The fears of cultural degeneration that the Klan exploited, as well as broader anxieties over mass immigration, complicated Americans’ responses to the urbanization that followed World War I. The growth of cities and urban immigrant populations sharpened rural discontent over these rapid cultural changes. As more people flocked to cities for job opportunities and a better quality of life, many of those left behind in rural areas felt that their traditions were being threatened. To rural Americans, the ways of the city seemed sinful and profligate. Many urbanites, for their part, viewed rural Americans as hayseeds who were hopelessly behind the times.

The Urban-Rural Divide

In the conflict between urban and rural values, Tennessee lawmakers drew a hard line over the issue of evolution and its challenge to the biblical explanation of humankind’s origins. Charles Darwin published his theory of natural selection in 1859, and by the 1920s, many standard textbooks contained information about Darwin’s theory of evolution. Fundamentalist Protestants targeted evolution as representative of all that was wrong with urban society. Tennessee’s Butler Act of 1925 made it illegal “to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

The Scopes Trial

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) hoped to challenge the Butler Act as an infringement of the freedom of speech. On March 21, 1925, in a tiny courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee, fundamentalists gathered to argue for the validity of creationism. A young biology teacher, John T. Scopes, was being tried for teaching his students evolutionary theory in violation of the Butler Act. This important moment in America’s legal history would come to be called the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Seeing the act as a threat to personal liberty, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) immediately sought a volunteer for a “test” case, hoping that the conviction and subsequent appeals would lead to an opportunity to argue before the Supreme Court, thus testing the law’s constitutionality. It was then that Scopes, a part-time teacher and coach, stepped forward and admitted to teaching evolution (Scopes’s violation of the law was never in question). Thus the stage was set for a pivotal courtroom showdown, “the trial of the century,” between the champions and opponents of evolution that marked a key moment in an enduring American “culture war.”

Figure 1. During the Scopes Monkey Trial, supporters of the Butler Act read literature at the headquarters of the Anti-Evolution League in Dayton, Tennessee.

The Scopes trial pointed to a tension between strict literalist interpretations of the Bible and more moderate viewpoints. Christian Fundamentalism arose most directly from a doctrinal dispute among Protestant leaders. Opposing the fundamentalists were liberal theologians who sought to intertwine religion with science and secular culture. These more modern thinkers, influenced by the biblical scholarship of nineteenth-century German academics, argued that Christian doctrines about the miraculous might be best understood metaphorically. The church, they said, needed to adapt itself to the world. The social gospel, which encouraged Christians to build the Kingdom of God on earth by working against social and economic inequality, was very much tied to liberal theology.

Fundamentalist champion William Jennings Bryan argued the case for the prosecution. Bryan was a three-time presidential candidate and Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State until 1915, at which point he began preaching across the country about the spread of secularism and the declining role of religion in education. He was known for offering $100 to anyone who would admit to being descended from an ape. Clarence Darrow, a prominent lawyer and outspoken agnostic, led the defense team. His statement that “Scopes isn’t on trial, civilization is on trial. No man’s belief will be safe if they win,” struck a chord in society. The case became a media event as well as a referendum of sorts on the role of religion in public life and learning.

The Outcome of the Scopes Trial

The outcome of the trial, in which Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, was never really in question, as Scopes himself had confessed to violating the law. Nevertheless, the trial itself proved to be high drama. The drama only escalated when Darrow made the unusual choice of calling Bryan as an expert witness on the Bible. Knowing of Bryan’s literal interpretation of the Bible, Darrow peppered him with questions designed to ridicule such a belief. The result was that those who approved of the teaching of evolution, often those who were more urban and formally educated, saw Bryan as foolish, whereas many rural Americans considered the cross-examination an attack on their faith. Journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken characterized the “circus in Tennessee” as an embarrassment for fundamentalism, and modernists remembered the “Monkey Trial” as a smashing victory. If fundamentalists retreated from the public sphere, they did not disappear entirely. Instead, they concentrated on local issues and emerged decades later as an influential and well-organized political force.

Billy Sunday

Indicative of the revival of Protestant fundamentalism and the rejection of evolution among rural and white Americans was the rise of Billy Sunday. As a young man, Sunday had gained fame as a baseball player with exceptional skill and speed. Later, he found even more celebrity as the nation’s most revered evangelist, drawing huge crowds at camp meetings around the country. He was one of the most influential evangelists of the time and had access to some of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the country. Sunday rallied many Americans around “old-time” fundamentalist religion and garnered support for Prohibition. Recognizing Sunday’s popular appeal, Bryan attempted to bring him to Dayton for the Scopes trial, although Sunday politely refused.

Figure 2. Billy Sunday, one of the most influential evangelists of his day, leaves the White House on February 20, 1922 (a). Aimee Semple McPherson, shown here preaching at the Angelus Temple in 1923 (b), founded the Foursquare Church. (credit a: modification of work by Library of Congress)

Aimee Semple McPherson

Even more spectacular than the rise of Billy Sunday was the popularity of Aimee Semple McPherson, a Canadian Pentecostal preacher whose Foursquare Church in Los Angeles catered to the large community of midwestern transplants and newcomers to California. Although her message promoted the fundamental truths of the Bible, her style was anything but old-fashioned. Dressed in tight-fitting clothes and wearing makeup, she held radio-broadcast services in large venues that resembled concert halls and staged dramatic faith-healing performances. Blending Hollywood style and modern technology with a message of fundamentalist Christianity, McPherson exemplified the contradictions of the decade well before public revelations about a scandalous love affair cost her much of her status and following.