The Scopes Trial: The 100-Year Anniversary
Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Biblical Authority Ministries, May 9, 2025
School teacher John T. Scopes was arrested on May 9, 1925—100
years ago today because he was teaching human evolution in a state school
in Dayton, Tennessee. It turned out to be the “trial of the century”.
Many suggest it was the turning point that caused the Bible
to be removed from schools and be replaced with secular humanism’s the
evolution of man. Government schools in the USA have never been the same.
It turned into a trial over the religion of Christianity vs. the religion of
humanism. It had a profound effect on education.
Leading Up To The Scopes Trial
In the 1830s, Charles Lyell, a lawyer, denied the Flood of
Noah’s day. Lyell argued that the rock layers produced during the Flood were
evidence of long ages of slow gradual accumulations over millions of years
(geological evolution).
This idea of long ages raged in the 1800s leading up to
Charles Darwin who from 1859-1871 applied this same concept of slow changes
over long ages to biology. Darwin, a theologian by training, reintroduced
an evolutionary worldview (biological evolution). Throughout the 1870s, long
ages and evolutionary ideas began permeating universities across the
Western World who fell from a Christian standard and adopted secular humanistic
ideas of origins.
In the by 1920, geological evolution was in state schools
prominently and animal evolution was taught (subset of the religion of secular
humanism), but the last holdout was against human evolution. This set
the stage for the Scope’s Trial.
The Scopes Trial
The Scopes Trial, officially known as The State of
Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, took place in July 1925 in Dayton,
Tennessee. This landmark legal case centered on the Butler Act, a Tennessee law
that prohibited public (i.e., state/government) school teachers from denying
the biblical account of special human creation by God and teaching that humanity
had evolved from a lower order of animals.
In the state, it was permissible to teach animal evolution,
but not human evolution—particularly as a fact! John Scopes, a high school
teacher with an undergraduate law degree and no education in science, was
accused of violating this act by teaching human evolution in his classroom. He
wanted to join the attack on the law by his own admission. Dr. David Menton, a
renown biologist and anatomist who studied the Scopes Trial and had
subsequently written and spoken on the subject stated,
“So John Scopes was not being
attacked at all; rather it was he who was on the attack. Scopes willingly
joined ranks with the ACLU in an attempt to repeal or nullify the Butler Act.”[1]
The trial featured prominent figures: William Jennings Bryan, a three-time presidential candidate, represented the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, a renowned defense attorney who was a skeptic and agnostic (a type of secular humanist/naturalism), represented Scopes.
The courtroom battle was not just about Scopes’ guilt but oddly
delved into whether evolution should be taught as fact in public schools.
Darrow sought to introduce expert testimony from evolutionary scientists to
promote evolution positions but this never happened.
Instead, Christianity was essentially put on trial. And
Bryan, the Christian attorney, was put on the stand to defend Christianity.
Ultimately, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 (maximum
potential fine was $500), though the verdict was later overturned on a
technicality. Despite the legal outcome, the trial had massive educational
ramifications.
Public perception, influenced by highly inaccurate and biased
portrayals like the play and film "Inherit the Wind," often
viewed the trial as a defeat for creation and the Bible and a victory for the
evolutionary religion. However, these dramatizations took considerable
liberties and did not accurately represent the historical events.
During the Scopes Trial in July 1925, Clarence Darrow, the
defense attorney, called William Jennings Bryan to the stand as an expert on
the Bible. Though it was an unusual legal move, Darrow used the opportunity to
question Bryan on his interpretation of Scripture. This exchange revealed that
Bryan did not fully uphold a literal, six-day creation as described in Genesis.
In other words, Bryan had compromised Genesis with
evolutionary ideas! Bryan was fine with geological evolution for instance.
One key question Darrow asked was whether the
"days" of creation were literal 24-hour periods. Bryan admitted that
he did not necessarily believe they were. He suggested that the days could have
been long periods of time—ages rather than actual days.
This aligned more with old-earth views and attempts to
reconcile Scripture with evolutionary beliefs of deep time (geological
evolution). This is called “syncretism” or “compromise” by the way. It is an
attempt to mix two different opposing religions. In this instance, it was
mixing the secular humanistic origins accounts with Christianity. Bryan also
conceded that he did not take all aspects of the Bible straightforward or
natural fashion, depending on what he considered symbolic or poetic. In other
words, passages like Genesis, which is written as a historical narrative,
didn’t need to be interpreted as such according to Bryan.
Bryan was essentially mixing Christianity with the secular
humanistic religion when it came to origins. This sent shockwaves to the
masses! But what it showed was that Bryan, the professing Christian, didn’t
believe the Bible in Genesis.
And this precedent set the stage for an entire educational
system to begin removing what little influence the Bible still held. And little
by little the remnant of Bible was removed from science, history, logic[2],
literature, and so much more. Finally, the Bible itself was thrown out of
schools in the 1960s.
Bryan also failed to answer the simple question “where did Cain get his wife?” because he had compromised Genesis. Of course, Cain married a sister or a niece, but either way, brothers and sister originally had to marry.
Bryan also struggled with answers to issues like miracles in
the Bible. Bryan, to his defense, was struggling with health issues, but his
position was simply not biblical. Menton writes,
“Once Darrow accomplished his
purpose of ridiculing Bryan’s beliefs in Biblical miracles, he asked the judge
to instruct the jury to find Scopes guilty, and in so doing, eliminated the
need for closing arguments. Bryan had put great effort into preparing his
closing statement. This maneuver by Darrow prevented Bryan from giving his
well-supported scientific and religious argument against the theory
of evolution.”[3]
Darrow got to critique Bryan’s version of compromised
Christianity, but the evolutionary worldview did not get the opportunity to be
scrutinized—which likely would have been devastating! No doubt, Darrow knew
this.
Bryan’s failures were a major issue from a biblical
creationist standpoint because Bryan, though known as a Christian and
anti-evolution advocate, undermined the authority of the Bible by
compromising on its plain meaning. This opened the door to attack Christianity
further.
Such compromise weakens the foundation of biblical authority
in the eyes of the masses who were watching and listening across the country
(and the world to a certain degree!). If Genesis is not taken as it is written,
it calls into question the accuracy and trustworthiness of the rest of
Scripture, including core doctrines such as sin, death,
and redemption through Christ. Ken Ham and David Menton co-wrote,
“That’s when Darrow knew he had
won, because he had managed to get the Christian to admit, in front
of a worldwide audience, that he couldn’t defend the Bible’s history
(e.g., Cain’s wife), and didn’t take the Bible as written (the days
of creation), and instead accepted the world’s teaching (millions of
years). Thus, Bryan (unwittingly) had undermined biblical authority and paved
the way for secular philosophy to pervade the culture and education system.”[4]
The big deal, then, was not just that Bryan lost rhetorical
ground to Darrow, but that his own inconsistencies made it harder to defend the
Bible effectively. The Scopes Trial was a turning point where many Christians
began to drift away from the plain and straightforward interpretation of
Genesis, opening the door for evolutionary teaching in public schools and
contributing to the cultural shift away from biblical authority.
Bryan’s answers revealed a compromised view of Scripture
that, while intending to defend Christianity, actually weakened its foundation
by allowing autonomous human reasoning (reasoning apart from God and His Word) to
reinterpret God’s Word.
The Scopes Trial highlighted the debate between creation and
evolution or more specifically Christianity vs. secular humanism
(naturalism/materialism). It highlights tensions regarding secular humanistic educational
content in government schools and the influence of religious beliefs on
education. It serves as a reminder of the importance of basing the defense of
faith on the authority of God's Word.
Further reading:
· The World’s Most Famous Court Trial, Word-for-word report from 1925, Second Reprint Edition, 1990, Bryan College, Dayton, Tennessee, (particularly the Seventh Day’s Proceedings, p. 211-304).
[1] David Menton, Inherit the Wind: An Historical Analysis, Creation 19, no 1 (December 1996): 35-38.
[2]
Whole logic courses are removed—Logic is a Christian concept predicated on a
logical God who uphold the universe in a logical way. And man is made in the
image of a logical God, but due to sin we err on logic and must learn and study
it. Students would go to a class on evolution, then they would go to a class on
logic and see the fallacies in an evolutionary worldview; so something had to
go. Logic was removed from most curriculum in the 1950s-1960s.
[3]
David Menton, Inherit the Wind: An Historical Analysis, Creation 19,
no 1 (December 1996): 35-38.
[4]
Ken Ham and David Menton, Why Is the Scopes Trial Significant? In The New
Answers Book 2, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2008.
