Keeping the Faith

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A magnificent history of the 1925 Scopes trial and how the teaching of evolution in public schools exposed profound divisions in America about morals, freedom, censorship, religion, and the meaning of democracy that still resonate todayIn 1925, hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the “trial of the century, ” where a young schoolteacher named John T. Scopes was charged with teaching evolution to his biology class. Darwin’s theory that species evolved over time through natural selection (misunderstood to suggest that humans descended from monkeys) was viewed as a threat to the nation. Two legendary attorneys, Clarence Darrow for the defense and William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution, drew massive crowds in a trial that quickly became a circus-like media sensation—but it was much more than that. Darrow was arguing that people should be free to worship, or not to worship, and be free to learn, particularly about science, while Bryan declared that evolution undermined the literal truth of the Bible and created a society without morals, meaning, or hope.Prize-winning historian Brenda Wineapple brings to vivid life the entirety of this dramatic and colorful period that exposed foundational divisions across race, region, and religion. Bryan, three times the Democratic nominee for President, had been Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State, and his populism and political ambitions, vividly chronicled in this book, culminated in Dayton. Darrow was the celebrated and successful advocate of labor and a fervent believer in civil rights, as protected by the Constitution. Along with the newly-formed ACLU, he defended Scopes, declaring, “No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry, and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America.”In Keeping the Faith, Brenda Wineapple illuminates this electrifying, pivotal legal showdown, which at its heart was a struggle over the fundamental values that define America, and in doing so calls attention to a crisis almost a century ago that continues to reverberate in the present.