The Child Catchers Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption

Adoption has long been enmeshed in the politics of abortion. But as award-winning journalist Kathryn Joyce makes clear in The Child Catchers, adoption has lately become entangled in the conservative Christian agenda. To tens of millions of evangelicals, adoption has become a new front in the culture wars: a test of "pro-life" bonafides, a way to reinvent compassionate conservatism on the global stage, and a means to fulfill the "Great Commission" mandate that Christians evangelize the nations. Influential leaders fervently promote a new "orphan theology," urging followers to adopt en masse, withlittle thought for the families these "orphans" may actually have. Christian adoption activists have added moral weight to a multi-billion dollar adoption industry intent on increasing the "supply" of adoptable children, both at home and overseas. The Child Catchersis a shocking expose of what the adoption industry has become and how it got there, told through deep investigative reporting and the heartbreaking stories of individuals who found that their own, and their children's, well-being was ultimately irrelevant in a market driven by profit and now, pulpit command.

Kathryn Joyce is a journalist based in New York City whose work has appeared in the Nation, Mother Jones, Slate, the Atlantic, and other publications. A 2011 recipient of the Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global Religion, she has also been awarded residencies and fellowship support by the Nation Institute Investigative Fund, the MacDowell Colony, the Bellagio Center, and the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. She is the author of Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement and as associate editor at Religion Dispatches.