Please note that I am discussing only a particular historical episode—fundamentalist attempts to impose creationism on public school curricula by legislative fiat—and not all nuances of argument included under the ambiguous term “creationism.” Some personal versions of creation fall entirely within the spirit of NOMA and bear no relationship to this story—the belief, for example, that God works through laws of evolution over the long time scale determined by geology, and that this style of superintendence may be regarded as a mode of creation.
As a matter of fact, not a necessity of logic, the activists of the creationist movement against the teaching of evolution have been young-earth fundamentalists who believe that the Bible must be literally true, that the earth cannot be more than ten thousand years old, and that God created all species, separately and ex nihilo, in six days of twenty-four hours. These people then display a form of ultimate hubris (or maybe just simple ignorance) in equating these marginal and long-discredited factual claims with the entire domain of “religion.”
I have no quarrel with fundamentalists who believe in teaching their doctrine in homes and churches, and not by forced imposition upon public schools. I am quite sure that they are wrong about the age of the earth and the history of life, and I will be happy to remonstrate with any advocate who maintains an open mind on these questions (not a common commodity within the movement). Lord knows, we have the right to be wrong, even to be stupid, in a democracy! Thus, I have no problem with the largest and most potentially influential of all creationist groups in America, the Jehovah’s Witnesses—for they do not try to impose their theological beliefs upon public school science curricula, and they agree with my view that churches and homes are the proper venue for teaching such private and partisan doctrines. In other words, our struggle with creationism is political and specific, not religious at all, and not even intellectual in any genuine sense. (Sorry to be harsh, but young-earth creationism offers nothing of intellectual merit that I have ever been able to discern—but just a hodgepodge of claims properly judged within the magisterium of science, and conclusively disproved more than a century ago.)
Before presenting a capsule history, I would summarize the peculiarities of our contemporary struggle with creationism in two propositions:
1. The forceful and persistent attempt by young-earth creationists to insinuate their partisan and minority theological dogma into the science curricula of American public schools cannot be read, in any legitimate way, as an episode in any supposedly general warfare between science and religion. If the issue must be dichotomized at all, the two sides might be characterized as supporters versus opponents of NOMA; as defenders of the First Amendment for separation of church and state versus theocrats who would incorporate their certainties as official state policy; or, most generally, as defenders of free inquiry and the right of teachers to present their best understanding of subjects in the light of their professional training versus the setting of curricula by local sensibilities or beliefs (or just by those who make the most noise or gain transitory power), whatever the state of natural knowledge, or the expertise of teachers.
In any case, however we choose to parse this controversy, the two sides cannot be labeled as science and religion on the most basic criterion of empirical evidence. For the great majority of professional clergy and religious scholars stand on the same side with the great majority of scientists—as defenders of NOMA and the First Amendment, and against the imposition of any specific theological doctrine, especially such a partisan and minority view, upon the science curricula of public schools. For example, the long list of official plaintiffs who successfully challenged the Arkansas creationism statute in 1981 included some scientists and educators, but even more ordained clergy of all major faiths, and scholars of religion.
2. This controversy is as locally and distinctively American as apple pie and Uncle Sam. No other Western nation faces such an incubus as a serious political movement (rather than a few powerless cranks at the fringes). The movement to impose creationism upon public school science curricula arises from a set of distinctively American contrasts, or generalities expressed in a peculiarly American context: North versus South, urban versus rural, rich versus poor, local or state control versus federal standards. Moreover, young-earth creationism can be favored only by so-called fundamentalists who accept the Bible as literally true in every word—a marginal belief among all major Western religions these days, and a doctrine only well developed within the distinctively American context of Protestant church pluralism. Such a fundamentalist perspective would make no sense in any predominantly Catholic nation, where no tradition for reading the Bible literally (or much at all, for that matter) has ever existed. Jewish traditions, even among the orthodox, may revere the Torah as the absolutely accurate word of God, where neither one jot nor tittle of text can ever be altered, but few scholars would ever think of interpreting this unchangeable text literally.2
Protestantism has always stressed personal Bible study, and justification by faith, rather than through saints or the interpretations of priests—and literalism becomes conceivable under these practices. But, again, the vast majority of modern Protestants would not choose to read their sacred texts in such a dogmatic and uncompromising manner—particularly in European nations with a limited diversity of mainly liberal styles. But American Protestantism has diversified into a uniquely rich range of sects, spanning the full gamut of conceivable forms of worship and belief. The vast majority, of course, pursue the same allegorical and spiritual style of reading as their Catholic and Jewish neighbors, but a few groups—mostly Southern, rural, and poor, to cite the distinctive dichotomies mentioned above—have dug in against all “modernism” with a literalist reading not subject to change, or even argument: “Gimme that old-time religion. It was good enough for grandpa, and it’s good enough for me.” (Through personal ignorance, I am not considering here the traditions of Islam and non-Western religions.)
To cite just one example of fundamentalism’s distinctly American base, and of the puzzlement that creationism evokes in the rest of the religious world, I once stayed at the Casa del Clerico in Rome, a hotel maintained by the Vatican, mostly for itinerant priests. One day in the lunchroom, a group of French and Italian Jesuits called me over. They belonged to a group of practicing scientists, visiting Rome for a convention on science and the Church. They had been reading about the growth of “scientific creationism” in America, and were deeply confused. They thought that evolution had been adequately proven, and certainly posed no challenge to religion in any case (both by their own reasoning and by papal pronouncement, as discussed on this page–this page). So what, they asked, was going on chez moi? Had good scientific arguments for young-earth creationism really been developed, and by lay fundamentalists rather than professional scientists? A wonderful polyglot of conversation ensued for the next half hour in all three languages. I told them that no new (or any) good arguments existed, and that the issues were both entirely political and uniquely American. They left satisfied, and perhaps with a better sense of the conundrum that America represents to the rest of the world.
TROUBLE IN OUR OWN HOUSE: A BRIEF LEGAL SURVEY FROM SCOPES TO SCALIA
The fundamentalist movement may be as old as America, and its opposition to teaching evolution must be as old as Darwin. But this marginal, politically disenfranchised, and largely regional movement could muster no clout to press a legislative agenda until one of the great figures of American history, William Jennings Bryan (much more on him later; see this page–this page), decided to make his last hurrah on this issue. Bryan gave the creationist movement both influence and contacts. In the early 1920s, several Southern states passed flat-out anti-evolution statutes. The Tennessee law, for example, declared it a crime to teach that “man had descended from a lower order of animals.”
American liberals, including many clergymen, were embarrassed and caught off guard by the quick (if local) successes of this movement. In a cha
llenge to the constitutionality of these statutes, the American Civil Liberties Union instigated the famous Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925. John Scopes, a young freethinker, but quite popular among his largely fundamentalist students, worked as the physics teacher and track coach of the local high school. He had substituted for the fundamentalist biology teacher during an illness, and had assigned the chapters on evolution from the class textbook, A Civic Biology, by George William Hunter. Scopes consented to be the guinea pig or stalking horse (choose your zoological metaphor) for a legal challenge to the constitutionality of Tennessee’s recently enacted anti-evolution law—and the rest is history, largely filtered and distorted, for most Americans, through the fictionalized account of a wonderful play, Inherit the Wind, written in 1955 by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, and performed by some of America’s best actors in several versions. (I had the great privilege, as a teenager, to see Paul Muni at the end of his career playing Clarence Darrow in the original Broadway production, with an equally impressive Ed Begley as William Jennings Bryan. Two film versions featured similar talent, with Spencer Tracy as Darrow and Fredric March as Bryan in the first, and Kirk Douglas as Darrow with Jason Robards as Bryan in the later remake for television.)
Contrary to the play, Scopes was not persecuted by Bible-thumpers, and never spent a second in jail. The trial did have its epic moments—particularly when Bryan, in his major speech, virtually denied that humans were mammals; and, in the most famous episode, when Judge Raulston convened his court on the lawn (for temperatures had risen into triple digits and cracks had developed in the ceiling on the floor below the crowded courtroom), and allowed Darrow to put Bryan on the stand as a witness for the defense. But the usual reading of the trial as an epic struggle between benighted Yahooism and resplendent virtue simply cannot suffice—however strongly this impression has been fostered both by Inherit the Wind and by the famous reporting of H. L. Mencken, who attended the trial and, to say the least, professed little respect for Bryan, whom he called “a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt.”
Scopes was recruited for a particular job—both by the ACLU and by Dayton fundamentalists, who saw the trial as an otherwise unobtainable opportunity to put their little town “on the map”—and not proactively persecuted in any way. The ACLU wanted a quick process and a sure conviction, not a media circus. (The Scopes trial initiated live broadcast by radio, and might therefore be designated as the inception of a trajectory leading to O.J. Simpson and other extravaganzas of arguable merit.) The local judge held no power to determine the constitutionality of the statute, and the ACLU therefore sought an unproblematical conviction, designated for appeal to a higher court. They may have loved Clarence Darrow as a personality, but they sure as hell didn’t want him in Dayton. However, when Bryan announced that he would appear for the state of Tennessee to rout Satan from Dayton, the die was cast, and Darrow’s counteroffer could hardly be refused.
The basic facts have been well reported, but the outcome has almost always been misunderstood. Darrow did bring several eminent scientists to testify, and the judge did refuse to let them take the stand. In so deciding, he was not playing the country bumpkin, but making a proper ruling that his court could judge Sccpes’s guilt or innocence only under the given statute—and Scopes was guilty as charged—not the legitimacy or constitutionality of the law itself. Testimony by experts about the validity or importance of evolution therefore became irrelevant. In this context, historians have never understood why Judge Raulston then allowed Bryan to testify as an expert for the other side. But this most famous episode has also been misread. First of all, the judge later struck the entire testimony from the record. Second, Darrow may have come out slightly ahead, but Bryan parried fairly well, and certainly didn’t embarrass himself. The most celebrated moment—when Darrow supposedly forced Bryan to admit that the days of creation might have spanned more than twenty-four hours—represented Bryan’s free-will statement about his own and well-known personal beliefs (he had never been a strict biblical literalist), not a fatal inconsistency, exposed by Darrow’s relentless questioning.
To correct the other most famous incident of the trial, Bryan did indeed drop dead of heart failure in Dayton—not dramatically on the courtroom floor (as fiction requires for maximal effect), but rather a week later, after stuffing himself at a church dinner. However, the most serious misunderstanding lies with the verdict itself, and the subsequent history of creationism. Inherit the Wind presents a tale of free inquiry triumphant over dogmatism. As an exercise in public relations, the Scopes trial may be read as a victory for our side. But the legal consequences could hardly have been more disastrous. Scopes was, of course, convicted—no surprises there. But the case was subsequently declared moot—and therefore unappealable—by the judge’s error of fining Scopes one hundred dollars (as the creationism statute specified), whereas Tennessee law required that all fines over fifty dollars be set by the jury. (Perhaps sleepy little towns like Dayton never fined anyone more than fifty bucks for anything, and the judge had simply forgotten this detail of unapplied law.) In any case, this error provides a good argument against using “outside agitators” like Darrow as sole representatives in local trials. The fancy plaintiff’s team, lead by Darrow and New York lawyer Dudley Field Malone, included no one with enough local knowledge to challenge the judge and assure proper procedure.
Thus, Scopes’s conviction was overturned on a technicality—an outcome that has usually been depicted as a victory, but was actually a bitter procedural defeat that stalled the real purpose of the entire enterprise: to test the law’s constitutionality. In order to reach the appropriate higher court, the entire process would have to start again, with a retrial of Scopes. But history could not be rolled back, for Bryan was dead, and Scopes, now enrolled as a graduate student in geology at the University of Chicago, had no desire to revisit this part of his life. (Scopes, a splendidly modest and honorable man, became a successful oil geologist in Shreveport, Louisiana. He never sought any profit from what he recognized as his accidental and transitory fame, and he never wavered in defending freedom of inquiry and the rights of teachers.)
So the Tennessee law (and similar statutes in other states) remained on the books—not actively enforced, to be sure, but ever-present as a weapon against the proper teaching of biology. Textbook publishers, the most cowardly arm of the printing industry, generally succumbed and either left evolution out or relegated the subject to a small chapter at the back of the book. I own a copy of the text that I used in 1956 at a public high school in New York City, a liberal constituency with no compunction about teaching evolution. This text, Modem Biology, by Moon, Mann, and Otto, dominated the market and taught more than half of America’s high school students. Evolution occupies only 18 of the book’s 662 pages—as chapter 58 out of 60. (Many readers, remembering the realities of high school, will immediately know that most classes never got to this chapter at all.) Moreover, the text never mentions the dreaded “E” word, and refers to Darwin’s theory as “the hypothesis of racial development.” But the first edition of this textbook, published in 1921, before the Scopes trial, featured Darwin on the frontispiece (my 1956 version substitutes a crowd of industrious beavers for the most celebrated of all naturalists), and includes several chapters treating evolution as both a proven fact and the primary organizing theme for all biological sciences.
This sorry situation persisted until 1968, when Susan Epperson, a courageous teacher from Arkansas, challenged a similar statute in the Supreme Court—and won the long-sought verdict of unconstitutionality on obvious First Amendment grounds. (A lovely woman approached me after a talk in Denver last year. She thanked me for my work in fighting creationism and then introduced herself as Susan Epperson. She had attended my lecture with her daughter, who, as a graduate student in evolutionary biology, had reaped the fruits of her mother’s courage. I could only reply that the major thrust of thanks must flow in the other direction.)
But nothing can stop a true believer. The creationists regrouped, and came back fighting with a new strategy designed to circumvent constitutional problems. They had always honorably identified their alternative system as explicitly theological, and doctrinally based in a literal reading of the Bible. But now they expurgated their texts, inventing the oxymoronic concept of “creation science.” Religion, it seems, and contrary to all previous pronouncements, has no bearing upon the subject at all. The latest discoveries of pure science now reveal a factual world that just happens to correlate perfectly with the literal pronouncements of the Book of Genesis. If virtually all professionally trained scientists regard such a view as nonsensical, and based on either pure ignorance or outright prevarication, then we can only conclude that credentialed members of this discipline cannot recognize the cutting edge of their own subject. In such a circumstance, legislative intervention becomes necessary. And besides, the creationists continued, we’re not asking schools to ban evolution anymore (that argument went down the tubes with the Epperson decision). Now we are only demanding “equal time” for “creation science” in any classroom that also teaches evolution. (Of course, if they decide not to teach evolution at all … well, then …)
However ludicrous such an argument might be, and however obviously self-serving as a strategy to cloak a real aim (the imposition of fundamentalist theological doctrine) in new language that might pass constitutional muster, two states actually did pass nearly identical “equal time” laws in the late 1970s—Arkansas and Louisiana. A consortium of the ACLU and many professional organizations, both scientific and religious, challenged the Arkansas statute in a trial labeled by the press (not inappropriately) as “Scopes II,” before Federal Judge William R. Overton in Little Rock during December 1981. Judge Overton, in a beautifully crafted decision (explaining the essence of science, and the proper role of religion, so well that Science, our leading professional journal, published the text verbatim), found the Arkansas equal-time law unconstitutional in January 1982.
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