The History of Presbyterianism in the United States

The History of Presbyterianism in the United States Part 3: A Determined Unbelief B – Evolution as Theater Andrew Frye, Worldview Academy and the Rev. David G. Barker

Master Timeline United States Europe • 1620 – Mayflower lands • 1730s-1743 – 1st Great Awakening • 1776-1783 – American Rev. • 1790-1840 – 2nd Great Awakening • 1830 – Book of Mormon • 1850-1900 – 3rd Great Awakening • 1861-1865 – American Civil War • 1870 – Scottish Common Sense • 1889 – Moody Bible Institute • 1891 – Briggs’ address • 1909 – Scofield Reference Bible • 1910 – Pres. G.A.: 5 Fundamentals • 1914-1919 – World War I • 1922 – “Shall Fund.s Win?” • 1923 – The Auburn Affirmation • 1925 – The Scopes Trial • 1929 – Westminster Theo. Seminary • 1936 – Orthodox Presbyterian Ch. • 1936 – John Mackay, Princeton Sem. • 1643 – Westminster Confession of Faith • 1650-1800 – Age of European Enlightenment & of Scottish Common Sense Philosophy • 1770s-1900 – Rise of German Higher Criticism • 1789-1799 – French Revolution • 1827 – Plymouth Brethren begin meeting • 1833 – Slavery Abolition Act of England • 1859 - Charles Darwin – Origin of Species • 1862-77 – Darby travels to the United States United States (cont.) 1937 – Death of J. Gresham Machen - Bible Presbyterian Ch. (McIntyre) 1966 – RTS, Jackson, MI 1967 – Confession of ‘67, Book of Confessions 1973 – PCA 1983 – Union of UPCUSA & PCUS

Dayton, Tennessee, 1925 “The Scopes trial is surrounded by misconceptions, and their exposure provides as good a way as any for recounting the basic story. In the heroic version, John Scopes was persecuted, Darrow rose to Scope's defense and smote the antediluvian Bryan, and the antievolution movement then dwindled or ground to at least a temporary halt. All three parts of this story are false.” Harvard Prof. Stephen Jay Gould [leading evolution apologist, d.2002]

The Occasioning Incident: Hunter’s Civic Biology • Published in 1914, it had been adopted by the state of Tennessee as the official text book for all public high schools.

The Occasioning Incident: Hunter’s Civic Biology Evolution of Man – “Undoubtedly there once lived upon the earth races of men who were much lower in their mental organization than the present inhabitants. If we follow the early history of man upon the earth, we find that at first he must have been little better than one of the lower animals. He was a nomad, wandering from place to place, feeding upon whatever living things he could kill with his hands. Gradually he must have learned to use weapons, and thus kill his prey, first using rough stone implements for this purpose. As man became more civilized, implements of bronze and of iron were used. About this time the subjugation and domestication of animals began to take place. Man then began to cultivate the fields, and to have a fixed place of abode other than a cave.”

The Occasioning Incident: Hunter’s Civic Biology The Races of Man --“At the present there exist upon the earth five races or varieties of man… and finally the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America…. The science of being well born is called eugenics… When people marry there are certain things that the individual as well as the race should demand. The most important of these is freedom from germ diseases which might be handed down to the offspring. Tuberculosis, that dread white plague which is still responsible for almost one seventh of all deaths, epilepsy, and feeble-mindedness are handicaps which is not only unfair but criminal to hand down to posterity.”

The Occasioning Incident: Hunter’s Civic Biology The Races of Man – He cites the “Kallikak”family as an example, tracing the lineage to demonstrate the progeny of “33 who were sexually immoral, 24 con- firmed drunkards, 3 epileptics, and 143 feeble- minded.” “Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants or animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. ”

The Occasioning Incident: Hunter’s Civic Biology The Races of Man –”Largely for them the poor- house and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasites…. If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race. Remedies of this sort have been tried successfully in Europe and are now meeting with success in this country.”

Turmoil in Tennessee • Jan. 27, 1925 – The Tennessee House of Representatives approves the Butler bill on a 71-to-5 vote.; March 13, 1925 Senate approves the Butler bill 24 to 6. The new law bars funding in public schools to be used to teach evolution. • ACLU ran a newspaper ad looking for a test case • ACLU statements in 1925: “The attempt to maintain a uniform orthodox opinion among teachers should be opposed.’” and “The attempts of education authorities to inject into public schools and colleges instruction propaganda in the interest of any particular theory of society to the exclusion of others should be opposed.”

Small town plotters… • May 5, 1925 – George Rappleyea– from NYC, manager of coal mine, wanted publicity - along with school board president and superintendent asks… • 24-year-old science teacher and football coach John Scopes[raised by a socialist and adamant atheist]. • Scopes has no degree in science (had a B.A. in law) and was not a biology teacher. He filled in as a substitute for two weeks near the end of the school year for the biology teacher, who was ill.

Willing “Victim” • Scopes agreed, even though he has only taught biology as a substitute teacher and later said he wasn't sure if he ever covered evolution in his classes. Scopes recounted his conversation with superintendent: • I said, ‘If you can prove that I've taught evolution, and that I can qualify as a defendant, then I’ll be willing to stand trial.’ • ‘You filled in as a biology teacher, didn’t you?’ Robinson said. • 'Yes.’ I nodded. ‘When Mr. Ferguson was sick.’ • ‘Well, you taught biology then. Didn’t you cover evolution?’ • 'We reviewed for the final exams, as best I remember.’ To tell the truth, I wasn’t sure I had taught evolution. • Then they called the ACLU…and big city papers for PR

Publicity circus • May 12, 1925 – Three time Democratic candidate William Jennings Bryan joins the prosecution. Several days later, well-known attorney Clarence Darrow takes the ACLU side • May-July, 1925 – The town is rewired with new telegraph and telephone wiring, movie-newsreel camera platforms and radio microphones. WGN Radio broadcasts the trial live at a cost of more than $1,000 a day just for telephone lines — the first such broadcast of its kind.

Bryan v. Darrow William Jennings Bryan Clarence Darrow Trained/Experienced Lawyer for the ACLU Leading critic of organized religion…like Carl Sagan… “Christianity was a slave religion.” “I am an agnostic; I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of.” • Three-time Democrat Candidate for Presidency, populist-progressive, Fundamentalist Christian, Presbyterian Elder • “The majority is not trying to establish a religion or to teach it -- it is trying to protect itself from the effort of an insolent minority to force irreligion upon the children under the guise of teaching science.“

H.L. Mencken • Cynical reporter for the Baltimore Sun • While a myriad of other reporters attended the trial, the world would come to understand the trial through his eyes alone. “Bryan has been oozing around the country since his first day here, addressing this organization and that, presenting the indubitable Word of God in his caressing, ingratiating way, and so making unanimity doubly unanimous. From the defense yesterday came hints that he was making hay before the sun had legally begun to shine--even that it was a sort of contempt of court. But no Daytonian believes anything of the sort. What Bryan says doesn't seem to these congenial Baptists and Methodists to be argument; it seems to be a mere graceful statement to the obvious.... ”

Dayton, Tennessee, 1925 1000 people at the first day of the trial - July 10, 1925. The trial lasted 11 days. Quoting PBS “But over the next two weeks nobody paid much attention to the defendant. Attorneys for both sides hogged the spotlight in the overheated courtroom. In the words of historian Kevin Tierney, "Scopes was being used. He was completely willing to be used. But essentially the case had been taken over by the big names.”

Bryan’s strategy was to appeal tostates’ rights … “Our position is that the statute is sufficient. The statute defines exactly what the people of Tennessee desired and intended and did declare unlawful and it needs no interpretation. … The legislature was careful to define what it meant by the … statute. … Yet while Mr. Scopes knew what the law was and knew what evolution was, and knew that it violated the law, he proceeded to violate the law. That is the evidence before this court, and we do not need any expert to tell us what that law means. … This is not the place to try to prove that the law ought never to have been passed. The place to prove that, or teach that, was to the legislature.”

Bryan’s strategy was to appeal tostates’ rights and to point outDarrow’s own inconsistencies. • Bryan told the court that in the famous Loeb–Leopold murder trial of 1923, Loeb and Leopold were accused of kidnapping and murdering a 14 year old boy. • Darrow wound up admitting their guilt, thereby avoiding the jury’s righteous indignation, but argued before the judge that Loeb and Leopold were not fully responsible.

Bryan’s strategy was to appeal tostates’ rights and to point outDarrow’s own inconsistencies. • Instead, Darrow had blamed their crime on the evolution-based philosophy they had learned at university - especially the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) who taught that virtues like truthfulness, love, and compassion, equality are actually bad because they interfere with the survival of the fittest… • Darrow had said “‘Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche's [evolutionary] philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it? … it is hardly fair to hang a 19–year–old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university.”

Darrow’s strategy changed as the trial developed. • First strategy was to pit states’ rights against the individual, academic rights/freedoms of the teacher. • He then shifted to the logic that there was no real issue between evolutionary science and the Bible (Theistic evolution). He presented eight scientific witnesses to support his argument but only one was admitted to testify as being relevant to the case.

Darrow’s strategy changed as the trial developed. • Then Darrow attacked literal, fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible, even challenging Bryan himself, trying first to portray him as “an expert on the Bible” and, by doing so demonstrate his Christian prejudice and his lack of grasp and appreciation of other religions and of science in general. • Finally, he made the trial a “protest” – he claimed because he had been blocked from presenting his evidence, the trial was futile and he entered a plea of guilty. He also did not present a summation of defense which, by Tennessee law, restricted Bryan from also entering a summation of his argument.

It may have been the law being put to the test but it was the Bible that had been put on trial. “The Fundamentalists convinced the jury but not the larger American public. At best, the trial revealed that even among American Christians in the 1920s, there were two competing standards for determining truth, one ‘biblical’, the other, ‘scientific’, and it was difficult to see how they could be reconciled.” (Goetz)

After just 8 minutes: guilty and fined $100.00. After the verdict is read, Scopes delivers his only statement of the trial, declaring his intent "to oppose this law in any way I can. Any other action would be in violation of my ideal of academic freedom — that is, to teach the truth as guaranteed in our constitution, of personal and religious freedom.”

Trial Results • Darrow had expertly played the courtroom proceedings, maneuvering the jury in and out while he sold his case thoroughly to the radio audience and the press. • Scopes’ fine of $100, which both Bryan and the ACLU offer to pay for him, was paid by Mencken later. All of Scopes’ trial expenses were paid, and was he given a scholarship [from ACLU backers] to do post-graduate studies at the University of Chicago, and become a geology petroleum engineer in Venezuela. • “Thousands of columns of newspaper debate have been published under Dayton date lines in the past two weeks, and from it all, the cause of the religion of Jesus Christ has not been helped, but the world has been broadcast with the reeks of doubt and skepticism, and only the future can tell what the harvest will be.” The Atlantic Constitution, 1925

On Sunday, July 26 [just five days after the trial concluded], he drove from Chattanooga to Dayton, participated in a church service, and died quietly in his sleep that afternoon. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery beneath the inscription, “He Kept the Faith”.

Afterwards… • A revised edition of Hunter's book appeared the year after the Scopes Trial no longer using the word "evolution" and removing most references to recognizably evolutionary concepts. … The section quoted above, "Evolution of Man", was renamed "Development of Man", and, rather than saying "lower in mental organization" said "lower in civilization" (page 250). (Wikipedia) • Jan. 15, 1927 – The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that the Butler law is constitutional. However, it overturned Scopes' verdict on a technicality. • 1930 – The William Jennings Bryan Memorial University opens in Dayton, Tenn. …Known today as Bryan College, holding distinctively to six-day creation.

Afterwards… • After the trial Scopes admitted to reporter W. K. Hutchinson "I didn't violate the law,” explaining that he had skipped the evolution lesson, and that his lawyers had coached his students to go on the stand; … . Hutchinson did not file his story until after the Scopes appeal was decided in 1927. Scopes also stated that he had not violated the law to the wife of the Universalist minister Charles Francis Potter. • He was later baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. • Scopes died in 1970 at the age of 70.

“It would be difficult to overestimate the impact of “the Monkey Trial” at Dayton, Tennessee, in transforming fundamentalism. William Jennings Bryan’s ill-fated attempt in the summer of 1925 to slay singlehanded the prophets of Baal brought instead an outpouring of derision. … This bizarre episode, wired around the world with a maximum of ballyhoo, would have far more impact on the popular interpretation of fundamentalism than all the arguments of preachers and theologians.” Marsden

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The History of Presbyterianism in the United States