New story up at The Daily Beast:
For the past week, the news from Haiti has been dominated by the story of 10 American evangelicals from Idaho who were caught at the border of the Dominican Republic attempting to take 33 Haitian children, many with living parents, out of the country without documentation. The Americans, missionaries with the recently created New Life Children’s Refuge, were arrested and charged with kidnapping and criminal conspiracy—a reprieve from the child trafficking charges they may have faced.
The details that emerged about the group’s plans and leader, Laura Silsby, were unsavory. Although Silsby, the legally embattled CEO of a personal shopping business, claimed that the group never intended to put the children up for adoption, an itinerary for New Life’s mission, published by an affiliated Southern Baptist church, bluntly described a plan to “gather 100 orphans from the streets and collapsed orphanages” onto a bus, then take them to a hotel in the Dominican Republic. There, New Life hoped to build permanent orphanage facilities, including a beachfront restaurant and “seaside villas” for prospective adoptive parents—amenities that underscore their understanding of local adoption residency requirements, even as they claimed ignorance of Haitian law. Additional planning and fundraising documents described the group’s goal to “equip each child” with the opportunity “for adoption into a loving Christian family,” and help them “find new life in Christ.”
After the arrests, Silsby and supporters explained that they’d been called by God to help orphans in Haiti, that they were “acting not only in faith but God’s faith.”
The news of an adoption organization driven by missionary zeal surprised many, but it shouldn’t. Although New Life’s illegal actions have been condemned by other religious adoption agencies, their sense of calling fits into a growing movement of American evangelical churches embracing a new orphan theology that urges Christians to see adoption and “orphan-care” as an integral part of their faith—and a means of spreading the gospel.
