- See the Learning Guides to The
Crucible and High Noon for background concerning the Red Scare of the
late 1940s and early 1950s. The anti-evolution campaign of the 1920s was not as
destructive to society as the Red Scares but there were striking
parallels between the two situations. People were singled out
for certain beliefs, i.e., belief in evolution in the anti-evolution campaign
and left wing political views in the Red Scare.
Some people, almost entirely teachers and college professors in the
anti-evolution campaign, lost their jobs.
- In the 1920s, religious fundamentalists objected to the
teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in the public
schools. They contended that evolution was inconsistent
with the biblical account of creation. William Jennings
Bryan, the great Populist politician, was a leader of this
movement. Strong opposition to the anti-evolution
movement came from "modernist" religious leaders who saw no
conflict between evolution and religion. Scientists who
were convinced of the truth of the theory of evolution and who saw it
as fundamental to the science of biology viewed the
anti-evolution crusade as an attack upon science. Civil
libertarians viewed the effort to prohibit the teaching of
evolution in the schools as undermining the
separation of church and state, academic freedom, and
freedom of religion.
In 1925, the state of Tennessee passed a law making it a
crime "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." Twenty other states had either passed or were
considering such laws at the time. Seeing a danger to
academic freedom and the constitutionally mandated
separation of church and state, the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) wanted to attack the law on constitutional grounds. It advertised for
a teacher willing to challenge the law and offered to pay the
costs of the defense.
The ACLU advertisement was seen by George W. Rappelyea, a mining
engineer who lived in Dayton, Tennessee. Rappelyea, a native New Yorker, had been outraged
when he witnessed a local preacher at the funeral of an
eight-year-old boy tell the congregation, including the
weeping parents, that "This here boy 'cause his pappy and mammy
didn't get him baptized, is now awrithin' in the flames of
hell." Rappelyea protested these statements, but was told
that outsiders shouldn't interfere with local religious
beliefs. (This event is echoed in a scene in the movie.)
When the law prohibiting teaching evolution in public schools
was passed, Rappelyea saw the same attitude behind the new statute
that he had seen in the preacher. Rappelyea suggested to John T.
Scopes, a young high school teacher, that he challenge the
law. (Clarence Darrow for the Defense, pages 343 & 345)
Scopes was a math teacher and football coach, who had never
actually taught evolution but had only filled in for the
biology teacher for two weeks. However, Scopes, like most educators then
and today, could not see
how biology could be properly taught without
the concept of evolution. He agreed that the law should be challenged.
Rappelyea discussed the
proposal with several leading citizens of Dayton
who were interested in the business
opportunities that a notorious trial would bring to Dayton.
They wanted to use the trial to "put Dayton on the map."
Among the Dayton participants, including the prosecutors, the trial was always a
friendly affair. For example, because of the extremely hot weather during the trial, Scopes and
some of the prosecutors went swimming together at the lunch breaks. Despite his
eventual conviction, Scopes was offered a teaching contract
for the next year by the same man who had been the official
complainant in the case against him. The good feeling even
extended to the outsiders. While the public relations
battle between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan was deadly serious,
the townspeople made the defense
attorneys feel at home and ensured that they were
comfortable. At the conclusion of the trial, Bryan offered to pay Scopes' fine.
- William Jennings Bryan, three time Democratic Party
candidate for President of the United States, former
Secretary of State, fundamentalist religious writer and
frequent Chautauqua speaker against "Darwinism," was asked by
a fundamentalist Christian group to aid the prosecution.
When Bryan accepted the invitation, Clarence Darrow, renowned attorney, civil
libertarian and agnostic, volunteered to help the defense.
Bryan and Darrow had worked together on reformist and
liberal causes in the past. While the ACLU had not wanted
Darrow to be on the defense team because it was afraid that
his presence would change the nature of the debate from one
over individual freedom to an attack on fundamentalist
religion, Scopes accepted Darrow as his attorney and the
ACLU had no choice. (See below for a more complete description of the many
accomplishments of William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow.)
Bryan and Darrow were not the only lawyers involved in the trial.
The defense team consisted of a local counsel and several attorneys
sent from New York by the ACLU. The prosecution was led by a local
prosecutor, assisted by several other attorneys and by Bryan. While Bryan
was the best known attorney for the prosecution, he hadn't practiced law in decades.
The goal of the defense, throughout the trial, was not to
get an acquittal. Rather, the defense attorneys, with Scopes' blessing, wanted to build a court
record from which they could bring an appeal on constitutional
grounds of separation of church and state and freedom of
speech. In addition, the defense wanted to publicize
evolution and show the logical inconsistency of those who
claimed that it was contrary to biblical teachings. As Darrow
put it, he wanted to free public education from the control
of "bigots and ignoramuses." He also thought that Bryan had
become dangerous and he wanted to put Bryan "in his place."
Bryan's goals were to vindicate the right of the majority to
control what was taught in the public schools, to protect
children from what he considered to be dangerous doctrines,
and to promote fundamentalist religion.
The defense tried to call experts to show that the theory of
evolution was scientifically legitimate and that it was
compatible with the biblical story of creation. The trial
judge excluded all of the expert evidence.
To get around this ruling, Darrow called Bryan to the stand
as an expert on the Bible, a subject that Bryan had written and
lectured about extensively. Attorneys representing one side
or the other almost never testify at a trial, but, in this case both
Bryan and Darrow knew that the real trial was
in the court of public opinion. While the judge would have
denied the request for Bryan to testify if he had objected, Bryan
accepted Darrow's challenge.
Darrow made Bryan look like a fool. Darrow's strategy was
to let Bryan talk himself out on a limb and then to either saw
it off, or simply let it break from the weight of what
Darrow considered to be the bad logic of Bryan's position.
Darrow started his examination of Bryan by establishing Bryan's expertise
in the Bible. Darrow then asked Bryan if he believed the biblical
story that Jonah had actually lived
three days inside of a whale. Bryan's response was that he
did and that "One miracle is just as easy to believe as
another." (See Learning Guide to "Moby Dick"
for a brief discussion of the story of Jonah
and the whale.) Then Darrow asked Bryan about the biblical account of how
Joshua made the sun stand still for the purpose of
lengthening the day, obtaining an admission from Bryan that
since the earth goes around the sun, the Bible must have
meant that the earth stood still, because the Almighty
"might have used language that could be understood at the
time." Darrow then asked "Have you pondered what would
actually happen to the earth if it stood still suddenly?"
Bryan responded: "No. The God I believe in could have taken
care of that...." When Darrow turned to the story of the
flood, Bryan stated that he, along with most Fundamentalists
of that time, accepted Bishop Usher's calculation, made in
the Seventeenth Century, that the flood had occurred in 2348 B.C.E.
Bryan denied any knowledge of civilizations traced back more
than 5,000 years, such as the Egyptian civilization or that
of the Chinese. He stated that, on these and many other
subjects of human and natural history, the Bible gave him
"all the information I want to live by, and to die by."
Darrow then turned to the Tower of Babel. Bryan stated that
approximately 4200 years ago, every human being
spoke the same language. He also said that all the
languages and dialects of the world had originated since
that time. Bryan and Darrow at Dayton page 148.
On the subject of creation, Bryan volunteered that the first
day could have been 25 hours long or a period of time,
perhaps millions of
years. This admission brought gasps from the audience of
fundamentalists and it, as well as Bryan's admission that it
was the earth and not the sun that had stood still on
Joshua's command, alienated his audience. [Scopes, Center of
the Storm, p. 178 - 181.]
In sum, during the cross-examination, Darrow got Bryan to admit that he didn't read
the Bible literally in all respects but that he selected
certain parts to believe literally. Thus Bryan's
anti-evolution beliefs were not compelled by the Bible, but only
by his personal choice to take certain parts of the Bible
literally. Bryan's testimony was struck from the Court
record as irrelevant but it left a lasting impression in the
court of public opinion. (Bryan and Darrow at Dayton, pp.
133 et seq.) Bryan had intended to call the defense attorneys to the
stand so that he could cross-examine them, but after
Darrow's examination of Bryan, the chief prosecutor refused
to permit this. (An excellent eye witness account of this
examination by Scopes himself can be found in Center of the Storm
pages 165 - 189.)
The defense, deprived of its ability to put on
evidence, had provided affidavits from its experts
to establish a record for the appeal.
After the examination of Bryan by Darrow, the defense stipulated to
a finding of guilty, not wanting to risk an
acquittal. The trial thereupon came to a quick end. This tactic
prevented Bryan from giving his summation at which he had been hard at work.
Bryan was regarded as one of the
greatest orators in the country and Darrow didn't want to
give him a chance to rehabilitate his position.
The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the
statute based on
the right of the state (i.e., the majority) as an employer of its teachers to tell them
what to do. The Court denied that the statute impermissibly infringed
on the separation of church and state in violation of the Tennessee Constitution,
asserting that the law only
prohibited the teaching of evolution. The Court pointed out that there was
no unanimity about evolution among Protestants, Catholics or Jews
and, for that reason, claimed that a law taking sides in the debate
was not in the service of any religion. The Court didn't
directly discuss the Federal Constitutional requirements that
church and state be separated, but its discussion of the similar
state constitutional provision makes it clear where the court would
have come out on that issue. However, on a minor technical ground, the
Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the conviction. Finally, the Court
pointed out that Scopes no longer taught school in Tennessee and stated that
"We see nothing to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case."
It then recommended that the case not be retried in
the interests of the "peace and dignity of the state." See Scopes v. State.
No one other than Scopes was ever prosecuted under the Tennessee statute. It was repealed in 1967.
- The trial was important, not because of the verdict or for any
legal principals that it established, but rather it was a
public relations battle for the mind of the country. While
Darrow's client was fined $100, Darrow was victorious in the
public relations battle. The Scopes trial dealt a strong
blow to creationism, fundamentalist religious beliefs, and
majoritarian control over what teachers teach.
- More than 200 newsmen covered the trial. International
coverage was provided as telegraph operators
sent reports through newly laid transatlantic cables.
Reporters came from as far away as Hong Kong. Dayton became
like a carnival with the streets full of "soap box" orators,
food sellers, and souvenir vendors. People who had strong
opinions about the case converged on the town from all over
the country. The side of the courthouse bore a large banner
that read "Read Your Bible Daily!"
- William Jennings Bryan, "the Great Commoner," was a
principled politician representing the agrarian wing of the
progressive movement. He was the Democratic party's
candidate for president three times and should have held
that office (one presidential election was stolen from
him). Bryan advocated many reforms which were controversial at the time but most
of which have now been adopted, including: the graduated income tax, the direct
election of senators by the people, women's suffrage,
workman's compensation, the minimum wage, the eight hour
day, improved conditions for seamen and railroad employees,
prohibition of injunctions in labor disputes, public
regulation of political campaign contributions, government
aid to farmers including minimum prices for agricultural
products, government regulation of the railroads, telegraph and
telephone industries, federal development of water
resources, employment of safety devices, federal regulation of food processing, tariff
reform, control of trusts, government control of currency
and banking, government guaranty of bank deposits, the
initiative, the referendum, defense of rights of minorities,
anti-imperialism, including freedom for the U.S. colony in
the Philippines, settling of international disputes through
peaceful arbitration, support of education (including
African-American education), strengthening of Latin American
relations, excess profits taxes in time of war, and voting
reform. While he was never elected president, history has
shown that Bryan's positions on the issues of the day
were, for the most part, eventually enacted into law. The two most important
exceptions are his advocacy of prohibition (enacted into law but later repealed) and his
leadership of the anti-evolution crusade. But Bryan's
overall record of support for many progressive causes that
were later adopted has assured him of a place in history.
Bryan served as Secretary of State under President Wilson
from 1913 - 1915. In that office, he negotiated a series of international
treaties by which countries agreed to arbitrate
international disputes. These treaties foundered on the
opposition of Germany and on the First World War. Bryan
resigned from Wilson's cabinet, opposing actions which he
felt would inevitably lead to war with Germany. Outside of
the government, he campaigned strenuously to keep America out
of the war. But he recognized the right of the majority to make
the decision between war and peace. Once war was declared, Bryan volunteered as a
private in the Army. President Wilson declined to have
Bryan serve in the army but enlisted Bryan in the public
relations effort to sell war bonds, increase agricultural
production and mobilize the country for war. Bryan served
his country well in that capacity.
Bryan was one of the greatest orators ever produced by
the United States. He was a newspaper editor and the author
of 15 books as well as two anthologies of his speeches.
After his political career was over, Bryan
continued his public speaking and became a proponent of
fundamentalist religion and a crusader against "Darwinism,"
which he considered a threat to religious beliefs and
morality. He lectured on creationism and other topics on
the Chautauqua circuit. He wrote a syndicated "Sunday School"
column which appeared in more than one hundred papers with
more than 15 million readers.
Bryan's guide, throughout his life, was a strong sense of
Christian ethics. For him, the message of Christ was not
merely preparation for the future world but a mandate for
this world. Man's task was not merely to remake
himself and await salvation but to remake society and create
an earthly salvation. War, alcohol (Bryan was a leader of
the prohibition movement), greed and godlessness were not
only to be resisted, they were to be smashed. Bryan was
also a Populist. He believed that collective wisdom was
superior to individual wisdom and that every man was capable of
and worthy of directly participating in government. What
was important was a man's spirit, not his training.
Why would such a progressive politician try to prohibit the teaching of an accepted
scientific theory in the public schools? The answer is that the
Populist-progressive mind which Bryan exemplified was not
particularly open or tolerant. Because the basis for its
outlook was moral rather than pragmatic, the Populist mind did not seek for
solutions, it knew the solutions. In his political
and economic positions Bryan had been a consistent advocate
of limiting individual freedom when it reached the point of
becoming harmful to others. In the anti-evolution
crusade, Bryan sought to limit freedom of the intellect when
he thought it threatened religious beliefs and morality. In
both spheres he was a moral crusader attempting to protect
common people from what he conceived to be selfish and
irresponsible forces. While most of Bryan's political positions were
ultimately adopted, the two crusades of the end of his life, prohibition and
creationism, were ultimately unsuccessful and rejected by history.
"... [I]f Bryan's final years ended
in tragedy, it was not the tragedy of a good man gone bad,
but the tragedy of a good faith too blindly held and too
uncritically applied." (The description in this paragraph is adapted from
Levine, Defender of the Faith, pages 358 & 359, 364 & 365;
the quotation is from page 365.)
Bryan eloquently espoused the hopes and fears of the people
of the rural South, West and Midwest. They, in
return, looked upon Bryan as a symbol of what was good and
right. As H.L. Mencken put it, after watching the reaction
of a crowd to one of Bryan's speeches, Bryan became "a great
sacerdotal figure, half man and half archangel. In brief,
a sort of fundamentalist pope." H.L. Mencken, article July
The picture of Bryan presented in the play and the film,
while ultimately sympathetic, is in many ways inaccurate.
Because of the focus of the story on the trial, it underplays his many
accomplishments and his lifelong advocacy of progressive
causes. His wife, Mary Bryan, was an invalid from arthritis
and he took care of her. She had grave misgivings about
his anti-evolutionist crusade and feared that it would
evolve into a broad assault on freedom of speech and belief
rather than simply an effort by parents and taxpayers to
control what was taught in the public schools. Bryan promised her
that he would not make that mistake. She then asked him if
he could control his followers. He replied that he thought
he could but shortly afterward, he died. (William Jennings
Bryan and Mary Baird Bryan, The Memoirs of William Jennings
Bryan, (Philadelphia, United, 1925) pp. 485 - 486). For an interesting comment
on Bryan by a visitor to this site, see Comment to Learning
Guide to Inherit the Wind.
Bryan died five days after the trial from a long standing
illness, diabetes myelitis. He was very active during the last days
of his life, keeping speaking engagements and arranging the
publication of the closing argument that he did not have the
opportunity to give at the trial.
- Constitutional cases usually involve a conflict between two
sets of rights. In this case, the majority of the people of
Tennessee through the state government asserted the
right to tell the teachers that it employed what to teach in the
schools owned and operated by the state. However, the Tennessee statute promoted
the teaching of a religious doctrine, creationism. The statute impinged upon the
right of the people who
disagreed with creationism to be protected from actions by the state supporting a
religious doctrine. A similar statute was later struck down as unconstitutional by the
U.S. Supreme Court because it violated the separation of
church and state. See Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968) and Significant Court Decisions Regarding Evolution/Creation Issues.
- Clarence Darrow (1857 - 1938) was one of the most famous
lawyers ever to practice in the United States. He was
brilliant, tireless, and eloquent. Darrow
specialized in defending the underdog. Frequently he took on
cases for the poor and the extremely unpopular. Darrow
stood for the rights of the individual against the majority
and its efforts to make individuals conform, both in mind
and action. He defended union organizers and labor leaders
for decades against the arrayed power structure of the state and the
powerful industries. Later, he undertook more criminal cases. Darrow did
not believe in capital punishment and none of the more than
one hundred defendants that he represented in capital cases
were put to death. Darrow secured life sentences for the
defendants in the infamous Leopold-Loeb trial. He also
defended radicals subject to political prosecutions. Darrow
had an enquiring and logical mind. He was extremely well read and
fond of lively exchanges with the best minds in various fields of study.
He frequently held "salon" evenings where there were spirited
discussions covering a broad range of topics.
Darrow and Bryan had been on the same side on many issues
before Bryan embarked on his anti-evolution crusade. Darrow
ran for the House of Representatives in 1896, losing by 100
votes because he spent so much time that year campaigning
for the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, William
Darrow, despite his well-known agnosticism, was considered a friend by many
religious leaders. His religious friends often said that Darrow
embodied the moral
precepts of the Judeo-Christian religions in his actions.
In his religious beliefs, Darrow maintained that while no one could
prove the existence of God, no one could disprove it either.
When Scopes left Dayton to go to graduate school at the
University of Chicago, Darrow (who lived near the University) took Scopes under his wing.
He helped Scopes find an apartment and invited him almost
weekly to the Darrow home. Scopes considered Darrow to be the second most influential
man in his life after his father.
Darrow understood the intellectual process to be a search
for truth. For this reason, fundamentalism dismayed him.
The best way that he found to challenge fundamentalism was
to show the intellectual weakness of its positions through
Bryan, its leading proponent. As Darrow later wrote to
Mencken "I made up my mind to show the country what an
ignoramus he was and I succeeded." (Larson, Summer for the
Gods p. 190, quoting from letter Darrow to Mencken, August
15, 1925, in the H.L. Mencken Collection, New York Public
Darrow's career was not without controversy. His last labor case
was the unsuccessful defense of the McNamara brothers
in Los Angeles in 1911. The McNamaras were labor union officials who were accused
of blowing up the Los Angeles Times
building. The explosion claimed several lives. The McNamaras at first
claimed to be innocent of the charges and victims of a conspiracy by the government
and conservative interests to discredit organized labor. Labor unions and people from the left wing
from all over the country rallied to the McNamara's defense. Millions of dollars were raised.
Darrow and a staff of investigators and lawyers were hired to represent them.
The problem was that the McNamaras were, in fact, guilty. The information obtained by Darrow's
investigators all pointed to the
McNamara's guilt. Convinced that his clients would be convicted and subject to the death
penalty, Darrow persuaded the McNamaras to accept a plea bargain in which their lives would
be saved. Organized labor felt
betrayed by the McNamaras and by Darrow. Darrow never tried a labor case again.
After the plea bargain, Darrow was accused of complicity in attempts to bribe two jurors. The cases were
tried separately. Darrow's former allies in the labor movement would not help him and he
was left to fight the charges with his own resources. Darrow was
acquitted of the first charge and the jury hung 8 - 4 for conviction on the second charge. He was retried
and eventually acquitted of the second charge. By that time Darrow was broken physically, emotionally,
and financially. However, he was a resilient man. He returned to Chicago, rebuilt his law
practice and his reputation. He went on to another brilliant career as a criminal defense
lawyer. He capped off his work as a lawyer with the Scopes trial. (Some argue that
Darrow was in fact guilty of bribing the jurors, despite the fact that he arranged a
plea bargain for the McNamaras. See The People v. Clarence Darrow, Geoffrey Cowan,
Times Books, 1993. We are not entirely convinced by this analysis, but it is intriguing and
the book and the question is an excellent project for high school students with an interest in history.)
- H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956) was a journalist and author whose
biting criticism was legendary. He was one of the most
popular social critics of the 1920s and 1930s.
- Claims of conflict between religious doctrine and science, while still generating hot debate in certain communities, have been much less violent in the 20th century than in prior centuries. In 1600, the Inquisition burned people at the stake for, among other things, believing that the earth revolved around the sun. The great Galileo Galilei, a father of modern science, escaped the same fate only by publicly recanting his belief in the Copernican system. The Inquisition was gentle with him. In return for denying a good part of his life's work, Galileo was sentenced only to house arrest for the remainder of his life. For a perspective on claims of conflict between science and religion, see Learning Guide to "Contact". For more on Galileo, see Learning Guide to: "Galileo: On the Shoulders of Giants".
- DIVERGENT CURRENTS IN AMERICAN THOUGHT EXEMPLIFIED BY THE SCOPES
TRIAL IN THE WORDS OF THE PARTICIPANTS
The Scopes trial transfixed the country in 1925 and has
fascinated Americans ever since. The philosophical and
religious attitudes advocated by the participants
represent legitimate choices and opinions strongly held by
good and well-intentioned people. They include:
1) The right of the majority in any state to control what children are taught in the
schools vs. academic freedom for teachers:
2) Fundamentalist religion which views the Bible as a
source of knowledge about nature vs. religious beliefs which find
no conflict between scientific discovery and belief in God and the Bible:
- Bryan: "The question is, can a minority
in this State come in and compel a teacher to
teach that the Bible is not true and make the
parents of these children pay the expenses of the
teacher to tell their children what [the parents]
believe is false and dangerous. / And the parents
have a right to say that no teacher paid by their
money shall rob their children of faith in God and
send them back to their homes, skeptical,
infidels, or agnostics or atheists." Scopes Trial, Day
5, The World's Most Famous Court Trial, page
- The defense argued that: Of course the State may determine what
subjects shall be taught in the public schools, but if biology is to be
taught, it cannot be demanded that it be taught
and Darrow at Dayton page 48.
3) Reliance on tradition vs. willingness to accept the newest revelations of science:
- Bryan: "The contest
between evolution and Christianity is a duel to
the death... If evolution wins in Dayton
Christianity goes, not suddenly of course, but
gradually for the two cannot stand together.
..." New York Times, July 8, 1925.
- Dudley Field
Malone (the only professing Christian on the
Defense team): "I find no difficulty in holding
with devotion to Christianity and also to
evolution. Theology is concerned with the
aspiration of men and their faith in a future
life. Science is concerned with the process of
nature." Summer for the Gods, p. 138.
- Arthur Garfield Hays (arguing that opening prayers at the
trial should be given by "modernist" as well as
"fundamentalist" ministers): We [should] have an
opportunity to hear prayers by men who think that
God has shown His divinity in the wonders of
nature, in the book of nature, quite as much as in
the book of the revealed word." Trial, Day 3, The
World's Most Famous Court Trial, page 93.
Written Closing Argument:" ... [E]volution not only
offers no suggestions regarding a Creator, but
tends to put the creative act so far away as to cast
doubt upon creation itself. And, while it is
shaking faith in God as a beginning, it is also
creating doubt regarding a heaven at the end of
life..../ Its tendency, natural if not inevitable, is
to lead those who really accept it, first to
agnosticism and then to atheism. Evolutionists
attack the truth of the Bible, not openly at
first, but by using weasel words like 'poetical,'
'symbolical,' and 'allegorical' to suck the
meaning out of the inspired record of man's
creation." Bryan and Darrow at Dayton, pages 177 179.
- Dudley Field Malone: "We maintain and we shall prove that
Christianity is bound up with no scientific
theory, that it has survived two thousand years in
the face of all the discoveries of science and that
Christianity will continue to grow in respect and
influence if the people recognize that there is
no conflict between science and Christianity." Scopes Trial, Day 4.
4) The interest of a majority in any state in preventing the
public schools from being used to teach scientific
theories that contradict its religious beliefs vs.
separation of church and state:
- Bryan on the stand, responding to one of Darrow's question,
"[Question:]You have never in all your life made any attempt to find out about the
other peoples of the earth, how old their civilizations are -- how long
they had existed on the earth -- have you?" [Answer by Bryan:] "No, sir,
I have been so well satisfied with the Christian religion that I have spent no
time trying to find arguments against it." Scopes Trial Day 7; The World's Most
Famous Court Trial, page 293.
Field Malone (trying to persuade the court to
allow the Defense to submit expert testimony on
the truth of the theory of evolution and that it
did not conflict with Genesis) "... We have no
fears about the young people of America. If any
teacher teaches the boys or girls of today an
incredible theory, we need not worry about these
children of this generation paying much attention
to it. The Children of this generation are pretty
wise. ... / There is never a duel with the truth.
The truth always wins. The truth is no coward.
The truth does not need the law. The truth does
not need the forces of government. The truth does
not need Mr. Bryan. The truth is imperishable,
eternal and immortal and needs no human agency to
support it./ We are ready to tell the truth as we
understand it. And we do not fear all the truth
that they can present as facts. We are ready. We
feel we stand with progress. We feel we stand
with science. We feel we stand with intelligence.
We feel we stand with fundamental freedom in
America. We are not afraid. Where is the fear?
We defy it!" Trial, Day 5 The World's Most
Famous Court Trial, Pp 187 & 188. (John Scopes
relates that this was the best speech of the trial
and that even the fundamentalists in the audience
clapped and cheered. Bryan commented to Malone
afterwards: "Dudley, that was the greatest speech
I have ever heard." Scopes, Center of the Storm,
pp. 154 & 155.)
5) Belief that knowledge springs from the people vs. reliance on experts:
- Bryan: "In
Tennessee the Christians are in the majority, and
they voluntarily restrain themselves from teaching
the Bible in the public schools. Having thus
restrained themselves from teaching the Bible or
defending the Bible, attacking the Bible is
undermining the faith of the children by teaching
a hypothesis which the parents believe contrary to
the Bible story of man's creation, namely, that
man is a descendant of the lower forms of life."
Bryan and Darrow at Dayton, page 101.
- Darrow: "It is impossible, if you leave freedom in the
world, to mold the opinions of one man upon the
opinions of another -- only tyranny can do it ...
[T]here is nothing else -- since man -- I don't know whether I dare
say evolved -- still, this isn't a school -- since man was created out
the dust of the earth ... there is nothing else your Honor that has
caused the difference of opinion, of bitterness, of hatred, of war,
of cruelty, that religion has caused. With that, of
course, it has given consolation to millions. / But it
is one of those particular things that should
be left solely between the individual and his
Maker, or his God, or whatever takes expression
with him, and it is no one else's concern." Trial
Day 2 The World's Most Famous Court Trial, page
82. The United States Supreme Court in the case
of Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968) held that a
similar anti-evolution law, passed by the voters
of Arkansas in a referendum held in the wake of
the Scopes trial, was unconstitutional because it
tended to support the establishment of religion.
Clarence Darrow for the
Defense, page 453.
6) Creationism vs. the theory of evolution:
- Bryan: "And when it comes to Bible experts,
every member of the jury is as good an expert on the Bible as
any man they could bring. The one beauty of
the Word of God is, it does not take an expert to
understand it./ [The] Bible is not going to be
driven out of this court by experts who come
hundreds of miles to testify ...." Trial Day
5; The World's Most Famous Court Trial, pages 181 182.
- Bryan: "No specialists from outside are
required to inform the parents of Tennessee as to
what is harmful." New York Times, July 12, 1925,
- Bryan's Written Closing Argument: "What right has
a little irresponsible oligarchy of self-styled
'intellectuals' to demand control of the schools
of the United States ...?" Bryan and Darrow at Dayton pg. 173.
- Darrow to Bryan during
Darrow's examination of Bryan: "I am examining you
on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian
on earth believes." Bryan and Darrow at Dayton page 156.
And on another occasion
Darrow remarked to his co-counsel "Can it be
possible that this trial is taking place in the
Bryan and Darrow in Dayton, page 106.
7) Regionalism v. nationalism:
- Mr. Stewart (the chief
prosecutor): "I say scientific investigation is
nothing but a theory and will never be anything
but a theory. Show me some reasonable cause to
believe it is not. They cannot do it." Scopes Trial
Day 5; Bryan and Darrow at Dayton, page 89.
- Darrow: "The theory of evolution as a scientific
theory was only announced about seventy years ago,
and since that time it has been accepted by almost
every scientist in the world. It is true that how
evolution came about has always been a matter of
discussion and investigation by scientific men,
but none of them question the truth of the
The prosecution also tried to cast the debate in terms of a struggle between belief in God and agnosticism. (Bryan: "I am simply trying to protect the
Word of God against the greatest atheist or
agnostic in the United States. [Prolonged
applause] ... I want the world to know that
agnosticism is trying to force agnosticism on our
colleges and on our schools and the people of
Tennessee will not permit it to be done.
[Prolonged applause]." Bryan and Darrow at
Dayton, page 151.) The position of the
defense was that evolution did not conflict with
- McKenzie (one of the prosecutors): "We don't
need anybody from New York to come down here to
tell us what [the statute] means." Summer for the Gods p. 160.
- Darrow: "The Constitution does not permit the
legislature to put a Chinese wall around the
state." New York Times, July 12, 1925, page 1.
In describing the events of the actual Scopes trial to children,
be sure to tell them that the film departed from
the historical facts so that the writers could comment on
the problems of the Red Scares.
1. See Discussion Questions for Use With any Film that is a Work of Fiction.
2. In which court was Scopes tried, a court of law or the court of public opinion? Who won the Scopes trial?
Suggested Response: The case was tried in both a court of law and the court of public opinion. The prosecution won a guilty verdict in the court of law. Darrow and the defense won in the court of public opinion and even today, with a resurgence of disbelief in the Theory of Evolution among the public, there is no substantial resistance to teaching the Theory of Evolution in the schools. Creationists now ask school districts to require disclaimers of the scientific accuracy of evolution or the teaching of alternative, allegedly "scientific", concepts which they believe are more supportive of the biblical account. Recent court decisions have dealt defeats to this effort based on rulings that creationist theories have no scientific validity and are, in effect, an effort to introduce religious teachings in the schools. See Creationism and the Law from the National Center for Science Education. An additional winner in the Scopes trial was the city of Dayton which became famous as the location of the great debate.
The right of the majority in any state to control what children are taught in the
schools vs. academic freedom for teachers.
3. Should there be a difference between the type of control exerted by the state legislatures over what professors can teach in publicly supported colleges and universities as opposed to primary and secondary schools which all children must attend? Suggested Response: The tradition of academic freedom in universities and institutions of higher learning is ancient. An important role of institutions of higher learning is to foster the creation and development of new ideas. Free and unhampered inquiry is prerequisite to the creation and development of new ideas. Students at these schools are adults and the theory is that they can be trusted to withstand fallacious ideas. For these reasons, academic freedom is an important value in the college and university setting. The public schools, in which childen are being trained in the basic skills and values of society, are not involved in the creation and development of new ideas. Within certain limits, the legislatures can dictate the course of study in elementary and secondary schools. Public school children are very impressionable and there is no need for free and unhampered inquiry into new ideas in their schools.
However, even in the public schools, the control of the majority, as expressed through the legislature, is not unlimited. In the U.S., one of the limits is that the state cannot foster the doctrines of any religion or promote any religious belief. This doctrine is called the separation of church and state and it's enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution. It was made applicable to the states by the 14th Amendment.
4. In the United States and other constitutional democracies, what is the source of the limits on the rights of the majority, acting through their elected officials? Suggested Response: Consitutions set out limits on the rule of the majority. For example, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." This applies to the states by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Fundamentalist religion which views the Bible as a
source of knowledge about nature vs.
religious beliefs which find no conflict between scientific discoveries and
belief in God and the Bible
5. Are the biblical accounts of creation and of the miracles literally true? Suggested Response: This question is related to religious belief. Public school teachers probably shouldn't get into it. Parents should discuss this issue with their children in light of their own religious tradition.
6. Is the theory of evolution inconsistent with the biblical account of creation, or, does science merely show how the universe was created without reference to whether it was created by God or by chance or by any other agency? Suggested Response: This is a question related to religious belief. Public school teachers probably shouldn't get into it. Parents should discuss this issue with their children in light of their own religious tradition.
Reliance on tradition vs. willingness to accept the newest revelations of science
7. In making decisions, what is the proper role for expertise, what is the proper role for common sense, and what is the proper role for tradition? -- To advance the discussion of this question, teachers should give the class the following background.
(1) The answer to this question is complicated by the fact that the experts change their positions. Often we read in the newspaper about some new scientific study which shows that practices that doctors had recommended in the past are actually harmful. The change in expert scientific opinion can apply even to fundamental laws of the universe. Newton's "clockwork universe" held sway for hundreds of years until science's view of the laws of physics were substantially changed by Einstein's theory of relativity. Darwin's Theory of Evolution is one of the most thoroughly tested and confirmed scientific theories that has ever existed. The acid test for a scientific theory is whether or not it suggests hypotheses which can then be tested through experiment or observation. Scientists have verified hypotheses predicted by the Theory of Evolution thousands, perhaps millions, of times. However, all scientific theories are tentative in the sense that they all are subject to being refined or even overthrown by new observations or experiments. Look at what happened to the theories of Newton.
(2) On the other hand, scientists aren't talking about changing their view of nature to conform to myths or religious texts. Scientists are talking about changing and refining theories to take account of newly discovered facts or the results of new experiments. Nor are they talking about chucking the scientific method, one of the greatest inventions of mankind. The scientific method has yielded amazing results and ranks close to the development of language or the use of tools in its contributions to the quality of human life. Without science, we would not have discovered that diseases were caused by germs and viruses. Without science, we would still be using horses to get around. Without science, there would be no computers, CDs, DVDs, MRIs, CT scans, antibiotics, sky scrapers, or modern sanitation systems. Yet, for centuries, religious authorities fought basic scientific discoveries, such as the idea that the earth revolves around the sun. Galileo was required by the Inquisition of the Catholic Church to recant his scientific discoveries.
(3) People often hold themselves out as experts about questions in which there is no clear scientifically verified answer. Examples are: many questions of medicine; handwriting analysis; fingerprint identification; etc. Experts can often only give us the best educated guess of the people who have studied their field. Experts have, in the past, maintained some obviously incorrect positions. They told us the earth was flat and that witches can fly on broomsticks.
Now, ask the question again and see what the students say.
Suggested Response: There is no one correct answer. One point that the discussion should cover is that in evaluating an expert's opinion or advice, we should try to find out how much of it is based on scientific testing.
8. Is there an inevitable conflict between science and religion? Justify your position. Suggested Response: This is a question related to religious belief. Public school teachers probably shouldn't get into it, other than to help students with the three points set out in the preceding question which relate to an understanding of the scientific method and its contributions to society. Framing a complete answer to this question should be left for students to resolve in conversation with members of their families.
The interest of a majority in any state in preventing the
public schools from being used to teach scientific
theories that contradict its religious beliefs vs.
separation of church and state
9. Should the majority be able to use the public schools to transmit their religious values to their children or must the majority be prevented from doing this to preserve the separation of church and state? Suggested Response: The majority cannot use the public schools to transmit their religious beliefs. This is an unconstitutional promotion of religion by an agency of the state. Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 105. In that case, a statute very similar to the statute involved in the Scopes case was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
10. Should the state tell people what to believe? What about concepts such as honesty, drug education, patriotism, obedience to the rule of law, concern for others, and resolving disputes peacefully? Most agree that these concepts should be taught in public schools. Why can the state, through its teachers and schools, tell children what to believe in matters of civics and basic morality but not in matters of religion? Suggested Response: The basic precepts of morality are shared by all major religions. For example, the The Six Pillars of Character are shared by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. They are also adopted by non-religious ethical humnists. We haven't studied the matter but we also believe that they are not inconsistent with other major religions including Hinduism and Buddhism. For a democracy to work, its people must share certain ethical beliefs. In addition, schools can't function if people don't agree upon such things as honesty, responsibility, and tolerance. It is a proper function of the schools to teach these beliefs.
11. In the Scopes trial, the legislature, acting for the majority, wanted to prevent the teaching of a scientific doctrine that it felt was inimical to its religious beliefs. Does this violate the separation of Church and State? Suggested Response: Yes. Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 105. In that case, a statute very similar to the statute involved in the Scopes case was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Belief that knowledge in springs from the people vs. reliance on experts
See Question # 7 above.
Creationism vs. the theory of evolution
13. Does the theory of evolution contradict the biblical story of creation? Suggested Response: This is a question related to religious belief. Public school teachers probably shouldn't get into it. This question is for students to resolve in conversation with members of their families. See Question #7, above.
14. Is it true that once a person accepts that some stories in the Bible should not be taken literally, that there is then no justification for any story in the Bible being taken literally? Suggested Response: This is a question related to religious belief. Public school teachers probably shouldn't get into it. This question is for students to resolve in conversation with members of their families.
Regionalism vs. nationalism
15. Can one region of the country have a different interpretation of science than other regions? Suggested Response: No. Scientific discoveries are universal and apply everywhere.
16. Can one region of a country have a different interpretation of a basic constitutional provision than the rest of the country? What would happen if this was permitted? Suggested Response: No. The constitutions should be interpreted in the same manner in all parts of the country. Otherwise, there would be no rule of law.
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