Evangelical engagements with Eugenics, 1900-1940

Ethics & Medicine, Summer 2002 by Durst, Dennis L

5 Mary E. Teats, The Way of God in Marriage: A Series of Essays upon Gospel and Scientific Purity (Spotswood, N. J.: Physical Culture Publishing Co., 1906), frontispiece.

6 Ibid., 30. in a chapter entitled "Alcohol and Eugenics," Edith Smith Davis, Superintendent of the WCTU Scientific

Temperance Department, declared: "That there is nothing new under the sun receives confirmation in the fact that the law of Moses is the law of Eugenics-that the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Likewise the children shall have health and happiness whose parents have lived according to the law of life which is the law of God." Edith Smith Davis, A Compendium of Temperance Truth: Largely Contributed by the Counselors of the Department of Scientific Temperance Investigation and of Scientific Temperance Investigation and of Scientific Temperance instruction of the World's and National Woman's Christian Temperance Union (Milwaukee, WI: Advocate Publishing Company, n.d.), 116.

7 Ibid., 43-44.

8 Leila Zenderland, "Biblical Biology: American Protestant Social Reformers and the Early Eugenics Movement," Science in Context 11 (1998): 522-23.

9 Second Annual Report of the Board of Christian Education of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia: Board of Christian Education of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., 1925). 50.

10 Marouf Arif Hasian, Jr., The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 22.

11 Dictionary of American Biography: Supplement Three, 1941-1945, s.v. "Kellogg, John Harvey;" American National Biography, s. v. "Kellogg, John Harvey;" Richard W. Schwarz, John Harvey Kellogg, M.D. (Berrien Springs, MIL Andrews University Press, 1970). 82-94.

12 John Harvey Kellogg, "The Race Betterment Conference," Good Health 62 (November, 1927), 5.

13 Official Proceedings of the Second National Conference on Race Betterment (Battle Creek, MI: Race Betterment Foundation, 1915), 89.

14 John Harvey Kellogg, "Mendel's Law of Heredity and Race Degeneration," Good Health 45 (1910), 737. See Irving Fisher, "Eugenics," Good Health 48 (1913), 582-84, where Fisher ended his address with the following paean to

eugenics as religion: "We shall make of eugenics the biggest pillar of the church, and eugenics will become embedded in the religion of the future. It shall happen hereafter that instead of conflicts between science and religion, these two great human interests will be marching together, hand in hand." For another instance of melding eugenics and religion, see the address given at Battle Creek Sanitarium Golden Jubilee, Charles B. Davenport, Eugenics as a Religion (New York: Cold Spring Harbor, n.d.), 3-8.

15 William Hallock Johnson, Professor of Greek and New Testament Literature, and later President of Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, wrote for both scholarly and lay audiences on the implications of science for Christianity. Lincoln University was one of the leading institutions of higher learning for African Americans during this period, boasting such graduates as Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall. See William Hallock Johnson, The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1916), 63-65; and Can the Christian Now Believe in Evolution? (Philadelphia: The Sunday School Times Company, 1926). See also Horace Mann Bond, Education for Freedom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).