The Scopes Trial

By Seth Stark

November 19, 2002

On Friday, July 10, 1925 the trial of a young high school teacher in Dayton, Tennessee began. John Thomas Scopes had been charged with violating the Butler Law; an act passed by the legislature of the state of Tennessee and signed into law by Gov. Peay less than three months earlier. The Butler Law made it "unlawful for any teacher in any of the universities, normals and all other public schools of the state, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the state, to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals" (Moran, 74). The Butler Law was the result of the influence of a group known as "Fundamentalists". The most recognizable figure in the fundamentalist movement was William Jennings Bryan. Bryan had been the Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party three times; he had served as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, and was the most famous elder in the Presbyterian Church (Wilson was no longer an elder) (North). Bryan, the Great Commoner, signed on to help prosecute Scopes. In response to Bryan's involvement in the case, Clarence Darrow, a famous lawyer from Chicago and an outspoken agnostic, volunteered his services (Moran, 26). These two lawyers set out to make this trial much more than Scopes v. Rhea County, Tennessee. They once and for all wanted to settle the question of Science and the Bible. There was only one problem: neither of them believed the Biblical account of creation.

William Jennings Bryan made his position on the issue of creation clear while being interviewed by Clarence Darrow on the seventh day of the trial's proceedings. Darrow asked, "Do you think the earth was made in six days?" Bryan responded, "Not six days of twenty-four hours" (Moran, 156). Darrow had earlier asked Bryan, "Do you claim that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?" Bryan replied, "I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there" (Moran, 144). Here was Bryan's contradiction. The Bible clearly states "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day" (Exodus 20:11, New King James Version). Bryan had admitted to believing the Bible "as it is given" yet he made exception with this point. Bryan did not believe the Biblical story of creation. He could not have taught biology in a Tennessee public school. Yet he still claimed to believe the Bible. This was not uncommon in the 1920s.

Bryan was a Presbyterian. The Presbyterian Church had long been a conservative force while other denominations in the United States allowed more liberal interpretations of the Bible. However, beginning as early as the 1860s, higher criticism of Scripture began seeping into the Presbyterian Church (North). Higher criticism can be defined as the "study of biblical writings to determine their literary history and the purpose and meaning of the authors" (Merriam-Webster). In other words, what was written thousands of years ago does not necessarily mean the same thing today. Moses may have written that God created all things in six days, but God may have only told Moses that so that Moses could understand it. God may have created the world in thousands of years and only used the words "six days" so that Moses could write it down in terms that ancient people could comprehend. In summary, the Bible should not be regarded as literally true, but as figurative language whose audience was an ancient civilization. With this view of the Bible, stories such as creation, the flood and Jesus' miracles can easily be dismissed as stories with good morals and not historical truths. Several leaders in the Presbyterian Church espoused these beliefs. Charles A. Briggs, a self avowed modernist, had completely denied Biblical creation (North). B. B. Warfield had written, "The Bible does not assign a brief span to human history; this is done only by a particular mode of interpreting the Biblical data, which is found on examination to rest on no solid basis" (Warfield, 9). A. A. Hodges agreed with Warfield (North). Briggs, Warfield and Hodges were not no-name pastors of backwoods congregations. They were national figures. Hodges was the President of Princeton Seminary. He and Warfield were seen as leaders of the conservative branch of the Presbyterian Church. Briggs was the leader of the liberal branch of the church (North). On both the right and the left, creation was being dismissed because it was incompatible with modern science.

It was not just the Presbyterian Church which had given up the historical truth of the Bible. Every mainstream denomination in the United States had. Darrow knew this and was prepared to have experts on the Bible give testimony that belief in the Bible is compatible with belief in evolution (Moran, 108). Though these expert witnesses were not allowed to take the stand, the defense had their testimony read into the transcripts (Ham). Pastors of all sorts of churches was as well as professors from prestigious Christian colleges and universities were prepared to testify that evolution and the Bible were compatible (Ham).

Though it was clear that a majority of Christians, or at least Christians with higher educations, now believed in some sort of evolution, this had not always been the case. Prior to Darwin's theories being published in 1859, all Christians accepted the biblical account of creation. Even in the 1870s, when higher criticism began surfacing in American churches (it had already taken over in Europe), many pastors were afraid to preach it because of the reactions of their congregations and the official stated beliefs of their denominations (North). However, as more pastors began to hold to a higher criticism of Biblical interpretation (and opponents did nothing to stop them), the tide slowly turned in their favor. By the 1900s, every mainstream denomination in America was controlled by higher critics (North).

In 1910, The Fundamentals, from which the fundamentalist movement derived its name, began being published (Moran, 215). This series of pamphlets reaffirmed that the Bible was historically true, that the miracles described in the Bibles had actually happened and that Jesus Christ had actually lived, died and been resurrected (North). Although creationism was not originally one of the tenants of fundamentalism, it was a natural extension of the movement. A belief in the historical truth of Scripture necessitated a belief in six days of divine creation. Bryan joined on the fundamentalist side of the evolution argument in 1922 when he wrote an article for the New York Times in which he called for "Christians to protect religion form its most insidious enemy": evolution (North).

In the 1920s, fundamentalism was at its peek. Prohibition was in and evolution was out. Fundamentalism was especially successful in the more conservative South (Norton, 426). It was so successful, in fact, that laws, such as the Butler law, were passed in a handful of Southern states preventing the teaching of evolution (Moran, 216). The trail at Dayton, therefore, was not a clash of the mighty academic elite and the weak fundamentalist movement. It was a battle between two super powers.

In the end, Scopes was found guilty of violating the Butler law (Moran, 50). It was clear to the jury that he had taught a theory of the origins of man which contradicted the Bible. On appeal, the case was thrown out on a technicality. The issue, however, was far from dead. Throughout the South, revise versions of high school text books which had little or no mention of evolution were sold to public schools (Moran, 52). More states passed antievolution laws (Moran, 216). On the other side, evolution fortified itself in the universities. The slow attrition of evolution against any publicly funded institution continued until, in 1987, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that creation had no place in a state funded school (Moran, 217). Today, the battle continues in both churches and schools. Mainstream denominations still espouse higher criticism and a literary, instead of historical, interpretation of the Bible, but this does not mean that the fundamentalist movement is dead. Instead, it has been reshaped and renamed. Evangelical Christians today are the guardians of Biblical inerrancy. Their numbers and influence continue to grow in all of the United States, not just the South. A battle was fought at Dayton in 1925 but the war between Christianity and evolution continues to rage today.

Works Cited

Ham, Ken. The Wrong Way Round! 1996.

Moran, Jeffrey P. The Scopes Trial. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002.

North, Gary. Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church.

Morton, Mary Beth, et. al. A People and a Nation. New York: Houghton Mifflin

Company, 2002.

Warfield, Benjamin B. "On the Antiquity of the Human Race." Princeton Theological

Review (Jan. 1911): 9.