movie, the protagonist gains new insight and moves to a new equilibrium. For me, part of the new equilibrium was a new level of patience and perseverance. While someone else might have had this level of patience and perseverance or more all along, I had to struggle to reach this new level through continual conflict, disappointment and renewed efforts. My relationship with God was also transformed through this story. We observed that God was answering our prayers after twelve years of waiting. We saw a significant turnaround in Jonathan’s health and now we had a major event in Jonathan’s life that we can point to in the future as a climax, a turning point in our battles. Jonathan’s hospital stay is now a marker of God’s faithfulness for us, a marker that has brought to my mind the story of Jacob wrestling with God (Gn. 32:22-32). Like Jacob, we have all come out of this with a limp. This marker has already become a source of hope and strength for us when situations are difficult. It’s been eighteen months since Jonathan was in the hospital. Our lives have changed significantly. Jonathan is still attending the great school that we finally found for him and he’s doing well at school. At home Jonathan is maturing and his behaviors have continue to improve. He’s using fewer and fewer medicines, at lower doses. Jonathan now attends youth group at church on his own and he’s making friends there. Jonathan and I are still very close. We play, talk and read together most days.

Jonathan and Me 3

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From this case study we learn that using the methods of screenwriting to construct stories, we ask different and new questions that can result in clearer, more well rounded stories. Is this a story worth telling? Why? From a theological perspective this can mean many things: is this story about something that is impacting the community? Is this story about something that is important for a specific population? Is this a story that promotes justice, that deepens our relationship with God that in some other way enhances the kingdom of God? From whose perspective are we telling the story? Can we find an exemplary protagonist or protagonists? Who are the opponents? What are the biggest obstacles? What character flaws or what other limitations does the protagonist have? What does the protagonist need to learn? How does the protagonist’s character flaws or limitations result in failures during conflicts? What is the midpoint of the story? What is the crisis, conflict and resolution? All of these questions are tools that help us to better understand a situation. They provide us with tools to write, tell or show stories that matter, stories that will have an impact. Telling this specific story about our family in general and about Jonathan and I in particular, in writing, for the first time, revealed and clarified several things for me. I have read practical theologians explore the significance of experiences of God in for our discipline. Now, I realize how pivotal my three or four key experiences of God were for our my life and the life of my family. I have begun to look for and talk more about the nature of the experience of God in specific situations that we address in practical theology. Secondly, by writing down some of my reflections on God throughout this story, I realized how powerfully my experience has shaped my faith. Often, I have spoken of and taught practical theology in a fashion that emphasizes how theology shapes our daily life. However, reflecting on this story, and other stories of our lives, I realize that it is equally or even more important to consider how our experiences shape our faith and theological understanding. Thirdly, by writing this story honestly I was able to appreciate how suffering has changed me for the better as a person. I will never be a model of patience for example, but I am more patient now than when this story began. I am also more hopeful, because we have prayed and God has been faithful to Jonathan and to us, even if it was not in the ways that we planned. While I cannot say I am grateful for or embrace suffering, we still suffer in many ways and now I can say that I will be looking more closely for opportunities for transformation in the midst of suffering. Perhaps it’s best to say I’m developing a grudging respect for suffering.

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Finally, I hope some elements of the story also encouraged adoptive children or parents who connected with it in some way. I also hope that it provided a realistic perspective on the commitment that may be necessary when we adopt children from the foster care system and orphanages in other countries.

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Index Adoption Greco Roman practices of adoption 2-10 Old Testament practices of adoption 3-6, 9, 17, 74, 104, 156, 179, 202, 245 New Testament practices of adoption 5, 8, 52, 53, 78, 104, 188, 189, 192 Israel Inter country xii, 101, 102, 152, 156, 161-170, 240, 242, 244, 246 Cross-cultural 22, 25, 139 Same sex adoption 183-194 Special needs adoption viii, x, xii, 100, 161-169, 172-176, 208, 224, 226, 231, 238, 241 Animals 10, 16-21, 27, 31, 32, 190, 238 Arendt, Hannah 26, 27, 68, 75 Augustine 17, 52, 68, 96, 237 Baptism 3, 10, 16, 21, 22, 23, 38, 39, 40, 41, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52-56, 59, 103, 104, 105, 127, 185, 189, 190, 209, 238, 240, 243 Barth, Karl 21, 32, 34, 41, 42, 62, 63, 66, 73, 75, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 165, 187, 188, 200, 237, 246 Belonging vii, x, 10, 6, 36, 47, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62-68, 94, 95, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 142, 153, 159, 199, 209 Biological children 36, 89, 127, 135, 149, 150 Birth parents x, 9, 35, 40, 41, 56, 72, 80, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 109, 110, 111, 132, 133, 135, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 200, 201 Body of Christ 117, 127, 128, 205, 209 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 77, 112, 125, 126, 206, 238 Brueggemann, Walter 74, 179, 238 Buber, Martin 78, 79, 81, 238 Calvin, John 20, 22, 23, 34, 77, 238, 242 Catholicism 184 Catholic ix, 36, 38, 41, 44, 47, 91, 96, 99, 108, 117, 184, 185, 186, 198, 199, 200, 205, 209, 246 Christian love 90, 102, 210 Community ix, 16, 22, 35, 39, 45, 51, 53, 55, 58, 59, 66, 67, 74, 75, 95, 111, 115, 116, 126,

127, 138, 140, 148, 154, 179, 189, 190, 201, 210, 218, 219, 234, 235 Creation 140, 148, 154, 179 Creaturely life vii, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83, 84, 85 Disability xiii, xiv, 137, 161, 163, 164, 169, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 243 Disciple 21, 50, 52, 127, 189, 222 Discipleship 50, 222 Dominion vii, 15, 19, 30, 31 Eschatological 39, 44, 52, 55, 63, 81, 82, 85, 86, 95, 130, 184, 192, 203 Ethos vii, xiii, 69, 70, 71, 72, 143 Filioque 49 Film 128, 130, 204, 211, 219, 221 Fostering x, 12, 35, 155, 204, 224, 237, 243 Friends 57, 65, 66, 115, 121, 145, 147, 155, 178, 188, 195, 211, 229, 230, 234, 243, 245 Friendship 65, 178, 243 Genesis 10, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 28, 34, 52, 139, 140, 141, 190, 237, 238, 241 Gift 2, 10, 11, 15, 22, 27, 28, 34, 59, 71, 77, 78, 84, 94, 97, 121, 125, 126, 128, 129, 130, 134, 137, 138, 170, 178, 180, 181, 222, 223, 243 Grace i, iv, ix, x, 9, 11, 12, 35, 38, 40, 46, 47, 48, 53, 78, 79, 84, 103, 127, 129, 185, 187, 193, 194, 208, 222 Gratitude 12, 27, 94, 97, 100, 124, 143, 235 Grief 12, 177, 195, 196, 197, 200, 202, 203, 208 Hauerwas 34, 51, 127, 210, 223, 240 Hollywood 219 Holy Spirit 34, 46, 49, 50, 53, 83, 117 Homosexuality 11, 90, 91, 188, 245 Hope 1, 7, 12, 25, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 51, 69-77, 79, 81, 97, 108, 114, 116, 118, 130, 145, 152, 154, 168, 195, 200, 201, 203, 204, 208, 213, 220, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234, 236 Hospitality 36, 52, 56, 74, 127, 148, 149, 155, 158, 180 Humanity 4, 6, 9, 10, 15, 27, 28, 46, 71, 82, 94,

248

Index 105, 106, 126, 131, 136, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 150, 158, 180, 181, 184, 190, 210, 211

Identity vii, x, 11, 15, 16, 22, 23, 24, 36, 72, 98, 109, 110-113, 129, 134, 139, 140, 143, 145-159, 179, 181, 190-192, 204, 207, 211, 212, 218, 237, 239, 240, 241-245 Idolatry 40-45, 50 Imago dei 181, 187, 190 Infertility 12, 135, 137, 154, 195, 197, 202, 208, 215 Inheritance 5, 6, 8, 15, 74, 75, 140, 180, 199 Lament 12, 195-197, 203 Loss 72, 32, 133, 137, 150, 154, 192, 195, 196, 220 Luther, Martin 18, 19, 29, 33, 34, 69, 77, 96, 111, 112, 114, 117, 128, 129, 241, 242, 246 Memory 18, 33, 214, 228, 243 Mercy 180, 185, 184, 201, 202, 203 Monasticism 53, 54 Naming vii, ix, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21-38, 113, 139, 238, 240, 243, 244 Natural theology 187, 188 Practical theology viii, xiii, xiv, xvi, 11, 12, 131, 142, 143, 144, 209, 214, 218, 219-223, 235,

242-245 6, 101, 146, 150, 151, 157, 185, 197, 200, 201, 233, 234 Pregnancy 92, 135, 137, 150, 151, 154, 176, 210 Prenatal testing 176 Procreation 10, 60-63, 71, 77, 88, 134, 137, 150, 184, 185, 186, 189, 190-194 Protestantism 23, 71, 240 Psalms 29, 180, 242 Prayer

Sacrament 21, 27, 33, 38, 48, 53, 92, 103, 105 Salvation 38, 42, 49, 55, 85, 187, 188, 192, 196, 198, 200, 201, 204 Social ethics vii, xvi, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105 Social identity theory 144-147, 21 Stigma 150 Taylor, Charles 238, 36, 40 Theological ethics xv, 10, 94 Theology of adoption viii, 11, 102, 138, 139, 140, 42, 191, 195-196, 202, 203, 205, 207, 208, 210, 244 Trinity 10, 46, 48, 49, 241 Vocation 10, 11, 20, 35, 50, 52, 55, 56, 60, 62, 63, 66, 67-69, 73, 77, 125-130, 140, 191, 197, 238, 146