Why is everyone always asking me all these questions about eugenics, as if I ever cared about that? Could it have something to do with the Introduction to "Scotty Kid: The Life Story of Brother Tommy," a chapter that is actually NOT written by the book's namesake? Pentecostals such as the Andersons rarely thought of such matters. Those were the words of Li-Ke-Ke, the Hawaiian name of Theodore Richards, a New Jersey-born educator who lived most of his life in Honolulu, Hawaii, a co-founder of the Honolulu Bible Training School and past principal of the Kamehameha School of Boys. I suppose that racial engineering might have been of special interest to residents of what was at that time only a territory of the United States, not really a state until 1959. And besides, this book was written in 1917, a time of widespread naivete in regards to matters of progress. I vaguely remember reading or hearing something in high school about the idea of eugenics being largely discredited as a science after the debacle of World War II in which it became an excuse for the wholesale elimination of millions of people of races not cared for by the Germans. The Nazis started by emptying the mental hospitals and homes for mentally retarded and then progressed to racial designations. Thus we see that eugenics is a highly subjective matter although science may be called into the service of subjective notions or prevailing opinions. Who will or will not propagate the race is certainly of particular obsession to these Nazis and fascists. But mostly, in the natural realm, natural selection is the survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle, of lions and tigers and bears, of birds and bees and beasts. Interesting thought, but if my descendants are not here to see the results of the great genetic engineering experiment so be it. Who am I to argue with God? You can wash the outside of the bowl if you like but the inside of the bowl will still be as sinful as ever. Each individual in each succeeding generation will still need to work out their own personal relationship with Jesus. I may not live long enough to see the outcome of World War III and the end of time so may be content to watch from heaven how things play out in the end. Whatever. I just wanted to have a normal life, mostly, anyway, but of course pleasing to the Lord. Christians are known by their love, not by sticking it to their enemies. We apparently must turn the other cheek, as Jesus said, to these gluttons for punishment. They constantly accuse me of vanity in regards to writing, and yet, having only a couple of weeks ago learned of the existence of this book, I open the first chapter and see Mr. Richards, a published author, touting his own horn in a most vain and self-aggrandizing manner when comparing his own brand of English to the bum slang usages described by the Scottish-born Mr. Anderson, who became a minister only after years of life on the run as a renegade who bummed rides on trains and begged for his dinner and danced the Irish jig in saloons and took dope and cocaine: "The destruction of the king's English attributable to Tommy from that time to this very day bears distinct relation to the "playing hooky" episode; certainly, it is in no wise to be charged to the Scotch schoolmarms." Mr. Richards concedes that while there is no virtue in abusing the rules of English grammar, the use of certain grammatical violations still may put a certain class of men at ease. (Mr. Anderson proves himself very good at ministering to the bums and down-and-outers from whose ranks he was himself rescued by God's mighty hand.) "It ought to be no special road to favor to vaunt one's ignorance or independence of rules of speech," says Mr. Richards. Yet Mr. Richards himself commits various writing atrocities throughout the book, in particular when using the plural when describing Mr. Anderson standing in lock-step with the prisoners in line for dinner at the penitentiary, as if all of us readers were there with them also standing in lock-step waiting for a plate of grub. Really, tell us the story but do not make us go there. This makes us readers very uneasy. He talks about the authorities giving the prisoner a "balling out" but I think he means "bawling out." Just a typo? Well, you be the judge. But really, it is a very good story if you can get past all of the excess verbiage. We get the impression that Mr. Richards had a rollicking good time interviewing Mr. Anderson for the book, all those details about how to do con jobs and how to break out of jail and how to smuggle things like drugs in to the prisoners. Scary to think all of this printed matter occupies more than half of the book. It is not until Chapter 9 that we finally get Brother Anderson's new nature explained. The Christ nature is described as "Anothengenics — Birth from above." Mr. Anderson says that he does not recognize the photo of convict No. 2173 as himself and yet such a photo is incorporated into the book's cover along with the title "Scotty Kid," the moniker given him by the street bums of bumdom, so we see that the book was planned this way. In Hawaii Mr. Anderson is still in the early years of a ministry that later took him to Bolivia. It is a miracle that such a useless, idle bum and dope addict could be redeemed to a life of useful ministry so this really is a powerful testimony of God's redeeming power. From the day Mr. Anderson is saved he stops taking dope. We have heard similar stories, more recently, from Nicky Cruz's book "Run Baby Run." We just wish Mr. Richards would tone it down a little because it is not about him. And if grandma ever had this book lying around the house I never noticed it, but there are several photos of the Anderson family in the family's photo collection. Why would that be? Well, in 1913 Mr. Anderson and family spend some time in China and possibly my great-grandparents were also there at that time. Who knows if they met or how. But, anyway, Mr. Richards does not find the China trip meritorious of explanation. Says Mr. Richards: "This China trip is unique and has much in it worth the telling. In a life that had not so many bristling out-of-the-ordinary points in it, this missionary trip to China could hardly escape notice, but somehow it strikes us somewhat foreign to our purpose and we omit further mention of it." Thus, we see that while Brother Tommy's story is certainly fascinating, it is mostly does not have very much to do with the story of missionaries in China, especially my great-grandparents. It almost sounds as if China were nothing compared to the experience of Hawaii, missions to China being a mostly average sort of humdrum thing in comparison to serving in Hawaii. Well, I am sure that Hawaii is a nice place, but it is truly not a foreign field in the sense that China was so the comparisons fall short. Surely he does not mean to say that reaching the people of China for Christ is any less important than reaching the Hawaiians, regardless of national ambitions, nor that one ever could or should make territorial ambitions a condition of Great Commission endeavors. The Great Commission does not discriminate in favor of Hawaii vs. China when it talks about taking the good news to the ends of the earth. So unless Mr. Richards can produce the notes he did not use regarding the China trip, well, his book is only of minor use to us in reference to the China story which, as we all know, is truly a foreign field in relationship to the U.S. and not just a territory such as Hawaii or Puerto Rico even if it is also borders the Pacific Ocean and was accessible at that time only by ship. Well, my great-grandparents served in both China in the 1910s and Hawaii in the 1930s but I never asked them which mission field they preferred, China or Hawaii. I am sure the Hawaii story is also of interest but it is much more well documented by persons such as Mr. Richards, and anyway Hawaii is accessible all the time by any U.S. citizen. China, on the other hand, is a much more complicated, less accessible story. Mr. Richards' 1902 hymnal in the Hawaiian language seems to have no relevance to the China story as no one speaks Hawaiian in China anyway. Working together we could all possibly put together some interesting history of China and Hawaii, but divided this way we will never get anything done.
So for all of Mr. Richards' verbiage, we are still pretty much getting nowhere if we spend all of our time obsessing about Mr. Richards and his notion of eugenics. It just misses the mark.
