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Overview
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781532605772 |
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Publisher: | Pickwick Publications |
Publication date: | 06/06/2017 |
Edition description: | New Edition |
Pages: | 218 |
Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
1 Degeneration Theory and Eugenics Discourse 12
2 Theories of Heredity and the Rise of Eugenics 18
3 "Stigmata of Degeneration": The Religious Rhetoric of Eugenics 35
4 Eugenic Family Studies, Science, and Religion 43
5 The Degenerate Mind and Hereditary Mental Defect 54
6 Epilepsy and Eugenics in Scientific and Religious Perspective 70
7 From Sinful to Criminal: The Making of Hereditary Criminality 87
8 Drink and the Degeneration of the Germ Plasm 113
9 Degeneration and the Race Question 134
10 Theologians, Hereditary Sin, and Eugenics 157
Conclusion: The Quest for Good Births 181
Bibliography 189
What People are Saying About This
"Dennis Durst's Eugenics and Protestant Social Reform fills an important gap in the history of eugenics by examining religious voices often neglected in conventional scholarship. Durst explores how nineteenth-century 'degeneracy' theory provided a common ground for discourse among both theologians and scientists who embraced eugenic ideals. Based on painstaking research, and grounded in writing that is both nuanced and clear, this book is an important addition to the history of eugenics."
Paul A. Lombardo, Georgia State University College of Law, Atlanta
"The eugenics movement of the early twentieth century has had a profound influence on medical ethics. Though the core ideas of eugenics go back to Aristotle, teachers of health care ethics have rightly traced their recent roots to the late nineteenth century, within social Darwinism and the Industrial Revolution. But where was the American evangelical church in all this? For more than two millennia, Christianity has defended poor, vulnerable, and marginalized individuals, with their value grounded in the imago Dei. Christian theology should have pushed back against the worst abuses of negative eugenics that sterilized the 'feeble-minded' and other genetically 'defective' persons. Yet given the interplay of science, theology, and attempts at social reform, eugenics sometimes co-opted the church. Philosopher and theologian Dennis Durst deftly and thoughtfully examines these complex relationships. This book is a rich academic resource for seminary and health care students alike."
Dennis M. Sullivan, Cedarville University, Cedarville, Ohio
"In Eugenics and Protestant Social Reform, Dennis Durst documents what happened when bad science and bad theology colluded to create the social monster that was the American and British eugenics movements of the early twentieth century. We who live in the twenty-first century must resist the power and subtlety of emerging biomedical and biotechnological developments that tempt us to embrace a new eugenics. Durst's penetrating analysis can help us avoid repeating the past, if we have ears to hear and eyes to see."
C. Ben Mitchell, Union University, Jackson, Tennessee
"Durst begins by thanking archivists. Superman has Lois Lane digging through archives at The Daily Planet to uncover a supervillain. Durst documents a history with no mastermind, describing how theology and science 'became entangled' across Protestantism. He shows how eugenics became holy. An 'emphasis on the body' led progressives to regulate 'bodily activities'to sterilization, institutionalization, incarceration. This book is essential for American Christianity, Ethics, Race Studies, and for anyone trying to live otherwise."
Amy Laura Hall, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina