…it is the efforts of Focus on the Family, a group which has previously been most known for its political involvement on issues like abortion and gay marriage, that have produced the most striking results so far

Last Saturday at a Denver church, Focus on the Family (in collaboration with the Colorado Department of Human Services) hosted an information session for parents interested in adopting children out of the foster-care system.

More than 150 families were represented and 55 of those have already begun the process. It was a successful and fitting end for the summer of 2010, which turned into a season of adoption for evangelicals.

In May, megachurch pastor Rick Warren held a “civil forum” on the subject. An audience of 800 attended and thousands more watched the webcast from their homes. “Orphans and vulnerable children are not a cause,” said Warren. “They are a biblical and social mandate we can’t ignore. A country half the size of the U.S—that’s how many orphans there are in the world. We’re not talking about a small problem.”

Adoption was the cover story of Christianity Today in July. It included a feature by Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in which he described in heart-wrenching terms the circumstances of his own adoption of two brothers from a Russian orphanage…

In trying to explain why Christians have a particular duty to adopt, he told me that “every one of us who follows Christ was adopted into an already existing family.”

Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703743504575494263102089970.html

Naomi Riley is an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values.