On March 25, the United States branch of World Vision announced that it would hire individuals in same-sex marriages. World Vision reversed the policy change one day later after protests from donors and the Evangelical community at large.
On March 25 and 26, World Vision lost more than 10,000 sponsorships.
I have never been more ashamed to be an “Evangelical,” to be considered a similar kind of “Christian” witha group of people who think that taking “a stand” against one kind of sin will give any actions that follow as a result of that stand, a sudden righteousness that removes any burden of proof from their actions. And to a lesser degree, I am ashamed to have supported World Vision. How naive.
For those who don’t know, World Vision International is an Evangelical Christian humanitarian organization most known for its child sponsorship program. Through it, donors from across the world can support children in impoverished comunities through a monthly donation — usually $35 — that provides “access to clean drinking water, sanitation, education, skills for future livelihood, nutrition, and health care,” according to World Vision’s website.
I decided to become a sponsor nearly three years ago, and I have been profoundly changed by the experience. God is the only one who could foster a relationship with a boy who is half my age, in a country that has a per capita income of less than 3 percent of what an American earns every year. The child I sponsor, Guideneaud Jean, lives with his grandmother in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after both of his parents died from AIDs. I have exchanged many letters with Guideneaud and have even received a few pictures of Guideneaud over the years.It can be argued that World Vision acted in complete self-interest. World Vision reversed its decision on March 27th.
“The decision to make a U-turn was made after donors canceled several thousand child sponsorships in two days,” said World Vision president Richard Stearns. This can be interpreted one of two ways. It might possibly be construed to mean that Mr. Stearns wanted to do whatever he could to stop the children’s suffering.
What comes across to a greater degree, however, is that. Stearns wanted same-sex couples to have the potential to work with World Vision to make World Vision look “better” to the liberal-leaning Christians, and most especially to the US government, which “provides 18 percent of its revenues.” Either way, it was the children that were the most hurt.
Quite frankly, I wonder how God could even make something good come out of this. 10,000 kids were shown supposedly unconditional love for a few years. Then suddenly, because of Evangelical in-fighting in America, their chances of future employment look bleaker, their food becomes harder to come by, and, in short, their hope is cruelly stolen away. I imagine many children who had become Christians will wonder if anyone really loves them anymore. Perhaps some may even stop professing Christianity.
Economically, it makes perfect sense for a Christian to drop a sponsorship because an organization provides an inferior “product,” and then sponsor another child with a more “Christian” organization. In protest of World Vision’s flip-flopping, I will probably do the same thing, but only when Guideneaud becomes self-sufficient. If I dropped the sponsorship now, however, Guideneaud will lose all of the benefits of my support, and, perhaps rightly so, would decide that he no longer wants to follow a God that encourages His followers to desert people in their time of need.