Christine Rosen, "Preaching Eugenics. Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement" (2004)

With our success in mapping the human genome, the possibility of altering our genetic futures has given rise to difficult ethical questions. Although opponents of genetic manipulation frequently raise the specter of eugenics, our contemporary debates about bioethics often take place in a historical vacuum. In fact, American religious leaders raised similarly challenging ethical questions in the first half of the twentieth century.

Preaching Eugenics tells how Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders confronted and, in many cases, enthusiastically embraced eugenics-a movement that embodied progressive attitudes about modern science at the time. Christine Rosen argues that religious leaders pursued eugenics precisely when they moved away from traditional religious tenets. The liberals and modernists-those who challenged their churches to embrace modernity-became the eugenics movement's most enthusiastic supporters. Their participation played an important part in the success of the American eugenics movement.

In the early twentieth century, leaders of churches and synagogues were forced to defend their faiths on many fronts. They faced new challenges from scientists and intellectuals; they struggled to adapt to the dramatic social changes wrought by immigration and urbanization; and they were often internally divided by doctrinal controversies among modernists, liberals, and fundamentalists. EPPC fellow and New Atlantis senior editor Christine Rosen draws on previously unexplored archival material from the records of the American Eugenics Society, religious and scientific books and periodicals of the day, and the personal papers of religious leaders such as Rev. John Haynes Holmes, Rev. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Rev. John M. Cooper, Rev. John A. Ryan, and biologists Charles Davenport and Ellsworth Huntington, to produce an intellectual history of these figures that is both lively and illuminating.

The story of how religious leaders confronted one of the era's newest "sciences," eugenics, sheds important new light on a time much like our own, when religion and science are engaged in critical and sometimes bitter dialogue.

• Click here for an excerpt of Preaching Eugenics.

COMMENTS:

"Preaching Eugenics tells a story we need to hear today. This is engagingly written narrative history at its best. Immersing us in an earlier time, it manages also to instruct us about the continuing lure of a eugenics that is today fostered less by government than by the desires of our hearts."
- Gilbert Meilaender, Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Professor of Theological Ethics, Valparaiso University

"Far from being the exclusive property of the lunatic fringe, eugenics in its heyday was as mainstream as Progressive social reform. [Rosen's] surprising findings call into question the presumed linkage between science, liberal theology, and humane social policy, and raise questions of profound importance, not only to historians but to us all."
- Wilfred M. McClay, SunTrust Chair of Excellence in Humanities, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

"Henry Ford famously said that history is bunk. That statement was bunk, and no better evidence for that could be found than Christine Rosen's splendid, absorbing book Preaching Eugenics. She tells an almost unknown, but important, story: how American religion was caught up in the early-twentieth-century enthusiasm for eugenics. And too often the best people in the best churches. Science, even bad science, can capture religion, a point to keep squarely before our eyes as we move into a new era of genetic medicine. Her book is an insightful telling of how that earlier era of genetics gained credibility, and suggestive of how it might happen again."
- Daniel Callahan, Director of International Programs, The Hastings Center

FROM OTHER REVIEWERS:

"Recent years have seen a rebirth of eugenic thought, with advocacy for eugenic abortion, human cloning, and the drive to learn how to 'enhance' the human genome. This phenomenon seems to be repeating itself in the contemporary divisions among churches over social issues such as abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, and therapeutic cloning -- agendas that, like eugenics, undercut belief in the sanctity of human life. Considering the history of liberal religion's embrace of eugenics, this 'new eugenics' once again threatens the vulnerable with the pernicious notion that some human lives have greater moral value than others. Christine Rosen's Preaching Eugenics could not be more relevant."
- Wesley J. Smith, The Weekly Standard, July 26, 2004

"... All of which gives a powerful relevance to Christine Rosen's thoroughly researched study of the eugenic movement that gained such ideological power in American thought between about 1900 and 1940. ... Rosen shows the immense influence that eugenic thought had within America's religious bodies, chiefly the mainline Protestant churches, but also among Jews and even some Roman Catholics."
- Philip Jenkins, Books & Culture, July/August 2004

"Religious and secular thinkers alike have begun to grapple with the issues posed by recent advances in genetics, exploring the theological and ethical implications of technologies like gene therapy, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and reproductive cloning. Given the enormous influence religion continues to wield in American life, the response of churches and synagogues will no doubt help to shape the debate. Will religious leaders in the 21st century embrace the new genetic techniques rather than risk appearing intransigent and irrelevant? Or will they stake out principled stands on theological grounds? The science may be new, but Preaching Eugenics reminds us that in an important sense, we have been there before."
- Kevin Shapiro, Commentary, July/August 2004

"Disconcerting albeit necessary reading."
- Richmond Times Dispatch, May 9, 2004

"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."
- Commonweal, May 7, 2004

"Whether you are spiritual or secular, you might well join Ms. Rosen in wishing for a little more backbone from our religious leaders, particularly as we reckon today with astounding developments in biotechnology and genomics. Tweaking the human race is a grave business. It should not be the exclusive province of clerics, certainly, but they should have a lot more to say to scientists than simply 'amen.'"
- Stephen Prothero, Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2004

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