Scopes Trial Essay

The Scopes Trial is one that boiled down to forcing the judge, and all the people impacted, to choose between taking a side on an important matter: faith or science. Because the trial occurred in a little rural town in Tennessee, the majority of the jury, and the judge himself, were of the Christian faith, or at least were raised in that atmosphere. The trial was one that did not debate so much whether God existed and created the world, but whether the Word of God should be taken literally or not. This debate had one side viewing the other as basically heathens, and the second side viewed the first as foolish and ignorant hillbillies. The Scopes Trial was considered the ‘perfect’ symbol of the clash between rural traditionalism and

In general, this is the case for the traditionalists because of all the negative publicity that came along with the trial and the assumptions that automatically became affiliated with traditionalists as a whole. The Scopes Trial influenced the world around and shed a, in this case negative, light onto a situation that had never really been brought up previously, at least not in such a broadcasted way. The so called traditionalists were labeled as overly religious, stubborn, and even “ignoramuses” (Mencken); they quickly became the laughing stock of all of the ‘well-educated’ community for being ‘ignorant’ when not giving up what they believe to be correct. “Evidently the case of the State of Tennessee versus John Thomas Scopes was to be tried in the super-heated, jazzy atmosphere of a Billy Sunday revival (Haldeman-Julius).” That quote from the Impressions of the Scope Trial does not just touch on the people native to Tennessee as being religious, but paints a picture that illustrates them as overtly. Famous journalist Henry L. Mencken even went so far as to say that “he [Bryan] has these hillbillies locked up in his pen and he knows it.” So, while the traditionalists were technically and legally the winner of the case, they received way more negative response and judgement than they did the ‘prize’ and title of