Growing God's family : the global orphan care movement and the limits of evangelical activism / Samuel L. Perry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Perry, Samuel L., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Evangelicalism.

Orphans--Care.

Orphans.

Adoption--Religious aspects--Christianity.

Adoption.

Physical Description:

xiv, 295 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2017]

Summary:

For more than a Decade, prominent leaders and organizations among American evangelicals have spent a substantial amount of time and money in an effort to address what they believe to be the "global orphan crisis." Yet, despite an expansive commitment of resources, there is no reliable evidence that these efforts have been successful. Adoptions are declining across the board, and both foster parenting and foster adoptions remain steady. Why have evangelical mobilization efforts been so ineffective? To answer this question, Samuel L. Perry draws on interviews with more than 220 movement leaders and grassroots families, as well as on national data on adoption and fostering, to show that the problem goes beyond orphan care. Perry argues that evangelical social engagement is fundamentally self-limiting and difficult to sustain because evangelicals' subcultural commitments lock them into an approach that does not work on a practical level. Growing God's Family ultimately reveals this peculiar irony within American evangelicalism by exposing how certain aspects of the evangelical subculture may stimulate activism to address social problems even while these same subcultural characteristics undermine the strategic effectiveness of such activism. The book provides a rich analysis of dominant elements within the evangelical subculture and the ways that subculture shapes the engagement strategies of evangelicals as a group. Book jacket.

Contents:

What evangelical orphan boom?

Culture building for change

Orphans need families! just not those families

So why did you adopt?

Costs not counted

What will a mature evangelical movement look like?

Data and methods

Interview guides.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781479800384

1479800384

9781479803057

1479803057

OCLC:

961208086