Southern Seminary’s Russell D. Moore says adoption calls evangelical Christians to “shelter the vulnerable,” in an interview published by the Religion News Service (RNS), Dec. 31, 2012. Moore, senior vice president for academic administration and dean of the School of Theology, talks with an editor from RNS, Adelle Banks, about adoption as a “pro-life policy for evangelicals.”
Banks asks Moore a number or questions, ranging from the biblical metaphor of adoption to the connection between pro-life and pro-adoption movements to challenges for adoptive parents. Concerning adoption as a calling for evangelicals, he states that care for orphans flows both from the Christian commitment to help the “least of these,” and from the evangelical doctrine of adoption, in which God brings spiritual orphans into his family. Moore answers two related questions:
Q: Are you suggesting that evangelical churches specifically or churches in general be more involved?
A: At the level of the common good, this is something that all people should be concerned about. But it’s consistent for evangelical Christians to be pro-orphan.
Q: Adoption has been a growing issue for evangelical churches in the last decade. How are they doing, and how much further do they have to go to meet your goals?
A: What most churches want, when they start to think about this issue, is a preprogrammed initiative, a set of instructions. I don’t think this issue works that way. It has to be organic. It has to be flexible. It has to create a culture within a congregation.
It will be congregational cultures that start to change with the inclusion of the families who are adopting and fostering and caring for orphans. I think that’s a long-term project over a generation, not something short-term.
The full interview, “Why adoption is a ‘pro-life’ policy for evangelicals” is available at the RNS website (here).