Darwinism, Eugenics, Methodists, and The Nazis.

The Methodist Church, on April the 28th, 2008 adopted the following resolution: Methodist Conference 2008

This resolution is a repentence of the Methodist Church's historical involvement in the support of Eugenics in the early part of the 20th century. Within the resolution, the connection between Darwinian evolution and the Nazi program is considered. The full resolution is here: An Apology for Support of Eugenics

This is a quote from the resolution, explaining the history of the connection between Charles Darwin and the theory of Eugenics as it would come to be considered applicable to humans:

"Eugenics, the belief that certain “genetic” traits are good and others bad, is associated in the public mind mostly with the extreme eugenics policies of Adolf Hitler, which ultimately led to the Holocaust. The study of eugenics did not begin with Hitler or his German scientists, but rather was first promoted by Sir Francis Galton, in England. Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, who expanded on Darwin’s theories and applied them to the human population. In an article entitled "Hereditary Character and Talent" (published in two parts in MacMillan's Magazine, vol. 11, November 1864 and April 1865, pp. 157-166, 318-327), Galton expressed his frustration that no one was breeding a better human: “If a twentieth part of the cost and pains were spent in measures for the improvement of the human race that is spent on the improvement of the breed of horses and cattle, what a galaxy of genius might we not create! We might introduce prophets and high priests of civilization into the world, as surely as we can propagate idiots by mating cretins. Men and women of the present day are, to those we might hope to bring into existence, what the pariah dogs of the streets of an Eastern town are to our own highly-bred varieties.” Galton in the same article described Africans and Native Americans in derogatory terms making it clear which racial group he thought was superior. Francis Galton, the founder of the Eugenics Society, spoke hopefully about persuading people with desirable genes to marry and have large families. Galton's successor at the helm of the Eugenics Society was Major Leonard Darwin (1850-1943), a son of Charles Darwin. Leonard Darwin, who ran the Eugenics Society until 1928, made the transition from positive to negative eugenics, and promoted plans for lowering the birthrate of the unfit."

The Methodist Church sympathized with the Darwinian pretension that certain humans were superior to others. According to the resolution, the church participated in “Fitter Family Contests” which were promoted by the American Eugenics Society. The following is worth noting from the resolution.

"Methodist bishops endorsed one of the first books circulated to the US churches promoting eugenics. Unlike the battles over evolution and creationism, both conservative and progressive church leaders endorsed eugenics. The liberal Rev. Harry F. Ward, professor of Christian ethics and a founder of the Methodist Federation for Social Service, writing in Eugenics, the magazine of the American Eugenic Society, said that Christianity and Eugenics were compatible because both pursued the “challenge of removing the causes that produce the weak. Conservative Rev. Clarence True Wilson, the General Secretary of the Methodist Episcopal Board of Temperance, Prohibition and Public Morals, and the man chosen to debate Clarence Darrow after William Jennings Bryan’s death, believed that only the white Aryan race was the descendent of the lost tribes of Israel. Methodists were active on the planning committees of the Race Betterment Conferences held in 1914, and 1915. In the 1910s, Methodist Churches hosted forums in their churches to discuss eugenics. In the 1920s, many Methodist preachers submitted their eugenics sermons to contests hosted by the American Eugenics Society. By 1927, when the American Eugenics Society formed its Committee on the Cooperation with Clergymen, Bishop Francis McConnell, President of the Methodist Federation for Social Service served on the committee. In 1936, he would chair the roundtable discussion on Religion and Eugenics at the American Eugenics Society Meeting. The laity of the church also took up the cause of eugenics. In 1929, the Methodist Review published the sermon “Eugenics: A Lay Sermon” by George Huntington Donaldson. In the sermon, Donaldson argues, “the strongest and the best are selected for the task of propagating the likeness of God and carrying on his work of improving the race.”

"In 1933, Hitler’s Nazi government used Laughlin’s Model Law as the basis for their sterilization law that led to the sterilization of some 350,000 people. State sponsored Eugenics reached an abhorrent extreme in the Nazi extermination programs of the 1930s and 1940s. Initially directed at people with similar health or social problems as were targeted by the U.S. sterilization laws, these were eventually expanded to cover entire populations—Jews, Gypsies, Poles—judged by the Nazi regime to represent “worthless lives” (lebensunwerte Leben)."

In particular, the Nazis used Harry Laughlin's model, which "provided for the sterilization of 'feeble minded, insane, criminalistic, epileptic, diseased, blind, deaf, deformed, and dependent” including “orphans, ne’er do wells, tramps, homeless, and paupers.'” You can read all about Harry at the Pickler Memorial Library's online page at Truman State University.

Harry Laughlin

As Dr. David Berlinski remarked in Ben Stein's movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" Darwinism was not a sufficient condition, but was a necessary condition for the Nazi program. There seems to have been a significant number of people affected by Darwinian Eugenics (as it was applied to humans) in this time period, otherwise intelligent people, in both America and Europe. So why are we afraid to include the Nazis in this group of folks who were influenced? Why are we afraid to say that they acted accordingly with the logic they thought they embraced? No doubt Hitler was diobolical, but it is usually when people think they are doing something justified, something "right" that they can be the most diabolical. Did Darwinian pretensions alone, taken in isolation, lead to the Nazi phenomenon? I doubt it. But, it certainly seems to have been a formidable weapon in their arsenal. And Darwinian Eugenics seems to have been a weapon that they inherited, not one that they had to invent.

Here is the apology of the Methodist Church, as stated in the resolution.

"The United Methodist General Conference formally apologizes for Methodist leaders and Methodist bodies who in the past supported eugenics as sound science and sound theology. We lament the ways eugenics was used to justify the sterilization of persons deemed less worthy. We lament that Methodist support of eugenics policies was used to keep persons of different races from marrying and forming legally recognized families. We are especially grieved that the politics of eugenics led to the extermination of millions of people by the Nazi government and continues today as “ethnic cleansing” around the world."