Fewer Protestant churchgoers now engaged with fostering or adoption than five years ago, poll shows

[WorthyNewsBot]

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A new study by Lifeway Research shows that fewer US Protestant churchgoers are actively participating in adoption and foster care than they were five years ago. At the same time, the study found that church leaders are increasingly encouraging their congregations to adopt or foster children.

In 2017, a Lifeway Research study found that 25% of US Protestant churchgoers said they knew of a church member who provided foster care, while 17% said they knew someone who had adopted domestically and 15% said a church member they knew had adopted internationally in the past year.

The new study shows that just 16% of US Protestants now know of a church member who provides foster care, 13% know of a member who adopted domestically, and 11% know of a churchgoer who adopted internationally within the last year.

The new study found that while 44% of US Protestant churchgoers said their congregation and church leaders are proactively involved with adoption and foster care, 45% said they have not seen other churchgoers or leaders provide any foster care or support for adoption.

“Caring for the fatherless is repeatedly prioritized throughout Scripture,” Scott McConnell, executive director Lifeway Research, said in a statement. “But the Bible does not pretend caring for another like your own child is convenient or easy.”

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[FJK]

As the Church of Accommodation continues to become more and more secularized you will see this trend become more pronounced among its members.

[Jayne]

I've always been a critic and skeptic of statistics.  Why?  Because when I was in post-graduate school at a very prestigious university. I learned well how to ask sample questions that could be interpreted in a variety of ways.  And how to keep a sample size small.  In other words - how to make those numbers say whatever you want.

I've found that trend to continue.

I didn't see the details of this "research", so I Googled it.  I googled "Lifeway research on fostering and adoption".  It was the second one that popped up.

The sample size was only 1,010.  They randomly surveyed people who only had to GO to church at least once a month.  That's only one day out of 30 that you had to be around members of your church or your pastor.  In my own opinion, the questions of "do you know" isn't scientific or valid or reliable.  Especially when the answer is just "yes" or "no".  

Some questions I had:

[1] Did anyone take into consideration the number of children in the U.S. waiting to be adopted with the number of families in the U.S. qualified to adopt?  There are about 117,00 - give or take - children available for adoption in any given year.  And there are about 125 million households in the U.S.  There's NO WAY your entire membership in the church can adopt and foster children!

[2]  Did anyone take into consideration that there are upswings and downswings to adoption/fostering?  There are.  I fact-checked it.  Year-to-year - adoption/fostering percentages differ.  2020 was significantly lower.  That's understandable.  Adoption/fostering percentages have ups and downs.

This article leads one to believe that church people don't CARE and that every year gets worse and worse.

Yes, the church should be doing a LOT more for widows and orphans.  

But articles like this are plain disingenuous.