THE SCOPES TRIAL -- Part I

In the early1920’s, Christians in Tennessee were so absolutely convinced of the truth of biblical creation that they fought to outlaw the teaching of the theory of evolution in public schools. These Christians considered evolution to be an outright lie of the Devil.

Led by John Butler, an ardent Baptist and Tennessee legislator, Tennessee's Christians were successful in passing the first law in America that banned teaching evolution in the classroom. The "Butler Law" made the classrooms of Tennessee safe from what William Jennings Bryan had derided as ape-ism. Bryan, who would later defend the Butler law during the Scopes Trial also famously said:

"I am more interested in the Rock of Ages than in the age of rocks."

Most Christians believed then, as they still do now, that evolution is an insulting attack by atheistic science upon God and the Bible. This was why the Baptists in Tennessee had worked so diligently to ensure that the teaching of evolution was outlawed, just as European Catholics had outlawed the ideas of Galileo and Copernicus five hundred years earlier.

The law, which was to provoke a trial that remains famous and controversial to this present day, was simple and straightforward:

PUBLIC ACTS OF THE STATE OF TENNESSEE PASSED BY THE

SIXTY - FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1925

CHAPTER NO. 27

House Bill No. 185

(By Mr. Butler)

AN ACT prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the violations thereof.

Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.

Section 2. Be it further enacted, That any teacher found guilty of the violation of this Act,
Shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction, shall be fined not less than One Hundred $ (100.00) Dollars nor more than Five Hundred ($ 500.00) Dollars for each offense.

Section 3. Be it further enacted, That this Act take effect from and after its passage, the public welfare requiring it.

Passed March 13, 1925

W. F. Barry,

Speaker of the House of Representatives L. D. Hill,

Speaker of the Senate Approved March 21, 1925.

Austin Peay, Governor.

There were many who were convinced that the Butler Law was unjust on many counts. Indeed, the law used tax dollars and the public schools to support the biblical account of creation while explicitly forbidding the teaching of a legitimate, and competing, scientific theory. The stage was set for a showdown in Tennesse.

The ACLU of New York set about to challenge the Butler Law. The challenge, which would turn into one of the most famous trials in US history, began when the ACLU persuaded John T. Scopes, a twenty-four year old biology teacher, to break the law by teaching evolution in his humble classroom in Dayton, Tennessee.

Following Scopes’ scandalous deed of teaching evolution in his Tennessee classroom an ACLU surrogate swore out a complaint against Scopes, thus resulting in his arrest and the setting of a court date. The fires of religion and science quickly fanned the trial into a symbolic firestorm in which Science and God were fighting it out in an American courtroom. The media named the legal proceeding The Scopes Monkey Trial to denote the name of the defendant and the subject matter of the litigation. While addressing the legality of the Butler Law, both prosecution and defense were also seeking to try the controversy underlying the law itself: Was man descended from monkeys, really the higher apes, as Charles Darwin had taught, or was man created in God’s image as the Bible taught?

The Scopes Monkey Trial pitted evolutionists, or "Darwinists" so named after Charles Darwin, the "father of evolution," against the "Creationists" who absolutely believed the story of creation as related in the Book of Genesis. Experts from both sides came together to do battle in the courtroom over the question of what teachers would be allowed to teach schoolchildren about how humanity, and by implication the Universe, had begun.

The trial was of such national interest that WGN in Chicago did a live radio broadcast from the courthouse. All of the major newspapers in America had reporters live on the scene to watch the trial by day and then in phone in their stories in the late afternoon so that a waking America could eagerly read the details the following morning as they drank coffee. The famous humorist H.L. Menken, the Mark Twain of his day, also offered his acerbic commentary on the trial through the Baltimore Sun.

Scopes’ ACLU legal team, headed by the brilliant defense attorney Clarence Darrow, waged a pitched intellectual battle against the prosecution and its esteemed leader, William Jennings Bryan. Darrow was considered a legal renegade by many for his having defended murderers, communists, and the worst sort of scum in America. The Scopes trial was the only case Darrow ever worked pro bono. He did so because he said he very much wanted to be a part of this historic and controversial affair.While Darrow’s brilliant endgame in the Scopes Trial was to become legendary, his initial strategy to place scientists and other expert witnesses on the stand to testify that evolution was scientifically valid would crash and burn before a hostile Christian judge.William Jennings Bryan was a remarkable orator who had national name recognition as he had thrice run for the president. While had lost all three times, his stature was nonetheless undiminished in the minds of his supporters, to whom he was known as known as "The Great Commoner. " Following his service as Secretary of State to Woodrow Wilson, Bryan had become a traveling evangelist who held revival meetings in large tents, churches, and auditoriums throughout America.

Bryan’s plan was to challenge Darrow at every step so that the defense could not bring its expert witnesses to the stand. Bryan, a veteran politician, knew the power of controlling the debate and was not about to allow Darrow to use the courtroom as a national forum whereby he could gain immense free publicity for the lies of evolution. The Scopes Trial embodied the anger of every Christian who objected to being told by science that they were descended from brutish, slovenly apes. Unfortunately, the evolutionists of that era were unable to produce televangelists as evidence of their thesis.

The Scopes Trial reflected the anger of every person who did not want religion dictating science curriculum in public schools. Judge John Raulston, who carried his Bible with him into the courtroom and opened every day of the trail with prayer, made it tough for Darrow and the ACLU by accepting Bryan’s objection that Darrow’s "experts" would only be offering only speculation about the past and not fact.

Judge Raulston demanded to hear the Darrow’s experts with the jury absent so that he could rule on whether or not their testimony would be admissible. The prominent zoologist Dr. Maynard Metcalf of Johns Hopkins, took the stand and sketched the theory of evolution. Metcalf cited the discoveries of the anthropologists, geologists, and zoologists as he traced the origins of the human race from primates onward. Darrow and Metcalf, however, might as well as have been arguing before a church, for the courtr was run by a biased judge who deemed Christianity to be valid as legal evidence when in fact religion can only, and ultimately, be founded upon faith.

Attorney General Stewart damned Darrow with faint praise by saying that Darrow, with his great mind, could have done great things in the service of God, but that he had instead, "strayed so far from the natural goal." The "natural goal” was of course to be a Christian. Stewart then castigated Darrow by concluding that Darrow’s legal work on behalf of evolution was tantamount to evil in that Darrow was now defending, "that which strikes its fangs at the very bosom of Christianity.” A chorus of "amens" and raised Bibles in the courtroom followed Stewart’s remarks as if he had been preaching rather than prosecuting.

While preaching of one kind or another is not an uncommon practice in the courtroom, what made the Scopes Trial unusual was that Stewart was preaching Christianity as a fact and evolution as a fallacy while being upheld in his ministrations by a Christian judge. As Christianity was in a very important sense on trial, legal theory would call for Raulston to recuse himself due to his belief in Christianity. But this was Tennessee in 1925 and Raulston did not. The jury still absent, Bryan stood before the court and demanded that the court disallow any "pseudoscientific evidence to be interjected into the trial." Judge Raulston granted the prosecution’s motion, thus preventing Darrow from putting his experts before the jury. Darrow heatedly argued with Judge Raulston over this absurd decision, so much so that Raulston charged him with contempt of court. This only added to Darrow’s misery in the one-hundred-degree weather of a Tennessee summer where the mosquitoes swarmed as thickly as the Bibles outside.

Darrow countered Raulston’s move by adopting a different strategy that attempted to bridge rationality and religion. Dudley Malone, one of Scopes’ attorneys argued that the Bible and evolution were not incompatible: "There are millions of people who believe in evolution and in the story of creation as set forth in the Bible, and they find no conflict between the two.” The defense’s attempt to conflate creation and evolution is a theological reconciliation used by a small minority of Creationists who believe that God used evolution as a mode of creation. For the vast majority of the truly religious, however, there is no middle ground, for they consider creation and evolution to be absolutely irreconcilable.