Today, I just found out, is William Jennings Bryan’s birthday. He was born March 19th, in the year 1860.
He was a major name in politics in the early 1900s. He ran for president three times and was the 41st US Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. He was also a US Representative from Nebraska in the late 1800s.
What he is most famous for, those that do know who he is, is the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1925 in Tennessee.
He was a classic fundamentalist-creationist. By that I mean, Bryan believed that the materialistic explanation for mankind undermined the Bible and that Darwinism was disruptive to the social order.
In 1921, Bryan kicked off an anti-evolution campaign and tour. At the time, theologians were getting to the point where they thought that most of the Bible might be metaphorical and thus there was no problem with God using evolution to create the diversity of life in our world. Bryan didn’t like this, especially in colleges (which were mostly church based at the time).
Bryan even joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1924 and attended the annual meeting to argue his points. A featured debate at that meeting was Bryan vs. Edward L. Rice , a developmental biologist from Ohio Wesleyan University.
In 1925, the state of Tennessee passed the Butler Act, making it illegal to teach that mankind evolved from lower forms (good thing that’s not what evolution actually teaches isn’t it?).
At the famous trial, Bryan prevailed. Scopes was found guilty. The Tennessee Supreme Court however, reversed the trial on a technicality and Scopes was set free.
Personally, the Scopes trial was a mess. The judge opened the trial by reading from the Book of Genesis and telling the jury not to focus on the law, but whether a willful violation of the law occurred. That, unfortunately, wasn’t the ACLU’s plan, which was to focus on the law itself. The defense (pro-teaching evolution) brought in Bible experts and scientists (only one of which was allowed to present at the trial, the others were only allowed to submit written statements).
After the sixth day of the trial, the judge declared that all the Bible testimony was irrelevant and should be excluded. Since the defense’s experts had been shot down, the defense called Bryan as a “Bible expert”.
The attempt was to show that the Bible was not a historical document and could not be taken literally. Since the science experts weren’t allowed to be examined, that was the only avenue for the defense.
The part that everyone thinks of from Inherit the Wind, lasted only about two hours. The next morning, the judge declared the whole thing irrelevant and was thrown out. This also prevented Bryan from examining Darrow on the witness stand.
After almost 8 days of testimony, the one thing that no one actually found out was whether Scopes had actually taught evolution or not. He was never presented as a witness, nor questioned.
All-in-all, this was a horrid trial. Neither side was focused. It was obvious that the judge was biased. And it obviously shows the reason behind the anti-evolution movement, that is, to promote the Bible as absolute truth. For a well done trial, take a look at the Kitzmiller trial.
William Jennings Bryan died 5 days after the conclusion of the trial (July 26,1925).
I would suppose that he died happy, never having seen the higher court reversal of the guilty verdict. And how, now, creationism is a failed movement.
