He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind;
And the foolish shall be servant to the wise of heart.
—Proverbs 11:29
One hundred years ago, on July 21, 1925, high school teacher John Thomas Scopes was found guilty of violating Tennessee’s controversial Butler Act. The act, which was named after State Representative John Washington Butler, prohibited the teaching of human evolution in public schools in Tennessee.
The trial sent shock waves across the nation, even though Scopes’ conviction was overturned on a technicality.
What exactly had Scopes done to incur the wrath of the people of his town? He taught his classroom full of young children Darwin’s theory of evolution, which taught that humans had evolved gradually from single-cell organisms, rather than being created in a single day by God.
The clash between Fundamentalists and Modernists
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, theological modernism arose, with its adherents touting the validity of scientific advancements. Christian fundamentalism grew in response, emphasizing a literal (or literalist) interpretation of Scripture and a belief in core doctrines, including the inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth of Jesus, and the reality of miracles.
The Scopes trial was intended to address this controversy. It was deliberately staged to pit modernists, who believed that evolution could be consistent with religion, against the fundamentalists who argued that the word of God, as presented in the Bible, took precedence over human understanding of science.
In 1925, prominent attorney William Jennings Bryan wrote a letter to Tennessee’s governor, thanking him for signing the state’s anti-evolution law. “The Christian parents of the state,” Bryan wrote, “…owe you debt of gratitude for saving their children from the poisonous influence of an unproven hypothesis.”
In response, the American Civil Liberties Union stepped up, offering to defend anyone who violated the Butler Act.
Teacher John Scopes was not sure whether he had ever openly taught his students about evolution, but he was a willing partner in the case against Butler. Scopes deliberately incriminated himself, becoming a willing defendant in the case. His trial was the first to be broadcast live on national radio.
Retelling the story
The Scopes Monkey Trial, as it was called, continued to draw interest throughout America. In 1955, playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee penned a stage play, titled Inherit the Wind, to tell the story. The title was drawn from the Book of Proverbs, which says that those who cause a problem within their own families would “inherit the wind”–presumably, instead of a more substantial inheritance.
An important note: the play used the trial as a way of discussing the importance of freedom of thought and expression. The playwright Lawrence apparently said, “We used the teaching of evolution as a parable, a metaphor for any kind of mind control … It’s not about science versus religion. It’s about the right to think.”
Following the success of Lawrence and Lee’s stage play, two movies were produced to present the story on the silver screen. A 1960 version of Inherit the Wind starred Dick York as Bertram Cates (the fictional version of teacher John Scopes), and Spencer Tracy as Harry Drummond (who was based on real-life attorney Clarence Darrow). Frederic March played attorney Matthew Harrison Brady (based on counsel for the prosecution William Jennings Bryan), and Gene Kelly played E.K. Hornbeck, a reporter for the fictional Baltimore Sun.
Almost forty years later, in 1999, Inherit the Wind was again released, this time as a made-for-TV drama. For that television release, the role of Bertram Cates was played by Tom Everett Scott; Henry Drummond was played by Jack Lemmon; George C. Scott was Matthew Harrison Brady; and Beau Bridges was the reporter E.K. Hornbeck.
Both the 1960 and 1999 versions of Inherit the Wind are available for viewing on Amazon Prime. One more version, a 1988 television movie, is no longer available for viewing.
The cinematic evolution of some details
Both the 1960 and the 1999 movies were based on the Scopes trial, which dominated the headlines in the 1920s. But while the story was essentially fact-based, the films changed the names of the prominent characters.
Also changed were some of the details, sometimes to simplify the story. The actual Scopes trial occurred in Dayton, Tennessee, but the stage version and later movie versions took place in the fictional town of Hillsboro, located in the American South (although no specific state is named).
And William Jennings Bryan, the conservative Presbyterian attorney representing John Scopes, actually died five days after the trial ended. But in the film version, he (or rather, his stand-in Matthew Harrison Brady) died in the courtroom after the sentence was read.
The playwrights included an explanatory note at the front of their theater program, explaining that Inherit the Wind was not intended to be a historical account.
A hundred years later
While many Christian denominations accepted the scientific theory of evolution, as explained in Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of the Species, Butler and other fundamentalists objected, believing that the Bible was inerrant. For Butler, the literal creation narrative in the Book of Genesis, claiming that God created the universe in just six days, was the only acceptable view of man’s origin.
It was Scopes’ presentation of the theory of evolution that landed him in the courtroom in 1925 and brought the story to stage and screen years later.
Both film versions of the Scopes trial artfully revealed the passions that existed on both sides of the issue. It is an argument that still exists and resonates in many corners of our society. The late Peter Berger, a few years ago, summarized it by stating he thought that what the event “did was to fortify a secularist worldview in the American intelligentsia, with a concomitant perception of Evangelicals as backwoods illiterates. The intellectual decline of Evangelicals has stopped. The secularist bias of intellectuals has not.”
A century later, the Scopes trial marks a line that has continued to grow, even as the debates about creation, evolution, Christianity, and science seem to devolve in the public square.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
The intellectual decline of Evangelicals has stopped? No, not at all. The “Young Earth” crowd still has traction in the Evangelical world. Biblical Fundamentalists still are around, although they try to disguise it. There is still a lot of nonsense among Evangelicals.
I know Catholic “young Earth ” believers.
St. Augustine harshly criticized those who insisted that the Genesis creation accounts be taken literally.
In 1909 the Pontifical Biblical Commission answered the following question in the affirmative:
“In the designation and distinction of the six days mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis may the word Yom (day) be taken either in the literal sense for the Whether in the naming and distinction of the six days in the first chapter of Genesis, it is possible for the word yôm (day) to be taken, either in its proper sense as a natural day, or in its improper sense as a certain space of time, and whether it be permitted to debate a question of this sort freely among exegetes?”
Answer: In the affirmative.
Catholics have never been bound to take the creation accounts of Genesis literally.
Oops. That should be:
“In the designation and distinction of the six days mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis may the word Yom (day) be taken either in the literal sense for the natural day or in an applied sense for a certain space of time, and may this question be the subject of free discussion among exegetes?”
In support of your fine comment, harry, we have a meaning for the word “day” that is both specific and general. We can say for example, in the general sense, “In my day, things were different than they are nowadays.”
God bless, harry, and, um, have a great day.
Context determines meaning when the same word has multiple meanings in Hebrew. The context of Genesis 1 clearly indicates a 24 hour period. Augustine’s interpretation is rooted in neoplatonic thought. Greek philosophy is not an appropriate biblical hermeneutic.
As I understand the teaching of Catholicism, there are two sources of revelation that are necessary to teach us about God: supernatural revelation, including the Bible and the traditions handed down by the Twelve Apostles, and natural revelation, as seen in the creation of the world all around us.
These supernatural and the natural revelations are always completely compatible and even complementary. They work together to help us to know God better. Thus it is that there is never a contradiction between faith and reason, properly understood, nor between scripture and science.
***
In other words, truth is truth, whether it is presented by supernatural revelation or natural revelation, or a combination of both — and another way of thinking about truth is that it is reality. To live outside of reality is both insane and unsafe.
So, for example, we can know that abortion is wrong both because of supernatural revelation and natural revelation. According to science and logic, a baby is a human at conception; DNA can also stand for Do Not Abort. According to the faith revealed to us by Jesus, all humans are equal in worth in the eyes of God, and so all of us are deserving of unalienable, God-given rights such as life and liberty and dignity.
We know that abortion is wrong in the same way we know that slavery is wrong. We can’t say that there is a legitimate choice for abortion or slavery. We can’t say we are personally opposed to abortion and slavery, but that it’s okay for others to practice these offenses. We defend every human life without exception because of one simple rule that can be known by all people of good will: Love thy neighbor.
Although we can know a lot of the truths of this life by natural revelation, we need supernatural revelation as a guarantee that we will always get things right. Our passions often get in the way of our reason; our sinfulness often skews our science. The stakes for human happiness — in this life and the next — are too high to allow for any mistakes of human folly.
Due to the gravity of Original Sin, we must aim the arrow of reason and righteousness higher than the target in order to hit the mark. We must be supernatural in order to merely be natural.
Without the God of love, we lose the point of the discussion and forget the moral of the story. We lose our purpose and our romance. We lose everything that makes life worth living.
***
Finally, we need the Catholic Church to give us the fullest expression of Christianity.
As we have seen in America, the Bible can be interpreted seemingly an infinite number of ways, until it is actually used against itself, and becomes not only meaningless but dangerous.
As we have also seen in America, science can be twisted almost beyond recognition, until it is actually used against itself, and becomes not only meaningless but dangerous.
A century after the Scopes Trial, a recent case of the Supreme Court related to another law in Tennessee, has allowed for the banning of so-called sex changes for children by hormonal mutation and surgical mutilation.
We know that transgenderism for anyone of any age is an absurdity and an abomination by both the faith of supernatural revelation and the science of natural revelation.
However, there are still states that permit and actually promote so-called sex changes. as we see more and more, day by day by day, without Catholicism we are losing both our religion and reason in America. Due to a misguided compassion based on lies against God and man, we are seriously harming the people we claim to be helping.
Our only hope for preserving the best of America’s past, as well as reaching the fullness of its potential, is in a better understanding and undertaking of Catholicism. Ultimately, that’s a closer relationship with Jesus.
P.S. Please excuse the length, which happened in a spurt of spontaneity. Thanks for any consideration. Sincerely, Stephen Fischer of The Catholic Difference, as available on Facebook.