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Summer For The Gods: The Scopes Trial And America's Continuing Debate Over Science And Religion, by Edward J. Larson
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In the summer of 1925, the sleepy hamlet of Dayton, Tennessee, became the unlikely setting of one of our century’s most contentious dramas: the Scopes trial and the debate over science, religion, and their place in public education. This ”trial of the century” not only cast Dayton into the national spotlight, it epitomized America’s ongoing struggle between individual liberty and majoritarian democracy.Now, with this authoritative and engaging book, Edward J. Larson examines the many facets of the Scopes trial and shows how its enduring legacy has crossed religious, cultural, educational, and political lines.The ”Monkey Trial,” as it was playfully nicknamed, was instigated by the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge a controversial Tennessee law banning the teaching of human evolution in public schools. The Tennessee statute represented the first major victory for an intense national campaign against Darwinism, launched in the 1920s by Protestant fundamentalists and led by the famed politician and orator William Jennings Bryan. At the behest of the ACLU, a teacher named John Scopes agreed to challenge the statute, and what resulted was a trial of mythic proportions. Bryan joined the prosecutors and acclaimed criminal attorney Clarence Darrow led the defense—a dramatic legal matchup that spurred enormous media attention and later inspired the classic play Inherit the Wind.The Scopes trial marked a watershed in our national discussion of science and religion. In addition to symbolizing the clash between evolutionists and creationists, the trial helped shape the development of both popular religion and constitutional law in America, serving as a precedent for more recent legal and political battles. With new archival material from both the prosecution and the defense, paired with Larson’s keen historical and legal analysis, Summer for the Gods is poised to become a new classic on a pivotal milestone in American history.
- Sales Rank: #153619 in Books
- Published on: 1997-06-26
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 10.00" h x 6.75" w x 1.00" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 336 pages
Amazon.com Review
If you haven't seen the film version of Inherit the Wind, you might have read it in high school. And even people who have never heard of either the movie or the play probably know something about the events that inspired them: The 1925 Scopes "monkey trial," during which Darwin's theory of evolution was essentially put on trial before the nation. Inherit the Wind paints a romantic picture of John Scopes as a principled biology teacher driven to present scientific theory to his students, even in the teeth of a Tennessee state law prohibiting the teaching of anything other than creationism. The truth, it turns out, was something quite different. In his fascinating history of the Scopes trial, Summer for the Gods, Edward J. Larson makes it abundantly clear that Truth and the Purity of Science had very little to do with the Scopes case. Tennessee had passed a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution, and the American Civil Liberties Union responded by advertising statewide for a high-school teacher willing to defy the law. Communities all across Tennessee saw an opportunity to put themselves on the map by hosting such a controversial trial, but it was the town of Dayton that came up with a sacrificial victim: John Scopes, a man who knew little about evolution and wasn't even the class's regular teacher. Chosen by the city fathers, Scopes obligingly broke the law and was carted off to jail to await trial.
What happened next was a bizarre mix of theatrics and law, enacted by William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense. Though Darrow lost the trial, he made his point--and his career--by calling Bryan, a noted Bible expert, as a witness for the defense. Summer for the Gods is a remarkable retelling of the trial and the events leading up to it, proof positive that truth is stranger than science.
From Booklist
Few courtroom dramas have captured the nation's attention so fully as that played out in 1925 when Tennessee prosecuted John Scopes for teaching evolutionary science in the classroom. Seventy years later, Larson gives us the drama again, tense and gripping: the populist rhetoric of Scopes' chief accuser, William Jennings Bryan; the mordant wit of his defender, Clarence Darrow; the caustic satire of the trial's most prominent chronicler, H. L. Mencken. But as a legal and historical scholar, Larson moves beyond the titanic personalities to limn the national and cultural forces that collided in that Dayton courtroom: agnosticism versus faith; North versus South; liberalism versus conservatism; cosmopolitanism versus localism. Careful and evenhanded analysis dispels the mythologies and caricatures in film and stage versions of the trial, leaving us with a far clearer picture of the cultural warfare that still periodically erupts in our classes and courts. Bryce Christensen
Review
Edward J. Larson provides an excellent cultural history of the case in Summer for the Gods, though his book is wanting as trial drama.... Bryan's and Darrow's ghosts still haunt us, and the Scopes trial still holds resonance, as we continue to litigate the role of religion in public life and the power of the state to prescribe what shall be taught in public schools. Read Summer for the Gods for that well-told story. For the trial of the century, rent the movie. -- The New York Times Book Review, Rodney A. Smolla
Edward Larson's training both in legal history and in the history of science serves him well in Summer for the Gods.... Larson unlocks the past and renders it gracefully accessible in a narrative style that is easy to follow, despite the complexity of the intellectual currents and counter-currents of his theme. -- The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Edward McGlynn Gaffney Jr.
Most helpful customer reviews
100 of 107 people found the following review helpful.
The most publicized misdemeanor case in American history
By Craig Matteson
Edward Larson has accomplished something wonderful with this book. In only 266 pages (318 including footnotes and index), he has captured the flow of cultural issues surrounding science, education, and religion in the early twentieth century, the political goals and maneuvering of the parties involved, the actual Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tennessee with the d�nouement of the appeal, the falsifying of the events involved in the popular culture, and the ongoing cultural impact of the issues involved in this trial.
As I read I found myself marveling at how Larson so richly captures the cultural forces coming together like tectonic plates and crashing into the Scopes trial. I haven't seen as fair a treatment of the issues involved for all the varying parties (there were many more self-interested folks than Darrow and Bryan) on any other subject. To have that time before the trial captured in such a beautiful way is very valuable.
As others have noted, the notion of the trial started as a publicity stunt to promote the hard luck town of Dayton, TN. The ACLU wanted a narrowly defined test case to overturn the laws forbidding the teaching of evolution. Darrow and his crowd wanted to attack religion more than work out the civil liberties issues involved, Bryan cared more about the rights of the parents as taxpayers to control what their children were taught. Remember, universal public education was still a rather new thing in 1925 and parents then, as now, want to have the education support them in raising their children. The education establishment then, as now, feels a responsibility to teach what they think best.
Bryan and many others were also concerned about the political uses to which evolution had recently been put in the name of survival of the fittest. It isn't a simple issue and shouldn't be turned into a cartoon. Especially since we are in some ways still grappling with these issues.
Yes, Bryan was also a Fundamentalist (although some were more Fundamental than him because he didn't insist on the strict 6 days of 24 hours for the Creation), but imposing that belief wasn't his goal.
Clarifying the truth of the trial versus the popular perceptions in our culture provided by "Only Yesterday" and "Inherit the Wind" is a very valuable service provided by this book. However, the culture seems to want the oversimplification and distortions of "Inherit the Wind" more than the truth of Scopes being a willing participant in a test case more or less on a lark. Or that Scopes never really "taught" evolution. He had used the textbook provided to him by the school and it discussed evolution, but he may never have gotten to that section since he wasn't the regular biology teacher. He taught physics, math, and football and was substituting in the biology class.
The book has a number of very nice pictures that also help capture the period of the trial and the characters involved.
One especially small quibble is that the book does not address the difference between the anti-clerical activities in Great Britain and their political nature because of the state power of the Church and the anti-clerical activities in the United States that were really anti-religion. In fact, a great deal of the fundamentalist backlash against evolution came out of this anti-religion sentiment.
I think it a reasonable view to say that most of the reaction against evolution wasn't from a considered rejection of the theory, but a reaction against being attacked by those who wanted to free America of religion. We didn't have a state church, although most in power were also believers (or publicly posed as believers). The anti-clerical movement was transplanted but to somewhat different effect here than in Europe where evolution was not seen as necessarily inconsistent with Faith (as it has become to be viewed here). But this is a trivial point compared to many wonderful insights this book provides.
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
"...A trivial thing full of humbuggery and hyprocrisy"
By Publius
The Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 combined two great American virtues: 1.) Individual Rights and 2.) The need to make a quick buck. One of the aspects of Larson's book that really comes through is how staged the whole trial was. From the initial meeting of the town fathers with Scopes to convince him to be a Defendant, to the State's decision to nolle prosse the conviction after it was overturned on a technicality, most everything was merely thespian. One of the most insightful stories that Larson relates is when the team of ACLU defense lawyers arrived in Dayton for trial preparation, a young man started to help them with their luggage out of the trunk. One of the lawyers shouted: "Hey boy, what are you doing with those suitcases!" Little did the lawyer know that that boy was John Scopes, the teacher that was charged with teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school. As Larson writes: "The defenders, along with everyone else, had forgotten the defendant." The author writes in this great concise book that the Scopes Monkey trial was less about Scopes, Darrow or Bryan and more about emerging fundamentalism versus a growing American concern of individual rights and liberties. As such, Dayton and John Scopes were essentially bit players in a staged battle between forces that still determine how Americans feel and think to this day. Not only does Larson concern himself with the broader sociological effects of the trial, he also talks about the ACLU's and the prosecutions trial strategy, which, as a lawyer, I found fascinating. Contemporary history has interpreted the Scopes Trial as the high water mark of Fundamentalism, being that the Butler Act and other similar legislation has been struck down as unconstitutional. "Summer" makes this very plain that this in fact was the opening salvo in the Fundamentalist battle and not the death throes. It is not a stretch to argue that the beginnings of the Mega-Church and the Fundamentalist college movement began in Dayton in 1925. Thus, as H.L. Mencken wrote that year: the fundamentalists and "Bryan started something that it will not be easy to stop."
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent
By R. Albin
This Pulitzer Prize winning book is a careful attempt to dispell the myths surrounding the Scopes Trial. As Larson points out, these misconceptions stem largely from popular accounts of the trial, such as the play Inherit The Wind, which tend to present the conflict as one between dogmatic and oppressive fundamentalist religion and enlightened liberal rationalism. History, as usual, is much more complex, as shown in the nuanced and fair minded account. The book is essentially divided into 3 parts; a description and analysis of the social and intellectual currents that lead to the trial, a narrative of the trial itself, and an account of the short-term and long-term impact of the trial.
All sections are very well written with ample documentation from primary sources and a nice combination of the author's narrative and quotations. This book is relatively short but covers all the important features and a lot of telling detail in thorough manner. Perhaps the most interesting portions are the initial chapters describing the genesis of the trial. Far from being a straightforward conflict between dogmatic religion and liberal rationalism, the trial occurred because of a nexus of semi-independent currents. One important feature was the existence of strong conflicts within American Protestantism between so-called modernizers and more traditional elements, though these traditional elements developed some aspects of a more radical reaction. The foes of evolution were far from dogmatic literalists. William Jennings Bryan, for example, espoused non-literal interpretations of key aspects of Scripture and a theistic view of evolution, several of whose key features he accepted as true. Bryan and many of his allies were driven by concerns that evolution related doctrines, such as Social Darwinism, were anti-democratic. They were concerned, however, that materialist doctrines like evolution were undermining the status of religion and a source of moral corruption. Bryan was concerned also with majoritarian views on public education, consistent with his long-standing populism. At the same time, the trial occurred at a time when the scientific community was becoming increasingly convinced of the validity of Darwinian positions, fueled by recent developments in genetics and paleontology. The consolidation of the scientific consensus did narrow the ground on which scientists could meet religion. The trial was mounted as test case by the nascent ACLU, which was concerned less with the religous aspects than with its efforts to expand 1st amendment rights and academic freedom. In some respects, the Scopes Trial was less a conflict between right and left than a family feud between different components of the Progressive movement that had fractured during WWI. The ACLU underwrote both prosecution and defense expenses and the trial was conducted in a relatively collegial atmosphere. Contrary to the impression from Inherit The Wind, if anyone succeeded, its was the anti-evolution side as the trial was followed by anti-evolution statutes in other southern states and revision of high school biology texts to soft-pedal evolution.
Larson closes by discussing how some themes of the Scopes Trial persist in our society. Again, this is a even handed discussion. Evangelical concerns about the corrupting effects of materialist ideas continue, and again, there is some sense among evangelicals that basic principles are under siege. A point not mentioned by Larson is that research of the last 20-30 years has strongly supported crucial features of evolutionary theory and the theory is much stronger and more complete than it was in 1920s. Entangled with these issues are perennial American conflicts over majority rule versus minority rights and what constitutes the boundaries of free speech and academic freedom.
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