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The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion
Harvard University Press
September 1998
336 pages ISBN: 0674854292 Trade Size (reprint)
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Non-Fiction
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.
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