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Clarence Darrow

The Scopes Trial: Race, Religion, and the Culture Wars

September 28, 2025
by Peter Feinman

Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today, it is the public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. (Clarence Darrow, quoted in Wineapple, 248)

 

This year is the centennial of the famous Monkey Trial, the trial of high-school biology teacher John Scopes for the teaching of evolution contrary to Tennessee state law. Far from being a minor event in a small town in Dayton, Tennessee, the trial featured two national-renowned heavy-weights. For the prosecution, William Jennings Bryan, thrice Democratic nominee for President and former Secretary of State under President Wilson led the way despite his lack of trial experience. For the defense, Clarence Darrow, famed attorney from a slew of cases that could be deemed progressive, led the attack. And the hearings were broadcast live. A plethora of national newspapers covered the story. For the moment, sleepy Dayton was the center of national attention as the orchestrators of the staged event had intended.

Recently, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial that Riveted a Nation by Brenda Wineapple, (New York: Random House, 2024) focused on this story. Her book ranges far beyond the trial itself. By placing the trial in its historical context, Wineapple shows whether by coincidence or design, how relevant the trial one-hundred years ago is to events today.  She lauds how Bryan intuits with stunning accuracy the frustration, anger, and anxiety over wide swaths of the American people due to the changes which were occurring in their country (Wineapple xvi). The lawyers defending Scopes were portrayed as invading vultures (from the North and New York City no less) who had come to Dayton to feast on the people and their customs (Wineapple xxiii). It was the religion of the South which was fighting to maintain its life against this northern onslaught.

For the new Fundamentalists, Bryan was one of them (“Shall the Fundamentalists Win?,” Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Christian Century 39 1922:713-717). The Bible was the literal and infallible word of God. The Bible was at the center of an emotional crusade that Bryan felt was indispensable during this postwar period (Wineapple 112). As a defense lawyer wrote:

“If teachers are to be allowed to undermine the Bible, why object to them undermining American history?”

“I think you are right in insisting that people who pay taxes have a right to decide what will be taught as history (quoted in Wineappple 125).”

Edward Larson addresses the educational challenge in his book Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 1997). According to Larson, Darwinism did not become a fighting matter for many fundamentalists until t began to influence their children’s education in the twenties. During the 19th century relatively few American teenagers attended high school and nearly none did so in the rural South (Larson 23-24). In an address to the West Virginia legislature in 1923, Bryan said:

“Teachers in public schools must teach what the taxpayers desire taught’ (quoted in Larson 44).

On day one of the trial, Bryan opined about the educated, elite lawyers facing him:

“[they are] a little oligarchy of intellectuals, attempting to force their views upon people through the public schools” (Wineapple 231).

Larsen characterizes the ACLU as an elitist organization dominated by liberal, educated New Yorkers (65). Today, the Jewish component of the ACLU might gain more coverage.

The comment of the judge is most revealing of the cultural dynamic at work.

“I want you gentlemen from New York or any other foreign state to always remember you are our guests (Wineapple 243)”.

The prosecution joins in the emphasis on foreign gentlemen, foreigners who’d invaded Tennessee (Wineapple 262).”

FOREIGN state. GUESTS. INVADERS. We are two countries still struggling how to live together as one and the 250th anniversary of our birth will not be a healing moment. It will only highlight that the Confederacy and the Union still are at war.

Naturally there was a racial component to this trial. If the origin of human beings could be traced to monkeys in Africa and not the garden of Eden paradise, then what did that mean for the concept of Nordic superiority? One should keep in mind that the time prior to the Monkey Trial had been a one of great migration and immigration. The country was being overwhelmed with dark swarthy people from southern and eastern Europe. Italians and Jews were not yet considered to be “white” in the color-coded hierarchy that prevailed. Comparing Black people to monkeys and other animals was one of the many ways white people dehumanized Africans and rationalized slavery (Wineapple 293).

Wineapple’s book highlights that there is more to the Scopes Trial than simply religion and science. As Matthew Stewart writes in his book review about Bryan (NYT August 11, 2024 online),

…the Great Commoner, an aging lion determined to rescue real Americans from an insidious “oligarchy of the professors,” jazz music, socialists and German philosophy.

He would champion:

…the little guy, the small farmer, the small business-owner, the craftsman and all the people left behind in the mad dash for cash known as the Gilded Age—as long as they were white.

As John Kaag writes in his review:

Divine Creation for Christians like Bryan, held within it the promise that human life amounted to something worthwhile (The Atlantic August 29, 2024).

The showdown at high noon that almost seems scripted for the movie it would become, includes this frequently quoted clash of ideas.

Bryan: The purpose is to cast ridicule on everybody who believes in the Bible.

Darrow: No, we have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States, and you know it.

In March 2025, the University of Pennsylvania held a two day conference on “The Scopes Trial at 100: Secularism, Race and Education” organized by Donavan Schaefer, Religious Studies.  Perhaps one day the proceedings will be published.

On July 13, 2025, timed with the centennial of the beginning of the trial on July 10, the Sunday edition of USA TODAY NETWORK, printed a 12-page supplement on the “Trial of the Century.” It includes sections on the movie Inherit the Wind and biblical-related issues in the schools today. Oklahoma leads the way today in fulfilling the vision of Bryan.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past (William Faulkner). The Scopes Trial lives on. It is a story that can be retold as it was in the 1950s with the play Inherit the Wind about the McCarthy era later turned into a movie. Many of the issues raised in the trial or the context of the trial remain the ones America fights over today in the culture wars. At the moment the Confederacy is in ascendancy and the scrubbing of the historical record at the Smithsonian, the National Park, and return of Robert E. Lee to West Point highlight that the Lost Cause is not so lost anymore. The battle certainly will continue with the 250th.

Trump versus Lincoln: The Battle Is Engaged

August 3, 2023
by Peter Feinman
The Mount Rushmore President and the Mount Rushmore Wannabee (https://ctmirror.org)

Finally. Finally. Finally. After years of talk about the civil war in the United States, it has now officially arrived. The events about to unfold in the trials of Trump and the 2024 election will determine what kind of America will exist when we celebrate the 250th birthday of the country on July 4, 2026.

Right now there is no way to know which side will prevail in the war. The details of what it means to “win” in this remain also will be a point of contention. Given how often pundits use the term “unprecedented” for the actions of or related to Donald Trump, one may reasonably anticipate the same term will apply to the outcome of the war. But make no mistake about it, we are engaged in a conflict to determine if the United States can long endure of if we have reached our expiration date.

WHERE’S THE MILITARY?

Where is the military in this war? When I first started writing about political action thrillers on January 3, 2021, I had the military in mind. Generally, such thrillers involved the military in some way. Coups or attempted coups automatically bring to mind the military. Think of the current events in Niger or Sudan as examples.

The attempted coup here did consider bringing in the military. One way was the long-known proposal to seize the voting machines in areas (meaning Democratic cities in battleground ground states). That initiative never went anywhere in practice. But the very fact that it could be reasonably considered by the Commander in Chief demonstrates how seriously this unconstitutional action was taken.

The second way is more recently exposed. This would be the application of the Insurrection Act whereby the President of the United States would be authorized to deploy military forces against Americans, specifically Americans who would rioted against the seizure of power by the Loser Incumbent. Again it never happened. And again, people very very close to the Commander in Chief were casually recommending it as a course of action to be taken.

One notices that both recommendations were coming from civilians. Contrary to the traditional political action thriller, the real military was nowhere to be seen in such deliberations. The loyalty of the military was to the Constitution and not to a coup plotter. Presumably the same would be true in 2024 should a similar circumstance would arise which is unlikely given the current President.

WHERE’S THE WAR ROOM?

One of the fixtures of the attempted insurrection was the infamous war room. How many times have you seen the clip of Bannon admonishing us to strap in because the next day is going to be like nothing anyone expected. We need to keep in mind that the original plan was for the President of the United States to crash the Capitol meeting with his possibly armed followers. It was only because the Secret Service declined to draw him there that the intrusion did not occur. Remember the President grabbing the steering wheel and agent in the attempt to make this drive.

The war room planning for this event included among others Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Mark Meadows by phone, and possibly some Congressmen. So far, no of them appear to have been included in the indictment.

My recommendation, which counts for nothing has been that the indictments be divided into parts:

Interference with the state legislators
The fake electors
January 6.

The indictment so far covers the first two but not the third. We know that the unnamed co-defendants will be indicted at some future date. It is still possible that the sedition indictment is an ace up the sleeve waiting for the dust to settle on the existing indictments before being revealed.

THE LAWYER COUP

The attempted coup was perpetuated by lawyers of all people. It was not to occur due to tanks rolling the streets but to supposedly legal actions through the courts and legislatures. At this point we know that all the legal machinations failed. Instead the lawyers who participated in such court proceedings look like legal fools.

Some lawyers decided to take it to next level. In these instances they sought to influence the legislatures in battleground states with direct appearances that crossed the line on what is legal. They sought to weaponize the Department of Justice in clearly illegal ways to intimidate the battleground state legislatures to do what needed to be done to reverse the vote in their states. These efforts failed and these people are now co-defendants. That means they will be charged in the future once the main case against the Boss is underway.

The lawyer coup as opposed to a military coup does show it a strange way that we are a nation of law. Think back to the Brooks Brother brigade in the 2000 presidential election. Now we have lawyers who are the prime actors in the coup whereas once upon a time priests may have been the ones involved in the battle for power at the capitol.

The presence of lawyers at the center of the attempted coup (plus one political consultant) attests the place of lawyers in American culture. Think of the Devil and Daniel Webster where an individual is more than a match against Satan versus the more traditional match between priest and Satan in the The Exorcist. Clarence Darrow in history and fiction in Inherit the Wind looms large in American culture as does Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mocking Bird. Of course these are all lawyers for the defense like Perry Mason and Ben Matlock, not lawyers who sought to perpetrate a crime. Even the Dream Team lawyers who helped O.J. get away with murder did not actually participate in the murder itself.

In this case the lawyers were the prime movers in the assault on America. They had to be restrained by Team Normal in some very contentious meetings. Still the presence of these lawyers at the pinnacle of extra-judicial power telling the moron child what he wanted to hear shows how perilously close we came to there being a successful coup.

WHERE’S LINCOLN?

When the indictments were first announced, I saw and heard Chris Hayes, MSNBC, passionately speak out on behalf of Lincoln. He recited parts of the Gettysburg Address, one of the most sacred texts in American history. He reminded us today that Lincoln knew of the fragility of the American experiment, of how the current generation in his time was being tested to determine if it could long endure just as we are now being tested. In so doing, Hayes raised the stakes (or rather recognized that they had been raised) to the level of an existential threat to the continued existence of the United States.

While Hayes was right in what he said, what he omitted also is important. Hayes was acting if all Americans recognized and accepted the validity of the message Lincoln delivered at Gettysburg. Even in his own time, Lincoln did not represent the views of all Americans. Even in his own time, Lincoln did not represent the view of all northerners. To this very day Lincoln is not a hero in the Confederacy. The Lincoln Memorial is a union memorial where Union people hold great events. Mount Rushmore Lincoln is in the north, Stonewall Jackson is in the Confederacy.

What Hayes omitted was something else Lincoln said about a house divided not being able to stand. We are that house divided. True the multiple trials may cumulatively undermine the passion to put one’s life on the line for Trump, but it does not change the fact that we are a divided country.

WHO LOST GEORGIA?

All the fuss over the votes the Loser implored the Georgia state officials to find obscures the truth of the voting in the state. Republican candidates did win sufficient votes in the down-ballot elections. What happen was over 30,000 people voted for Republican candidates except for the one at the top. These people may be prepared to do the same again in 2024 provided the down-ballot candidates are not also stolen election denying MAGAs. The same polls that show the size of the MAGA base in the Republican Party also show the number of Never Trumpers and pursuables in the Party.

Here are some questions to ask Republicans who are open to moving on.

If Trump is such a fighter, how come he never takes the stand to defend himself?
If the Department of Justice has been weaponized, how come all the people testifying against him are Republicans?
Who would testify on his behalf? Jim Jordan? Scott Perry? Roger Stone? Steve Bannon?

If the civil war is to end peacefully in 2024, it is essential that these Republicans make their voice heard. Back in 1861, people had plenty of time to prepare for what they would if Lincoln became president. Similarly, in 2025, the same would be true if Biden won again.

When the Confederate states seceded upon Lincoln’s inauguration, not every adult in the state had the right to vote. Any state, even Alabama, which rejects a Biden victory if he should win, will discovered a strong Union minority that does accept the result and wants to remain part of the United States. All the bluster “not my President” and secede may come to naught not simply because of the number of Democrats who do not want to secede, but because of the Republicans in the Confederacy for whom secession is a line too far to cross.