Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective by Lawrence Kaplan Read Free Book Online

fundamentalists also battled strong drink, sexy movies, and birth control, it was the trial of John Thomas Scopes for teaching evolution that servedand continues to serveas the preeminent symbol of their impact on American life. They had never liked Dar-

 

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win's theory, but the danger seemed especially great in the 1920s. With growing high school enrollments, many more students learned about evolution, and the much-publicized "revolution in morals" convinced fundamentalists that talk of "monkey men" had indeed produced ''monkey morals." Moreover, wartime bans on the German language had suggested a strategy; the possibility of barring evolution from public schools. The World Christian Fundamentals Association adopted this issue as a central concern and President William Bell Riley convinced William Jennings Bryan to lead the attack. In February 1922, the New York Times outlined Bryan's standard fundamentalist case against evolution. According to Bryan, evolutionary theory was not science but "Darwin's guess." It threatened religious faith by destroying belief in Jesus' virgin birth and other miracles. Finally, Bryan circumspectly suggested that Darwinism undermined proper personal morality.
Fundamentalists campaigned to bar the teaching of evolution from the public schools in at least twenty states. Straton led the unsuccessful effort in New York. But three states did ban the subject and others yielded to pressure by modifying their textbook selections. During 1925 the legislation enacted in Tennessee was challenged by John Scopes and his theologically liberal and civil libertarian allies. The defense led by Clarence Darrow wanted eminent scientists and leading liberal theologians to testify that evolution was both scientifically sound and compatible with sensible religion. When the trial judge refused to allow this testimony, Darrow called William Jennings Bryan, one of the prosecutors, to testify as an expert on the Bible. During perhaps the most famous cross-examination in American legal history, Darrow forced Bryan to admit that Scripture was often problematical and subject to divergent interpretations. A broken Bryan died within the week.
Although the Scopes trial occurred in Dayton, Tennessee, diverse New Yorkers tried to play, and some did play, major roles. The owner of a Coney Island zoo offered his prize monkey as an associate counsel for the prosecution. The offer was not accepted, but two New Yorkers, Arthur Garfield Hays of the American Civil Liberties Union and Dudley Field Malone, an iconoclastic cultural Catholic, joined Clarence Darrow in defending Scopes. Henry Fairfield Osborn of the

 

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Museum of Natural History was recruited by the defense to certify Darwinism's scientific validity.
The Scopes trial is a flawed symbol of fundamentalism's impact partly because the issues involved are so often parodied. For example, the most accessible version of the trial, the slightly fictionalized account in Inherit the Wind, presents a simple conflict between science and bigotry. Yet much of the science. Scopes taught was not only dubious but dangerous. The textbook he used affirmed that some products of evolution, notably Anglo-Saxons, were superior to others, notably blacks and Asians. The prospective defense witness Henry Fairfield Osborn agreed, having written the foreword to Madison Grant's pernicious nativist tract, The Passing of the Great Race . Moreover, Bryan pressed two points usually lost in recollections of the trial. If Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas had moved young men to murder, as Darrow had argued in his defense of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, how could he then deny that Darwin's ideas could corrupt adolescents? And did not the citizens of Tennessee have the right to decide what their children learned in public schools?
There are convincing liberal and constitutional answers to these questions. Separation of church and state is a worthy though elusive goal and children should have