Bryan’s
Downfall: Evolution and the Scopes
Monkey Trial
The closing years of
Bryan’s life were spent in preparation for the Scopes Monkey Trial. However, Bryan did not wage this battle because
of his ideas concerning evolution; Bryan actually wanted to keep the scientific
specifics out of the trial. He was an
anti-evolutionist, but his reasons were more complex than conflict with
fundamentalist literal interpretation of the Bible as many assume. Bryan was not aggressive in his opinions of
Charles Darwin, father of evolutionary thought. He did state, “I do not mean to find fault with you if you want
to accept the theory. . . I
shall not quarrel with you about it.”[1] However, he did dislike the theory for
religious and political reasons.
Religiously, Bryan did not appreciate the compromised
Christianity evolution implied.
According to Darwin’s theory, animals mate with those whose
characteristics have best adapted to the environment to assure succession of
the species. This theory implies that
man is created through competition rather than love.[2] Harsh origins such as these also could not
be reconciled with Bryan’s ideas of social justice and applied Christianity.[3] Socially, Darwin’s ideas morphed into
Social-Darwinism, which was an application of evolutionary ideas to societal
structures. Bryan mirrored the concerns
of many others at this time. He was
afraid that the emphasis on competition and superior traits would result in more
class-defined snobbery, which could weaken democracy.
Bryan did see evolutionary rhetoric in public schools as a
threat. Bryan was very concerned with
moral education throughout his career, as he deemed a moral conscience as a
requirement to following the law and becoming a responsible democratic
citizen. Bryan expressed the need for
moral instruction when he stated, “Law is but the crystallization of
conscience; moral sentiment must be created before it can express itself in the
form of a statute.”[4] Therefore he was very angry that evolution,
which challenges the Bible, could be taught in school while religion was unable
to defend its rhetoric. Bryan stated
angrily, “irreligion is being taught under the guise of philosophy.”[5] Additionally Bryan simply thought that
evolution was bad science. Historian
George M. Mardsen asserts that Bryan was holding Darwin to the traditional
scientific test of fact and demonstration.[6] Many people did question the validity of
Darwin’s assertions because they were only a string of hypotheses without any
concrete scientific support.
In 1925, Tennessee was the first state to pass legislation,
the Butler Bill, that barred instruction of evolution in schools, though it was
intended to be a dead letter law.
Predictably, the American Civil Liberty Union was outraged and looked
for an offender of the law to support.
The ACLU agreed to sponsor the defense of John Thomas Scopes, who used
the state approved text, Civic Biology, in class, which contained
lessons on evolution.
Bryan was contacted to participate in the trial and he
agreed. However, he defended the issue
on the grounds of the school’s right to
dictate education rather than promotion of anti-evolutionism. He stated, “The right of the people,
speaking through the legislature, to control the schools which they create and
support is the real issue as I see it.”[7] However, Clarence Darrow, the outspoken
defense lawyer did not have similar intentions. He fully admitted that he wanted to put the fundamentals on the
stand. This mission was accomplished in
grand fashion when Bryan himself was called to the stand for the defense. Bryan made a serious mistake at this time
when he allowed the scope of the trial to expand this far. Darrow asked many leading questions forced
the oratorical giant into many logical corners. The gaps in his logic caused Bryan to be seen as unintelligent,
despite the guilty verdict. Bryan
wished to examine Darrow as well, but the court would not allow it, causing
only Bryan’s reputation to be scarred by the loss. This fiasco gave the fundamentalists a radically conservative
reputation. Five days later, William
Jennings Bryan was dead.
The infamous last years of Bryan’s life are often the ones
remembered. However his political
career was equally important, perhaps more important, as historian Willard H.
Smith asserts, “The Christian in public life had the opportunity to apply the
principle of Christianity to contemporary problems.”[8] Bryan always aspired to this goal. He wholeheartedly supported progressive
reform, world peace, and other agendas that contained the duality of religion
and politics. At the turn of the
century, Bryan represented the conscience of America and provided strong
religiously based political leadership to the Democratic Party, despite his
three failed presidential bids.
Failures only resulted when society moved away from his ideology. Nonetheless, Bryan was always confident in
his efforts. He often quoted the
scripture which read, “One with God shall chase a thousand and two shall put
ten thousand to flight.”[9]
William Jennings Bryan:
A Conservative Progressive
World War I: The
Destruction of a Dream
Church and State:
Religion's Role in a Democratic System
Bryan's Downfall:
Evolution and the Scopes Monkey Trial
This page was created by
Kristy Owens
Email any questions to:
This page was last updated
on March 30, 2001.
[1] William Jennings Bryan, quoted in, Lawrence W. Levine, Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan: The Last Decade, 1915-1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 261.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Willard H. Smith, “William Jennings Bryan and the Social Gospel,” The Journal of American History 53 (June 1966): 60.
[4] William Jennings Bryan, quoted in, Levine, 249.
[5] William Jennings Bryan, quoted in, Levine, 263.
[6] George M. Mardsen, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 214.
[7] William Jennings Bryan, quoted in Levine, 331.
[8] Smith, 50.
[9] William Jennings Bryan, quoted in Smith, 57.