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Scopes Monkey Trial

Perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of the yearning for a simpler past was the religious fundamentalist crusade that pitted Biblical texts against the Darwinian theory of biological evolution. Without a doubt, the question, “where do humans come from?” was asked long before Charles Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859. Bishop James Ussher was a prominent theologian and head of the Anglo-Irish Church during the 17th Century, who established the date of creation as October 23, 4004 BC. In 1701, his chronology was adopted by the Church of England. Ussher’s dates were used over the next two centuries. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, the debate among members of the scientific and religious communities continued to be a divisive and widely debated topic.

In the 1920s, bills to prohibit the teaching of evolution began appearing in Midwestern and Southern state legislatures. The arguments that were made against evolution can be summed up under four heads. It is antagonistic to the Bible, and the teaching of it undermines faith in Christianity. It lowers man to the brute, and takes away his divine birthright. It eliminates God from creation. It justifies force as a social program.

Leading this crusade was the aging William Jennings Bryan, long a spokesman for the values of the countryside as well as a progressive politician. William Jennings Bryan had been a three-time candidate for President, served in the US House of Representatives, and was a former Secretary of State. Theodore Roosevelt once said of William Jennings Bryan, “By George, he would make the greatest Baptist preacher on earth.” Bryan had dreamed of becoming a preacher in the Baptist Church of his father, but Bryan later claimed that after seeing his first baptismal immersion at age six, his fear of water was so great that he left the Baptist Church and became a Presbyterian.

By 1920, when he addressed the World Brotherhood Congress, Bryan had become convinced that Darwinism represented "the most paralyzing influence with which civilization has had to contend during the last century." Bryan skillfully reconciled his anti-evolutionary activism with his earlier economic radicalism, declaring that evolution "by denying the need or possibility of spiritual regeneration, discourages all reforms."

Bryan wrote that "... the natural tendency of Darwinism is to lead those astray who put their faith in evolution. ... The tendency of Darwinism, when taken seriously, is to undermine faith, first, in the Bible as an inspired book, and then in the miracles because contrary to evolution; next, repudiation of the virgin birth and the resurrection of Christ because miraculous, and the rejection of Christ as Son and Saviour. Lastly, Darwinism leads to the denial of the existence of a personal God. ... The special reason for bringing to the attention of Christians at this time the evil that Darwinism is doing is to show that atheists and agnostics are not only claiming but enjoying higher rights and greater privileges in this land than Christians; that is, they are able to propagate their views at public expense while Christianity must be taught at the expense of Christians."

Bryan sensibly asked "How can one feel God's presence in his daily life if Darwin's reasoning is sound? This restraining influence, more potent than any external force, is paralyzed when God is put so far away. How can one believe in prayer if, for millions of years, God has never touched a human life or laid His hand upon the destiny of the human race? What mockery to petition or implore, if God neither hears nor answers. Elijah taunted the prophets of Baal when their god failed to answer with fire; "Cry aloud," he said, "peradventure he sleepeth." Darwin mocks the Christians even more cruelly; he tells us that our God has been asleep for millions of years."

The Scopes “Monkey” Trial is perhaps one of the critical events of this controversy and one of the landmark legal decisions of the twentieth century. The issue came to a head in March 1925, with the passage of the Butler Act, prohibited the teaching of evolution in any Tennessee school receiving public educational funding from state government. A young high school teacher, John Scopes, was prosecuted for violating the Tennessee law that forbade the teaching of evolution in the public schools. The case became a national spectacle, drawing intense news coverage.

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938), one of the most famous defense lawyers in U.S. history, represented many unpopular and controversial clients throughout his career. The American Civil Liberties Union retained the renowned attorney Clarence Darrow to defend Scopes. Bryan wrangled an appointment as special prosecutor, then foolishly allowed Darrow to call him as a hostile witness. Bryan’s confused defense of Biblical passages as literal rather than metaphorical truth drew widespread criticism. Scopes, nearly forgotten in the fuss, was convicted, but his fine was reversed on a technicality. Bryan died shortly after the trial ended. The state wisely declined to retry Scopes. Urban sophisticates ridiculed fundamentalism, but it continued to be a powerful force in rural, small-town America. Darrow further cemented his national reputation as one of the most powerful courtroom advocates of his age.

Most of what people today think they know of this the Scopes trial is based on the 1955 play Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, which was made into a movie of the same name in 1960. A made-for-TV movie ran on NBC in 1988. William Jennings Bryan, Matthew Harrison Brady in the play - played by Fredric March in the movie and Kirk Douglas on TV - is portrayed as an almost comical fanatic. A typical response to the depiction of the Bryan-Darrow confrontation was that of Bowtey Crowther, in the New York Times (10/12/1960) "When the two men come down to their final showdown and the barrier of dogma is breached, it is a triumphant moment for human dignity."

Bryan was not the bufoon of Inherit the Wind. A deeply religious man, Bryan said, "The Rock of Ages is more important than the age of rocks". Bryan opposed Darwinism, not simply out of a blind adherence to a literal reading of scripture, but out of an understanding that Darwinism underaly Social Darwinism, and Eugenics. Bryan saw that Darwinism provided biological justifications for racism, war, and exploitation. Social Darwinism and its explicit eugenics, racist, and free-market ideology of "Survival of the Fittest," was eventually rendered unfashionable as Western democracies were quick to disassociate themselves with explicitly Nazi-related ideologies after World War II.