July 10 marked the beginning of the Scopes Trial 100 years ago. It was one of the strangest events in the history of American religion and jurisprudence. For eight days, hundreds of celebrity lawyers, journalists, and spectators gathered in a rural Tennessee town to see if one man would be convicted of breaking the state’s new law against teaching Darwinian evolution.
Backed by the ACLU, substitute biology teacher John T. Scopes volunteered to test the Butler Act. That state law declared that teachers could not 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.”
Notably, the trial drew in prominent national figures, including the progressive thought leader and former U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, the renowned religious skeptic and journalist H.L. Mencken, and the agnostic defense lawyer Clarence Darrow.
Fundamentalist Protestants had argued that an understanding of Scripture was a societal necessity, lest Darwinism undermine the faith of school children and breed a competitive spirit of social Darwinism in their minds that could fester into hatred, skepticism, eugenicism, and contempt for the weak.
The third Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee, Thomas Frank Gailor (1898-1935), was one of many Tennessee clergy who condemned the Butler Act: “I consider such a restrictive legislation not only unfortunate but calamitous.” The Rev. Walter C. Whitaker of Knoxville, a priest with liberal views on the Bible, was on the list of defense witnesses, but he was not admitted as a witness.
The Legacy of Scopes
Part of the problem with Scopes is that it has been thoroughly mythologized. The modernist version of the story lives on through the classic film Inherit the Wind (1960), which distorted Dayton into a town of violent zealots who called for Scopes to be hanged. Conversely, the version of the story told by Dayton’s annual reenactment skews toward Bryan as a hero of Christianity.
Even the older debate about prayer in public schools is in some ways a mirror image of the pro-creation Scopes arguments, given that the creationists had argued that imposing Darwinism was a violation of educational neutrality that marginalized Christians, with non-Christians arguing that prayer was an imposition on them.
“The question about public education and difficult teaching is far from resolved,” says the Rev. Drew Bunting, priest in charge at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Chattanooga. Bunting and other priests spoke with TLC about lessons they have drawn from their ministry in East Tennessee.
Understand Fundamentalists
The underlying narrative of the trial, espoused by its proponents and critics alike, was adversarial. It was East Tennessee versus the world, religion versus science, modernity versus zealotry. Most of these narratives end up painting life in the South with a broad brush. Inherit the Wind paints a picture of Southerners as ignorant and violent. Mencken dismissed Christians in Dayton as “Homo boobiens.” History offers a broader portrayal. Local fundamentalist townsfolk were quite welcoming and gracious to their town’s visitors. The prosecution offered to pay Scopes’ fine.
The Rev. Claire Brown is rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Athens, Tennessee. Having grown up in northern Georgia and living most of her life in Tennessee, she’s engaged with the culture around her. Her parish is less than an hour from Dayton and she ministers to parishioners who drive to St. Paul’s because Dayton lacks an active Episcopal church.
Her parish is “very eclectic,” she says, but appeals to the community by being theologically open and diverse, with a focus on local charity, community outreach, and inclusion. She says evolution is still considered transgressive in her community.
“One of our families has a teenager who was attending a private Christian academy in Rhea County, and she was a graduating senior and could invite her pastor to come and speak,” Brown says. “I was the only female and mainline pastor invited. And a very precious, respectful 15-year-old boy asked me for my time so he could sit me down with his well-worn Bible and point out all the passages that let me know my full-time vocation is against the will of God.
“And he was doing this as an apologetic stance, where you have to be ready to defend your version of the faith against those who would corrupt it. He was trying to be so kind, and I recognized that he felt he was doing what God was calling him to do in that moment and watching out for me. It’s a great testimony to the way that this legacy of convincing people of God’s truth is still alive and well, and masks some other interesting social questions. It’s an entrenched social fabric that goes beyond the piety of individuals or churches.”
Check Your Stereotypes
The cultural fabric of fundamentalism in East Tennessee is deep and abiding, but it isn’t the full story. Both Brown and Bunting say they see firsthand the ways that American culture judges the South to the detriment of the most vulnerable.
“One of the things I see in rural Appalachia is that it’s considered a colony of the rest of the United States,” Brown says. “It is one of the last places that good progressive people are allowed to make fun of. It is deeply misunderstood through depictions of being homogeneous. These narratives don’t serve our communities. People talk about us without us. [Tennessee] isn’t a monoculture. The idea that there is just one version of us silences the diversity that is present and does more harm than good to marginalized populations in rural communities.”
Bunting has lived much of his life in the South and observed many of the ways that Southerners engage with the culture around them. This is true for outsiders, who often have to earn their voice in a rural culture in which they’re outnumbered 100-to-1, but equally for those who are a part of the wider South.
“It’s so frequently portrayed or distilled down into one large swamp of ignorance,” Bunting says. “But even in environments that are like that, you’re not dealing with morons. Those people are very smart. Suspicion around somebody who sounds different can be very powerful, and that is often the way Southerners are depicted, with a strong accent. They’re aware they’re looked down upon because of the way they speak.”
The South contains multitudes. As an example, one need only look to the nearby University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, just an hour west of Dayton, a large Episcopal school mostly composed of academics who skew to the Darrow side of the Scopes debate. It may represent a more aristocratic and moneyed version of the South, but it is still part of the South.
Avoid Theological Silos
Both now and then, the Episcopal Church has stood outside the popular orthodoxies of Southern life. Episcopal priests stood athwart the Butler Act and now largely stand as cultural outliers in the rural South, ministering to an eclectic group of outsiders who don’t fit into the church culture around them.
“As an Episcopalian, I have a view of the creation story that I hold as part of a sacred and divine, but also contextual and literary, understanding of what Genesis is about that is not at odds with scientific understandings of biological development,” Brown says. “That can be the outlier in rural East Tennessee. The landscape is predominantly conservative evangelical Christians.”
Most modern Episcopalians have no issue with evolution. As Bunting points out, teaching evolution in schools and churches has been effectively solved from the perspective of the Episcopal Church. He doesn’t believe any of his parishioners would have been on the creationist side 100 years ago.
“Scopes hasn’t come up in my life with any kind of regularity, with one exception in seminary,” he says. “I was just getting started when a fellow student from another area of the country made a joke about the Scopes Trial when he found out I was from South Carolina. It didn’t come up again until a few months ago, when I drove through Dayton and I realized where I was, and looked for the historical marker to take a picture with it.”
Still, he interacts with the culture around him, in which it’s common for others to send him Answers in Genesis articles if he disagrees with them. This dialogue is important, lest the Episcopal Church fall out of communication with the surrounding culture and lose its voice.
Division and Civility
As historian Edward J. Larson writes in Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, the adversarial style of American justice means that both sides walked away more resentful than when they walked into the courtroom. Scopes remains to this day a forecast of future strife because of our inability to resolve issues.
“As a diverse people, Americans have learned to seek the middle ground whenever possible,” Larson writes. “As a species, however, human beings instinctively respond to stirring oratory. Darrow and Bryan had mastered that craft and used it in Dayton to enlist their legions. They tapped into a cultural divide that deeply troubles American society.”
As strange as it may seem, though, the Scopes Trial may also be an effective model about how a democratic society can work through contentious issues.
Tom Davis is vice president of Rhea Heritage Preservation Foundation, and has assisted with Dayton’s festival to celebrate the trial’s 100th anniversary. Between July 11-19, the Scopes 100 festival will play host to history tours, lectures, and live trial reenactments.
Davis argues that the trial’s absurdity often overshadows the fact that it was an altogether more civil affair than the controversies we face today.
“If you look at the headlines today, look how many are related to parents and schools,” he says. “The legislature said you couldn’t teach evolution, but they argued it’s what their constituents wanted to do. One hundred years later, we’re fighting the same battle, in a sense.
“But in 1925, these folks got together and fought with everything they had—calling names and making accusations—in the courtroom, but at 4 p.m., when the judge said go home, they went home for the day, and went out to eat and socialize. In 1925, these folks found 4 p.m., and now we can’t find 4 p.m. As recently as Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill, they enjoyed sitting down for a beer at the end of the day. Now look where we are today.”
Tyler Hummel is a freelance writer based in Elkhorn, Wisconsin.