Religious discourse on adoption in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam often draws on the prophetic texts of these respective traditions to talk about the ethical calls to care for orphans, metaphors of divine adoption and the prophetic capacities and callings of adopted children in these traditions. With increased attention to adoption's traumatic dimensions and the risks of cultural erasure, a close examination of the significance and place of adoption in religious practice is warranted.
Abstract:
In the Christian scriptures, two prominent figures for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit are prophecy and adoption. This essay explores the possibility that these two figures for spiritual inspiration are more closely related than they would initially appear: the experience of adoption may be a condition for the capacity for prophecy. Through its readings of Romans 8, Ephesians 1, and Acts 2, it considers two scriptural models of adoption—what I term the absorptive and the dislocative—as possible ways to think about how adoption may enable prophetic gifts. It offers a critique of absorptive models, which track more closely with justifications for extant systems of international and domestic adoption, and argues that the dislocative conception of adoption offers a different sense of prophetic insight, through its openness to the fractured and complex dimensions of adoptees’ experience.
Adoptees have increasingly been speaking out about unjust adoption practices and adoption trauma. Social media has been instrumental to getting these stories out and pushing back against years of pain caused by unethical adoption practices. The Quran, believed by Muslims to be revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad—himself and orphan—in 7th century Arabia—preempts some of these concerns. This paper argues that the Quran contains an ethically revolutionary way of thinking about orphanhood and adoption, emphasizing not only the necessity of good treatment of the vulnerable, but also the importance of preserving their family names and identities--a major concern of adoptees today. In this way, it is a useful resource to consider ethical advancement in the way adoptees are treated in society, ideally contributing to a way forward in dismantling the for-profit adoption industry.
This paper argues that while it is certainly possible to construe “adoption” positively, MacDonald saw the translation of Paul’s υίοθεσία as “adoption” as tending to obscure the creaturely aspect of human beings, or the fact that they are God’s natural children and hence naturally loved by God as such. MacDonald argues that “the so-called doctrine of Adoption” suggests a separation between God and his creatures that can be bridged only artificially and sustained only precariously. Thus rather than encouraging faith in God’s universal love for his creatures as such, the doctrine of adoption serves to emphasize the unlikeness between God and human beings and hence to sow seeds of doubt in people concerning whether God could actually love them.