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The Monkey Trial That Rewired America 100 Years Ago · Theology Made Podcast

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Theology Made Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jordan.
• 0:09
  On today's episode,
• 0:10
  we're going to look at the monkey trial that rewired America
• 0:13
  100 years ago.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's July 1925, and the small town of Dayton, Tennessee is sweltering.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Cicadas buzz in the trees.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: The courthouse square is packed shoulder to shoulder,
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: and the streets outside are jammed with Model Ts,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: reporters and vendors hawking hot dogs and lemonade.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Inside the courthouse, men in suspenders fan themselves with newspapers.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: On one side sits William Jennings Bryan,
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: the great commoner,
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: three-time presidential candidate,
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: a man who could electrify a crowd just by clearing his throat.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: On the other side sits Clarence Darrow,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: America's most famous defense lawyer,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: known for defending anarchists,
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: gangsters,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: and now a small-town school teacher accused of teaching evolution.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: This was the Scopes Monkey Trial,
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  SPEAKER_00: the case that for many symbolized the clash between science and religion,
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Darwin vs.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Genesis,
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: progress vs.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: tradition.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not the whole story.
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  SPEAKER_00: In many ways, the real story of the Scopes Trial wasn't just science.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was about shame.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was about how,
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: in a single week in a Tennessee courtroom,
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: a confident evangelical culture,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: one that had once sat proudly at the center of American life,
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  SPEAKER_00: suddenly felt mocked,
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: humiliated,
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  SPEAKER_00: and pushed to the edges of society.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: In that moment,
• 1:38
  that humiliation reshaped American Christianity for the rest of
• 1:43
  the 20th century.
• 1:44
  In March 1925,
• 1:44
  Tennessee Governor Austin Peay signed a new law,
• 1:48
  the Butler Act,
• 1:49
  It was just a few lines long,
• 1:51
  and it was buried in the state's legislative paperwork.
• 1:54
  The law made it illegal to teach any theory that denies the
• 1:57
  story of the divine
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: creation of man as taught in the Bible,
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: and to teach instead that man descended from a lower order of animals.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't passed in a fit of anger.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't even debated very much.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was just one more skirmish in the rising tensions of the 1920s.
• 2:14
  between rural traditionalists who felt the modern world erasing
• 2:17
  their way of life
• 2:18
  and urban elites who believe science and progress could replace
• 2:22
  old religion.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: The American Civil Liberties Union New York spotted an opportunity.
• 2:27
  They placed an ad in the newspaper offering to defend anyone
• 2:31
  willing to challenge the law.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Their goal wasn't to protect one teacher.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was to put anti-evolution laws on trial.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when Dayton,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Tennessee stepped forward,
• 2:42
  a small town of just about 1,800 people with coal mines nearby
• 2:46
  and a courthouse
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: clock tower in the center.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dayton's leaders saw the ACLU's offer and thought, why not here?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: A big trial could put Dayton on the map.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Hotels filled, restaurants buzzed, business could be booming.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So they approached John Scopes, a 24-year-old substitute teacher.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Scopes was young, mild-mannered, not really that invested in evolution.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact,
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  SPEAKER_00: he couldn't even remember if he had taught Darwin's theory,
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  SPEAKER_00: but he agreed to be the defendant.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was a stunt.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just a publicity stunt.
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  SPEAKER_00: And yet,
• 3:15
  out of this small-town gambit came one of the most important
• 3:18
  trials in American
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  SPEAKER_00: religious history.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because in 1925, evangelical Christians weren't outsiders yet.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: They weren't the Bible Belt stereotype we think of today.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: They were the mainstream.
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  SPEAKER_00: William Jennings Bryan,
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  SPEAKER_00: who would lead the prosecution,
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  SPEAKER_00: had been the Democratic nominee for president three times.
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  SPEAKER_00: Evangelicals shaped public life, built universities, filled churches.
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  SPEAKER_00: They believed America was still their house.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Scopes trial would change that belief forever.
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  SPEAKER_00: From the moment the trial was announced, it became a national spectacle.
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  SPEAKER_00: Reporters flooded into Dayton.
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  The Chicago Tribune wired the courthouse so updates could
• 3:54
  stream across the country instantly.
• 3:57
  Radio networks set up microphones,
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  making it one of the first trials ever broadcast live.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then came the sideshows.
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  SPEAKER_00: Vendors sold hot dogs, lemonades, toy monkeys.
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  SPEAKER_00: Souvenir stands popped up along Main Street.
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  SPEAKER_00: Preachers from out of town held revival services in the open air.
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  It was a carnival,
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  a revival,
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  and a boxing match had all collided into one small southern
• 4:18
  town.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the town of Dayton,
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  SPEAKER_00: which had one modest hotel,
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  SPEAKER_00: suddenly had to host journalists from London,
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  SPEAKER_00: Paris,
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  SPEAKER_00: and New York.
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  SPEAKER_00: H.L.
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  SPEAKER_00: Mencken,
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  SPEAKER_00: the sharp-tongued journalist from the Baltimore Sun,
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  SPEAKER_00: came ready to make the fundamentalists look like fools.
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  SPEAKER_00: He wrote dispatches dripping with sarcasm,
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  SPEAKER_00: called Dayton the monkey town,
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  SPEAKER_00: and described the townspeople as if they were backwoods caricatures.
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  SPEAKER_00: His words would shape how the nation remembered the trial,
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  SPEAKER_00: not as a fair legal proceeding,
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  SPEAKER_00: but as a theater of absurdity.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's really all it was, theater.
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  SPEAKER_00: On one side stood William Jennings Bryan, the great commoner.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was 65, silver-haired, but still booming with charisma.
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  SPEAKER_00: He had once electrified audiences with his cross of gold speech.
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  SPEAKER_00: And he considered himself as a man of the people.
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  SPEAKER_00: To Bryan, this trial wasn't about Darwin's finches or fossils.
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  It was about defending ordinary Americans from the intellectual
• 5:10
  elites who,
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  SPEAKER_00: in his view,
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  SPEAKER_00: used evolution as a weapon to strip away faith and morality.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: On the other side was Clarence Darrow.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: 70 years old, craggy-faced, always with a cigar in hand.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was America's most famous defense lawyer,
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  SPEAKER_00: known for defending anarchists,
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: labor leaders,
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  SPEAKER_00: and radicals.
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  SPEAKER_00: Darrow saw this trial as his chance to strike at Christianity itself,
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  SPEAKER_00: to show that the Bible,
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  SPEAKER_00: when examined in public,
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  SPEAKER_00: couldn't stand against modern reason.
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  SPEAKER_00: So two aging titans of American public life,
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  SPEAKER_00: Brian Darrow,
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  SPEAKER_00: squaring off in a tiny courthouse while the whole world listened.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dayton had become a stage.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: The courtroom battles were fiery from the beginning.
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  SPEAKER_00: Darrow, ever the provocateur, painted the Butler Act as censorship.
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  SPEAKER_00: How could a state ban a teacher from presenting scientific theory?
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  SPEAKER_00: Wasn't this America, the land of free thought?
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  SPEAKER_00: And Brian countered with passion.
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  SPEAKER_00: Evolution, he argued, wasn't just science.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was a worldview that undermined democracy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Darwin's survival of the fittest, he said...
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  SPEAKER_00: could justify all sorts of things.
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  SPEAKER_00: For Brian, the stakes weren't fossils or classrooms.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was civilization itself.
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  If children were taught they came from animals,
• 6:15
  why wouldn't they behave like animals?
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  SPEAKER_00: Trio was never really about John Scopes.
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  SPEAKER_00: He barely spoke.
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  He sat quietly while the real battle played out between two
• 6:22
  worldviews embodied in
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: two different men.
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  Day after day,
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  the courtroom filled with sweat,
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  shouting,
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  objections,
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  applause.
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  SPEAKER_00: The jury listened.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the real audience was outside, the nation.
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  Reading the papers,
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  hearing the broadcasts,
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  this wasn't a local trial anymore.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was a referendum on the place of faith in modern America.
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  SPEAKER_00: And in that courtroom tension, something deeper was happening.
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  SPEAKER_00: Evangelicals,
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  SPEAKER_00: who had once felt they owned the cultural center,
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  SPEAKER_00: were suddenly seeing themselves portrayed as outdated,
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  SPEAKER_00: even foolish.
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  SPEAKER_00: The laughter of the reporters,
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  SPEAKER_00: the cartoons of monkey preachers,
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  SPEAKER_00: the sneering editorials,
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  SPEAKER_00: it all signaled a shift.
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  The stage was set for the moment of humiliation that would come
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  in the trial's climax.
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  SPEAKER_00: The trial had gone on for a week.
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  SPEAKER_00: when Clarence Darrow made his move.
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  SPEAKER_00: Up until then,
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  SPEAKER_00: the courtroom had been clogged with expert witnesses,
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  SPEAKER_00: legal technicalities,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the endless drone of testimony about biology textbooks.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was hot, tempers were flaring, and the jury was restless.
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  SPEAKER_00: But then Darrow did something that no one expected.
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  He called William Jennings Bryan himself to the stand,
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  which was unprecedented.
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  SPEAKER_00: Imagine the prosecution's lead attorney,
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  the star of the entire case being yanked into the witness chair
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  as an expert
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  SPEAKER_00: witness.
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  SPEAKER_00: The courtroom gasp.
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  SPEAKER_00: Reporters leaned forward, fans fluttered in the heavy air.
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  Brian rose slowly from his seat,
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  Bible in hand,
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  his face stern and determined.
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  He believed God had given him this moment that he would defend
• 7:50
  scripture in the very lion's den.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Darrow had a different plan.
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  SPEAKER_00: What followed wasn't a legal cross-examination.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was a theater of humiliation.
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  SPEAKER_00: Darrow began with questions that seemed simple.
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  SPEAKER_00: Do you believe Jonah was swallowed by a big fish?
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  SPEAKER_00: Brian said yes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Do you believe Joshua made the sun stand still?
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  SPEAKER_00: Brian said yes.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so he pressed on.
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  SPEAKER_00: Do you believe the world was created in six days?
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  SPEAKER_00: Brian affirmed it.
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  SPEAKER_00: At first, he handled these questions with steady confidence.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Dara was a master of pacing.
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  SPEAKER_00: He quickened the tempo, driving harder, sharper.
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  SPEAKER_00: He asked about the age of the earth,
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  SPEAKER_00: the length of a biblical day,
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  SPEAKER_00: whether the serpent in Eden literally died.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that was the moment.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not when Brian lost an argument,
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  SPEAKER_00: but when the courtroom,
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  SPEAKER_00: the reporters,
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  SPEAKER_00: the world beyond Dayton's Little Square,
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  SPEAKER_00: laughed.
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  SPEAKER_00: The Baltimore Sun ran headlines mocking Brian as a buffoon.
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  SPEAKER_00: Cartoonists drew monkeys in pulpits.
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  The image of Christianity that spread across America wasn't
• 8:50
  noble or steadfast or
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  SPEAKER_00: intellectually serious.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was Brian,
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  SPEAKER_00: red-faced,
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  SPEAKER_00: fumbling,
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  SPEAKER_00: mocked by a sharp lawyer,
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  SPEAKER_00: while the crowd roared with amusement.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the irony, the jury never heard it.
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  SPEAKER_00: The judge struck the testimony from the official record.
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  SPEAKER_00: Darrow's questioning was legally irrelevant,
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  SPEAKER_00: but culturally explosive because it turned the Bible,
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  SPEAKER_00: not evolution,
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  SPEAKER_00: into the punchline of the trial.
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  SPEAKER_00: Brian was devastated.
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  SPEAKER_00: Five days after the trial ends, collapsed dead in Dayton.
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  SPEAKER_00: His last great fight for the faith ended in humiliation.
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  SPEAKER_00: His funeral train carried his body back to Washington,
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  SPEAKER_00: but the newspapers carried something else.
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  SPEAKER_00: The image of Christianity as backwards, uneducated, laughable.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that was the real verdict of the Scopes trial.
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  SPEAKER_00: And as for John Scopes himself, he was fined just $100.
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  SPEAKER_00: His conviction was later overturned on technicality.
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  SPEAKER_00: Legally, the trial meant almost nothing.
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  SPEAKER_00: But psychologically, it was a cultural earthquake.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because for evangelical Christians, the wound wasn't losing the case.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was being laughed out of the courtroom.
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  SPEAKER_00: And this was the pivot.
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  Before 1925,
• 9:58
  evangelicals believed they sat at the center of American
• 10:00
  culture.
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  SPEAKER_00: After 1925, they began to feel like outsiders.
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  SPEAKER_00: What persecution couldn't achieve, mockery did.
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  SPEAKER_00: See, it's one thing to lose power.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's another thing to lose dignity.
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  And the Scopes trial burned a lesson to the memory of a
• 10:14
  generation of believers.
• 10:15
  Across the country,
• 10:16
  newspapers didn't focus on Scopes or the law or even the
• 10:19
  verdict.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: They focused on Brian's humiliation and Darrell's smirk.
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  SPEAKER_00: The cultural verdict was clear.
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  SPEAKER_00: Evangelical Christians had been made to look like fools.
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  SPEAKER_00: And for evangelicals, the sting was sharp.
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  SPEAKER_00: William Jennings Bryan,
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: once the voice of the common people,
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  SPEAKER_00: the man who could fill arenas with a thunderous oratory,
• 10:37
  was now remembered for sweating under the cross-examination of
• 10:41
  Klanestaro.
• 10:42
  And though the Butler Act remained on the books,
• 10:44
  it wasn't enforced with much vigor.
• 10:46
  Other states passed similar laws,
• 10:47
  but the real power wasn't legal,
• 10:49
  it was cultural.
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  For decades afterwards,
• 10:52
  whenever evolution was debated,
• 10:54
  the specter of Dayton hovered.
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  SPEAKER_00: To bring up creationism was to risk being mocked.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't the loss of law that shook evangelicals.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was the loss of confidence.
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  A generation that had once believed America was their stage
• 11:06
  suddenly realized they
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: were the punchline.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Evangelicals didn't disappear,
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: they didn't stop believing,
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  SPEAKER_00: but they did stop trusting the cultural mainstream.
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  SPEAKER_00: Bible colleges began to multiply.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wheaton in Illinois, Bob Jones in South Carolina, Moody in Chicago.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Independent seminaries sprang up.
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  Determined trained pastors and scholars without the taint of
• 11:26
  modernist theology.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Christian publishers grew.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Radio ministries blossomed.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was the birth of the evangelical subculture.
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  SPEAKER_00: And to outsiders, it looked like retreat.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Fundamentalists withdrawing from the real world,
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  SPEAKER_00: circling the wagons,
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  SPEAKER_00: building an alternative universe of churches,
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: schools,
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  SPEAKER_00: conferences,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: and media.
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  SPEAKER_00: But from the inside, it didn't feel like withdrawal.
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  SPEAKER_00: It felt like survival.
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  If the world laughed at you,
• 11:47
  you built your own world where faith could be taken seriously.
• 11:50
  And that subculture would become the engine of evangelical
• 11:53
  revival later in the century.
• 11:55
  Out of the post-scopes retreat came the institutions that
• 11:57
  nurtured Billy Graham,
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: that built the parachurch movements,
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  SPEAKER_00: that laid the foundation for the moral majority and the religious right.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: The irony is sharp.
• 12:05
  The very mockery that pushed evangelicals out of the mainstream
• 12:09
  forced them to
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: build their own infrastructure.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Infrastructure.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: would in time give them power again.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: But in 1925, the future was invisible.
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  SPEAKER_00: All evangelicals knew in that moment was the sting of laughter.
• 12:21
  And if persecution makes people feel noble,
• 12:23
  mockery makes them feel small.
• 12:25
  The Scopes trial wasn't remembered as a noble defeat,
• 12:27
  it was remembered as a humiliation.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And humiliation is what drove evangelicals underground,
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  SPEAKER_00: where they built a parallel culture strong enough to reemerge later.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if you flip through the textbooks,
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: the Scopes trial is often framed as a legal battle,
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  SPEAKER_00: a state law against evolution,
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  SPEAKER_00: a courtroom showdown,
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: a fine.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Legally, the story is a footnote.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: But culturally, it's a turning point.
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  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because what really happened in Dayton wasn't about law.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was about shame.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And there's an important difference between persecution and mockery.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: When you're persecuted,
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: when you're jailed,
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  SPEAKER_00: fined,
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  SPEAKER_00: even beaten for your beliefs,
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  SPEAKER_00: you feel noble.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's dignity and suffering for a cause.
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  SPEAKER_00: The early Christians thrown to the lions remembered as heroes, not fools.
• 13:09
  The martyrs in Fox Books of Martyrs became symbols of courage
• 13:12
  and conviction.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're mocked, it feels different.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Mockery doesn't make you noble.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: It makes you feel small.
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  SPEAKER_00: It turns your belief into a punchline and your convictions into comedy.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what happened in Dayton.
• 13:24
  Evangelicals didn't walk away feeling like martyrs,
• 13:26
  they walked away feeling ridiculed.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Psychologists have long noted how laughter functions in society.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not just about humor, it's about hierarchy.
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  SPEAKER_00: We laugh at things to place them beneath us.
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  SPEAKER_00: A joke at someone else's expense is a way of saying you're lower,
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  SPEAKER_00: you're ridiculous,
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  SPEAKER_00: you don't belong at the grown-up table.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what the courtroom laughter in 1925 signaled.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Not that Christians were wrong, but that they were laughable.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's a hard wound to heal.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can fight back against arguments.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: You can rally against persecution.
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  SPEAKER_00: But how can you fight back against being made the butt of the joke?
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  SPEAKER_00: And no one captured this better than H.L.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Minkin, the Baltimore Sun journalist covering the trial.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Minkin was brilliant, biting, and merciless.
• 14:06
  His columns painted the people of Dayton as yokels and the
• 14:10
  Christian faith as superstition.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: He mocked the town.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: He compared Brian's testimony to a rustic meeting house debate.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: His words mattered.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: They were syndicated nationwide.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Readers in Chicago,
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: New York,
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Los Angeles consumed the trial not as a serious debate,
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: but as satire.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: The Scopes trial became less about law,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: more about comedy,
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: a farce in which evangelicals play the role of fools.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And when a group feels mocked long enough, they retreat.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sociologists talk about status threat.
• 14:37
  The moment when a group that once held cultural power realizes
• 14:40
  being displaced.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: The reaction isn't just anger, it's defensiveness.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Status threat produces enclaves, bubbles, subcultures.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what happened post Scopes.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Evangelicals withdrew.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: They built Bible colleges, Christian schools, publishing houses.
• 14:54
  It's not that they stopped believing,
• 14:55
  but they stopped trusting the cultural center.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was self-protection.
• 15:00
  And if the world laughs at you,
• 15:01
  you create your own world where you can take yourself
• 15:03
  seriously.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And theologically, this raises a haunting question.
• 15:07
  How do Christians respond when the world doesn't just disagree
• 15:09
  with them,
• 15:10
  but laughs at them?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus warned of persecution.
• 15:13
  He told his disciples they would be hated,
• 15:15
  imprisoned,
• 15:15
  even killed for following him.
• 15:17
  And indeed,
• 15:17
  for centuries,
• 15:18
  Christians interpreted suffering as a mark of faithfulness.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: But mockery, that's trickier.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Mockery doesn't feel like noble suffering.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like shame.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: And shame works differently than pain.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Pain you can endure.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Shame you carry inside.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: Shame changes how you see yourself.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: In Dayton, evangelicals began to see themselves differently.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not as America's moral backbone.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: but as outsiders, objects of ridicule.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: That shift in self-perception was as significant as any legal ruling.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the echo.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Decades later,
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: when evangelicals built Christian schools,
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: when they founded creation museums,
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: when they rallied against Hollywood and the media,
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: what were they really responding to?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, secularization.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, modernism.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: But underneath all that, there's still that echo of Dayton.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's the laughter in the courtroom,
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: the cartoons of monkey preachers,
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: the sense that to believe in scripture in modern America,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: wasn't controversial, it was laughable.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the sting of shame, it still shapes evangelical responses today.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever a comedian mocks Christians on late-night TV,
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: whenever social media sneers at Bible-thumpers,
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: you can trace a little bit of a line back to Dayton,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: 1925.
• 16:25
  Because once you've been laughed out of the courtroom,
• 16:27
  you don't forget it.
• 16:28
  And while it looked like defeat,
• 16:30
  hidden in this retreat was a kind of reinvention.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because by creating their own schools,
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: media,
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: and publishing houses,
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: evangelicals build a parallel world,
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: a subculture,
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: strong enough to sustain itself without approval from the cultural elite.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And in time, that subculture produced a revival.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: In the late 1940s,
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: a tall,
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: handsome preacher from North Carolina stepped onto the national stage.
• 16:51
  Billy Graham wasn't a fundamentalist firebrand like the angry
• 16:54
  street preachers of the era.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: He was winsome, polished, camera-ready.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And he emerged from the very institutions born in retreat after Scopes.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Wheaton College.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Youth for Christ rallies.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Christian radio.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Graham's crusades brought evangelicals out of the shadows.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, stadiums were filled again.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Presidents were inviting him to the White House.
• 17:12
  And what looked like a subculture in hiding became a movement
• 17:15
  back in the mainstream.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: However...
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: The DNA of Dayton was still there.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Graham may have smiled for the cameras,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: but the movement behind him still carried this thing of humiliation.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: There was always the sense of being looked down on by cultural elites,
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: being sneered by professors,
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: mocked in editorials,
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: dismissed as unsophisticated.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: The Scopes trial made evangelicals self-conscious.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that self-consciousness never went away.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you can see this most clearly in the ongoing battle over evolution.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Long after 1925, creationism kept coming back to court.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: In the 1960s, states tried to ban evolution again.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: In the 1980s, some tried to mandate creation science in classrooms.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Each time the court struck them down,
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: and each time the cultural script replayed,
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Christians portrayed as backward...
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: mocked as anti-science.
• 18:01
  The creation museums and art replicas that dot the American
• 18:04
  South today aren't just
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: about defending genesis,
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: they're about reclaiming dignity.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're statements to the wider culture,
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: we're not fools,
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: we take this seriously and we can build institutions that show it.
• 18:14
  Every diorama of humans walking with dinosaurs is in its own
• 18:17
  way an answer to
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Clarence Darrow's smirk.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: By the late 1970s,
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: The retreat had turned into counterattack.
• 18:23
  The religious right emerged,
• 18:25
  mobilizing evangelicals into a political force.
• 18:28
  They rallied against abortion,
• 18:29
  for school prayer,
• 18:30
  for family values,
• 18:31
  their leaders.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dodson.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: They built television empires, megachurches, and lobbying organizations.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And always beneath the surface was the psychology of status threat.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Evangelicals weren't simply trying to shape politics.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: They were trying to claw back the dignity they felt they had lost.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: When Ronald Reagan told a roomful of pastors in 1980,
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: you can't endorse me,
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: but I endorse you,
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: evangelicals felt the warm glow of being taken seriously again.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was a long way from the courthouse laughter in Dayton.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: You fast forward today,
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: the arguments over evolution have morphed into arguments over gender,
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: sexuality,
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: religious liberty,
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: and education.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: But the psychology is the same.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Many evangelicals feel mocked by late night comedians,
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: sneered by Hollywood,
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: dismissed by academics.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Again,
• 19:15
  you can draw a straight line from Clarence Darrow's
• 19:16
  cross-examination of Brian in
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: 1925 to the meme wars of Twitter in 2025.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: The script hasn't changed.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: The fear of being laughed out of the room.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the real legacy of the Scopes trial.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't the Butler Act.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't even evolution in schools.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was a deep, lingering wound in the evangelical imagination.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: The fear of mockery,
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: the sting of humiliation,
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: and the shift from cultural insiders to outsiders.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you had been in Dayton in July 1925,
• 19:42
  you would have thought you were watching a small-town publicity
• 19:46
  stunt over a $100
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: fine,
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: but you weren't.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: You were watching a cultural role reversal unfold in real time.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Before Scopes, evangelicals were the mainstream.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: After Scopes, they became the subculture.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And that shift shaped the entire century.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: The rise of Bible colleges,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: the birth of Christian media,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: the emergence of Billy Graham,
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: the battle over revolution,
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: the moral majority,
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: the religious right,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: and the cultural wars we still live with today.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: The Scopes trial wasn't just a legal case.
• 20:10
  It was a turning point when American evangelicalism moved from
• 20:14
  confidence to
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: defensiveness,
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: from majority to minority,
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: from laughing to being laughed at.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the shadow of that humiliation still stretches long.
• 20:22
  If you walk into the old courthouse in Dayton,
• 20:23
  Tennessee today,
• 20:24
  it feels quiet.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: The crowds are gone.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: The telegraph wires have been dismantled.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: The reporters' typewriters are silent.
• 20:30
  The building has been turned into a museum with faded
• 20:32
  photographs of Brian and Darrell.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: A few display cases and a bronze plaque commemorating the trial.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to believe that for a single week in July 1925,
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: this was the most famous courtroom in the world.
• 20:44
  That here,
• 20:45
  in this small southern town,
• 20:46
  the course of American religion took a decisive turn.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because the Scopes trial was never really about evolution.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't even about John Scopes.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: The fine was trivial.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: The law was symbolic.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: What made the trial matter was the laughter.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: When Clarence Darrow cross-examined William Jennings Bryan,
• 21:02
  when the courtroom chuckled and the papers ran cartoons of
• 21:04
  monkey preachers,
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: evangelicals didn't lose an argument.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: They lost face.
• 21:09
  They discovered what it felt like to be ridiculed in public to
• 21:11
  have their faith
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: turned into a punchline.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that humiliation reshaped everything.
• 21:15
  The Scopes trial reminds us that movements are not only shaped
• 21:18
  by victories and
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: defeats,
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: they're shaped by dignity and by the loss of it.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: If persecution makes you noble, mockery makes you defensive.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And defensive movements can grow powerful in ways no one expects.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's the irony of Dayton.
• 21:31
  The trial meant almost nothing in legal history,
• 21:33
  but in cultural history,
• 21:34
  it meant everything.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: It marked the moment evangelicals shifted from insiders to outsiders,
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: from confident to self-conscious.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: The monkey trial, it didn't decide the place of Darwin in schools.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: It decided the place of evangelicals in American society.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: And a century later, we're still living in its shadow.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to Theology Made.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jordan.