page_title: Newell Dwight Hillis
section_title: Controversial views
hierarchical_section_title: Newell Dwight Hillis / Controversial views
caption_attribution_description: Newell Dwight Hillis, a Congregationalist minister, writer, and philosopher from Brooklyn. He served as pastor of the historic Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn, and he oversaw the completion of the last major renovation of the church.
context_page_description: Newell Dwight Hillis was a Congregationalist minister, writer, and philosopher from Brooklyn. He served as pastor of the historic Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn, and he oversaw the completion of the last major renovation of the church.
context_section_description: As a minister in a major metropolis, Hillis railed against immorality, and he told reporters in 1900 that "a common whipping post might be very wholesome for New York today." Hillis was upset over what he deemed the immoral behavior found in Broadway plays, in particular the play Sapho, which featured English actress Olga Nethersole in the role of Fanny.  The offensive scene involved Fanny being carried up a flight of stairs by a man to whom she was not married, with Fanny discussing her excitement onstage about what might await the couple after they reached the top of the stairs.
  Hillis was a supporter of eugenics. With John Harvey Kellogg he organized the first and second National Race Betterment Conferences in 1914 and 1915. As a Vice-President of Race Betterment Foundation Hillis was on the executive committee and spoke on the subject of factory degeneration. In 1918, Hillis called for the sterilization of Germans because of the atrocities performed by the German military during World War I.
caption: Newell Dwight Hillis
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