In 2025 we mark 80 years since the end of World War II, 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War and 20 years since Hurricane Katrina. But for milestone anniversaries, consider the centennial of the 1925 Scopes 鈥淢onkey Trial,鈥 a watershed in American society whose impacts are felt in the culture wars of today.
John Scopes was a biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee. In 1925 he was tried under a new state law that banned the teaching of evolution in public schools. The prosecution was led by William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic nominee for president, former secretary of state, renowned orator. For the defense was Clarence Darrow who, in the sensational Leopold and Loeb murder trial of 1924, famously helped his clients cheat the hangman.
Scopes was the first trial broadcast nationally by radio. Near the end, Darrow called Bryan to the witness stand as a 鈥淏ible expert.鈥 The cross-examination humiliated Bryan, whose fundamentalist beliefs sounded anti-modern to radio audiences.
To understand the impact, think in 50-year increments. In the half-century before Scopes, fundamentalism was on the rise. After Scopes, fundamentalists were dismissed by the public. For the next 50 years, the movement retreated from mainstream culture, rebranded as 鈥渆vangelicals鈥 and built a subculture with its own institutions. Around 1975, those institutions became large enough to reengage society in a culture war that has raged for 50 years.
This century-long process produced in evangelicals a persecution complex, a feeling of being pariahs in society, outcasts from the mainstream, snubbed by elites. So evangelicals desire desperately to 鈥渕atter鈥 again, to be taken seriously, to reclaim the cultural power they believe was once theirs.
The anti-evolution cause, a flashpoint in 1925, is again a dividing line in 2025. Thirty-seven percent of respondents in an October 2023 Suffolk University/USA Today poll agreed with the statement, 鈥淗umans did not evolve. They were created in their present form by God.鈥 Another 24 percent believed, 鈥淗umans evolved into their present form, but God directed the process,鈥 while 29 percent discounted divine intervention.
Ironically, many evangelical theologians in the late nineteenth century had no problem with Darwin. But in the years after World War I, fundamentalists became alarmed at the rapid pace of social change and saw evolutionary theory as anti-God. Then in the 1960s, another time of rapid social change, modern creationism arose with publication of 鈥淭he Genesis Flood.鈥 Almost overnight, the book sparked a movement.
In my research, I listen to many sermons. Not long ago, I heard a sermon that captures the essence of anti-evolutionism. The preacher gave a full-throated defense of 鈥測oung earth creationism,鈥 that God created the earth in six 24-hour days no more than 8,000 years ago. Furthermore, God created the universe with only the 鈥渁ppearance鈥 of being billions of years old.
His sermon sought to rebut the 鈥渄ay-age鈥 theory that the six 鈥渄ays鈥 in Genesis were six geologic ages rather than 24-hour days. The alternative of 鈥渢heistic evolution,鈥 that God directs the process, he shrugged off with 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know how a Christian鈥 could believe that.
In his world, he could only think in literal terms. Creation could only have happened in six literal days or six literal ages. The idea did not, could not, occur to him that the ancient authors of the Genesis account never intended their narrative to be taken literally. He never considered this because it gets no hearing in his silo.
This illustrates why our culture wars are polarizing the nation. The preacher was sincere 鈥 and to stand against majority opinion for what you believe can be admirable. But how often do partisans hear only their side 鈥 whether the issue is abortion, LGBTQ rights, critical race theory, immigration, guns, vaccines, climate change or election denial 鈥 and impugn any other viewpoints?
Civil discourse requires listening to different sides. Instead, the legacy of the Scopes 鈥淢onkey Trial鈥 is a nation that has 鈥渋nherited the wind.鈥