How does scientific knowledge gain authority in relationship to other ways of knowing? Standard narratives of modernity assume that science expands through secularization; as scientific facts and theories emerge to explain natural and social phenomena, these are thought to replace explanations offered by religions, indigenous traditions, the humanities, etc. What is overlooked in this narrative is the role that these other modes of knowing have and continue to play in shaping and authenticating science within various communities. This was especially true in the context of the emergence of the biopolitical state; by the late 19th century “facts” from the new hereditary sciences were woven into pronatalist religious and nationalist movements throughout the world. These larger movements both made sense of, and grounded the authority of, the new eugenic sciences. This paper analyzes one example of this from a sermon contest convened by the American Eugenics Society in the 1920s. The AES offered cash prizes to American pastors to write and preach sermons on the topic “Religion and Eugenics--Does the Church have any responsibility for improving the human stock?” The records of these sermons, preserved in the AES papers, reveal how substantively Christian teaching was utilized to articulate and promote the moral imperatives of American eugenics-- to preserve and protect the hereditary purity of the American racial stock.
