The Scopes trial and the battle over religion in US politics.
A new history revisits “the Trial of the Century” and its legacy in contemporary politics.
Jock the monkey listens in on the Scopes trial, 1923.
(Getty Images)
Why should we care about “the Trial of the Century” nearly a century after it happened? Many Americans have long understood the 1925 prosecution of John Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee, for breaking a new state law that forbade teaching “the Evolution Theory” in public schools as a conflict of profound simplicity in which religious bigotry clashed with scientific reason. In it, Clarence Darrow, a veteran stalwart of the legal left, skillfully defended Scopes, a biology instructor, while William Jennings Bryan, a thrice-failed nominee for president and devout fundamentalist, clumsily led the…