Conservative evangelicals claim they are being persecuted by not being allowed to persecute LGBTQ foster kids

This article originally appeared at Baptist News Global on July 2, 2024.

In the latest episode of conservative Christianity’s persecution complex, the Biden administration is accused of discriminating against Christians by prohibiting them from fostering kids.

“Biden Takes Aim at Christian Foster Care,” one headline from the American Family Association claims. “The Biden Regime has proposed a new plan that will essentially bar Christians or anyone else who opposes LGBTQ+ ideologies from becoming foster parents, deeming them ‘unsafe.’”

The Catholic Herald adds that “Christians could be forced from the foster care system in the United States.”

According to the Washington Examiner, the recently passed “Safe and Appropriate Fostercare Placement Requirements” is part of Biden’s “war on faith and family.”

And Carol Smith writes for the Tennessee Conservative, “They’re coming for our children.”

It sounds pretty horrifying by the way these people are describing it. So now to ramp up the emotion even more, Megan Basham is promoting a new movie being released on July 4 about a true story of Christians fostering kids. And she’s drumming up fear that Christians fostering kids may never happen again.

A heartbreakingly big need

In an episode of the “Morning Wire” podcast produced by the conservative website The Daily Wire, Basham explained: “It’s a heartbreakingly big need. The most recent year for which we have data is 2022. And that year, just over 53,000 kids were adopted out of foster care. But well over twice that number had a case plan for adoption. So what that means is that they just continued in the system because they didn’t have any family that case workers believed were safe for them to return to. And no one else adopted them.”

She interviewed Joe Knittig, CEO of the Global Orphan Project and founder of the Care Portal ministry that helps churches connect with foster kids.

“Every year in the United States, even though we pour about 30 billion taxpayer dollars into child welfare, there are more than 7 million children, that’s more than 4 million families, that are referred to child protective services,” Knittig said. “So these are families at the front door of the system. And there are nearly 400,000 children that are in foster care right now. And there are more than 100,000 children in the system who are available and waiting for adoption.”

Finding common ground

In the very moving trailer for the film Sound of Hope Basham is promoting, one character says, “If we can’t wrap our arms around the most vulnerable, then what do we have?”

Another adds, “We want the ones that nobody else wants.”

Then a woman expresses: “We gotta work on this together. We your people now. And love never gives up.”

The movie is based on the true story of Bennett Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Shelbyville, Texas. Bishop WC Martin’s wife, Donna, shared their story with Guideposts, the magazine started by the conservative Reformed pastor Norman Vincent Peale in 1945.

“In the cool breeze I seemed to hear God say: Think of all those children who don’t have what you had in a mother. I want you to give them that,” Martin wrote. Then she and the other members of their church adopted 76 kids.

“Every child is special, every child deserves to be loved,” she says. “Even if it is in a little town back in the woods, with no paved roads, no stoplight, just a cool sweet Texas breeze that blows in when you least expect it.”

Whatever differences progressive Christians may have with Basham and Knittig, or with conservatives in the line of Peale, the desire to love the most vulnerable kids is commendable and one we all seem to hold in common.

Continue reading at Baptist News Global.