Taller, smarter, prettier.

Preaching Eugenics

Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement

Christine Rosen

Oxford University Press, $35, 296 pp.

In a wonderful essay whose title, "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died," sums up a certain view of contemporary science, Tom Wolfe describes a public meeting in 1992 at which Frederick K. Goodwin, head of the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration, sought to explain the National Institutes of Mental Health's ten-year-old Violence Initiative. Goodwin explained that the working hypothesis of the initiative was that genetics could help explain and even solve the crime problem. As he put it, we know that most of the violence among chimpanzees in the wild is caused by a few male chimps that appear genetically predisposed to violence. Perhaps the same is true for humans; indeed, perhaps the notion of urban America as a "jungle" was not just a metaphor.

It would be hard to argue with Wolfe's assessment that the use of the word jungle to describe America's inner cities "may have been the stupidest single word uttered by an American public official in the year 1992," for the Violence Initiative was immediately compared to Nazi eugenics programs, Goodwin's resignation was called for and received, and the Violence Initiative came to an abrupt halt. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how someone could be so tone-deaf about issues of race and genetics in contemporary America as to utter Goodwin's incendiary words.

What is not surprising, at least not if you have read any history of the eugenics movement in the United States, is that in late-twentieth and early-twenty-first century America, scientists may be enamored of genetic explanations for social problems. For the eugenicists we have always with us. We like to think otherwise, that the eugenics movement found no foothold in the United States, that "Nazi eugenics" is a redundancy because the eugenics movement only took root in the xenophobic soil of Hitler's Germany. But we know better.

The infamous words of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. upholding a Virginia law that allowed compulsory sterilization--words that make Goodwin's remarks look tame--tell us how deeply rooted the eugenics movement was in this country. "It is better for all the world," Holmes wrote, "if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

Fortunately, the eugenics movement in this country has been widely documented and the history of the relationship of the movement to various cultural phenomena--everything from literature to immigration policy--has been previously told. The great merit of Preaching Eugenics is that it expands this history to include the story of the relationship between the American eugenics movement and prominent religious leaders in this country. It is not a pretty tale.

As the title of the book suggests, many religious leaders embraced the eugenics movement and gave impassioned homilies advocating eugenic solutions to social problems. Not only was eugenics said to be good science, it was also supported by Scripture. In fascinating detail, Rosen documents how the Parable of the Talents, the story of the Good Samaritan, the Sermon on the Mount, and other biblical narratives were all used to justify eugenics.

Indeed, although it would not have occurred to these preachers to ask what car Jesus would drive if he were alive in their day, they did ask what Jesus would think of eugenics. Rosen quotes the unequivocal answer of Albert Edward Wiggam, a well-known Protestant lecturer and author. "Had Jesus been among us," Wiggam wrote, "he would have been president of the First Eugenics Congress."

As Rosen demonstrates, Wiggam was not alone. Catholics, Protestants, and Jews all embraced the eugenics movement, and the American Eugenics Society's Committee on Cooperation with Clergymen included prominent Christian and Jewish leaders. Moreover, the committee's attempt to proselytize on behalf of eugenics was quite creative and insured that worshipers in churches and synagogues across the country heard the good news that eugenics was part of God's plan. For example, the committee sponsored annual eugenics sermon contests that paid handsomely for the best sermon on a theme such as "Religion and eugenics: Does the church have any responsibility for improving the human stock?"

In one of the most interesting chapters in the book, Rosen complicates the usual narrative about Catholic enthusiasm for eugenics being more muted than Protestant support because of the close alliance between the eugenics movement and efforts to promote sterilization and selective use of birth control. Rosen acknowledges the general accuracy of this claim, but shows that "Catholics did not arrive at this denunciation of eugenics as quickly or neatly as historians have suggested." As an illustration, she cites Father John A. Ryan's defense of Holmes's decision cited above as consistent with Catholic moral teaching.

In the concluding chapter of this fine study, Rosen notes that the folly of our eugenic past "has not erased the irrepressible urge to improve the human race." We tend to see this desire as one that religion typically seeks to keep in check. Preaching Eugenics helps us remember that the religious impulse to respond to human suffering can also fuel the desire to improve upon nature. At a time when stem-cell research, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and other scientific marvels hold out the promise of dramatically reducing human suffering, understanding the ambiguous relationship between science and religion is a moral necessity. For that reason alone Rosen's book is a must-read.

Paul Lauritzen is director of the Program in Applied Ethics at John Carroll University in Cleveland.