Religion and Eugenics
A free lecture sponsored by The Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science, the Messiah College Honors Program, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Featured speaker: Dr. Christine Rosen, fellow for the Project on Biotechnology and American Democracy at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and senior editor of The New Atlantis magazine

With the successful mapping of the human genome and daily advances in the field of biotechnology, the public is raising difficult questions about the ethical implications of our new scientific knowledge of genetics. In this context the specter of eugenics frequently has been raised. Yet what historical grounding do we have for assessing the validity of these contemporary debates? Are we truly treading on new ethical territory? How has our understanding of the history of eugenics in the United States shaped the way we examine hereditarian thinking today? Thinking about these questions prompts examination of a group that raised similar challenges to science in the early half of the twentieth century: American religious leaders. In exploring how Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders adapted to, rejected, and, in many cases, enthusiastically embraced eugenics—a movement emblematic of modern science and progressive thought in the early twentieth century—we can gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between religion and science in the twentieth century and shed light on continuing scientific and ethical debates.

Monday, 10 November 2008, at 7:30 pm.

Location: Kline Hall, room 120, Messiah College, Grantham, PA.  Directions and a campus map are here http://www.messiah.edu/visitors/direction.html.

Dr. Rosen is the author of Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (Oxford, 2004), a history of the ethical and religious debates surrounding the eugenics movement in the United States. She is also co-author (under her maiden name, Stolba), with Diana Furchtgott-Roth, of two books: Women’s Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economic Progress of Women in America (1999) and The Feminist Dilemma: When Success is Not Enough (2001). Mrs. Rosen’s newest book, My Fundamentalist Education: The Story of a Christian Fundamentalist School in Florida, was published by Public Affairs in December 2005. To download a radio interview and for additional information, see her website: http://www.eppc.org/scholars/scholarID.51/scholar.asp.

We also thank the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (www.isi.org) for supporting this particular event.


The Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science, based at Messiah College, has been made possible in part by a Local Societies Initiative grant (http://www.metanexus.net/lsi) of the Metanexus Institute (www.metanexus.net). This lecture is also made possible by a grant from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (www.isi.org). For details about all Forum events, please visit http://www.messiah.edu/godandscience/ or contact Dr. Ted Davis (tdavis@messiah.edu), 717-766-2511, ext 6840.