Chuck, Abe, and Me
In case you missed it, today is Darwin Day, marking the 198th birthday of Charles Darwin. It’s hard to overstate the impact Darwin had on life as we know it. In many ways his theory of evolution, guided by natural selection, exerted more of an influence upon American Protestantism than any actual theological development. And as James Turner has rightly noted, it was the catalyst for the introduction of intellectually viable atheism. Whatever one’s opinion of evolution, however, there has been a darker parallel to evolutionary theory in American history and David Klinghoffer takes notice of it in an article today at The Weekly Standard.
As of 2007, it is exactly a century since the key turning point in the Darwin-inspired American eugenic movement. In 1907, the state of Indiana achieved the distinction of becoming the world’s first government entity to enforce sterilization of institutionalized “idiots,” “imbeciles,” and other individuals deemed genetically “unfit.” The idea caught on.
With Washington and California following in 1909, some 30 states eventually passed similar compulsory sterilization laws by the early 1930s. California was the leader in the field, accounting for half of the coercive sterilizations in the years leading up to World War II.
By 1958 some 60,000 American citizens had been sterilized against their will. Only the horrors of Nazism succeeded in casting a pall over America’s romance with eugenics, when it became widely known that German doctors were following the lead of their California colleagues and sterilizing undesirables. [Full Story]
The horrors of Josef Mengele have been effaced from the collective memory of much of our generation, but, as Klinghoffer points out, there are signs of an emerging eugenic culture in our midst. Christians of all stripes should be able to agree on a consensus against such a degradation of human life. However, while we might agree that the bioethics of a Peter Singer are unequivocally reprehensible, one has to wonder if Christians will recover a more extensive ideology of life. For many of us, how we esteem life–particularly as the imago dei–will be seen not in whether we affirm Singer, but in how we approach issues of prenatal screening.
Ironically, Darwin shares his birthday with another massively significant historical figure. While Charles was born in Shrewsbury, England, on February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin County, Kentucky. I confess I have not yet succumbed to the complete disdain for Lincoln which still marks much of southern life. He remains for me a fascinating and heroic figure. His second inaugural address from 1865 is another example of Lincoln’s unusual ability to express in prose the sentiment of a nation.
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
For some, the fact that these two men should share the same birthday is fitting. If Lincoln emancipated a massive number of enslaved Americans, so too did Darwin free the modern mind from the trappings of superstition, some might suggest. But the darker side of Darwin’s legacy, the ideas of Mengele and Singer, suggest something quite different. Lincoln was a man of his time, and still very much committed to racist ideas himself, but it seems undeniable that his efforts bolstered the notion that “all men are created equal.” Unfortunately, Darwin’s legacy in our day seems to suggest otherwise.
On a very different note, while I wasn’t born in 1809, today is my birthday as well. However, I doubt that it is fodder for any serious commentary or cultural reflection.