
By Colby Malsbury
In more than one respect, the centuries-old Christian culture war suffered a major setback in the little town of Dayton, TN, in the summer of 1925.
Oh, sure, John Scopes might have been found guilty of teaching evolution and charged a nominal fine – that was later overturned – but that was hardly the point of what would go on to constitute the most infamous misdemeanor trial in all of history. Nay, as almost all of the trial’s participants would later admit – including those local power-brokers who found it politic to align themselves with the prosecution – the whole spectacle was a bit of theater designed, in best 1920s small-town ‘booster’ fashion, to put their economically dwindling whistle stop on the map and reap a few out-of-county bucks from the proceedings.1 And if the money’s talking loud and clear…why, sure, those nominal Christians would have had no problem allowing magistrate-with-a-mission Clarence Darrow to get on his soapbox and deliver his trademark militant atheistic (‘agnostic’, my ass) rhetoric to a print media already mesmerized by rationalism in all its hideous glory: