Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 6
March 24, 1955
NUMBER 45, PAGE 12

A Misuse Of Figures

Arthur W. Atkinson, Jr., Dayton, Ohio

In the Gospel Advocate of February 3, 1955, page 94, there is an article by D. Ellis Walker of the Walnut Street church of Christ, Dickson, Tennessee. I do not know Brother Walker personally and have nothing whatsoever against him of a personal nature. My purpose in presenting these things is not to deal in personalities or to in any way cast reflections upon the honesty or ability of my brother. It is my purpose, though, to show that some of the figures used by Brother Walker in his effort to sway the thinking or prejudices of the people in favor of institutional orphan homes is far from representing the facts as they should be. In fact, the picture presented by Brother Walker is a very severe indictment of the institutional method of caring for children. Let us see.

Brother Walker very generously suggests that maybe 7,500 orphans, out of 22,000 available, were applied for by members of the church in a certain year. I doubt that the number is this high, and I imagine that Brother Walker does too. I think that Brother Walker was trying to be fair in his presentation, thus allowed this high figure. But let us take a more reasonable figure (which might still not be correct) and say that one half of one percent of the members of the church applied for orphans and that three-fourths of those who applied received them. This would make a total of 2,811 orphans taken into private homes of Christians, out of an available 22,000. This figure seems small and it is not large but how large is it in comparison with the number taken into the institutional orphan homes the same year. I have read that "our" homes care for about 1200 to 1400 "orphan" children. But the 1400 does not represent the true picture for these have been gathered over a period of several years and not the one year we are talking about. I suppose (and I will try to be just as generous as Brother Walker here) that in one year's time there are not more than 300 children taken into "our" homes. I personally feel that the figure is exorbitantly high and if truth were known it might be far less than 100. The institutional homes are always indicating that there is a lack of space and that they do not have room for more children. But we want to be fair so we will say they admitted 300. Now, let us compare. The institutional home took in 300 and the private Christian homes adopted 2,811. This makes the Lord's plan superior to man's plan by at least 2,500 orphan children a year. And if we knew all the facts and had all the statistics it would undoubtedly be far more superior.

Also, if we were to use Brother Walker's first figure of 7,500 and get outlandishly generous with regard to "our" homes and say that they took in 1,000 (which they could not do) the Lord's plan would be 6,500 children superior to man's.

Brother Walker makes this statement after stating that 7,500 children were adopted into private homes of Christians: "The indication is that in that certain year our people either did not want or else thought they could not care for almost 14,500 orphans." In making this statement Brother Walker seemingly wants to leave the impression with the people reading the article that the institutional homes would have done better. Would they though? No, they would and could not. This statement in itself serves as a severe indictment, not of the Lord's method of caring for orphan children in private homes of Christians, but of institutional homes. The same year that Christians were adopting 7,600 children (by Brother Walker's standard of measure) the institutional homes were busy taking in about 300 or less. Thus the institutional homes (to use Brother Walker's words) "did not want or else thought they could not care for almost" 21,700 orphans. The institutional method of caring for children left 21,700 uncared for while the Lord's method left only 14,500. Even the casual reader can see which is the better of the two methods.

Setting aside, for the moment, all scriptural objections to the institutional set-up, and looking at it purely from a statistical standpoint it is plain to be seen that the adoption of orphan children into private homes of Christians is far superior to the method now being used by institutional minded brethren. We hope that Brother Walker will be able to see this.