The Spirit of Adoption

The Spirit of Adoption explores many of the complexities inherent in adoption and its relationship to spirituality, challenging us to move beyond the common mythologies about adoption to consider the more difficult questions adoption raises about the nature of God, family, culture, loss, and joy. Rather than hearing from experts in adoption, this collection uses the narratives of birth parents, adoptive parents, and adoptees themselves, bearing witness to the ways adoption shapes its participants' spiritual lives. By allowing others to narrate their spiritual journeys through adoption, we hope to proclaim that adoption can be a wonderful, powerful, hopeful experience, and one that is difficult, painful, despairing--and that these paradoxes of adoption might be held together in God's hand.

""Adoption requires many acts of faith: the birth mother's, that her offspring will find a better life elsewhere; the adoptive parent's, that he will be able to provide it; the adopted child's, that the tension between what is and what might have been will be a force of creation, not destruction. The Spirit of Adoption presents myriad perspectives in the context of rich Christian faith that hold this tension and call it grace.""
--Meghan Krogh, Goodreads.com

""The warp and weft of these stories highlight the uniqueness of every adoption, even while the various patterns reveal common interwoven threads of love, joy, loss, and grace. Adoptive families will see blessedly honest glimpses of themselves in this tapestry. People of faith considering adoption will do well to wrap themselves in what they find here. In fact, it's grace-filled reading for anyone who has ever been a part of a family.""
--Cheri L. Larsen Hoeckley, Westmont College, California

""Adoption is such a powerful act of humanity that one cannot comprehend the emotions, trials, and rewards that are involved in the overall process. The testimonies that are shared in this book are a testament of the undying faith that each family has in God. As a first generation adoptee from Vietnam, I am encouraged by the families that have chosen to grow their family, one child at a time.""
--Richard V. Silver, George Fox University, Oregon


Melanie Springer Mock is a Professor of English at George Fox University. She is the author most recently of Just Moms (2011).

Martha Kalnin Diede is a Professor and Chair of English at Northwest University, Kirkland, Washington. She is the author of Shakespeare's Knowledgeable Body (2008).

Jeremiah Webster is an Assistant Professor of English at Northwest University. He is the author of Paradise in The Waste Land (2013).