Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Alex McFarland: 1925 Scopes Trial & Its Tragic Effect On America

Transcript

Alex McFarland: 1925 Scopes Trial & Its Tragic Effect On America · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:00
  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
• 0:10
  defending biblical Christianity.
• 0:13
  No topic off limits.
• 0:16
  And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
• 0:20
  Friends, family in Christ, thank you so much for tuning in, for sharing the podcast,
• 0:25
  for Prank for this ministry.
• 0:27
  It's been a blessing.
• 0:28
  We're approaching our two-year anniversary already.
• 0:30
  Wow, and 400 episodes.
• 0:32
  But my guest today, I love this brother in Christ, this apologist, Alex McFarlane.
• 0:39
  He is a Christian apologist, author, evangelist, religion, and culture analyst, and an advocate
• 0:44
  for biblical truth.
• 0:45
  He speaks worldwide.
• 0:46
  He's preached in over 2200 churches throughout North America, numerous more internationally.
• 0:53
  He also speaks at Christian events, conferences, debates, other venues to teach biblical truths
• 0:58
  and preachers the gospel.
• 1:01
  And we'll talk about one or two of his books.
• 1:02
  I want to bring them on right now, Alex McFarlane, good to see you, brother, thanks for your
• 1:06
  time again.
• 1:07
  Well, thank you, David.
• 1:09
  It's great to be on with you, and congratulations on two years.
• 1:13
  That's fantastic.
• 1:14
  It's an accomplishment when you start something new.
• 1:16
  You don't know how it's going to go, how people will react.
• 1:19
  But man, we've got a very loyal viewers and family in Christ.
• 1:25
  So your website, AlexMcFarlane.com, your Facebook page, Rev Alex McFarlane.
• 1:32
  And that's what I want to start with.
• 1:34
  You just recently had an event, and Charlie Kirk was there as part of your speaker series.
• 1:40
  Tell us about that, and who's coming up next, Alex.
• 1:43
  Well, thank you very much.
• 1:45
  You know, in addition to my own writing, and speaking, and broadcasting, we love to
• 1:50
  do events.
• 1:51
  We need to get you out on the East Coast and have you speak, but we've done this summer,
• 1:58
  as you and I record this, kind of August is drawing to a close.
• 2:01
  We did seven youth camps this summer, Bidlical World View, we're in places like Montana,
• 2:08
  in Colorado, and Georgia, had over 1200 kids in seven youth camps, quite a number that
• 2:15
  invited Christ into their life.
• 2:17
  And then many kids that are repeat camp, you know, participants, and they're learning Bidlical
• 2:24
  World View.
• 2:25
  And David, in addition to talking about God's Word and defending the Christian faith, we
• 2:29
  talk about America and why this country is so worth fighting for.
• 2:36
  But we did an adult event this summer, a speaker series that I called Conversations
• 2:41
  that Matter.
• 2:43
  And we had Dinesh D'Souza, Dr. Gary Chapman, who wrote the five love languages.
• 2:49
  But then just days ago, we had Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, fantastic, had 2010
• 2:56
  days from 17 states, it was really fun.
• 3:00
  But then coming up in just a little while, actually in a couple of weeks, we've got
• 3:04
  Lauren Green of Fox News.
• 3:07
  Awesome.
• 3:08
  Lauren, she and I have known each other about 15 years, she's an author, a best-selling author,
• 3:15
  but she also generally is like the Fox News anchor on Saturday nights.
• 3:21
  And then she's also, for I guess, 20, 25 years has been a full-time religion correspondent
• 3:30
  for Fox, and she's interviewed incredible leaders, the world over, and she was there
• 3:38
  a few months ago at the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral there in France.
• 3:44
  But Lauren Green will be moderating a panel discussion, David, on the future of the American
• 3:52
  Church, religious freedom of religious expression.
• 3:57
  And someone that we've just confirmed a couple of weeks ago to be there as well is Mark
• 4:02
  Walker.
• 4:03
  He is Trump's appointee to be the international ambassador for religious freedom.
• 4:10
  And so, now where our speaker series is in Myrtle Beach on the East Coast, Myrtle Beach
• 4:17
  is a very renowned resort area.
• 4:20
  There are a lot of theaters here, and for all of our speaker series, we've rented some
• 4:26
  just state-of-the-art theaters.
• 4:28
  And so the September 14 event with Lauren Green and US Ambassador Mark Walker, that's
• 4:35
  going to be at a place called the Grig Rolls Theater.
• 4:39
  And then in that very same theater, the final conference will do this year, October 3
• 4:45
  and 4th.
• 4:46
  I'll be teaching apologetics.
• 4:48
  We've got a free event on how to defend the Christian faith, but all this info and
• 4:53
  more is at my own website, which is Alex McFarlane.com.
• 4:59
  And friends, scroll down to conversations that matter to get info or tickets on the speaker
• 5:05
  series.
• 5:06
  Phenomenal, Alex, I just love what you're doing, love what you've been doing all these
• 5:09
  years.
• 5:10
  In fact, I have several of your books, and I record your program on NRB and forgive me,
• 5:17
  I don't know what night it comes on.
• 5:19
  When are you on NRB?
• 5:20
  Because I saw your interview a while back with Lauren Green, and I've seen many others.
• 5:23
  So when are you on NRB?
• 5:25
  Deena, I'm going to show my ignorance here.
• 5:28
  I think it's Monday nights and Thursday nights.
• 5:31
  Okay.
• 5:32
  I know we're on like two nights a week.
• 5:34
  I think it's Monday and Thursday.
• 5:36
  I should know when my own show is on that particular network.
• 5:39
  Well, it shows how busy you are.
• 5:42
  We've been so blessed to interview.
• 5:46
  In addition to my own teaching, which is biblical worldview and apologetics, that's been
• 5:51
  really, I went to school for it, we've taught apologetics really since 1989, and it's been
• 5:59
  my joy to host about 50 or 51 conferences.
• 6:04
  And David, with that, may I acknowledge the homegoing of a dear friend, a mentor, and
• 6:13
  he was my boss for eight years, greatest guy in the world, the late, and I would say great,
• 6:20
  Dr. James C. Dobson.
• 6:22
  Absolutely.
• 6:24
  And I went to work for Dr. Dobson 22 years ago.
• 6:28
  We had done conferences in my hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina.
• 6:34
  And you know, I was a youth pastor, and I was just concerned.
• 6:38
  My kids were going away to UNC Chapel Hill and Duke and State and Clemson, and very often,
• 6:45
  the very same kids that were very on fire in our youth group, they would go away to college
• 6:51
  as necessary as college is, but my kids were going away to college, and they were just
• 6:56
  getting deconstructionism and anti-God, anti-American content.
• 7:02
  And so in the late 80s, early 90s, we began to do biblical worldview conferences.
• 7:09
  And I brought in my heroes, Josh McDowell, if you remember that name.
• 7:13
  Absolutely, oh my goodness.
• 7:16
  John Ankerberg, Norm Geisler, and then we began to bring in people like Chuck Colson,
• 7:22
  another name that I do not want people to forget, please.
• 7:27
  Well, one day my telephone rings in 2003, the first call was a guy named H.B. London,
• 7:36
  and Christianity today had done this little 80-bitty, tiny article on me.
• 7:42
  And we had rented the Greensboro Colosseum four or five times, and we had 5,000 kids,
• 7:48
  and we had 8,000 kids.
• 7:51
  And we would book Josh McDowell and two or three speakers.
• 7:55
  Well, H.B. London called me, and he said, are you Alex?
• 7:59
  Are you that youth apologetics guy?
• 8:02
  And I said, yes, sir.
• 8:04
  And he said, well, do you know my cousin, James Dobson?
• 8:08
  And I said, well, I don't know him, but I surely know who he is.
• 8:12
  Folks, you've got to understand Dr. Dobson at one point was on over 2,000 radio stations.
• 8:18
  I mean, he had like four times the reach that Rush Limbaugh had and Rush with you.
• 8:26
  So H.B. London said, may Jim Dobson give you a call?
• 8:32
  And I was like, okay, sure.
• 8:35
  Well, yeah, no, how did you get this number?
• 8:40
  No, but I'm going to tell you something, we had done all these youth apologetics events.
• 8:48
  And I just had a sense in my heart that we had gone about as far as I knew how to go.
• 8:54
  And I remember I was praying and I was like, Lord, show me what to do and help me and guide me.
• 8:59
  And please elevate our footprint a little bit that we can tell more people about you.
• 9:05
  Well, H.B. London called me and then that afternoon, James Dobson called me.
• 9:11
  And he said, Alex, this is Jim Dobson.
• 9:14
  And my little heart was beating and he said, I'm going to cut to the chase.
• 9:21
  I want you to bring your circus under our tent.
• 9:25
  And two months later, my wife and I were living in Colorado Springs.
• 9:29
  I had a budget, a staff and we began to do world view and apologetics up and down the west coast.
• 9:38
  Excellent. I didn't know that.
• 9:40
  Wow.
• 9:41
  Yeah, I worked for Dobs in a total of eight years and you know, here's the thing.
• 9:48
  We went on the radio in 15 months and I completely give God the glory.
• 9:54
  David, I just want to, I want to give God the glory for how he has opened doors.
• 9:59
  But I was on the radio with Dr. Dobson seven times in 15 months.
• 10:07
  And all about biblical world view of different things and young people and how do we equip
• 10:15
  teenagers to not lose their faith in college or something?
• 10:19
  You know, those kinds of topics.
• 10:21
  And Tindale publishers call me up and they said, Alex, we want you to write a book.
• 10:27
  And I give God the praise.
• 10:30
  My 21st book comes out October 7th.
• 10:34
  But I just want to acknowledge James Dobson.
• 10:37
  He was a pioneer.
• 10:39
  What did I see?
• 10:41
  Yeah, he saw around the curve before most people did.
• 10:47
  And really everything good that has been offered to me over the last two decades,
• 10:55
  I really owe to the influence of James Dobson.
• 10:59
  And so he's gone on to heaven.
• 11:02
  But folks, now we've got to stay faithful, present and defend the gospel, defend the family.
• 11:08
  But David, aren't we all blessed due to the associations and the friendships that God puts
• 11:17
  along the pathway?
• 11:18
  Absolutely.
• 11:19
  I have a couple similar stories, not at that level though.
• 11:22
  But thank God for Dr. James Dobson for focus on the family when the families were being torn apart
• 11:29
  when he started his ministry.
• 11:30
  And I'm sure he heard those wonderful words we all long for and hope to hear.
• 11:35
  Well done, my good and faithful servant when he went home.
• 11:39
  So Alex, speaking of worldview, I want to bring up a couple more books here.
• 11:42
  First of all, I wrote a book 10 years ago called The Cost of Our Silence.
• 11:48
  And in that book, in a chapter called World of View War, I had a section about the Bible being
• 11:55
  on trial 100 years ago.
• 11:59
  We're talking about the Scopes trial and it is officially the United States of America
• 12:04
  and the state of Tennessee versus John T Scopes.
• 12:08
  Some people know it as the Scopes Monkey trial.
• 12:11
  I wanted to bring you one to talk about this.
• 12:12
  It's 100 years ago.
• 12:14
  And yet look at where we're at today when they add laws back then in some states banning the
• 12:19
  teaching of evolution in government schools.
• 12:23
  Well, today they don't not they don't ban the teaching.
• 12:26
  They teach it not as a theory, but as a fact in a lot of cases.
• 12:29
  We're going to talk about that.
• 12:30
  Now let's bring in your book.
• 12:32
  And I want you to tell a story about the courtroom.
• 12:34
  And you finishing this book called 10 Answers for Atheists and Eric Metaxas wrote the
• 12:40
  Forward.
• 12:41
  So we're going by really fast today, Alex.
• 12:44
  If you can just sum up that story and how you came to be in that courtroom where they held
• 12:48
  the Scopes Monkey trial and you finished this book on atheism.
• 12:54
  Yeah, wow.
• 12:55
  I'm glad you're bringing this up because you know, this really does help set some context.
• 13:00
  Yes, 100 years ago in 1925, a century ago, the ACLU was looking for a way to challenge Tennessee
• 13:10
  had a law against the teaching of evolution in the public school classroom.
• 13:14
  Because they knew the school board, by the way, the Tennessee state school board,
• 13:19
  every one on that school board had a master's degree.
• 13:22
  I mean, an undergrad degree and a number had masters.
• 13:27
  So they were not, you know, unintelligent, you know, mountain people like H.L.
• 13:33
  Minken, there was a great news, a great or infamous perhaps, I should say,
• 13:38
  newspaper publisher H.L. Minken of the Baltimore Sun, who was friends with Clarence Dero,
• 13:45
  the attorney for John T Scopes and the ACLU and they liked to paint Tennessee as
• 13:52
  anti-science, you know, hillbilly robes.
• 13:56
  But in reality, the school board and the jury all at least had a college degree and some had
• 14:03
  post-grad degrees. But what happened was the ACLU with some very militant secularists like John
• 14:11
  Dewey, Margaret Sanger of Planned Parenthood and others, they wanted to challenge the Tennessee
• 14:19
  law. So they paid a substitute gym teacher, a physed teacher, John Scopes.
• 14:27
  They paid him to purposely go in a classroom, teach evolution and be charged with a crime.
• 14:33
  And that's what it was really about, but it became just this media circus.
• 14:38
  They estimate over the summer of 1925, from nationally and internationally,
• 14:45
  a million people, total cumulative, a million people came through the sleepy Tennessee town of
• 14:52
  Dayton, Tennessee. Now, defending the Tennessee school board was William Jennings Bryan, a Christian.
• 15:00
  Now he was getting older, he had not been in a courtroom in 10 years and sweltering
• 15:06
  heat, no air conditioning. Clarence Dero basically got William Jennings Bryan to sort of make a
• 15:15
  tactical mistake and really commit to what I would call a false dichotomy. Clarence Dero was
• 15:24
  just pummeling William Jennings Bryan, saying, look, couldn't it be that maybe the Bible it's okay
• 15:31
  a book about faith, but when it comes to science, Noah's Ark, creation, let's just keep that
• 15:40
  in the hands of Charles Darwin and the scientist, but the Bible wouldn't it be fair to say it's a
• 15:46
  book about faith, not about science? And William Jennings Bryan said yes. Now, you and I could do an
• 15:54
  entire show on why that's problematic and I disagree with that. But John T Scopes was convicted
• 16:01
  he was fined $100, but here's the point in the media and in the eyes of the public.
• 16:08
  For a long time after the Scopes trial, it became just assumed that the Bible is a book about
• 16:16
  faith. When it comes to truth, science, we have to go outside the Bible and that's why I would
• 16:25
  say, look, David, even as you and I record this, you know, hearts are broken over the shooting
• 16:31
  in Minneapolis. And that's very sad, that Robert Westman, aka Robin, transgender shooter,
• 16:40
  killed people at Annunciation Catholic School. But here's the thing, we've had now nearly a century
• 16:49
  of America that rejects the idea that there's objective moral truth, like we should not commit
• 16:56
  murder. America largely rejects the idea that where Imago Day made in the image of God, human life
• 17:03
  is sacred. I would argue rampant abortion. And by the way, the tens of millions of abortions
• 17:12
  now threatens the preservation of our population. I mean, sociologists, or I wrote about this 10
• 17:19
  years ago, now sociologists are just writing warnings about demographic winter because there are
• 17:26
  80 million Americans that don't exist. Why? Because they were aborted. And so the thing is, the Scopes
• 17:36
  trial in the eyes of the public, and certainly in the purveyor of academia, the Scopes trial
• 17:45
  largely legitimize the idea of, we are a secular culture, faith is not really objectively true.
• 17:56
  And the other thing is that we can keep reality and God in two separate silos.
• 18:05
  Now, one thing that I have to tell you, and I wrote this for short on time,
• 18:11
  David, have you ever heard of the former publisher of World magazine, PhD from Harvard,
• 18:18
  a brilliant Christian thinker, Dr. Marvin Olaski? Absolutely. Love him.
• 18:23
  Yeah. Okay. So Marvin Olaski, 20 plus years ago, I wrote a book called Prodigal Press.
• 18:31
  And I've interviewed him a number of times. Anyway, Marvin Olaski, 20 years ago, interviewed some
• 18:39
  journalists that had covered the Scopes trial. And they admitted a number of them, and he writes about
• 18:45
  this in the book Prodigal Press. Wow. Because the Scopes trial was really a turning point that
• 18:52
  during and after the Scopes trial, the secular media largely became at best questioning and at worst,
• 19:04
  overtly hostile to religious people and religious ideas. And here's the thing, quite a number of
• 19:13
  the journalists who covered the Scopes trial. Decades later, they told Marvin Olaski on record.
• 19:20
  They said, we're so embarrassed. The Tennessee School Board was articulate. They made a case,
• 19:27
  but we lambasted, we marginalized the people because we wanted to curry favor with the atheist
• 19:36
  HL Minken. Clarence Dero and HL Minken were so influential to make it in newspaper journalism.
• 19:44
  You had to sort of kiss the ring. And so we slammed the Tennessee School Board as ignorant
• 19:51
  hillbillies, but it wasn't that way at all. And one person told Olaski, like it was the worst
• 19:59
  shame of my career. And I've always regretted the way we skewed the coverage. And so the Scopes
• 20:07
  trial, by the way, Alex, some things never changed. They're skewing the coverage. They're not
• 20:14
  reporting fairly, honestly. That was 100 years ago. Please go ahead.
• 20:18
  Yeah, I know. Do you know, let me give you just a for instance, do you remember when the
• 20:23
  Mel Gibson movie The Passion of the Christ came out? Absolutely 2004.
• 20:27
  Yeah, I was at a private screening with Mel Gibson. And then in my home state of North Carolina,
• 20:34
  we rented two theaters and we screened it. And you may recall there was a lot of controversy
• 20:39
  about that film. So I went to the local Jewish synagogue and I met with a rabbi and the leaders
• 20:45
  of this synagogue and I said, look, could we view this film together and then we'll do open Q&A
• 20:52
  with the audience. And it will be very loving and collegial. And there were accusations that
• 20:59
  that film would cause anti-Semitism. And so the rabbi and his leaders, they said, sure,
• 21:07
  let's do it. And, you know, it was, it was very, you know, the presentation of Jesus was very
• 21:15
  clear. But after it was over, we had this discussion, this Q&A. It was very, very cordial. And I,
• 21:25
  you know, publicly said, look, we don't want this film to cause any anti-Semitism, but let's
• 21:32
  discuss it. And it was a wonderful night. A lot of hugs and handshakes. Well, the next morning
• 21:39
  in the local Greensboro newspaper, the store began, it said, you could cut the tension with a knife.
• 21:48
  Everyone was on edge as we felt like any second violence shouting could erupt. And I talked to
• 21:56
  the rabbi, I said, I don't know what event they were at. But last night, we had a warm and loving
• 22:03
  evening. My point being, folks, the media, I don't know that it's ever completely neutral or
• 22:13
  objective. But the Scopes trial was a very much a turning point in the media feeling emboldened
• 22:23
  to be hostile to people of faith and religion in general. And so I would say it was one other thing
• 22:32
  though, David. Okay, in the aftermath of the Scopes trial, a lot of conservative Christian
• 22:39
  schools and groups retreated from the public square. That's what the title of your book,
• 22:47
  The Cost of Silence is very true. Because in a similar vein, France is shay for a great Christian
• 22:54
  thinker in the 70s and 80s would often write and speak about what he called the great evangelical
• 23:02
  disaster that the church after Scopes to a degree retreated from academia, retreated from
• 23:13
  journalism, even from the arts. And so I would say the removal of the Ten Commandments in 1963,
• 23:22
  the removal of prayer from public schools, the removal of legal protection for the unborn in 1973,
• 23:30
  the mainstreaming of homosexuality by the late 70s, Billy Crystal was the first openly gay
• 23:39
  character on a television comedy. And then, of course, the redefinition of marriage in 2015,
• 23:46
  honestly, all of these cultural dominoes that fill were, I would say the progression
• 23:55
  was ignited during the Scopes trial. Yeah, absolutely. It changed in some ways, it changed America,
• 24:04
  sadly. And this was 100 years ago, we've seen patterns now of how the media handled it. I mean,
• 24:10
  maybe they didn't have an agenda, but they used that to ridicule Christians as old fashion,
• 24:16
  fundamentalists or knowing nothing about science, right? And now today we've learned you've got
• 24:21
  to put science in air quotes. But Alex, there's some other decisions that came down the Supreme
• 24:27
  Court after that. In 1968, they ruled laws preventing the teaching of evolution were unconstitutional.
• 24:35
  That's Epersons versus Arkansas. And then in 1975, listen to this, Tennessee's equal time law.
• 24:42
  All it did was declared that you could have equal time to present creationism or intelligent
• 24:48
  design and evolution, but they they declared that unconstitutional. And because of course,
• 24:55
  they don't want the Bible's views to be told that 1982 in Arkansas, US court struck down a law
• 25:01
  requiring public schools to give a balanced treatment to evolution and creation. And then finally,
• 25:07
  I'll let you respond to this in 1987, the Supreme Court ruled a Louisiana law requiring schools
• 25:14
  to give equal time or a balanced treatment to both creation and evolution ruled it unconstitutional.
• 25:19
  So they don't want to hear the truth. They want to silence the truth, but this is the pattern
• 25:24
  of the media of the public schools and the courts, your thoughts and as we wrap it up in a few minutes
• 25:30
  here. Well, you know, they talk about Trump derangement syndrome, TDS. I would say a lot of people on
• 25:37
  the left have God derangement syndrome, GDS. I mean, they don't want God even allowed into the
• 25:45
  conversation. And one of the things about evolution, look, to believe in evolution, you have to
• 25:52
  believe that something came from nothing. Chaos is the mother of order. Information comes from
• 25:58
  inanimate matter. Just the DNA, which is encrypted information, we've never, never observed
• 26:06
  information come from anywhere but an intelligent outside source. And so when they say follow the
• 26:14
  science, good, to posit a creator, i.e. God and God, the foundation of moral knowledge, and we
• 26:24
  are accountable to God, that's the true truth. And that is what is truly scientific, not this
• 26:31
  methodological naturalism that's been enforced on generation of American school children.
• 26:37
  And this is the fact that people have to get their kids. If you're young enough to have children,
• 26:44
  you have a big decision to make as far as what kind of education you're going to give them.
• 26:47
  There are good Christian schools. There's online schooling. There's what Freedom Project Academy.
• 26:52
  There's many, many more. There are a lot of good options out there because the schools, as you
• 26:56
  said, I think you used the word earlier, they have become hostile, not just disagreeing with the
• 27:02
  biblical worldview in the Christian faith. They have become hostile toward biblical Christianity,
• 27:06
  true biblical Christianity, Alex. I knew it would go by really fast, but we had to go back a hundred
• 27:11
  years and look at where we're at now as far as the public square and the teaching of evolution,
• 27:17
  what's allowed in creationism and the Bible is offensive. And we knew that, but brother, thank you
• 27:23
  so much for your time. God bless your work and your ministry. Yes, salute. I know you've got another
• 27:29
  interview coming up. We appreciate it. So Alex McFarlane.com, I also didn't mention what we talked
• 27:34
  about last time. One hundred Bible questions and answers for families, great resource. But friends,
• 27:38
  thank you so much. This is an important podcast. It's good to look back at history and learn what
• 27:44
  happened, how we got here and what we need to do about it now to hopefully write the shift. God
• 27:49
  bless you and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.