Tennessee v Scopes at 100

The more things change, the more they stay the same. That may be an annoying platitude, but with regard to the teaching of religious faith in public schools it remains an unresolved issue a century after a landmark case. One hundred years ago this month in the town of Dayton, Tennessee there was a legal showdown pitting a zealous religious majority against a public school teacher charged with violating the state’s Butler Act, a law legislated in 1925 prohibiting the teaching of any theory of the origins of humankind other than the Biblical account detailed in the Book of Genesis. John T. Scopes was the undistinguished biology teacher that agreed to act as the defendant in a test case funded by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the constitutionality of that law. The case was tried by two of the most seasoned legal professionals of their day, William Jennings Bryan prosecuting and Clarence Darrow defending. Long story short, Scopes was convicted and sentenced to a $100 fine. His conviction was overturned on appeal on a technicality, that being the judge in the case set the fine rather than the jury. The Scopes case however was hardly the final resolution of the issue. After a hundred years in the secular constitutional republic of the United States, the battle still rages in the courts and on the school boards over whether we remain what the framers of the Constitution envisioned or if we become a Christian theocracy.

Leading off the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment is that of worship stating, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” It took President Thomas Jefferson in his reply letter to the Danbury, CT Baptists to clarify this concept as a “wall of separation between church and state.” In 2025 there are still pro-theocracy members of Congress who dismiss this explanation because Jefferson’s choice of wording is not codified in the First Amendment.

With the emergence of Christian Nationalism in the MAGA era, the push to dissolve the wall separating church and state has gained a dangerous amount of traction. This is especially evident on the school boards in many traditionally conservative localities. It seems every state with a legislature controlled by the MAGA/Republican party has introduced and passed bills aimed at inserting evangelical Christian doctrine into the curriculum of public elementary and secondary education. Here along The Mother Road’s most conservative stretch it has become especially bad. Oklahoma’s all MAGA/GOP government and legislature appears to be just fine with the appointed then subsequently elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction mandating the King James Bible be taught in school in his personal quest to purge what he deems WOKE ideology from every public learning institution in our state. He is another one who has dismissed Jefferson’s ‘wall of separation’ explanation as a “Liberal myth.” A reasonable question to pose in light of such overreach would be if a religious text is introduced into public education curriculum, what will be the extent of indoctrination in its contents? We must also not forget that in the past fourteen years of all-Republican governance, Oklahoma has dropped from the Top 20 to the bottom five in national ranking in public education. It remains to be demonstrated how inserting religion into curriculum will reverse that trend. It is perhaps by design a measure aimed at increasing belief in deity and sustaining numbers in church attendance conveniently done on the taxpayer’s dime. When honest truth seekers eventually equip themselves with tools of inquiry then begin examining history and questioning fundamental beliefs in which they were indoctrinated, they often discover that things are not exactly what or how they were taught. They then have to figure out on their own what belief system works best for them. There is a plausible explanation as to why a growing number of adults are leaving church and walking away from the faith of their upbringing. It is unreasonable to expect a genuinely curious mind to restrict itself to the limits imposed by strict religious doctrine especially when the tenets of it are preached in a pontific message laced with accusatory bombast, contentious exclusivity and last but not least, an implied if not an outright demand for money.

During my storied career in the Navy then later in my run of civilian jobs, I met and worked alongside numerous professionals who came to the United States from other countries, some of which were ruled by religious zealots that governed by rigidly dogmatic belief systems. Virtually without exception, all insisted that the one thing America got right was separating church and state. I thought that near consensus was very telling as well as validating. Looking back on my early elementary public education at the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, my fellow students and I were surrounded by soft religious indoctrination. From sitting in class and reciting The Lord’s Prayer in unison with heads bowed and eyes closed to receiving free pocket bibles from The Gideons to singing traditional Yuletide carols for a Christian Nativity Christmas program to attending Cub Scout meetings in neighborhood churches, me and my grade school cohorts were never far from the influence of evangelical Christianity. On a couple occasions a few of us actually wondered out loud why the few non-Christians among us were excused from most of those activities. It never really occurred to me until years later when me and my friend circle became ever more tolerant and secular as to why none of this was ever questioned. The honest answer is how can anyone possibly question anything that is so ingrained into the routine and fabric of life without any of the tools to do so. These things were characteristics that were laid down early and became part of who we were, so how does one question it? Belief and belonging to any faith organization where skepticism and inquiry are not allowed requires absolute obedience and the faith of innocence. There was no place for critical thinking let alone anyone or anything that could adequately instruct us in it. This was one of the many things we were left to figure out on our own as adults. I like many others have concluded that we will educate better and more capable citizens if children are taught HOW to think instead of WHAT to think. Instead of religious indoctrination, all high school students should have mandatory course units that teach critical thinking such as semantic analysis and reasoning fallacies as part of all solid course requirements. This is imperative for elevating public education and improving its product.

One hundred years after Scopes the argument between those who defend the idea that God made Man versus those who understand that Man made God remains as hotly contested as ever. Even still, the United States officially remains a secular republic. Despite a seemingly relentless assault by determined forces seeking to change that factual characteristic of this nation, religious belief is steadily losing adherents. What would it benefit anyone who would seek to gain a national pulpit from which to sermonize the will of their deity only to deliver a scathing screed of intolerance to an empty sanctuary? Tennessee repealed the Butler Act in 1967, but science continued to move on improving the lives of real people and reducing the sufferings confronting humankind without the blessings of the purveyors of Biblical Creationism. Hopefully this push for ecclesiastical governance and the empowerment of policy directors who desire to march the USA backward to the time of unquestioned and unchecked biblical government will be little more than an aberrant footnote in our national history much like the jury’s verdict was in Dayton, Tennessee a hundred years ago this week.

Thank you for reading.

Postscript: The 1960 United Artists movie Inherit the Wind was a dramatic depiction of the Scopes trial starring Spencer Tracy, Frederic March and Dick York. Much of the courtroom dialog was taken verbatim from the trial transcript. The title comes from Proverbs 11:29, “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind, and the fool shall be servant to the wise at heart.”

Inherit the Wind