2 of 6

"Now, you wouldn't want to sit on this jury unless you were fair, would you?"

"Certainly, I would want to be fair; yes, sir," the minister replied.

Darrow asked him again whether he had preached on evolution, and the minister said he was strictly for the Bible.

Darrow pressed, "I'm talking about evolution. I am not talking about the Bible. Did you preach for or against evolution?"

When the minister said, "I preached against it, of course!" the courtroom erupted into applause.

"Let's have order," the judge barked, and eventually excused the minister from jury duty.

After the jury was selected, it was dismissed for two days as prosecution and defense argued whether the indictment was legitimate (the defense argued that the Butler Bill violated the Tennessee constitution in denying freedom of speech). In the end, the judge ruled the indictment was legitimate, and the defense entered a plea for Scopes: Not guilty.

On day four, each side made an opening statement. The defense argued the trial represented not a conflict between secular humanists and Christians, but between tolerant, educated Christians and intolerant, obscurantist Christians. Defense attorney Dudley Malone said, "We believe there is no conflict between evolution and Christianity. There may be a conflict between evolution and the peculiar ideas of Christianity which are held by Mr. Bryan as the evangelical leader of the prosecution, but we deny that the evangelical leader of the prosecution is an authorized spokesman for the Christians of the United States. … We maintain and we shall prove that Christianity is bound up with no scientific theory."

The state, on the other hand, said the trial was about the immediate facts: did Scopes in fact violate the Tennessee statute?(right)

The state began its case in the afternoon, calling as its first witness Walter White, county superintendent of public instruction. White testified that Scopes had admitted to him that he had taught from the textbook Civic Biology, that Scopes confessed he "could not teach that book without teaching evolution," and that "the statute was unconstitutional."

In Darrow's cross-examination, White admitted he had no complaint about Scopes's work as a teacher.

The next state's witness was 14-year-old Howard Morgan. He testified that his teacher, John Scopes, taught him about evolution, that "the earth was once a hot molten mass, too hot for plant or animal life to exist upon it."

Prosecuting attorney Stewart asked Morgan, "How did he [Scopes] classify man with reference to other animals; what did he say about them?"

"Well, the book and he," replied Morgan, "both classified man along with cats and dogs, cows, horses, monkeys, lions, horses, and all that."

During his cross-examination, Darrow asked Morgan, "He [Scopes] didn't say a cat was the same as a man?"

"No sir," replied Morgan. "He said man had a reasoning power, that these animals did not."

Darrow quipped, "There is some doubt about that, but that is what he said, is it?" and the courtroom guffawed.

Darrow then asked Morgan, "What he [Scopes] taught you … has not hurt you any, has it?"

Morgan replied, "No, sir," and the courtroom once more broke into laughter.

Two more state's witnesses testified that afternoon, and with that, Stewart said, "The state rests." The prosecution had made its case in only a couple of hours.

The defense wanted to show that evolution was a universally held view among scientists, and that it was not a contradiction for Christians to subscribe to the theory. So the defense brought in from world-class universities experts who, in many cases, were also Christians.

next page... |  2 of 6

share this page

FREE E-Newsletter Sign up for the ChristianHistory.net e-mail newsletter. Discover more about your Christian heritage with this weekly e-newsletter that features key people, topics, and events from the history of Christianity.      RSS Feed   RSS Help