The Scopes Trial In a Changing America

Did the Scopes Trial Really Matter?

The Scopes Trial has been variously described as a confrontation between:

Fundamentalism and Modernism (within the erstwhile Christian community);

Evolutionism and Creationism;

Rural and Urban values;

Northern and Southern values;

Religion and Science;

The Rights of the Community and the Rights of the Individual;

The Rights of the State and the Rights of the People;

etc.

The problem is that these issues are often presented as though they are either/or choices - either it was about religion versus science or it was about rural values versus urban values or it was about Northern and Southern values, and so on.

In practice, however, the trial was an outward expression of an inner battle for control of American society and American culture. Very loosely speaking it was also about the future of Christianity in America, though this must be seen in the light of the proliferation of Christian and pseudo-Christian organizations in America at the time (see Stephen Prothero's fascinating book American Jesus for a detailed study of this subject.)

In short, it encompassed all of the above issues - and more.

In this section we will see how all of the above elements of American society, and others, converged at the time of the Scopes Trial.

Note: In 1925 there was no Intelligent Design movement. And no clearly defined "creationist" movement, since a belief in the historical accuracy of the Book of Genesis was still very widely accepted by both the Christian community and Americans in general (see Part 13 - Education After the Scopes Trial for further information.).

Having said that, the 1920s were a time when the scientific community in America was being increasingly propagandized to reject the kind of beliefs set out in The Fundamentals (see below) - ultimately leading to the development of the Creationist movement as it exists today.

The Fundamentalist and Modernist Connection

Interestingly enough, fundamentalism and modernism actually grew up side-by-side in America during the first quarter of the 20th century.

Fundamentalism was basically a restatement of the values and beliefs of traditional Christianity, and the factors which led to the printing of The Fundamentals (see The Petro-Dollars Connection), along with William B. Riley's formation of the World Christian Fundamentals Association in 1919, was as much as anything a response to so-called Higher Literary Criticism which had become popular in some quarters during the previous century.

Higher Literary Criticism

An approach to study of the Christian Bible adopted by a group based in Tubingen (Germany) in the 19th century, lead by Ferdinand Christian Baur. Like the self-styled Jesus Seminar of today, Baur's group held that the supernatural elements described in the Bible such as miracles, the Virgin Birth and the literal physical resurrection of Jesus after the Crucifixion were fictitious and might be explained by natural methods and/or the allegedly mythological nature of much of the Bible.

To a large extent, the group's thinking was based on Hegelian metaphysics (after the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)), which was something of a giveaway, to put it mildly, since Hegel himself was prone to ignore any facts that didn't support his theories. A typical example of Hegel's attitude can be found in the account of a class in which he was explaining his philosophy of history by using a specific series of events as an example.

"But, Herr Professor," one of his students interrupted, "the facts are otherwise."
"So much the worse for the facts," Hegel replied.

Where fundamentalists were opposed higher criticism in every respect, most people who described themselves as Christian modernists eagerly allied themselves with the wider modernist or "progressive" movement, including many of the claims made by advocates of higher criticism.

Modernism

Modernism as a social movement - which included the arts, religion, social standards, etc. - began shortly before the end of the 19th century.

At the heart of this movement was a profound rejection of the values and attitudes of the Victorian era and a belief that every aspect of existence, from commerce to philosophy, should be re-examined, with the aim of rooting out anything which was holding back the "march of progress", and replacing it with new, and therefore (allegedly) better, ways of achieving the same goals. The philosophy behind modernism/progressivism was heavily influenced by an almost irrational belief in the ability of scientists to guide mankind into a utopian future.
In short, the advocates of modernism adopted the world view that "old" was, almost by definition, "bad", whilst anything "new" was good and beautiful.

(After seeing the kind of hullabaloo, dire predictions and wild expectations which surrounded the dawning of the 21st century, it isn't very difficult to understand how the modernist/progressive movement arose from the upheaval of the first World War - sometimes referred to as "the war to end all wars" - which had been sanctioned by the leaders of a variety of religions, and in favour of both sides of the conflict!)

The main point of contention between fundamentalists and modernists within the Christian community was a difference of opinion over what became known as the five "fundamentals":

The Fundamentals

The inerrancy of scripture;

The divinity of Christ (including a literal interpretation of the "Virgin Birth");

Christ's death as substitutionary atonement;

Christ's resurrection as a literal event;

Christ's return (the "Second Coming") as a literal event.

As you might imagine, fundamentalists were, in America in the 1920s, those Christians who upheld the five fundamentals; the modernists had other ideas.

The Inerrancy of Scripture

Fundamentalists believed that the Bible was to be taken as straight fact, in those places where there was no indication that it should be taken otherwise. Hence Bryan's answer to Darrow's question about whether he took everything in the Bible to be literally true:

"I believe that everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there; some of the Bible is given illustratively. For instance: 'Ye are the salt of the earth.' I would not insist that man was actually salt, or that he had flesh of salt, but it is used in the sense of salt as saving God's people."
(See The Duel In the Shade for details of Darrow's cross examination of Bryan.)

Important note:

Commentators often confuse fundamentalist and literalist views on inerrancy. In practice, literalists, so called because they take the entire text of the Bible as being literally true, are also fundamentalists (they also accept the other four Fundamentals). Though having said that, it can sometimes be hard to get a literalist to specify which particular version/translation of The Bible is is that they regard as inerrant.

Fundamentalists who are not also literalists, on the other hand, are distinguished by the fact that they do not insist on an "end to end" literal interpretation of the Bible, but accept that the text contains numerous metaphors, parables, descriptions of visions and so on.

However, it would appear that many fundamentalists do share the belief that the account of the Creation in the Book of Genesis is historically accurate. Though even on this subject it should be noted that opinions differ between "Old Earthers" (who accept that the Earth may be billions of years old), and "Young Earthers," who believe the Earth is only a few thousand years old). This leaves lots of room for a wide variety of belief on specific details.

The modernists/progressives/liberals (I'll call them all "modernists", in future, to save time) adopted what was often referred to as a "demystified" interpretation of the contents of the Bible that was more or less in line with the ideas of the Higher Literary Criticism movement.

The practical gap between these two groups can be seen in this description of Professor Kirtley Mather's interest in the case, by one of his descendents:

When Professor Mather read of the trial, he determined that the testimony of sincerely religious scientists, like himself, should be heard. Mather wrote "I knew that Darrow would easily demolish the case for literal infallibility of the Bible and the kind of religion that Bryan proclaimed, but who would be in Dayton to promote a religion that is respectable in light of modern science?"

Compare this with Arthur Hays' admission that the defense scientists all rejected most if not all of the Fundamentals - which group most certainly included Mather.

The Divinity of Christ

Throughout the history of the Christian church, the orthodox view has been that Jesus was, in a literal sense, "the Son of God"; that he was born to Mary whilst she was literally still a virgin; that he performed various miracles, as described in the Gospels, and so on.
Whilst fundamentalists upheld this view of Jesus, most modernists believed that Jesus was actually either:

A fictional character who embodied mythical characteristics drawn from earlier religions, or

Had existed, but was basically no more than a good man who lived out his beliefs so that there was nothing supernatural about him or the things that he did.

In fact many of the so-called discoveries and revelations of the last few decades were already well-known to people in the 1920s. The post-WW2 discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi manuscripts have certainly added fuel to the discussion, but they have presented little, if anything, that is genuinely new.

For example, several books have appeared relatively recently that have claimed to contain amazing discoveries about the similarity of the mythology of Greece and Babylon to the biblical accounts of the life of Christ. In reality, however, as well as the Higher Criticism movement, the late 19th century also saw the appearance of the "History of Religions school", which tried to demonstrate exactly the same point, that the Bible accounts of the life of Jesus were actually just recycled myths from earlier civilizations. Likewise a number of writers have tried to show that a broad category of religious beliefs known as Gnosticism - belief in salvation through knowledge/release from ignorance - included the earliest and most authentic forms of Christianity. This is often presented as yet another supposedly recent, "shock" revelation. Yet in practice Gnosticism didn't begin to make an appearance until about 80-100 years after Jesus died, and in any case there was a major increase in interest in Gnosticism over a century ago, with numerous popular books on the subject appearing, in some cases, as far back as the 1840's.

It is somewhat ironic, in light of the developments of the last few decades, that an incomplete version the much hyped Gospel of Thomas, with its mixture of authentic Biblical quotes and cryptic gnostic sayings, was widely known and read in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Only then it was known simply as "The Sayings of Jesus". (It was only when the materials were discovered at Nag Hammadi that a full version of the "sayings" was found and was revealed to have been attributed, in the introductory verse, to Didymus Judas Thomas.)

The Crucifixion as Substitutionary Atonement

The Fundamentalist view of the significance of Christ's cricifixion was, and is, very simple and straight forward. The Modernist views are a little for difficult to understand.

For Fundamentalists it makes sense that only someone such as the authentic "Son of God" - taken as a literal description of Jesus - could serve as the atonement for the sins of all mankind throughout the history of the world. Whether or not one accepts the underlying theory that God required such a sacrifice in the first place, the internal logic of this claim is entirely consistant. The Christ must be genuinely divine in order for his death to be sufficiently significant to serve its intended purpose. And the crucifixion can be efective only because Jesus is the genuine "Son of God".

The modernist view was/is also consistent in one sense, but is thoroughly inconsistent in another.

Once the modernists had effectively excluded any and all possibility of a supernatural dimension to the crucifixion (yet again, shades of the Jesus Seminar), hanging on to the idea of Jesus literally dying in order to 'overcome death', or surrendering his life in order to give everyone else the opportunity to have eternal life, was clearly nuts. And having arrived at that interpretation, what point would there be to declaring oneself a Christian at all?

Remember Kirtley Mathers' concern to:

... promote a religion that is respectable in light of modern science"

This typifies one widely held modernist attitude that humankind should not look to God (any God or god) for their salvation, but to scientists. Mather clearly shared this view, and yet he boasted of how he had served for several decades as teacher of 'a large adult Sunday School class (known as "the Mather Class"), for the Newton Centre Baptist Church near Boston' ((Science and Religious Fundamentalism in the 1920s, Edward B. Davis. In American Scientist, Vol. 93, Issue 3, May-June 2005 (pages 253-260. This quote is from page 256.)
(Further references to this article, which can be found online at

http://www.paricenter.com/library/papers/davis01.pdf

will simply read "(Davis, page ".)

No wonder, given this background, William Jennings Bryan is said to have told one reporter at Dayton, "I have no complaint against evolutionists. I'm opposed to the people who claim to be Christians but aren't."

The Resurrection as a Literal Event

According to the accounts of the crucifixion and its aftermath in the New Testament, on the third day after the crucifixion Jesus' body was found to have disappeared from the tomb where his body had been placed, and he subsequently appeared to a number of his followers in a sufficiently substantial form to allow "Doubting" Thomas to feel the wounds made by the nails that had been hammered into Jesus' hands.

The "Second Coming" as a Literal Event

Evolutionism and Creationism

Strictly speaking there was no "Evolutionism versus Creationism" in the sense that we use the terms today.

As described in earlier sections (see Part 6: The Expert Evidence, for example), ideas on Darwinism and evolution were still at a formative stage in America at the time of the Scopes Trial, and even scientists who were allegedly experts on the subject had decidedly strange ideas on what actually constituted evolution (see comments by Maynard Metcalf and Arthur Hays, for example).

By the same token there were those who accepted the description of the Creation in the Book of Genesis as fact, and those that didn't. But there was little or no thought for putting forward the Genesis account as "scientific fact", and certainly nothing along the lines of Intelligent Design, or anything of that kind.
Rural and Urban Values

Religion and Science: The Chicago Connections

Considering how far apart they are, in geographical terms, it is interesting to note how many links sprang up between Chicago and Dayton in the context of the Scopes Trial:

Whilst John Neal (from Knoxville) was the "attorney of record," and Arthur Garfield Hays (New York) was (at least in theory) managing the defense team on behalf of the ACLU, it was Clarence Darrow - from Chicago - who dictated the way the case for the defense was handled.

Despite the vast distance involved, it was WGN - the Chicago Tribune's radio station - which set up its microphones in the Rhea County courthouse during the Scopes trial, making it the first ever live broadcast of court proceedings in America.

Of the eight scientific "expert witnesses" for the defense, three - Judd, Cole and Newman - were serving faculty members of the University of Chicago, and a a fourth - Kirtley Mather - had received his Ph.D from the University of Chicago just ten years earlier.

Shailer Mathews, one of the defense's experts on religious matters, was also on the faculty at the University of Chicago - as well as serving as editor for a series of "Popular Religious Leaflets" published by the intriguingly named American Institute of Sacred Literature (the relevance of these pamphlets will be explained later on).

At the end of the trial several of the expert witnesses contributed to a scholarship fund to send John Scopes to study for a master's degree in geology at - the University of Chicago.

In fact, when the Tennessee legislature passed the Butler Act (see Part 4: How it all Began), it was almost automatically setting itself up for a confrontation with powerful forces connected with the University of Chicago.

To get a clearer overall picture, however, we have to go not to Chicago in the 1920's, but to Leipzig in the 1870's.

Route 1 - Wilhelm Wundt

The shortest of the eight affidavits written by the expert witnesses at the Scopes trial was that of Charles Hubbard Judd. At a mere 411 words it was considerably less than half the length (by word count) of the next shortest affidavit, supplied by the soil scientist, Jacob Lipman. And yet - Charles Hubbard Judd's affidavit, together with the brief biography which precedes it, provide us with a series of crucial clue as to what lay behind the Scopes Trial.

The first point to notice is that:

"[Judd] received the degree Ph. D. at Leipsig [sic] University, where he took comparative anatomy as a minor subject, with psychology as a major."

Nothing too earthshaking there, you might think - but there is.
Because to obtain his Ph. D. Judd had spent two years as a student and, as it turned out, a disciple of the Prussian psychologist Wilhelm Max Wundt,
In 1875, Wundt used his appointment as a professor at Leipzig as an opportunity to set up one of the first two experimental psychology laboratories in the world (William James also set up an experimental psychology lab in that year). But this wasn't his only claim to fame, for Wundt had some fairly radical ideas, for his day, about the essential nature of human beings.
According to Wundt, with human beings what you saw was what you got. The whole idea that we might have a spirit, a soul, a mind, or whatever, was complete wishful thinking as far as Wundt was concerned. In fact even the idea that we had any capacity for self-determination was nonsense, according to Wundt. In reality, he claimed, we were utterly at the mercy of whatever environment we find ourselves in. All we could do, like Pavlov's dogs, was respond to our experiences. Only he didn't actually mention Pavlov's dogs, because Pavlov was also one of Wundt's students at Leipzig and hadn't done the experiments yet.

Route 2 - Social Darwinism

Though modern supporters of Darwinism sometimes try to deny it, the concept of "natural selection" has a very potent social dimension. That is to say, it readily lends itself to the claim that it provides "scientific proof" that certain social situations are determined by "nature", so to speak, and are therefore inherently "right."

This aspect of the theory of evolution certainly appealed the upper classes in Victorian Britain,when it first appeared, and not only as some kind of intellectual theory. As one of the best known hymns of the time put it:

"The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
[God] made them high and lowly,
And ordered their estate."
(All things Bright and Beautiful, from Hymns for Little Children (1848). Words by Mrs. C.F. Alexander. This verse is usually omitted in modern hymn books.)

For a nation in the process of establishing an Empire "on which the sun never set", Darwin's book On the Origin of Species was tantamount to scientific justification for whatever deeds were carried out in the "interests" of Queen and Country. Thus Darwin himself, when told of the genocidal clearing of the aboriginal population of Tasmania, is said to have commented, albeit sadly: "It was inevitable."

This interpretation of evolutionist ideas found an equally eager audience, at the same level of society, when it eventually gained a foothold in America.

When Charles Davenport established his Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbour, New York, in 1910, it was almost entirely funded by wealthy socialite Mary Harriman (widow of railroad baron E. H. Harriman) until her death in 1932. Financial supported then passed to the Carnegie Institution, until 1939.

Andrew Carnegie, though genuinely philanthropic on a grand scale, was also a keen supporter of eugenics and the idea of weeding out those members of society he saw as being unfit to live in the America he wanted to see come into existence.

The Petro-Dollars Connections

The Rockefellers

Two more public philanthropists with a "dark side" relevant to our story were John D. Rockefeller and his son, John Jnr.
In the 1890s, Rockefeller's funding, estimated at $80 million, turned a relatively insignificant Baptist college into the University of Chicago. What has beem less well-known until quite recently, is that whilst Rockefeller was allegedly a devout Baptist, he and his son, David, were active supporters of the "modernist" brand of christianity promulgated by Dr. Shailor Matthew, who was installed as Dean of the University of Chicago School of Divinity. Indeed, at the time of the Scopes Trial the Rockefellers donated $1 million to the School of Divinity (a huge amount of money in those days). And that is the doorway to a view of the background to the Scopes Trial that went virtually unknown over the decades between 1930 (approx.) and just five years ago.

As Professor Edward B. Davis, a well-respected Professor of the History of Science at Messiah College, Grantham, Pennsylvania explained, regarding his research:

"I will show from studies of popular religious literature that for a whole decade surrounding the Scopes trial, liberal Protestants enlisted the support of prominent scientists to promote their own, often highly unorthodox, theology of science to the American religious public, and that the University of Chicago Divinity School took the lead role in this effort."
(http://www.stnews.org/Research-2226.htm)

In 1922 (barely 4 years after World War 1 officially ended), Bryan wrote an editorial in a Sunday edition of the New York Times in which he described evolution as neither a proven fact nor religiously neutral and therefore should not be taught in schools. Moreover, "Bryan and his fellow fundamentalists believed that the militarism of German society could be linked to its use of natural selection in social policy and to the rise in German academic circles of higher literary criticism" (E. B. davis, page 255).

This lead to a series of responses from men such as Edwin G. Conklin (professor of biology at Princeton), Henry Fairfield Osborn (president of the American Museum of Natural History, and a long-running opponent of William Jennings Bryan - see Nebraska Man for details), and "modernist" Harry Emerson Fosdick (at that time an assistant pastor at the First Presbyterian Church, New York City and wholly opposed to fundamentalism). In September, 1922, the editorials written by Conklin and Fosdick were reprinted as the first two pamphlets in a series of 10 "Popular Religious Leaflets" on "Science and Religion" published by the American Institute of Sacred Literature (AISL). The leaflets, produced over a period od about 10 years, carried such impressive titles as "Through Science to God" by Samual C. Schmucker, "The Religion of a Geologist" by Kirtley F. Mather, "A Scientist Confesses his Faith" by Robert A. Millikan, and "Life After Death" by Arthur H. Compton, Shailer Mathews and Charles W. Gilkey.

But all was not quite what it seemed. The AISL was, in reality, a correspondence school operating under the auspices of the University of Chicago and was, in this context, effectively a "front" for the Divinity School, whose ultra-modernist Dean - Shailer Mathews - edited the series, co-authored one of the pamphlets (see above) and wrote another. At least 100 scientists, the AAAS and, most importantly, John Rockefeller Jnr. via the prestigeous Rockefeller Foundation, financed the printing of the leaflets, which enjoyed a relatively limited circulation as compared with the 12 Fundamentals booklets. Nevertheless, the circulation list, according to Professor Davis, included: "the principal of every public high school in [America and] every legislator at every level of government", plus "numerous university chaplains, some 30,000 Protestant ministers and more than 1,000 carefully chosen scientists"
(Davis, page 256.)

The Stewarts

Lyman Stewart, co-founder and sometime President of Union Oil, and his brother Milton donated $300,000 to pay for the printing of a series of twelve books jointly entitled The Fundamentals. The booklets received wide distribution, approximately 3 million copies being printed between 1909 and 1920 and sent free of charge to churches and other Christian organizations.
Also provided the financial backing for the foundation of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, now Biola University, in 1908.

The William Jennings Bryan Connection

William Jennings Bryan ran as the Democrat candidate for President of the USA in 1986, 1900 and 1908. Of special note is Bryan's platform in his last presidential campain, which was focused around his opposition to trusts - business cartels such as the one created by John D. Rockefeller who used economic threats against competitors and negotiated secret rebate deals with the railroad companies to build a monopoly in the oil business during the 1870s and 1880s. He was consistently on the side of the average citizen, supporting such programmes as the campaign for women's sufferage (the right to vote), federal income tax (to provide services for the less well-off), and the direct election of senators by the voters at large (rather than by the party "machines"), and therefore wholeheartedly opposed to the kind of "Social Darwinism" practised by people like Andrew Carnegie against their workers.

And just to pull in all the threads, it should be noted that even Bryan had a direct link to "The Windy City", having graduated from the Union Law School, Chicago (later absorbed into the Northwestern University School of Law), in the early 1880s.

The Scopes "Monkey" Trial Site Map

Introduction
A brief description of the Scopes Trial - the original proceedings, the effective fictionalising of the event in F.L. Allen's book Only Yesterday, and the confusion surrounding the play Inherit the Wind. Also a short biography of the author.

Part 1: Summary
A short history of the events leading up to the Scopes Trial, the trial itself, and what happened afterwards. Includes lists of the lawyers, witnesses, jurors, etc. involved in the Scopes Trial. Explains why it was called the "Monkey" trial.

Part 2: Inherit the Wind
Looks at the real story behind the writing of the play Inherit the Wind, and some of the key differences between the play and the actual trial. Explains where the title came from, and what it signifies.

Part 3: A Cult of Misinformation
The Scopes Trial has been the subject of a mountain of misinformation from the time of the trial through to the present day. The members of this "cult" include not just journalists and authors but also lawyers, university professors, the Encyclopaedia Britannica and even the Library of Congress. This section shows why the real life events are so widely misunderstood today.

Part 4: How it Began
Discusses the Butler Act (the basis for the charge against John Scopes), the action of the ACLU, the "Drugstore Conspiracy" which led to the trial being staged in Dayton, and how the two sets of lawyers were selected - or in some cases selected themselves. This section includes the names of all of the lawyers on both sides.

Part 5: The Experts - and Others
Details of the expert witnesses due to give evidence for the defense - and two potential witnesses, one of whom did make an appearance (Piltdown Man), and one who didn't (Nebraska Man).

Part 6: The Expert Evidence
Arthur Hays claimed that the expert witnesses would deal only in "facts." This section discusses specific items of "expert testimony" in the light of that claim and subsequent discoveries.

Part 7: Hunter's Civic Biology
Details of the true nature of the contents of Hunter's textbook A Civic Biology.

Part 8: The Trial - Part 1 In preparation
A timeline of the main events of the trial on a day-by-day basis.

Part 9: The Trial - Part 2
A detailed evaluation of the confrontation between Darrow and Bryan on the afternoon of day 7, with numerous quotes from the trial transcript and elsewhere.

Part 10: The Appeal
Many people know that the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the original result of the trial, but why? Was John Scopes found "not guilty"? What reasons did the Supreme Court give for their decision?
And what the heck is a nolle prosequi anyway?

Part 11: Was Scopes Guilty?
Another remarkable feature of the Scopes Trial was the number of lies involved - the biggest of which centers on the likelihood that the defense lawyers deliberately concealed the fact that Scopes was genuinely "not guilty."

Part 12: 80 Years of Evolution and Species
(Under Construction. Additional material will be added. Existing material may be subject to further editing.)
In Part 6 we looked at the kind of "evidence" offered by the expert witnesses. In this section we look specifically at the meaning of terms such as "evolution" and "species" in 1925 and 2006.

Part 13: Education After the Scopes Trial
This section describes what happened to the teaching of evolutionary theory in American schools after the trial; and what Americans believe about the teaching of evolutionism and creationism today.

Part 14: Clarence Darrow - Attorney for the Damned?
Whilst the ACLU triggered the Scopes Trial, and the "drugstore conspirators" brought it to Dayton, the guiding force behind the events during the trial itself was Clarence Darrow. This section looks at what motivated Darrow to essentially hi-jack the ACLU campaign and use it for his own ends.

Part 15: The Significance of the Scopes Trial
This section considers some of the many clashes in American society in the 1920s and considers whether they were genuine clashes, and if they were, what influence the Scopes Trial had an on any of them.
It also reveals what will be, for many people, surprising new information about the role of the University of Chicago in American culture at that time discovered by Professor of the History of Science, Edward Davis.

Part 16: The Play, the Movie and the Trial
(Under Construction. Additional material will be added. Existing material may be subject to further editing.)
A detailed examination of the differences between the play and first (1960) film version of Inherit the Wind, and the real life Scopes Trial.

Part 20: Links and Resources
A list of websites and books related to the Scopes Trial, including the trial transcript and the script of Inherit the Wind.