Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (40 page)
Authors: Edward J. Larson
BOOK: Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion
13.49Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Once Riley, Straton, and other antievolution leaders associated with prosecuting the Scopes case passed from the scene, fundamentalists did little to contest the popular interpretation stamped on the trial by secular commentators and historians. Bent on separating their movement from the general culture, the next generation of fundamentalist leaders largely ignored the trial and its impact on society—a development that later, more worldly fundamentalists would come to deplore.
26
Fundamentalist students increasingly attended separate academies and colleges that, typically, did not utilize textbooks that either criticized or contradicted their faith. Most likely, only a few fundamentalists actually read what secular authors wrote about the Scopes trial, and most of them probably did not care.
26
Fundamentalist students increasingly attended separate academies and colleges that, typically, did not utilize textbooks that either criticized or contradicted their faith. Most likely, only a few fundamentalists actually read what secular authors wrote about the Scopes trial, and most of them probably did not care.
Even creationist science lecturers and writers abandoned the prosecutors of John Scopes. During the late 1920s, Harry Rimmer and Arthur I. Brown defended Bryan’s efforts at Dayton, but they did so less in later years.
27
The position of George McCready Price changed even more dramatically. A week before the trial, he advised Bryan to concentrate on the “utterly divisive and ‘sectarian’ character” of teaching evolution: “This you are capable of doing, I do not know of any one more capable.” Yet Price turned against Bryan after the Commoner testified that the days of creation in Genesis represented ages of geological history. At first, Price simply commented that Bryan “really didn’t know a thing about the scientific aspects of the case.” By the 1940s, however, Price even surpassed secular commentators in describing the trial as a crushing defeat for fundamentalism, “which may be regarded as a turning point in the intellectual and religious history of mankind.” He blamed the entire disaster on “poor Bryan, with his day-age theory of Genesis.”
28
Later fundamentalist proponents of a more recent creation agreed. Price’s successor at the helm of the “scientific” creationist movement, Henry M. Morris, commented, “Probably the most serious mistake made by Bryan on the stand was to insist repeatedly that he had implicit confidence in the infallibility of Scripture, but then to hedge on the geological question, relying on the day/age theory.”
29
Of course, Bryan simply testified to what he and many prominent fundamentalists of his day believed. Nevertheless, late-twentieth-century fundamentalist leader Jerry Falwell maintained that Bryan “lost the respect of Fundamentalists when he subscribed to the idea of periods of time for creation rather than twenty-four hour days.”
30
27
The position of George McCready Price changed even more dramatically. A week before the trial, he advised Bryan to concentrate on the “utterly divisive and ‘sectarian’ character” of teaching evolution: “This you are capable of doing, I do not know of any one more capable.” Yet Price turned against Bryan after the Commoner testified that the days of creation in Genesis represented ages of geological history. At first, Price simply commented that Bryan “really didn’t know a thing about the scientific aspects of the case.” By the 1940s, however, Price even surpassed secular commentators in describing the trial as a crushing defeat for fundamentalism, “which may be regarded as a turning point in the intellectual and religious history of mankind.” He blamed the entire disaster on “poor Bryan, with his day-age theory of Genesis.”
28
Later fundamentalist proponents of a more recent creation agreed. Price’s successor at the helm of the “scientific” creationist movement, Henry M. Morris, commented, “Probably the most serious mistake made by Bryan on the stand was to insist repeatedly that he had implicit confidence in the infallibility of Scripture, but then to hedge on the geological question, relying on the day/age theory.”
29
Of course, Bryan simply testified to what he and many prominent fundamentalists of his day believed. Nevertheless, late-twentieth-century fundamentalist leader Jerry Falwell maintained that Bryan “lost the respect of Fundamentalists when he subscribed to the idea of periods of time for creation rather than twenty-four hour days.”
30
During the period of fundamentalists’ self-imposed isolation from the broader culture, it took threats to repeal the Tennessee antievolution statute to arouse even Bryan College stalwarts to defend the memory of Bryan’s role at the trial. The first such threat came in 1935, when a 22-year-old Tennessee state representative—described in the press as a “pipe-smoking Vanderbilt law student”—offered legislation to repeal the statute. Bryan College teachers and students beseeched legislators with letters and petitions condemning the repealer. Sue Hicks, then a state representative, warned his colleagues that “repeal of the law might endanger” the college. Another lawmaker declared on the state house floor, “I believe that God looked down from high Heaven on Dayton when William Jennings Bryan was there sacrificing his blood not only in the interests of man, but in the interests of his God.” A third representative maintained, “A law that was good enough for William Jennings Bryan is good enough for me.” The proposal lost by a vote of 67 to 20.
31
Seventeen years later, a second effort to repeal the statute raised a similar outcry from Bryan College. Its longtime president, Judson A. Rudd, sent copies of Bryan’s closing arguments to every member of the state legislature with a note stating that “the arguments advanced by Mr. Bryan [are] as sound today as when presented twenty-five years ago.”
32
Once again, the repeal effort failed.
31
Seventeen years later, a second effort to repeal the statute raised a similar outcry from Bryan College. Its longtime president, Judson A. Rudd, sent copies of Bryan’s closing arguments to every member of the state legislature with a note stating that “the arguments advanced by Mr. Bryan [are] as sound today as when presented twenty-five years ago.”
32
Once again, the repeal effort failed.
Even though Rudd’s letter defended Bryan, it suggests a further reason why midcentury fundamentalists abandoned the Commoner. “We are asking you to use your vote and influence to retain this historic and important law,” Rudd wrote in this 1951 letter. “It is even more important today that we withstand the efforts of atheistic communism to deny the dignity of man and to undermine the Christian foundations of our country.” To the extent that fundamentalists entered the political fray during the middle part of the century, their main concerns were with communism, which came to a peak in the early 1950s when the fundamentalist leader Carl McIntire actively supported Senator Joe McCarthy’s crusade against Communist influences in America’s political, education, cultural, and religious institutions.
33
From the outset, most leading fundamentalists (except Bryan) tended to lean toward the conservative end of the political spectrum, but now the movement swung hard right. Its new leaders had little inclination to defend a liberal Democratic politician such as Bryan, especially when they could blame their perceived setback at Dayton on his willingness to compromise on an ultraliteral interpretation of Genesis. Even in the early 1920s, when leading fundamentalists enlisted Bryan to aid in their fight against teaching evolution, the historian Ferenc M. Szasz observed, “it is doubtful if many of them ever voted for him. The officials of Moody Bible Institute on his death admitted that they never had.” Only much later, when some evangelicals began reclaiming their heritage of social activism, did a few seek to restore Bryan’s reputation.
34
33
From the outset, most leading fundamentalists (except Bryan) tended to lean toward the conservative end of the political spectrum, but now the movement swung hard right. Its new leaders had little inclination to defend a liberal Democratic politician such as Bryan, especially when they could blame their perceived setback at Dayton on his willingness to compromise on an ultraliteral interpretation of Genesis. Even in the early 1920s, when leading fundamentalists enlisted Bryan to aid in their fight against teaching evolution, the historian Ferenc M. Szasz observed, “it is doubtful if many of them ever voted for him. The officials of Moody Bible Institute on his death admitted that they never had.” Only much later, when some evangelicals began reclaiming their heritage of social activism, did a few seek to restore Bryan’s reputation.
34
During the fifties, McCarthy-era assaults on individual liberty heightened liberal interest in fundamentalism and the Scopes trial. In particular, the sociologist of religion James Davison Hunter noted, these assaults “and the participation of conservative Protestants in them alerted the academy and the broader liberal culture to certain propensities within the conservative Protestant subculture.”
35
The Scopes trial came to symbolize a moment when civil libertarians successfully stood up to majoritarian tyranny. This is apparent in Ray Ginger’s 1958 book about the trial, which concludes by comparing Darrow’s interrogation of Bryan with “the Senate hearings regarding Joseph R. McCarthy, where the line of questioning was weak and compromised, but the mere fact that McCarthy could be forced to answer questions at all caused millions of people to see him in a new way.”
36
Similarly, Leuchtenburg’s interest in the perils of prosperity during the 1920s grew out of his concern about the perils of prosperity during the 1950s—with antievolutionism standing in for anticommunism. Furthermore, Furniss began and ended his book on fundamentalism in the twenties with references to political repression of domestic dissent during the fifties.
35
The Scopes trial came to symbolize a moment when civil libertarians successfully stood up to majoritarian tyranny. This is apparent in Ray Ginger’s 1958 book about the trial, which concludes by comparing Darrow’s interrogation of Bryan with “the Senate hearings regarding Joseph R. McCarthy, where the line of questioning was weak and compromised, but the mere fact that McCarthy could be forced to answer questions at all caused millions of people to see him in a new way.”
36
Similarly, Leuchtenburg’s interest in the perils of prosperity during the 1920s grew out of his concern about the perils of prosperity during the 1950s—with antievolutionism standing in for anticommunism. Furthermore, Furniss began and ended his book on fundamentalism in the twenties with references to political repression of domestic dissent during the fifties.
Again, Richard Hofstadter helped set the tone. His most extensive analysis of the Scopes trial appeared in the landmark study,
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
“Although this book deals mainly with certain aspects of the remoter American past, it was conceived in response to the political and intellectual conditions of the 1950’s,” he stated at the outset. “Primarily it was McCarthyism which aroused the fear that the critical mind was at a ruinous discount in this country.” Several chapters of this book discuss episodes of religious anti-intellectualism, one of which focuses on fundamentalism during the 1920s. “It was in the crusade against the teaching of evolution that the fundamentalist movement reached its climax and in the Scopes trial that it made its most determined stand,” Hofstadter wrote in this chapter. Yet he described the trial as a momentous defeat for fundamentalists. “The Scopes trial, like the Army-McCarthy hearings thirty years later, brought feeling to a head and provided a dramatic purgation and resolution. After the trial was over, it was easier to see that the antievolution crusade was being contained,” Hofstadter concluded.
37
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
“Although this book deals mainly with certain aspects of the remoter American past, it was conceived in response to the political and intellectual conditions of the 1950’s,” he stated at the outset. “Primarily it was McCarthyism which aroused the fear that the critical mind was at a ruinous discount in this country.” Several chapters of this book discuss episodes of religious anti-intellectualism, one of which focuses on fundamentalism during the 1920s. “It was in the crusade against the teaching of evolution that the fundamentalist movement reached its climax and in the Scopes trial that it made its most determined stand,” Hofstadter wrote in this chapter. Yet he described the trial as a momentous defeat for fundamentalists. “The Scopes trial, like the Army-McCarthy hearings thirty years later, brought feeling to a head and provided a dramatic purgation and resolution. After the trial was over, it was easier to see that the antievolution crusade was being contained,” Hofstadter concluded.
37
One significant distinction between the interpretation given the Scopes trial by historians of the 1950s and that given it by Allen and other commentators during the 1930s involves its seriousness. Both eras saw the trial as a defeat for fundamentalism, but Allen presents it primarily as a media spectacular. His account of the trial appears sandwiched between lighthearted descriptions of the mah-jongg craze and Red Grange’s gridiron exploits in a chapter titled, “The Ballyhoo Years.” In the shadow of McCarthyism, historians of the fifties inevitably placed it alongside the Red Scare, even though fundamentalists did not initiate or disproportionately participate in that earlier assault against alleged domestic Communists. Ballyhoo gave way to bogeymen.
Such grim fascination with the Scopes trial as a foreshadowing of McCarthyism inspired the single most influential retelling of the tale, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s play,
Inherit the Wind.
In contrast to Allen’s comic portrayal of the trial, Lawrence and Lee presented it as present-day drama.
“Inherit the Wind
does not pretend to be journalism,” they wrote in their published introduction for the play, “It is not 1925. The stage directions set the time as ‘Not too long ago.’ It might have been yesterday. It could be tomorrow.” In writing this, they did not intend to present antievolutionism as an ongoing danger—to the contrary, they perceived that threat as safely past; rather, their concern was the McCarthy-era blacklisting of writers and actors (the play opened on Broadway in 1955). “In the 1950s, Lee and his partner became very concerned with the spread of McCarthyism,” a student who interviewed him reported. “Lawrence and Lee felt that McCarthyism paralleled some aspects of the Scopes trial. Lee worried, ‘I was very concerned when laws were passed, when legislation limits our freedom to speak; silence is a dangerous thing.’” Tony Randall, who starred in the original Broadway cast, later wrote, “Like
The Crucible, Inherit the Wind
was a response to and a product of McCarthyism. In each play, the authors looked to American history for a parallel.”
38
Inherit the Wind.
In contrast to Allen’s comic portrayal of the trial, Lawrence and Lee presented it as present-day drama.
“Inherit the Wind
does not pretend to be journalism,” they wrote in their published introduction for the play, “It is not 1925. The stage directions set the time as ‘Not too long ago.’ It might have been yesterday. It could be tomorrow.” In writing this, they did not intend to present antievolutionism as an ongoing danger—to the contrary, they perceived that threat as safely past; rather, their concern was the McCarthy-era blacklisting of writers and actors (the play opened on Broadway in 1955). “In the 1950s, Lee and his partner became very concerned with the spread of McCarthyism,” a student who interviewed him reported. “Lawrence and Lee felt that McCarthyism paralleled some aspects of the Scopes trial. Lee worried, ‘I was very concerned when laws were passed, when legislation limits our freedom to speak; silence is a dangerous thing.’” Tony Randall, who starred in the original Broadway cast, later wrote, “Like
The Crucible, Inherit the Wind
was a response to and a product of McCarthyism. In each play, the authors looked to American history for a parallel.”
38
For their model, Lawrence and Lee took Maxwell Anderson’s
Winterset,
a play loosely based on the Sacco—Vanzetti case. Anderson had claimed “a poet’s license to expand, develop, and interpolate, dramatize and comment,” Lawrence and Lee later explained. “We asked for the same liberty ... to allow the actuality to be the springboard for the larger drama so that the stage could thunder a meaning that wasn’t pinned to a given date or a given place.”
39
Winterset,
a play loosely based on the Sacco—Vanzetti case. Anderson had claimed “a poet’s license to expand, develop, and interpolate, dramatize and comment,” Lawrence and Lee later explained. “We asked for the same liberty ... to allow the actuality to be the springboard for the larger drama so that the stage could thunder a meaning that wasn’t pinned to a given date or a given place.”
39
The play was not history, as Lawrence and Lee stressed in their introduction. “Only a handful of phrases have been taken from the actual transcript of the famous Scopes trial. Some of the characters of the play are related to the colorful figures in that battle of giants; but they have a life and language of their own—and, therefore, names of their own.” For their two starring roles, the writers chose sound-alike names: Bryan became Brady and Darrow was Drummond. The role of the Baltimore
Sun’s
H. L. Mencken was expanded to become the Baltimore
Herald’s
E. K. Hornbeck. Scopes became Cates. Tom Stewart diminished into a minor role as Tom Davenport. Malone, Hays, Neal, Rappleyea, and the ACLU disappeared from the story altogether, as did the WCFA and all the hometown prosecutors. Dayton (called Hillsboro) gained a mayor and a fire-breathing fundamentalist pastor who subjugated townspeople until Darrow came to set them free with his cool reason.
Sun’s
H. L. Mencken was expanded to become the Baltimore
Herald’s
E. K. Hornbeck. Scopes became Cates. Tom Stewart diminished into a minor role as Tom Davenport. Malone, Hays, Neal, Rappleyea, and the ACLU disappeared from the story altogether, as did the WCFA and all the hometown prosecutors. Dayton (called Hillsboro) gained a mayor and a fire-breathing fundamentalist pastor who subjugated townspeople until Darrow came to set them free with his cool reason.
Scopes acquired a fiancée—“She is twenty-two, pretty, but not beautiful,” the stage directions read, and she is the fearsome preacher’s daughter. “They had to invent romance for the balcony set,” Scopes later joked.
40
It may not have been accurate history, but it was brilliant theater—and it all but replaced the actual trial in the nation’s memory. The play wove three fundamental changes into the story line (in addition to countless minor ones), all of which served the writers’ objectives of debunking McCarthyism.
40
It may not have been accurate history, but it was brilliant theater—and it all but replaced the actual trial in the nation’s memory. The play wove three fundamental changes into the story line (in addition to countless minor ones), all of which served the writers’ objectives of debunking McCarthyism.
The first change involved Scopes and Dayton. Ralph Waldo Emerson once described a mob as “a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason.” In
Inherit the Wind,
Cates becomes the innocent victim of a mob-enforced antievolution law. The stage directions begin,
“It is important to the concept of the play that the town is always visible, looming there, as much on trial as the individual defendant.
”In the movie version, the town fathers haul Cates out of his classroom for teaching evolution. Limited to a few sets, the play begins with the defendant in jail explaining to his fiancée, “You know why I did it. I had the book in my hand, Hunter’s
Civic Biology.
I opened it up, and read to my sophomore science class Chapter 17, Darwin’s
Origin of Species.”
For innocently doing his job, Cates “is threatened with fine and imprisonment,” according to the script.
41
This change provoked trial correspondent Joseph Wood Krutch. “The little town of Dayton behaved on the whole quite well,” he wrote in rebuttal. “The atmosphere was so far from being sinister that it suggested a circus day.” Yet, he complained, “The authors of
Inherit the Wind
made it chiefly sinister, a witchhunt of the sort we are now all too familiar with.” Scopes never truly faced jail, Krutch reminded readers, and the defense actually instigated the trial. “Thus it was all in all a strange sort of witch trial,” he concluded, “one in which the accused won a scholarship enabling him to attend graduate school and the only victim was the chief witness for the prosection, poor old Bryan.”
42
Inherit the Wind,
Cates becomes the innocent victim of a mob-enforced antievolution law. The stage directions begin,
“It is important to the concept of the play that the town is always visible, looming there, as much on trial as the individual defendant.
”In the movie version, the town fathers haul Cates out of his classroom for teaching evolution. Limited to a few sets, the play begins with the defendant in jail explaining to his fiancée, “You know why I did it. I had the book in my hand, Hunter’s
Civic Biology.
I opened it up, and read to my sophomore science class Chapter 17, Darwin’s
Origin of Species.”
For innocently doing his job, Cates “is threatened with fine and imprisonment,” according to the script.
41
This change provoked trial correspondent Joseph Wood Krutch. “The little town of Dayton behaved on the whole quite well,” he wrote in rebuttal. “The atmosphere was so far from being sinister that it suggested a circus day.” Yet, he complained, “The authors of
Inherit the Wind
made it chiefly sinister, a witchhunt of the sort we are now all too familiar with.” Scopes never truly faced jail, Krutch reminded readers, and the defense actually instigated the trial. “Thus it was all in all a strange sort of witch trial,” he concluded, “one in which the accused won a scholarship enabling him to attend graduate school and the only victim was the chief witness for the prosection, poor old Bryan.”
42
Other books
To Run Across the Sea by Norman Lewis
Cluttered Attic Secrets by Jan Christensen
Reckless Endangerment by Robert K. Tanenbaum
The Angel of Losses by Stephanie Feldman
Beautiful Broken by Nazarea Andrews
Coming Home by Lydia Michaels
Hard Times by Terkel, Studs
Oathbreaker by Amy Sumida
Brothers in Arms by Odd Arne Westad
Michael (The Mark) (The Airel Saga, Book 4: Part 7-8) by Patterson, Aaron, White, Chris