Episode 703: Religion & Adoption - Primary Sources & Overview

Transcript!

PDF transcript. Also available via our Buzzsprout page.

Shownotes
(because citations are political)

This is the second 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 following our first episode, which covered some basics on adoption, including how different religious traditions do (or do not) engage in the practice, with a deeper dive into the stakes of adoption, religion, and law. Shocking perhaps no one at this point of the pod: we’re talking about religious freedom.

We also offer a content warning: adoption and the constellation of issues that surrounds it—appropriately or not, things like abortion, abandonment, child abuse & neglect, infertility, histories of religio-racist child removal—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.

In this episode, we talked about religious freedom. We said that while a lot of the religious freedom cases about adoption are about the rights of adoptive parents, and/or adoption agencies, adoptees’ religious freedom is nonexistent. And that matters, a lot.

Adoption is a religious freedom issue for a few reasons. The ones we talked about included:

  1. Religions have their own way of thinking about orphans, children without guardians, and adoption. And those things aren’t the same, at all. But the government–any government–has its own ways of thinking about adoption in particular. State and religious definitions or legal frameworks often do not line up. So, for example, if your religion prefers permanent guardianship and resists plenary adoption, you might not have that choice available to you based on the nation-state’s laws. Obviously lots of religious groups—like Muslims and Jews, notably—make do in these systems. But we cannot pretend this doesn’t impact religious freedom or access to it, especially for minoritized religions.

  2. Children’s rights are abysmal, and that includes adoptees. Adopted into a religious family? You don’t get to opt out of the adoptive one, and your adoptive family can do what all parents do, which is raise you as they see fit. But here, there’s no acknowledgement, legally, for the preexisting experiences of the child adoptee. Grew up Catholic but adopted by Baptists? They have the right to take you to church, impose their religious values, and convert you. Grew up Catholic and want to go to the church you knew before foster care, before being orphaned, before ending up with “new” parents? Let’s hope that adoptive family is supportive. Because they aren’t required to be, and your religious identity is secondary to their roles as head of household.

  3. The overwhelming majority of adoption agencies and organizations historically and contemporarily are Christian. Christian values permeate every single element of adoption in EuroAmerican contexts, and even post-colonial Asian and African ones, too. Many organizations outright praise Jesus, ask parents to believe in Christ, be married in hetero couples, raise Christian children, and other theological concerns. That is not a problem in an of itself—where it is problematic is how these organizations run the adoption industry, are in and have held positions of power to determine what a “good” placement is or what a “safe” family looks like, and, as we’ll see below, often have the right to deny adoption services to families of other religious backgrounds.

  4. Conservative Christian activists have been using religious freedom as a tool to enshrine Christianity in US laws. We’ve talked about this before, but the reality is that legal activism about religious freedom has been about furthering the power of Christianity in the US and not at all about protecting minority religious rights. Adoption, abortion, and “good” families? This is a foul soup ripe for exploitation.

The Cases

We highlighted two ongoing, current cases to demonstrate how relevant adoption and religion—and religious freedom—are.

Bates v. Pakseresht.  In Oregon, in 2023, a woman named Jessica Bates, was denied the right (and I need y’all to hear us eyerolling on “right”) to adopt two children by the ​​Oregon Department of Human Services. As part of routine screenings, Bates told a case worker, a state employee, that her Christian beliefs prevented her from “following a rule that requires adoptive parents to support and respect their child’s sexual orientation and gender identity.” She was disqualified from starting the adoption process for failing to answer the mandated questionnaire in a way that sufficiently demonstrated she could be a safe, trustworthy parent to children placed in the state’s care. Bates is represented by conservative legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom, and most commentators agree this is a test case—meant to push the boundaries of what the state can/can’t do. Ilyse reasonably freaked out at this case, because Bates imagines children as things you can order off a menu, treat how you like, raise without regard for their own identities or needs, and do so with full backing of the government.

Rutan-Ram et al. vs. Tennessee Department of Children’s Services et. al. In 2022 and 2023, the Rutan-Ram (and others) brought suit against the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (et. al.) because they were denied the ability to start the adoption process because they are Jewish. In Tennessee, state certification and approval for foster and adoptive parents is outsourced to approved affiliates, including religious organizations, like the Holston United Methodist Home for Children, which denied child placement to the Rutan-Ram family given their Christian mandates (and, therefore, the Rutan-Ram’s Judaism).

Both of these cases assume the religious freedom of the prospective adoptive parents > the child, which grates Ilyse’s cheese. The podcast really hates that religious freedom can be abused and misused so prominently—and disproportionately by Christians to maintain the hegemony and power that Christianity enjoys in the US.

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.