Erased Parents, Damaged Children, and White Redeemers: Exploring Evangelical Discourses of Foster Care and Adoption

Background and purpose: Evangelical Christians are a unique population in the U.S. with tremendous socio-political influence. Additionally, 90% of U.S. evangelicals are white. Evangelicals have a unique interest in foster care and adoption, observable in historical child saving efforts such as 18th century orphan trains and modern manifestations like the evangelical orphan movement, which reached its height in 2013 and continues to influence evangelicalism today. Despite these historical and contemporary intersections, little social work scholarship examines evangelical Christians vis-à-vis child welfare. This study explores this gap by examining evangelical discourses of foster care and adoption, focusing on the pulpit’s role in shaping such discourses.

Methods: This study used a Foucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze 22 sermons on foster care and adoption posted online by evangelical churches between 2007 and 2024.

Results: Findings reveal a discourse that largely erases the biological parents of fostered/adopted children. When biological parents are acknowledged, they are constructed as objects existing only in the past who have perpetrated irreparable harm forceclosing the possibility of relationship with their child and the foster/adoptive family. In contrast, the discursive construction of the foster/adoptive parent is that of God-like redeemer. The discourses of fostered and adopted children are rife with contradiction; while on one hand the child is constructed as damaged, the child is also worthy of redemption and care, even sacrifice, unlike the child’s biological parents. The constructions of both foster/adoptive parent and fostered/adopted child also reveal the discursive power of Biblical authority. For example, pastors frequently drew on scripture to emphasize the “orphan mandate,” and employed scripture to metaphorically situate the foster/adoptive parent as God and the child as sinner in need of redemption. Finally, the discourses circulating from the evangelical pulpit contain several striking parallels to the racist discourses that have long justified family separation. For example, the discursive erasure of the biological parent mirrors constructions of the Black mother during chattel slavery, when white enslavers viewed Black women as objects incapable of mothering their own children but who produce Black children for the white enslaver/adoptive parent. Similarly, the adoptive parent is constructed as benevolent white redeemer and the child as redeemable by proximity to whiteness.

Conclusions and Implications: Given evangelicals’ continued interest and participation in foster care and adoption, understanding and intervening into the ways in which they talk about, think about, and thus engage with foster care and adoption is critical. Social workers, particularly those working in child welfare and adjacent fields, must consider how this powerful and influential group understands foster care and adoption, revealed in part through this study. This work also points to ways that both evangelicals and non-evangelicals might think beyond adoption and the establishment of a new nuclear family as the only response to the issue of children in foster care, considering how families facing challenges caring for their children may also benefit from interventions at structural and policy levels and the non-normative kinship relationships that may be possible.