American Christianity and the New Eugenics: Consumerism, Human Genetics, and the Challenge to Christian Personhood
American Christianity’s participation in the twentieth-century movement commonly termed the "old eugenics" helped enable eugenic policies that contributed to human rights abuses and social divisions. While churches have attempted to restore their reputations from the stain of that period,...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
[publisher not identified]
2023
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| In: |
Christian scholar's review
Year: 2023, Volume: 52, Issue: 2, Pages: 21-42 |
| IxTheo Classification: | CF Christianity and Science KBQ North America NBE Anthropology NCH Medical ethics NCJ Ethics of science |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | American Christianity’s participation in the twentieth-century movement commonly termed the "old eugenics" helped enable eugenic policies that contributed to human rights abuses and social divisions. While churches have attempted to restore their reputations from the stain of that period, what some are calling the “new” or “consumer” eugenics has emerged a century later with markedly different characteristics. As opposed to legal rulings, state legislation, or “promotion from the pulpit,” eugenic ideas today are being driven by market forces advancing genetic technologies that numb the population to their moral effects. This essay contends that American Christianity’s role in defining and defending the human person is being tested by the emergence of new eugenic attitudes through the combined influence of science and economics, and whose cultural consequences are likely to be more indelible than those witnessed in the first half of the twentieth century. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Christian scholar's review
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