Episode 703: Religion & Adoption - Primary Sources & Overview

Transcript!

PDF transcript. Also available via our Buzzsprout page.

Shownotes
(because citations are political)

This is the first of our four episode miniseries on religion and adoption, which actually turned out to have five episodes because, well, there were just too many horrors to be neatly contained in an outline.

We're starting off with some basics on adoption, including how different religious traditions do (or do not) engage in the practice.

We started with a content warning: adoption is hard for lots of folks. Really hard. So if these frank, data-driven episodes aren’t for you where you’re at? No worries. We have so many other things to listen to.

We defined adoption as a system where vulnerable children without guardians are placed in the permanent, legal care of adults who can be guardians. Adoption, as a system, can include a whole range of forms: systems of temporary care, like the foster care system, guardianship, open adoptions, closed or plenary adoptions, residential care facilities or orphanages, residential schools. All its parts contribute, all parts show up across cultures and communities and nations. Ultimately, when we’re talking adoption, we are talking about the process through which a child who is found to have no capable parents is essentially reassigned to other supposedly capable adults, either to be their parent or their guardian, temporary or otherwise.

We talked about imperialism briefly, since we will get to the ways that white Christian imperialism remakes adoption in its own baby-scooping image.

But the thrust of this episode was outlining how a handful of religions treat orphans and guardian-less children as well as adoptions (which are not the same thing!). Most religions have something to say about orphans or children without fit parents, because, uh, missing, dead, shitty, abusive families are not new, and most cultures and communities have had to confront the realities of missing, dead, absent, abusive, or otherwise shitty families create guardian-less children. 

And the thing is, most religions demand the care of orphans. But many religions do not prescribe adoption as we know it today, especially in the US and UK and other parts of Europe.

In Judaism, for example, there are lots of ways to fulfill the religious obligation of procreation, including caring for a child—any child—as your own. But, in Judaism, plenary or closed adoptions are not kosher, traditionally; and adoption is viewed as problematic, for a lot of reasons, not the last of which is the Jewish notion of matrilineal descent. Despite closed adoptions being the religious equivalent of shrimp, religion is what people do—and Jewish people adopt in countries where this is the standard or legally required form of adoption. So, Jewish adoptions can be not kosher and still be, well, kosher.

Similarly, in Islam, closed adoptions are not halal or acceptable; the logic here is not matrilinealism, but rather, a conservation of the child’s identity and an unwillingness to strip the child of those rights (name, biology, inheritance, marriage, and more). Ilyse suggested in this section of the episode that while many people will google “Islam and adoption,” find some conservative shaykhs saying Islam forbids adoption, and assume that Muslims are jerks to orphans that this is problematically Islamophobic and, actually, untrue. Frankly, the kind of adoptions that are halal are way more in line with what adoptees themselves suggest is best practices: open adoption with no changes to names, no “reassignments” into new families with the erasure of the old one. The Islamic adoption model looks really similar to permanent guardianship.

We also talked about Hinduism, which has a slightly different approach. We said that while taking care of children is a virtue for most Hindus, Hindu classical texts have a lot of rules—many of which center on caste and gender. This is theological, in part: the caste system is a problem, but it is also a religious precept. So too is the religious demand for sons—and the reality in which some classical Hindu texts, like the Yājñavalkya-smṛti, that a married couple without a son can adopt, because sons are required for end of life rituals.

Finally, we talked Christianity, and not the white Christian imperialism and supremacy we’ll get to in literally the rest of this series, but the Christian theological view of adoption. Spoilers: Christians like adoption, theologically and in Christian community. Some of that is about the care of parentless children, but a lot of it is about fulfilling the requirement to procreate and to raise Christian children. Adoption here is used metaphorically (God adopts all of us) and literally (adopt and convert children for the faith).

Primary Sources

This episode also featured a very special, very dark return of Primary Sources!

Since we care about citational politics, it is important to know that Ilyse, who has talked about her adoptee status from day 1 on this podcast, is an adoptee. Megan is not, but has a bunch of personal adoption connections.

Ilyse talked about being adopted, her bone-deep knowledge that the system of adoption is fully violent and deeply horrific, and the ways in which the government bars her from knowing her own history—and what that means for religions, especially her own religion, Judaism.

Megan talked about how Catholicism is never done with her, created the reality in which she has a secret sibling, and also shared her late dad’s participation in the Catholic Church’s program to adopt pagan babies. You read that correctly. Here’s the evidence:

In which Bob Goodwin adopted a pagan baby for—we think—a dime and renamed said pagan baby after his actual sister, Lisa, so as to prove she was adopted.

Homework

Religion Is Not Done With You

Our book is available for preorder! And if you know anything about contemporary book publishing, those preorders really, really matter. We love a local indie store, but you can grab a copy to be delivered on November 5 everywhere and anywhere books are sold.

If you want to have us visit your local bookstore or campus, please reach out to us and Caitlin Meyer, one piece of the rockstar publicity team at Beacon Press.