Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-t27h7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-21T19:07:55.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Biblical Biology: American Protestant Social Reformers and the Early Eugenics Movement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Leila Zenderland
Leila Zenderland
Affiliation:
American Studies DepartmentCalifornia State University at Fullerton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In most historical accounts, eugenic doctrines and Christian beliefs are assumed to be adversaries. Such a perspective is too narrow, however, for while many prominent eugenicists were indeed religious skeptics, others sought to reconcile eugenics with Christianity. Various American Protestant social reformers tried to synthesize new biological theories with older biblical ideas about the meaning of a good inheritance. Such syntheses played an important role in disseminating eugenic doctrines into America's deeply Protestant heartland.

Type
Historical Perspectives
Information
Science in Context , Volume 11 , Issue 3-4 , Autumn-Winter 1998 , pp. 511 - 525
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Mark, ed. 1990. The Well-Born Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barr, Martin. 1904. Mental Defectives: Their History, Treatment, and Training. Philadelphia: Blakiston.Google Scholar
Blacker, C. P. 1952. Eugenics: Galton and After. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Davenport, Charles. 1909. Letter of March 9 to E.R. Johnstone [given to H.H. Goddard]. Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Galton, Francis. 1883. Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galton, Francis. 1907. Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, 2nd ed. London: Dent, New York: Dutton.Google Scholar
Garrison, S. Olin, ed. 1888. Forty Witnesses, Covering the Whole Range of Christian Experience. New York: Phillips and Hunt.Google Scholar
Goddard, Henry Herbert. 1909. Letter of March 15 to C.B. Davenport. Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Goddard, Henry Herbert. 1912. The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness. New York: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, G. Stanley. 1896. “Modern Methods in the Study of the Soul.” Christian Register 75:131–133.Google Scholar
Hall, G. Stanley. 1911. “Eugenics: Its Ideals and What it is Going to Do.” Religious Education 6:152–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, G. Stanley. 1923. Life and Confessions of a Psychologist. New York: Appleton.Google Scholar
Hall, Stephen Ray. 1993. “Oscar McCulloch and Indiana Eugenics.” Ph.D. dissertation, Virginia Commonwealth University.Google Scholar
Howe, Samuel Gridley. [1848] 1976. “On the Causes of Idiocy.” In History of Mental Retardation: Collected Papers, 1:31–60, edited by Rosen, Marvin, Clark, Gerald, and Kivitz, Marvin. Baltimore: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Johnstone, Edward. 1906. “Report of the Superintendent.” Vineland Training School Annual Report 18:18–29.Google Scholar
Kerlin, Isaac. 1884. “Provision for Idiotic and Feeble-Minded Children.” Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction 16: 246–263.Google Scholar
Kite, Elizabeth. 1912. “Unto the Third Generation.” Survey 27: 789–791.Google Scholar
M'Cowen, Jennie. 1886. “Heredity in Relation to Charity Work.” Journal of Heredity 1:48–49.Google Scholar
McCulloch, Oscar. 1888. “The Tribe of Ishmael: A Study in Social Degradation.” Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction 20:154–159.Google Scholar
Moore, James R. 1979. The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, Diane. 1984. “Eugenics and the Left.” Journal of the History of Ideas 45:567–590.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paul, Diane. 1995. Controlling Human Heredity, 1865 to the Present. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International.Google Scholar
Pick, Daniel. 1989. Faces of Degenerarion: A European Disorder, c. 1848–c. 1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rafter, Nicole Hahn, ed. 1988. White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies, 1877–1919. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Google Scholar
Review of The Kallikak Family. 1912a. “A Unique Study in Social Heredity.” Dial 53:247.Google Scholar
Review of The Kallikak Family. 1912b. Independent 73:794.Google Scholar
Roberts, Jon H. 1988. Darwinism and the Divine in America: Protestant Intellectuals and Organic Evolution, 1859–1900. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Rogers, A. C. 1910. “Modern Studies in Heredity.” Journal of Psycho-Asthenics 14:118.Google Scholar
Rogers, A. C. and Merrill, Maud. 1919. Dwellers in the Vale of Siddem. Boston: R. G. Badger.Google Scholar
Seguin, Edouard. 1870. New Facts and Remarks Concerning Idiocy. New York: Wood.Google Scholar
Smith, J. David. 1985. Minds Made Feeble: The Myth and Legacy of the Kallikaks. Rockville, Maryland: Aspen Systems Corporation.Google Scholar
Tomes, Nancy. 1984. A Generous Confidence: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Art of Asylum-Keeping, 1840–1883. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wiggam, Albert Edward. 1923. The New Decalogue of Science. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Wines, Frederick. 1880. “Report on the Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent Classes of the Population of the United States.” U.S. House Miscellaneous Documents, 1882–83, 13:179–298.Google Scholar
Zenderland, Leila. 1998. Measuring Minds: Henry Herbert Goddard and the Origins of American Intelligence Testing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar