Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (22 page)
Authors: Edward J. Larson
BOOK: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion
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Whatever the source for bias, the results could be quite blatant. For example, when T. T. Martin passed through Chattanooga on his way to the trial he defended antievolution laws with the standard claim that they protected the individual liberty of religious students. Apparently unable to see any connection between the restrictive statute and individual liberty, the
Chattanooga Times
article on Martin’s speech dismissed his claim as “quite novel.”
42
Stung by critical letters to the editor from fundamentalists, the newspaper’s managing editor sought a balance by commissioning Chattanooga’s leading fundamentalist minister to join the paper’s regular staff reporters in covering the trial “with no restrictions,” as the minister was told, “save the truth and nothing but the truth be written.” This policy, which Bryan hailed as “highly commendable,” produced a diverse array of articles, with the minister’s daily features typically published alongside those written by modernist clerics or Watson Davis’s Science Service.
43
No other newspapers followed this approach, however. In mid June, when Riley, Martin, and other prominent antievolutionists offered a series of newspaper columns to balance the proevolution Science Service series, there were few takers among major papers.
Chattanooga Times
article on Martin’s speech dismissed his claim as “quite novel.”
42
Stung by critical letters to the editor from fundamentalists, the newspaper’s managing editor sought a balance by commissioning Chattanooga’s leading fundamentalist minister to join the paper’s regular staff reporters in covering the trial “with no restrictions,” as the minister was told, “save the truth and nothing but the truth be written.” This policy, which Bryan hailed as “highly commendable,” produced a diverse array of articles, with the minister’s daily features typically published alongside those written by modernist clerics or Watson Davis’s Science Service.
43
No other newspapers followed this approach, however. In mid June, when Riley, Martin, and other prominent antievolutionists offered a series of newspaper columns to balance the proevolution Science Service series, there were few takers among major papers.
Antievolutionists despaired of receiving fair treatment in the secular press. A letter to Sue Hicks from his brother Ira, a fundamentalist pastor in New Jersey, captured this feeling of frustration. “I have no doubt about the outcome of the case,” Ira wrote in mid June. “What I fear is the news papers will color everything to look like a victory for evolution as their sympathy is there. To get the real facts of this case before the people, especially in the north, is going to be a difficult task.”
44
Alternate outlets for information existed in church newspapers and journals. Some supported the prosecution, such as
The Baptist and Reflector,
which sent its editor from Kentucky to Dayton to cover the trial. Another Baptist journal offered its support from afar: “Scopes is just a fool boy who has lent himself to be the tool of faddists and opportunists.”
45
A pretrial article in a Washington, D.C.-based fundamentalist journal,
The Present Truth,
added, “Scopes as a teacher is an employee of the State, paid out of state funds, and surely the State has a right to say what he may do and may not do in his official capacity.”
46
44
Alternate outlets for information existed in church newspapers and journals. Some supported the prosecution, such as
The Baptist and Reflector,
which sent its editor from Kentucky to Dayton to cover the trial. Another Baptist journal offered its support from afar: “Scopes is just a fool boy who has lent himself to be the tool of faddists and opportunists.”
45
A pretrial article in a Washington, D.C.-based fundamentalist journal,
The Present Truth,
added, “Scopes as a teacher is an employee of the State, paid out of state funds, and surely the State has a right to say what he may do and may not do in his official capacity.”
46
Most traditional church publications appeared under denominational auspices, however, and many established denominations were split by the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, which left their newspapers and journals in the middle on the Scopes case. Some criticized both Bryan’s fanaticism and Darrow’s naturalism; others called for tolerance or simply avoided the issue. In discussing the trial, Roman Catholic newspapers warned parishioners against both the theory of evolution as materialistic dogma and antievolution laws as part of an effort by Protestant fundamentalists to control public education. The Catholic Press Association sent a top officer, Benedict Elder, to cover the trial for diocesan newspapers across the country. Upon his arrival in Dayton, Elder complained about the “religious complex [of] some writers for the metropolitan papers,” and offered his qualified support for the prosecution: “Although as Catholics we do not go quite as far as Mr. Bryan on the Bible, we do want it preserved.”
47
Elder went to Dayton with a top Knights of Columbus official. “There is a vast amount of sympathy for Mr. Bryan and the state of Tennessee among the Catholics of America,” the official noted. “However one may differ from him, the efforts of the Great Commoner serve the Christian faith of the young of Tennessee, and he is entitled to respect.”
48
47
Elder went to Dayton with a top Knights of Columbus official. “There is a vast amount of sympathy for Mr. Bryan and the state of Tennessee among the Catholics of America,” the official noted. “However one may differ from him, the efforts of the Great Commoner serve the Christian faith of the young of Tennessee, and he is entitled to respect.”
48
Antievolutionists increasingly turned to interdenominational journals and publishers to communicate their side of the story. The WCFA’s quarterly journal presented its view of the Scopes trial to the faithful, and America’s two leading conservative Christian magazines,
Moody Monthly and Sunday School Times,
also took up the cause. Fundamentalist publishing houses, particularly the nondenominational Fleming H. Revell Company, contributed to the barrage of words. Antievolution books by Bryan sold so well that he discussed retiring from the lecture circuit after the Scopes trial to concentrate solely on writing. T. T. Martin’s
Hell and the High School
and Price’s
The Phantom of Organic Evolution
chalked up record sales; indeed, Martin hawked his book near the courthouse in Dayton under a large banner bearing the book’s title, which created a popular backdrop for photographers who wanted to emphasize the trial’s carnival atmosphere. The role of interdenominational and parachurch organizations in American religion had been increasing for years as traditional churches divided into liberal and conservative factions that crossed denominational lines; events leading up to the Scopes trial, however, accelerated this trend—especially for fundamentalists. Just before the trial, for example, when Riley announced the formation of a half dozen local societies to push for antievolution laws in various states, he stressed, “The societies are sponsored by fundamentalists of all denominations.”
49
Moody Monthly and Sunday School Times,
also took up the cause. Fundamentalist publishing houses, particularly the nondenominational Fleming H. Revell Company, contributed to the barrage of words. Antievolution books by Bryan sold so well that he discussed retiring from the lecture circuit after the Scopes trial to concentrate solely on writing. T. T. Martin’s
Hell and the High School
and Price’s
The Phantom of Organic Evolution
chalked up record sales; indeed, Martin hawked his book near the courthouse in Dayton under a large banner bearing the book’s title, which created a popular backdrop for photographers who wanted to emphasize the trial’s carnival atmosphere. The role of interdenominational and parachurch organizations in American religion had been increasing for years as traditional churches divided into liberal and conservative factions that crossed denominational lines; events leading up to the Scopes trial, however, accelerated this trend—especially for fundamentalists. Just before the trial, for example, when Riley announced the formation of a half dozen local societies to push for antievolution laws in various states, he stressed, “The societies are sponsored by fundamentalists of all denominations.”
49
Bryan moved at the center of the fundamentalists’ pretrial publicity campaign. He kept in close contact with leading antievolutionists as they spoke around the country. He traveled extensively himself, criss-crossing the eastern United States half a dozen times during May and June, speaking freely about the case in a style reminiscent of his whistle-stop campaigns for the presidency. The trial “is not a joke,” Bryan assured a Chicago audience, “but the beginning of the end of attacks upon the Bible by those teachers in the public schools who have been substituting the guesses of scientists for the word of God.”
50
Before a crowd of over 20,000 people in a small midwestern town, he added, “The most important elements that stir the human heart are bound up in [this case:] the education of the child and the religion of the child.”
51
In full campaign mode, the Commoner proclaimed in Brooklyn, “We must win if the world is to be saved.”
52
Back home in early July, he reported to the Miami Rotary Club: “The wide publicity given evolution and religion is focusing the attention of the world on a subject the people did not fully understand.”
53
Upon meeting Scopes in Dayton several days later, Bryan leaned toward the teacher and quietly said, “You have no idea what a black and brutal thing this evolution is.”
54
50
Before a crowd of over 20,000 people in a small midwestern town, he added, “The most important elements that stir the human heart are bound up in [this case:] the education of the child and the religion of the child.”
51
In full campaign mode, the Commoner proclaimed in Brooklyn, “We must win if the world is to be saved.”
52
Back home in early July, he reported to the Miami Rotary Club: “The wide publicity given evolution and religion is focusing the attention of the world on a subject the people did not fully understand.”
53
Upon meeting Scopes in Dayton several days later, Bryan leaned toward the teacher and quietly said, “You have no idea what a black and brutal thing this evolution is.”
54
Bryan’s busy schedule made it difficult for the prosecutors to arrange a joint strategy session. Knowing that Bryan was passing through Tennessee in early June, Sue Hicks proposed that the Commoner stop over in Chattanooga for a conference, but Bryan had a speech in Tallahassee the following day. “You might meet me in Nashville at 8 A.M., [and] ride to Decatur,” Bryan scribbled his reply on hotel stationery. “This would give us about four hours together on the train, which would I think be sufficient for plans necessary now.”
55
Thus forewarned of Bryan’s itinerary, a band playing “Onward Christian Soldiers” and a blue-ribbon delegation of city and state leaders greeted the Commoner’s train when it pulled into Nashville. The three Dayton prosecutors, Hicks, Hicks, and Haggard, met with Bryan that morning; Stewart was in court at the time. The prosecution met together only once more prior to assembling in Dayton, late in June when Bryan had a brief stopover in Atlanta. Otherwise, they communicated by mail. Nevertheless, a bond immediately formed among the prosecutors. Four days after the first meeting, Sue Hicks wrote to his brother Ira, “We had a splendid conference with Bryan ... in Nashville and rode with him in [his] state room to Chattanooga. He is greatly enthused about the case and will talk about nothing else. Of course we think Bryan is a wonderful man.”
56
In similar letter to another brother, Sue Hicks added that Bryan “is making great plans for this case. He says it is [a] turning point for Christianity.”
57
55
Thus forewarned of Bryan’s itinerary, a band playing “Onward Christian Soldiers” and a blue-ribbon delegation of city and state leaders greeted the Commoner’s train when it pulled into Nashville. The three Dayton prosecutors, Hicks, Hicks, and Haggard, met with Bryan that morning; Stewart was in court at the time. The prosecution met together only once more prior to assembling in Dayton, late in June when Bryan had a brief stopover in Atlanta. Otherwise, they communicated by mail. Nevertheless, a bond immediately formed among the prosecutors. Four days after the first meeting, Sue Hicks wrote to his brother Ira, “We had a splendid conference with Bryan ... in Nashville and rode with him in [his] state room to Chattanooga. He is greatly enthused about the case and will talk about nothing else. Of course we think Bryan is a wonderful man.”
56
In similar letter to another brother, Sue Hicks added that Bryan “is making great plans for this case. He says it is [a] turning point for Christianity.”
57
Bryan never varied in his public pronouncements regarding the prosecution’s strategy. “I have been explaining this case to audiences. It is the
easiest
case to explain I have ever found,” he wrote to Sue Hicks at the outset. “The
right
of the
people
speaking through the legislature, to control the schools which they
create
and
support
is the real issue as I see it.” Bryan went on to add, “By the way I don’t think we should insist on more than the
minimum
fine and I will let the defendant have the money.”
58
He reasserted this position after consulting with co-counsel on the train in Nashville. “The New York papers have entirely mistaken the issue,” he told reporters. “Mr. Scopes demands pay for teaching what the state does not want taught and demands that the state furnish him with an audience of children to which he can talk and say things contrary to law. No court has ever upheld any such proposition.” As to raising “the question of evolution” at trial, Bryan commented, “I am not so sure that it is involved.”
59
easiest
case to explain I have ever found,” he wrote to Sue Hicks at the outset. “The
right
of the
people
speaking through the legislature, to control the schools which they
create
and
support
is the real issue as I see it.” Bryan went on to add, “By the way I don’t think we should insist on more than the
minimum
fine and I will let the defendant have the money.”
58
He reasserted this position after consulting with co-counsel on the train in Nashville. “The New York papers have entirely mistaken the issue,” he told reporters. “Mr. Scopes demands pay for teaching what the state does not want taught and demands that the state furnish him with an audience of children to which he can talk and say things contrary to law. No court has ever upheld any such proposition.” As to raising “the question of evolution” at trial, Bryan commented, “I am not so sure that it is involved.”
59
Privately, however, Bryan hoped to discredit the theory of evolution through expert testimony. Sue Hicks explained the plan to his brothers shortly after the prosecution’s first strategy session. “We can confine the case to the right of the legislature to control the schools and easily win. However we want both legal and moral victory if possible,” he wrote in strict confidence. “After we have put on sufficient proof to show the facts of the teaching, the state will rest its case and wait for the defense to move. They will likely want to win a moral victory for their scientific beliefs and will introduce various scientists, to substantiate the theory of evolution.” Here, Bryan hoped to ambush the defense. “We are planning to meet them on every issue raised and we think, without trouble, we have them beat in both the legal and scientific phases,” Hicks boasted. “It is part of our plan to keep the defense thinking that we are going to restrict the case to the right of the legislature to control, but when the trial comes on we can gain a moral victory by opening out the field to our evidence.”
60
Bryan confided his hopes in a letter to Johns Hopkins medical school professor Howard A. Kelly, one of the scientific experts solicited to testify. “The American people do not know what a menace evolution is—I am expecting a tremendous reaction as a result of the information which will go out from Dayton, and I am counting on you as one of the most powerful factors,” he wrote.
61
60
Bryan confided his hopes in a letter to Johns Hopkins medical school professor Howard A. Kelly, one of the scientific experts solicited to testify. “The American people do not know what a menace evolution is—I am expecting a tremendous reaction as a result of the information which will go out from Dayton, and I am counting on you as one of the most powerful factors,” he wrote.
61
Early on, the prosecution divided up responsibility for preparing and presenting the case. Recognizing his lack of trial experience and unfamiliarity with Tennessee law, Bryan left the legal issues strictly to the local attorneys. He assumed responsibility for securing scientists and theologians to testify against the theory of evolution. It was here that Bryan’s ambitious plans for attacking the theory at trial began to break down. None of the Tennessee prosecutors knew anything about science. Sue Hicks’s confidence about winning the scientific phase of the trial rested solely on Bryan’s assertions about the matter. “Mr. Bryan is getting up the witnesses for us,” he wrote to his brother Ira, “and expects to have many of the leading scientists and doctors of divinity.”
62
This great expectation met with bitter disappointment.
62
This great expectation met with bitter disappointment.
During the first strategy session, Bryan referred to the work of George McCready Price in refuting the theory of evolution. Sue Hicks also heard about Price from his brother Ira, who called Price “one of the best geologists.”
63
But Price carried no authority as a scientist outside fundamentalist circles. He lacked formal scientific training and devised his idiosyncratic geological theories about a recent six-day creation and cataclysmic Noachian Flood based on a literal reading of scripture informed by writings of the Adventist prophet Ellen G. White. Adventism stood on the fringes of fundamentalism, however, and Price’s work gained only qualified support from Bryan and other prominent antievolution crusaders of the twenties—many of whom accepted a long geologic history of the earth based on a “day/age theory” or “gap theory” interpretation of the Genesis account. Prosecutors turned to Price as their principal scientific expert against the theory of evolution. “You are one of the outstanding scientists who reject evolution as a proven hypothesis,” Bryan wrote to Price in early June. “Please let us know at once whether you can come.”
64
But Price was lecturing in England and unable to return. “I do not think that I could do any good, even if I were present at the coming trial,” Price wrote in a letter to Bryan. “It seems to me that in this case, it is not a time to argue about the scientific or unscientific character of evolution theory, but to show its utterly divisive and ‘sectarian’ character, and its essentially anti-Christian implications and tendencies. This you are very capable of doing.”
65
63
But Price carried no authority as a scientist outside fundamentalist circles. He lacked formal scientific training and devised his idiosyncratic geological theories about a recent six-day creation and cataclysmic Noachian Flood based on a literal reading of scripture informed by writings of the Adventist prophet Ellen G. White. Adventism stood on the fringes of fundamentalism, however, and Price’s work gained only qualified support from Bryan and other prominent antievolution crusaders of the twenties—many of whom accepted a long geologic history of the earth based on a “day/age theory” or “gap theory” interpretation of the Genesis account. Prosecutors turned to Price as their principal scientific expert against the theory of evolution. “You are one of the outstanding scientists who reject evolution as a proven hypothesis,” Bryan wrote to Price in early June. “Please let us know at once whether you can come.”
64
But Price was lecturing in England and unable to return. “I do not think that I could do any good, even if I were present at the coming trial,” Price wrote in a letter to Bryan. “It seems to me that in this case, it is not a time to argue about the scientific or unscientific character of evolution theory, but to show its utterly divisive and ‘sectarian’ character, and its essentially anti-Christian implications and tendencies. This you are very capable of doing.”
65
No other potential scientific expert contacted by Bryan wanted to participate. Several turned him down flatly. Only Kelly gave a qualified yes, writing that “the Christian must stand very literally with the Word regarding the creation of man,” but he acknowledged “a possible continuous sequence in the life history of the lower creation.”
66
In other words, nonhuman species evolved. This troubled Bryan from a strategic standpoint. “I would not be concerned about the truth or falsity of evolution before man but for the fact that a concession as to the truth of evolution furnishes our opponents with an argument which they are quick to use,” Bryan wrote back. “If we concede evolution up to man, we have only the Bible to support us in the contention that evolution stops before it reaches man.” Of course, this was Kelly’s point when he offered to stand with the word of God rather than the evidence of science regarding human evolution. The prosecution had plenty of potential religious experts with better theological credentials than Kelly (Riley, Straton, and Norris offered to testify), so Bryan put Kelly on standby status. “I don’t want to put you to the trouble of going to Dayton unless it is necessary,” Bryan wrote, and it would not be necessary if the court foreclosed all scientific testimony; this became the prosecution’s single-minded objective by the time of trial.
67
66
In other words, nonhuman species evolved. This troubled Bryan from a strategic standpoint. “I would not be concerned about the truth or falsity of evolution before man but for the fact that a concession as to the truth of evolution furnishes our opponents with an argument which they are quick to use,” Bryan wrote back. “If we concede evolution up to man, we have only the Bible to support us in the contention that evolution stops before it reaches man.” Of course, this was Kelly’s point when he offered to stand with the word of God rather than the evidence of science regarding human evolution. The prosecution had plenty of potential religious experts with better theological credentials than Kelly (Riley, Straton, and Norris offered to testify), so Bryan put Kelly on standby status. “I don’t want to put you to the trouble of going to Dayton unless it is necessary,” Bryan wrote, and it would not be necessary if the court foreclosed all scientific testimony; this became the prosecution’s single-minded objective by the time of trial.
67
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