Keeping the Faith; Brenda Wineapple; 2024; 408 pgs, Dramatis Personae, the Butler Act, Acknowledgments, Notes, Bibliography, Index

If you have never seen Inherit the Wind (stage play and several movies, most notably the one starring Spencer Tracy), you should. It is the story of the Scopes Monkey Trial in the town of Dayton, Tennessee in 1925. It pitted the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow for the defense against William Jennings Bryan, a two-time candidate for President and well known bible thumper.

Bryan thought that the federal government should stay out of state business, except in matters of religion.

​Other major players in the events of those days were H. L. Mencken and Thomas Henry Huxley (died in the 1890s). Huxley was Darwin's defender, and coiner of the word "agnostic" in 1869.

In reading this book, I learned a new word: sacerdotalism. Sacerdotalism is the church doctrine that one can only address god through a priest. In other words: it is a self serving argument that allows priests to keep their phony-baloney jobs. That alone made it a worthwhile read.

In 1922, the US House passed the Dryer bill making it illegal to lynch people (black people, that is). The bill died in the Senate, much to the relief of Bryan.

One of the things that struck me most about the book is how little has changed. The language of the righteous  in 1925 is very little different from that of the creationists today. They still attack evolution as "unscientific" and "ungodly".

The book covers the various players one at a time, one per chapter. The trial itself does begin until page 309.

In early 1925, Tennessee passed the Butler Bill making it illegal to teach anything the contradicts the Bible… especially evolution. Scopes was a science teacher. He was chosen to challenge the law. Scopes insisted that the out-spoken and controversial lawyer William Darrow lead the defense.      

Much of the dialogue of the plays and movies are lifted directly from the statements of Darrow and others during the trial. In the end, they lost. The judge fined Scopes $100, but that was overturned due to an error by the judge (in Tennessee, a jury must approve the fine, which did not happen).

This book documents a fight from 100 years ago that is still on-going today. As a skeptic, I see anti-evolution garbage on a regular basis. The latest battle ground is so called "intelligent design".

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