58. PERSECUTION! The Legacy of the Scopes Trial

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A sticky sweltering Tennessee courtroom in 1925 would change the course of Christian conservative perception of "persecution" for the next 100 years. Tennessee's passage of the unconstitutional Butler Act in March of 1925 was fertile soil for a challenge by the ACLU who offered to represent any teacher prosecuted under the law. It was also prime opportunity for the ailing town of Dayton to draw in some much needed publicity to stimulate a strangled local economy.

John T Scopes, a substitute biology teacher would stand trial for teaching evolution from the state approved textbook. The prosecution was led by William Jennings Bryan, lawyer and presidential nominee and the defense was led by Clarence Darrow, the greatest defense attorney of his time. A Christian nationalist judge refused any testimony or experts for the defense and in a desperate move Darrow called prosecutor Bryan to the stand. The interrogation of literal interpretations of the Bible would not win the case, but it would cast Christian conservatives opposition to science into humiliation across the country. Journalist HL Mencken would exacerbate the embarrassment by mocking the "backwoods" people nationwide.

The humiliation didn't change them, it changed their strategy. They decided Christians in the US were being persecuted, formal education was the enemy and they withdrew from society and began to found their own institutions that would lead to Christian colleges, media platforms, conglomerates, PACS, and production agencies. The rhetoric of Christian persecution would fuel the rise of the radical right, the moral majority and the neo nazi platforms we see today.

Sources:

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Darrow, C. (1904). The Resistible Rise of Democracy. Public lecture, later reprinted in Darrow's collected writings.

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Hart, R. P. (2016). H. L. Mencken and the mythology of American journalism. American Journalism, 33(4), 432–450.

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State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, 154 Tenn. 105 (1927).

State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, Trial Transcript (1925). Reprinted in Famous Trials Project.

Whitehead, A. L., & Perry, S. L. (2020). Taking America back for God: Christian nationalism in the United States. Oxford University Press.