In July 1925, John T. Scopes stood trial in Dayton, Tennessee, charged with teaching to a high school biology class Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to explain evolution. The trial was intended as a test of Tennessee’s newly passed Butler Law, which prohibited the state’s public schools and universities from denying the biblical account of creation or suggesting humans had evolved from lower orders of life…
…The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), formed in 1920 in response to World War I – era limits on free speech and the right to dissent, saw the Butler Law and the fight to limit the teaching of evolutionary theory as a threat to scientific inquiry and academic freedom. Hoping to challenge the law’s constitutionality and establish whether a state legislature could impose a curriculum shaped by religious beliefs, the ACLU announced it would cover all legal expenses for any Tennessee teacher willing to defy it…
…The Darrow-Bryan spectacle culminated in Darrow’s famous cross-examination of Bryan as an expert witness on the Bible. Neither man was much of a biblical authority, but Darrow pressed tenaciously on whether Bryan accepted a literal reading of the Old Testament. Had a fish swallowed Jonah and then three days later spat him alive back onto land? Had the sun stood still at Joshua’s command? Was it true that all species of animals and human races that populated the earth existed because of Noah and his ark? Were the six days of creation in Genesis actual days or was this metaphorical language? Sometimes Bryan insisted on biblical literalism; sometimes he hedged; often he professed not to know or even to care. The exchange ended bitterly, with Bryan asserting that Darrow and the other defense lawyers had “no other purpose than ridiculing every Christian who believes in the Bible.” Darrow shot back: “We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States” …
A Century Ago, the Christian Right, believed they were right in determining the definition of science, and medicine, and defining both of these institutions' rights, as to how the public student could and would be educated. Back in the 1920s, it seemed that any and all history was to be based on the Bible, no, not just any Bible, but the New Testament and its philosophy. A century later, as if time not only stood still, but in fact took a 360-degree reversal the Christian Right, once again has determined that our Founding Fathers and the US Constitution have been misinterpreted, and once again demands that only Christian Law, (as it pertains to some CHARALTINS interpretation of the BIBLE) be the source of LAW and ORDER. From Reproductive Rights, Human Rights, LGBTQ Rights, Freedoms for People of Color, and the Rights of anyone NOT of the Christian Religion, the America of 2022, has no place for you. God does Bless America, according to these anarchists, HE only is concerned with a segment of CHRISTIANS!
