Monday, December 13, 2010

Two Choirs

We had the church Christmas musical program last night. In the adult choir, there are entirely white people, and they all have names that are Dutch, Swedish, German, and English. The children's choir is more mixed, with (at least) Sudanese, Chinese, Guatemalan, Korean, and Eastern European children - though many of their names are northern European* - in addition to the expected pale, light-haired descendants.

Well, it makes for incredible cuteness, of course, and distracting as that is, it does have value.

In our previous church, about one-third of the children were foreign adoptees, and though the percentage here is less than one-quarter, the trend is clear. My data is likely greatly skewed, both by the Christians I know and the adoptees (and refugees) I know, but it seems that evangelicals are much more likely to have foreign-born children than even other Christian groups, and well more than more secular folks.

*It's going to be a hoot in another generation when all those Pastors Cedarstrom and Van Der Beken were actually born in the C.A.R. or China - an outcome the original Covenanters would doubtless have laughed happily at.

2 comments:

lelia said...

Lovely, lovely.

Anna said...

Yes it is nice to see that, the other thing common around my locale is for an American man to have a foreign wife, I can think of a bunch from South America and the Philippines.

While in general favor of adoption, a few years ago there was a trend of celebrities and the very wealthy to adopt kids from Africa as a status symbol (like the Jolie Pitts and Madonna) and I was very glad that died out and did not become widespread. I remember a political cartoon at the time, which showed two rich ladies talking about a third rich lady. The third lady had a black baby in her purse and the other two were whispering "I heard it's not even real, its African-American."