SPECIAL FEATURE: HISTORY OF EUGENICS
Religion and Eugenics BY ELIZABETH NIELSEN In the 1927 court case Buck v. Bell, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a Virginia law that allowed the forced sterilization of individuals deemed (intellectually or socially) “unfit.” Between 1909 and 1942, Washington State also had a compulsory sterilization law on the books. In 2002, Oregon’s governor apologized publicly to those forcibly sterilized while in state care between 1923 and 1983 (1).
Saxon, Protestant) race and fearfully described “race suicide” as on the horizon (4). In his 1913 critique of eugenics, Lester Ward described how “Roosevelt lost no opportunity to weave [fear of race suicide] into his speeches and warn his audiences of the insidious dangers to mankind” (4). Roosevelt and others rejected the growing diversity of the American population and firmly believed the solution to the social problem of race suicide could be found in eugenics.
While it is certainly disturbing to have these ideas encoded in law—not to mention shockingly long-lasting—these ideas did not just circulate in the minds of lawyers, politicians, and scientists. Ideas about the importance of eugenics seized the imagination of ordinary Americans during the early 20th century, helped by outreach efforts and rhetoric employed by science communicators. Historians have done much great work understanding the scientists and scientific justifications of laws like those in Virginia, Washington, and Oregon, but sometimes understanding the rhetoric of an individual can demonstrate how this movement became so popular.
Wiggam seized upon these Progressive-era fears and anxieties over the future of “the race” and concerns about morality and sexuality in his writing, marrying these concerns with modern scientific language and encouraging scientific solutions for these social “problems.” He found a welcome audience in an era during which many saw science as a solution to the questions and issues supposedly plaguing society. In a series of books—The New Decalogue of Science (1923), The Fruit of the Family Tree (1924), and The Next Age of Man (1927)—Wiggam drew analogies between eugenics scholarship and theological phrases with which readers would have been familiar. The New Decalogue even provides a new Ten Commandments based on eugenic ideals. Wiggam drew on common, relatable themes and real-life examples of problems that, he argued, needed a scientific solution. His “crusade” (as he called it) focused on bringing eugenics forward as a new framework for religion, morality, and activist science to the public. His books provided a guide for how, through implementing eugenic policy, individuals worried about the potential apocalyptic downfall of civilization could use science to produce a better future. While some scientists complained about his use of religious language, he was able to amass dozens of testimonials from professional scientists that praised his work for translating the implications of biology for the American public.
One such figure is Albert Wiggam, a Midwestern boy turned newspaper editor, Chautauqua lecturer, and prolific author. Wiggam strongly advocated for eugenics and popularized the concepts in his work during the 1920s. A contemporary described him as “the leading interpreter of the human sciences and their bearing upon America’s future, and the making of a better and happier world” (2). Wiggam popularized eugenics and helped connect the movement to values and fears held by influential segments of the American public. “Civilization is making the world safe for stupidity,” he lamented in a New York Times editorial in March 1930. The reason? Because, Wiggam argued, as the final stage of supposed “progress,” civilization encouraged altruism and sympathy, which in turn helped so-called “moron types” (eugenicists’ term for those with an IQ between 51 and 70) and the “physically and mentally unfit, through charitable institutions, prolong their lives and propagate others of their kind” (3). Statements like this, though disturbing, were not uncommon during the first part of the 20th century. Ideas and anxieties about race improvement or race degeneration flourished in a time of rampant racism, classism, and ableism. In 1904, for example, Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech in which he lamented the degeneration of the (white, Anglo-
For Wiggam, science clearly laid out a path of action, a duty, even, for “bettering” the human race. “Eugenical truth,” Wiggam urged, “is the highest truth men will ever know” (5). Clearly, for Wiggam, without eugenics, humanity was doomed. Despite all the medical advances, he argued, a social organization based on orthodox ideas of Christian sympathy and charity would take care of the unfit, thereby allowing degenerate individuals to reproduce. Amid what he called “the rising tide of degeneracy,” Wiggam turned to eugenics as “the field of hope and inquiry” (5). Indeed, Wiggam perceived
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