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The ready credence given to eugenic arguments must be explained by the scientific basis that they provided to social prejudices. A eugenicist not only knew that people of his race and class were literally the best in the world, but had science on his side as well. And this same science justified, or actually demanded, the use of draconian legal measures to coerce and restrain the poor, the deviant, and the disturbed. Being the crown of creation is a tough burden, but someone has to bear it.
Nor are these complaints merely the result of post-Hitler hindsight, since all these weaknesses were discussed at length at the time. By far the most systematic critique can be found in G. K. Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils (1922), almost every line of which clamors for quotation. Chesterton not only demolished the evidence offered to support the new pseudo-science but also brilliantly analyzed its policy consequences. He shrewdly warned how the rhetoric of therapy and social hygiene in practice permitted total discretion to bureaucrats and administrators, eliminating traditional rights, and placing society under an "anarchy from above." Let no one say that the totalitarian appropriation of eugenics came as a complete surprise.
In its day, Chesterton's title was meant to be provocative or shocking, but in retrospect it seems merely descriptive. Of course eugenics was, and is, a blatant evil. Whoever could have thought otherwise? In fact, as Rosen notes, a great many people bought the eugenic package, including—or especially—in the religious community:
Clerics, rabbis and lay leaders wrote books and articles about eugenics, joined eugenic organizations, and lobbied for eugenics legislation. They grafted elements of the eugenic message onto their own efforts to pursue religious based charity in their churches and adopted eugenic solutions to the social problems that beset their communities.
Especially vulnerable were believers in the Social Gospel, as well as modernists "who embraced modern ideas first and adjusted their theologies later." Thank heavens no such rootless faddists are writing in our own days!
Throughout Preaching Eugenics, we repeatedly find events and phrases that indicate how ordinary and orthodox eugenic views had become. In 1912, Dean Walter Taylor Sumner of Chicago's Episcopal Cathedral demanded that any couple wishing to marry in the church would have to show a "certificate of health" from a reputable doctor. Sumner was no isolated crank. Other mainline clergy issued similar decrees, and further research would certainly produce additional instances. Nor was the dean regarded as a reactionary, since his openness to science clearly placed him in the camp of social and political Progressivism. Equally symbolic of progress and modernity was Harry Emerson Fosdick, nemesis of fundamentalists, who was one of several clerical members of the Advisory Council of the American Eugenics Society (AES). By 1928, the AES published a special "Preachers' Issue" of its magazine, dedicated to proving the harmony between religion and science.
Given such cooperation, it is not surprising to find a convergence of scientific and religious rhetoric in eugenic propaganda during the 1920s. Eugenic themes surfaced frequently in sermons and church tracts, while secular-minded eugenicists borrowed from religious language and idealism, even composing a catechism for the instruction of young people dedicated to race-betterment. Albert Wiggam composed his Ten Eugenic Commandments. Seeing just how easily American churches assimilated these pseudo-scientific doctrines, we must be less shocked by the easy acquiescence of German religious leaders in the 1930s to that nation's particular brand of racial purification.
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