3. Progressive Protestantism, race, and contraception (1920–1965)

"Race suicide" was the idea that desirable White Anglo-Saxon Protestants were being outbred by less desirable poor Catholic and Jewish immigrants. The fight against it was led by the American Eugenics Society (AES) [3–6]. Largely a lobbying group, the AES was the premier eugenics education association at the time. The AES cultivated close ties with its "eugenic apostles" ([7], p. 3), most of whom were "nationally prominent ministers" and rabbis ([4], p. 88;

[8], p. 8) The AES had well-funded standing committees and regular outreach campaigns and columns in Eugenics written for and by religious leaders, all dedicated to communicating with

All years (1918–1965) Early period (1918–1932) Later period (1935–1965)

Historical context: • Women's Suffrage • Temperance

• Science

• Labor

• [Prohibition] • The depression • [Capitalism] • [Socialism] • [New deal] • [Social security] Sex and gender issues: • Birth control • [The pill] • [Malthus]

From Eugenicists to Family Planners: America's Religious Promoters of Contraception

• Abortion • Sexuality

Historical context: • WWII

> • [Nazis] • [Hitler] • [Germany]

• [Jews]

• Communism • [Cold War] • [Russia] • [USSR] • [China] • [Korean War] • [Vietnam War] • [McCarthyism] • Growth of higher education • [College]

• Race (black/white)

• Catholicism

tion] • [Segregation] • [Civil rights movement] • [Voting rights] Theological/denominational issues:

• [Ecumenism] • [Vatican II] • Religious growth/decline • [Evangelicals/ ism] • [Evangelism] • [Billy Graham]

• [Brown vs. board of educa-

Race:

• [Population explosion] • [Food insecurity] • [Voluntary parenthood] • [Responsible parenthood]

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.72378

17

• [Sexual revolution] • [Summer of love] • [Homosexuality]

• [Religious persecution]

• [Roma or Gypsies] • [Fascists/ism] • [Conscientious objection] • [United Nations]

• [Evolution] • [Darwin] • [Scopes Trial]

• [Labor unions] • [Labor movement]

America's religious elite [1, 9].

• [Internal division/strife]

• [Domestic missions] • [Foreign missionary activity]

Table 2. Keywords searched.

Sex and gender issues: • Birth control

• Feminism

• Sexuality

• Marriage

Race: • Eugenics

• [Contraceptives] • [Family planning] • [Margaret Sanger]

• [Women's issues] • [Women's rights]

• [Sex education]

• [Juvenile delinquency] • [Overburdened parents] • [Anglo-Saxon] • [Superior race] • [Racial stock] • [Blood/line] • [Genetics] • [Heredity]

• [Undesirable/desirable]

• [Differential birth rates]

Theological/denominational issues: • Fundamentalists or modernists (or -ism) • Federal Council Churches (FCC) • National Council of Churches

• World Council of Churches (WCC)

(NCC)

• "Social Gospel" • Catholicism • ["Rome"] • Religious growth/decline • [Revivals]

• Missions

• "Race suicide"

• Immigration • Race (black/white) • [the Negro] • [Lynching] • [Racial justice]

• [Divorce]

<sup>2</sup> The UCC published four articles on birth control in 1965, which is among the most of any early liberalizer. The tone of their articles is very similar to the others with a focus on the "crisis" in India, China, and Latin America and weaker but still presents concern about the inner cities in the USA.

<sup>3</sup> We do not assume that every member who was reading these periodicals agreed with the views expressed in them or, indeed, with the official stances of their denomination. Instead, we treat these periodicals and the articles we obtained as representative of the general beliefs and opinions of the denomination, the level of analysis that is our focus.

<sup>4</sup> Almost all of the denominations had yearbooks or minutes from their general conventions that we also used for various official statements. These are not included in these periodical numbers (but do show up in the references where relevant), unless we had to perform keyword searches on them because a popularly oriented periodical was unavailable. Table 1 indicates when this was necessary.

<sup>5</sup> The first half of the research, from 1919 to 1932, averaged about 120 articles for 35 periodicals, for a total of about 4000 articles.


Table 2. Keywords searched.

The Methodist Church was formed in 1939 as a result of a merger between the eugenicist early liberalizer of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the silent Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The United Church of Christ (UCC) is the most complicated denomination examined in this paper. Unlike the other denominations analyzed here, it includes a precursor denomination that was an outspoken critic of eugenics, the Reformed Church in the US, which merged in 1957 with two other denominations, the early liberalizer the Congregational Christian Churches

In sum, of the seven remaining distinct denominations, three remained intact, three resulted from mergers of like-minded fellow eugenicist groups, and one, the UCC, resulted from a

The primary data presented here come from an analysis of each denomination's periodical between 1919 and 1965.3 Although there was some unavoidable variation in the periodicals, in general, they were remarkably comparable. Two-thirds of the periodicals were weeklies, and all but two of the periodicals were popularly oriented and written for a general, lay audience.<sup>4</sup>

With the rare exception of those that were electronically searchable, research assistants examined each of the periodicals by hand and gathered all articles that mentioned the keywords listed in Table 2, which varied by time period, and were added inductively as the research

On average, about 250 articles were summarized, coded, and analyzed for 50 different periodicals, for a total of about 10,000 articles, about one-third of which we draw on for this paper.5

"Race suicide" was the idea that desirable White Anglo-Saxon Protestants were being outbred by less desirable poor Catholic and Jewish immigrants. The fight against it was led by the American Eugenics Society (AES) [3–6]. Largely a lobbying group, the AES was the premier eugenics education association at the time. The AES cultivated close ties with its "eugenic apostles" ([7], p. 3), most of whom were "nationally prominent ministers" and rabbis ([4], p. 88;

The UCC published four articles on birth control in 1965, which is among the most of any early liberalizer. The tone of their articles is very similar to the others with a focus on the "crisis" in India, China, and Latin America and weaker but

We do not assume that every member who was reading these periodicals agreed with the views expressed in them or, indeed, with the official stances of their denomination. Instead, we treat these periodicals and the articles we obtained as

Almost all of the denominations had yearbooks or minutes from their general conventions that we also used for various official statements. These are not included in these periodical numbers (but do show up in the references where relevant), unless we had to perform keyword searches on them because a popularly oriented periodical was unavailable. Table 1

The first half of the research, from 1919 to 1932, averaged about 120 articles for 35 periodicals, for a total of about 4000

representative of the general beliefs and opinions of the denomination, the level of analysis that is our focus.

3. Progressive Protestantism, race, and contraception (1920–1965)

and the Evangelical Synod of North America.

merger of a wider variety of denominations.<sup>2</sup>

still presents concern about the inner cities in the USA.

indicates when this was necessary.

2.2. Periodical research

progressed.

16 Family Planning

2

3

4

5

articles.

[8], p. 8) The AES had well-funded standing committees and regular outreach campaigns and columns in Eugenics written for and by religious leaders, all dedicated to communicating with America's religious elite [1, 9].

At first, through the mid-1920s, the AES and its religious allies supported immigration restriction and involuntary sterilization and generally promoted positive eugenics, the idea that "desirable" people should have more ("at least four") children (see [9, 10]). After little success at actually raising birth rates among desirables, however, the AES and the religious leaders affiliated with it turned to "negative eugenics" and began pushing for the legalization of birth control. Working closely with Margaret Sanger and the American Birth Control League, they did so under the assumption that the birthrate differential was due to the poor's inadequate access to contraceptive methods. Contraceptives were largely available only through a physician, to which most of the poor did not have regular access.

of America from 1949 to 1950 and started the journal Eugenic Quarterly in 1954. That same year, he noted great progress in relation to the "growing concern with world population problems" ([24], p. 3a) and "the need to balance the concern over size of population with concern for the quality of that population" ([24], p. 3a). As another example, take AES President Henry Pratt Fairchild, who was the first President of the Population Association of America (as the AES began it's decline from 1931 to 1934), and a few years later became the President of the

From Eugenicists to Family Planners: America's Religious Promoters of Contraception

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19

Thus, the history of eugenics in the USA is well established, as is its relationship concerns about world population and the organizations and academic disciplines (especially demography and sociology) that would attempt to curtail world population in the next few decades. However, although religious groups have always been central to debates over contraception, there has been very little systematic investigation of which groups supported early birth control reform, and why they did (with the exception of 1). Likewise, until now, there has been no investigation into how those religious groups who were advocates of eugenics adjusted their perspectives on contraception overtime, as eugenics became delegitimized. This paper explores these groups' views over the next three decades and demonstrates that by and large they remained staunch advocates of contraception. Like the former eugenic activists who became population control advocates, their focus shifted from the out-of-control fertility of immigrants and their children to the "population explosion" among the poor of the Third World and the inner cities of the USA.

Working with the AES, during the first wave of liberalization, the early liberalizers worked hard to prevent "race suicide." At first, these religious leaders largely focused on "positive eugenics" or the idea that more desirable people should have more children. For example, in 1932 the Congregationalist and Herald of Gospel Liberty insisted "Every marriage must have a minimum of three children in order to fulfill its social obligation in maintaining the present level of population…Those who are able must average four or more in order to prevent race

However, such a call was at best a swan song for those hoping to increase the fertility of desirable parents. By the late 1920s, it was clear that positive eugenics was at best a stop gap measure and that race suicide would not be prevented unless something could be done to curtail "the high birth-rate among the inferior" ([26], p. 663) most of whom were Irish and Italian immigrants, populations that were "increasing nearly five times as rapidly as non-Catholics" ([27], p. 514). By that time, the AES had joined forces with the American Birth Control League and began enlisting the support and legitimacy that religious leaders' endorsements would lend

In the least openly eugenic statement among the early liberalizers, a 1931 resolution by the General Council of Congregational and Christian Churches (CCC) endorsed a report titled

to their cause. And, those denominations affiliated with the AES did not disappoint.

4.1. Official statements: open about the eugenic need for birth control

American Sociological Association in 1936.

4. Eugenic thought among the early liberalizers

suicide" ([25], p. 1336).

By the early 1930s, the campaign to legalize contraceptives was largely successful, culminating in the 1936 case United States v One Package of Japanese Pessaries. The decision of the case stated that distributing birth control, when recommended by a physician for preserving the health of a patient, was not a violation of the Comstock law that had previously prohibited the practice for its obscenity [11–13]. Though birth control products did not immediately become readily available to patients, the court's ruling allowed an easier and legal pathway to accessing birth control.

By the time birth control was legalized, however, the American Eugenics Society had all but disappeared [14–16]. Researchers offer various reasons for the AES' demise—from rapid loss of popularity due from the taint of Hitlerism ([17], p. 50) to internal divisions and strife over the direction of the Society ([18], p. 301) to the general decline of the field due to a significant drain in funding ([19], p. 324). Most likely because of a result of all of these factors, researchers agree that by the mid-1930s, eugenics went from being a sign of progressive politics and enlightened scientific understanding to a dirty word associated with Hitler [6, 14–16, 20, 21] and, correspondingly, that the AES was largely defunct.

However, although explicit mention of eugenics largely faded from the public view, much eugenic thought, and activism around birth control, remained but with two differences. First, although the focus was still on poor people of color, instead of being concerned about nonwhite immigrants' fertility in the USA, activists became focused on fertility in the developing world [5], ([6], p. 186, 187), [22, 23] and, to a lesser extent, African Americans in the inner cities [15]. Second, instead of explicit talk about "race suicide" and open promotion of eugenics, eugenicists began to engage in a more "discreet and mild-mannered form of eugenics" ([18], p. 299) where they attempted to accomplish "eugenic control" through "population control" ([5], p. 186, 187).

Taking advantage of the public's exhaustion and anxieties after the close of WWII, eugenicists strategically promoted population control as crucial to preventing "the imminent destruction of human society" ([5], p. 83) and the achievement of world peace ([23], p. 153). In a quote that demonstrates this tactic, in 1945, Guy Irving Burch, who was the director of both the Population Reference Bureau and the AES, stated that "uncontrolled human reproduction…favors the least gifted of society…and in the long run will destroy human liberties and any chance for a world at peace" ([22, 23], p. 153).

Those connections between the two movements ran deep and are undeniable. For example, a founding member of the AES, Frederick Osborn, became President of the Population Association

of America from 1949 to 1950 and started the journal Eugenic Quarterly in 1954. That same year, he noted great progress in relation to the "growing concern with world population problems" ([24], p. 3a) and "the need to balance the concern over size of population with concern for the quality of that population" ([24], p. 3a). As another example, take AES President Henry Pratt Fairchild, who was the first President of the Population Association of America (as the AES began it's decline from 1931 to 1934), and a few years later became the President of the American Sociological Association in 1936.

Thus, the history of eugenics in the USA is well established, as is its relationship concerns about world population and the organizations and academic disciplines (especially demography and sociology) that would attempt to curtail world population in the next few decades. However, although religious groups have always been central to debates over contraception, there has been very little systematic investigation of which groups supported early birth control reform, and why they did (with the exception of 1). Likewise, until now, there has been no investigation into how those religious groups who were advocates of eugenics adjusted their perspectives on contraception overtime, as eugenics became delegitimized. This paper explores these groups' views over the next three decades and demonstrates that by and large they remained staunch advocates of contraception. Like the former eugenic activists who became population control advocates, their focus shifted from the out-of-control fertility of immigrants and their children to the "population explosion" among the poor of the Third World and the inner cities of the USA.
