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10A Opinion mm m
The Scopes
By Daniel S. Brown lective memories not
This month marks the because it was about sci-
80th anniversary of the ence, but because it wasn't.
Scopes Trial, the original Scopes represents the
trial of the century. Civility, uniquely American ability
not a survival-of-the-fittest
demeanor, marked the proceedings.
It's not a bad
precedent for our U.S.
Senators to follow in their
deliberations over U.S.
Supreme Court justice nominee
Judge John Roberts.
Why* after eight decades,
does this historic trial continue
to resonate with
Americans? The standard
reply is that the battle
between evolution and creationism
is still being
fought. That may be true, in
part, but it is a simplified, if
not mistaken, conclusion.
While the indictment
against a first-year math
teacher and beloved tennis
coach John Scopes charged
that he "taught that man
has descended from a lower
order of animals," more was
at stake. The trial, played
out in Rhea County,
Tennessee, lives in our col-
simultaneously to accommodate
and dismiss competing
world views.
The American ideal —
that all men are created
equal, that all persons are
gifted with inalienable
rights — means that I must
learn to maintain and
defend my values while
simultaneously respecting
and defending the right of
my philosophical opponents
to hold their values.
I do not argue there are
no absolutes; nor do I argue
that someone is not wrong
in the current culture wars.
I do argue, however, that
intellectual and philosophical
differences — conservative
and liberal, faith-filled
and faithless, rural and
urban, North and South,
coastal cities and "fly-over"
states — are bound together
in the American experiment.
The Scopes Trial shows
one early attempt by educated
men to wrestle with a
convergence of incompatible
values. It was a legal proceeding
with tensions that
in many ways transcended
the evolution-creationism
debate: It was about northern
industrialism vs. southern
agrarianism, new vs.
old, educational accountability
vs. academic freedom,
local control vs. governmental
mandates of
schools; parental involvement
vs. professional standards
in education; freedom
of speech vs. community
standards; and science vs.
authority as ways of knowing.
Evolution and "monkeys"
were just convenient
frames for examining the
cultural milieu of the day.
No other trial has garnered
as much popular
intrigue as the Scopes Trial.
What other trial has
inspired a Pulitzer prizewinning
book, a Broadway
play, feature films, popular
songs? Herein lies the prob­
lem: In a culture where an
appreciation for intellectual
rigor and critical thinking
are panned, the stories told
in fictional accounts — like
Jerome Lawrence and
Robert E. Lee's perennialfavorite
"Inherit the Wind"
— become "more real" and
"more true" than the reality
of the historic event.
In the late 1980s, community
leaders in Dayton, the
county seat of Rhea County,
decided to use the public
record to correct public misperceptions.
A two-hour
adaptation of the trial
based solely on the official
transcripts of The State of
Tennessee v, John Thomas
Scopes emerged. In the
early 1990s, while a professor
at Bryan College, I
directed the community's
production of the original
script, "Destiny in Dayton,"
for two summers.
The annual Tennessee recreation
is remarkable
because of overwhelming
local and national support.
The play works with a vol-
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