"Quite aside from the intellectual and religious arguments that Rosen canvases, her book offers a panoply of colorful personalities (many of them appear in portrait photographs) that help to show how eugenics was sold to the public. The minibiographies of the eugenics star, so to speak, help to make this an enteraining as well as an instructive work of scholarship." --Magill''s Literary Annual"Preaching Eugenics is not simply revealing history, but an insightful commentary on contemporary debates."--Claremont Review of Books".this book takes an important first step in grappling with the role that religious leaders during the twentieth century played in public discussions concerning the regulation of childbirth."--American Historical Review"Quite aside from the intellectual and religious arguments that Rosen canvases, her book offers a panoply of colorful personalities (many of them appear in portrait photographs) that help to show how eugenics was sold to the public. The minibiographies of the eugenics star, so to speak, help to make this an enteraining as well as an instructive work of scholarship." --Magill''s Literary Annual"Preaching Eugenics is not simply revealing history, but an insightful commentary on contemporary debates.
"--Claremont Review of Books".this book takes an important first step in grappling with the role that religious leaders during the twentieth century played in public discussions concerning the regulation of childbirth."--American Historical Review".as prophecy (of the Jeremiah sort) it shines. Whether you are spiritual or secular, you might well join Ms. Rosen in wishing for a little more backbone from our religious leaders, particularly as we reckon today with astounding developments in biotechnology and genomics."--The Wall Street Journal"At a time when stem-cell research, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, and other scientific marvels hold out the promise of dramatically reducing human suffering, understanding the ambiguous relationship between science and religion is a moral necessity. For that reason alone Rosen''s book is a must-read.
"--Commonweal"[A] thoroughly researched study of the eugenic movement that gained such ideological power in American thought between about 1900 and 1940."--Books & Culture"Considering the history of liberal religion''s embrace of eugenics, this ''new eugenics'' once again threatens the vulnerable with the pernicious notion that some human lives have greater moral value than others. Christine Rosen''s Preaching Eugenics could not be more relevant."--The Weekly Standard"Henry Ford famously said that history is bunk. That statement was bunk, and no better evidence for that could be found than Christine Rosen''s splendid, absorbing book Preaching Eugenics. She tells an almost unknown, but important, story: how American religion was caught up in the early-20th-century enthusiasm for eugenics. And too often the best people in the best churches. Science, even bad science, can capture religion, a point to keep squarelybefore our eyes as we move into a new era of genetic medicine.
Her book is an insightful telling of how that earlier era of genetics gained credibility, and suggestive of how it might happen again." --Daniel Callahan, Director of International Programs, The Hastings Center"Preaching Eugenics tells a story we need to hear today. We suppose that science and religion are at odds, but Christine Rosen recounts a story of considerable cooperation as the ''science'' of eugenics developed in the early decades of the twentieth century. This is engagingly written narrative history at its best. Immersing us in an earlier time, it manages also to instruct us about the continuing lure of a eugenics that is today fostered less bygovernment than by the desires of our hearts."--Gilbert Meilaender, Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Professor of Theological Ethics, Valparaiso University"Far from being the exclusive property of the lunatic fringe, eugenics in its heyday was as mainstream as Progressive social reform. Indeed, as Christine Rosen demonstrates in this absorbing study, the most theologically liberal and socially concerned members of the American clergy--liberal Protestants, Reform Jews, and even a few socially minded Catholics--were precisely the ones most likely to embrace eugenics, out of a conviction that applied science couldrealize their fondest hopes. Her surprising findings call into question the presumed linkage between science, liberal theology, and humane social policy, and raise questions of profound importance, not only to historians but to us all.
" --Wilfred M. McClay, SunTrust Chair of Excellence in Humanities,University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.