Religion and Eugenics

Religion and Eugenics

SPECIAL FEATURE: HISTORY OF 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).

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.

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, AngloSaxon, 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.

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.

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

all social issues through the lens of eugenics. “Prohibition,” he wrote, “is above all a eugenical question” (5). He argued that prohibition was harmful to the health of the race, as “alcohol is probably an agent of race improvement,” and “if they had reflected a little further, it might have occurred to them that nothing better could have happened for the race, especially if alcohol carried the foolish persons off before they had children” (5). ABOVE: Early 20th Century cartoonist Samuel D. Ehrhart’s depiction of “race suicide” Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

12 | ELEMENTS

One of the most interesting components of Wiggam’s work is how he appealed to religious sentiments and beliefs to defend eugenic thinking and policies. Modernist Christianity developed out of a strong tradition of liberal theology, in which the Bible was examined as a story, but an important story that contained a code of morals that good Christians ought to follow. Since the 19th century, theological liberals had modified central doctrines, such as the reliability of the Bible or the means to salvation, in order to adapt Christianity to modern values, especially science (6). Wiggam’s book The New Decalogue of Science described eugenics as the final step in the divinely-approved progress of mankind and produced, as the title hinted, 10 new commandments arising from biology (including the “duty of eugenics”). When presenting at Chautauqua lectures and standing in small-town auditoriums across the United States, Wiggam employed religious language to both connect to his audience and orchestrate this “new religion” of eugenics.

Wiggam was not alone in appealing to religious sentiment and values to justify eugenic thinking and policies. The American Eugenics Society held eugenics-themed sermon contests for clergymen with a monetary prize (one contest was advertised in the University of Puget Sound’s student newspaper The Trail in 1930), sponsored lectures, and also published eugenics pamphlets, brochures, and other media. In addition, The Eugenics Record Office’s pamphlet entitled “A Eugenics Catechism” became wildly popular. “A Eugenics Catechism” provided answers to questions about eugenics, inheritance, and the environment. For example, “Which counts for more, heredity or the environment?” received the answer, “They are interdependent” and the existence of slums was attributed to “Inferior people in inferior places” (7). In addition, the American Eugenics Society (AES) published the costs of the environmental improvement of the human race (in 1926, $1,385,220,000) and the economic cost of genetic improvement ($300,000). The AES said that sterilization surgery was “as easy as pulling a tooth” (7).

Wiggam described eugenics as approved by God and the “enlightened” Christian. “If His will is ever to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven,” Wiggam wrote, invoking the Lord’s Prayer, “it will have to be done through the instrumentalities of science, that is, through the use of intelligence” (8). He added:

Science and religion were not antagonistic for Wiggam, or for Wiggam’s audience. Wiggam’s writings connected an individual’s religious, modern Christian duty with new scientific morality. Science could create a new Heaven on Earth, which also implied that Hell would result should the “biological imperatives” of eugenics not be adopted. After describing the prospect of racial degeneration without eugenics, he concluded: “These warnings at first should make you tremble, they should secondly make you pray, and they should thirdly fill you with the militant faith of a new evangel” (8). Wiggam’s language appealed to modernist and liberal Christians who believed in progress through science, and that the future of the human race must be valued over and above the rights of the individual. For more on the relation between eugenics and religion, see Christine Rosen’s Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement.

Popular science accounts like Wiggam’s can tell us a great deal about the social, economic, and political factors that nurtured interest in eugenics, including among scientists intent on reconciling religion and science. Understanding stories like Wiggam’s allows us to watch how and why particular scientific ideas moved into the popular consciousness, how the translation of these scientific ideas depended upon religious categories and language, and how what we are tempted to call a pseudoscience was in fact firmly supported by the scientists of the day. In addition, this history should inspire us to pay closer attention to the language, metaphors, and assumptions that we use to talk about the aims of science. “Eugenics is a method ordained of God and seated in natural law for securing better parents for our children, in order that they may be born more richly endowed, mentally, morally, and physically for the human struggle. (8).”