This week is the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey trial. Few moments of American history enjoy such an exceptionally disfigured yet profoundly appreciated status among our relatively secular elite. Especially among educated audiences, the Scopes Monkey trial -- accentuated by absurd portrayals like those provided in movies like Inherit the Wind, is a treasured lesson in secular mythology. All the excesses of modern Christianity can be seen in this sad tale clashing the glamorous and cosmopolitan Charles Darrow versus the feeble champion of old school Christianity, William Jennings Bryan.

In the popular telling of secular fundamentalists today, the Scopes trial, while scoring a victory for Tennessee’s laws against teaching evolution, ultimately betrayed the archaic thinking of Christian “fundamentalists” and their inherently backward ways. Darrow, the ACLU, and the larger intellectual ethos of evolution represent the greater and truer future of America. Bryan’s feeble defense of faith is a reminder to those who are astute and sophisticated that we must be eternally vigilant in the defense of the First Amendment’s assurance of ‘separation of church and state.’ These treasured tropes anchor the 21st-century defense of secularism and form the rhetorical contest of culture wars today regarding sexuality and so much more.

The terminology of “fundamentalist” Christian and now “right-wing Christian nationalist” is all part of a secular academic critique designed to undermine Christianity as a public ethos. It is true that Christianity, like any idea has been abused by human beings to commit gross acts of cruelty. But this human habit of abusing and misinterpreting ideas is not caused by Christianity and it is in fact an enduring political solution to this stubborn human arrogance that kills the innocent all too often in its wake. The original criticisms of Charles Darwin’s work were much more profound than arcane questions regarding the age of the Earth. Darwin’s seminal work and title put the problem front and center: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Darwin’s thesis energized by an ethos of “survival of the fittest” set in motion some of humanity’s most debased ideologies and genocidal fantasies. The “Struggle for Life” became a scientized battle to rid the earth of its lesser species -- especially among those ‘less favored races.’ Darwin’s scientism was welded into the ideology of White Supremacy. Darwin sought to understand, explain, and justify why the white race was superior. That outrageous and anti-biblical notion became the progressive doctrine of the early 20th century and it animated the blunt ugly racism that said black people were biologically inferior to white people. Every thinking person who knows recent history recognizes that this is precisely what the scientific theory of evolution unleashed upon global humanity in the 1880s. Karl Marx was influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution and saw it as applicable to the natural evolution of societies away from agrarian feudalism toward the political ideal of managerial socialism. In all its permutations, the theory of evolution maintains a clear and empirical ethos: survival of the fittest. Every death of a human being had a simple meaning: progress. This month, only the strong survived the flood in Texas -- the new ethos was well served. 

In secular fantasies like those written by Margaret Atwood, secular minds like Darrow and so many of the educated erudite elite imagine they are living under an unbearable Christian theocracy. The ethos of care that all human beings are equal and made in the image of God is an impossible rhetorical burden in this rhetorical fantasy. The American tradition is actually clear, despite all the dust thrown into the air by secularists. It was dynamic Christian thought that sought the abolition of slavery -- and yes, the abolitionists were thought to be wild-eyed Christian nationalists. It was dynamic Christian thought that animated the American Civil Rights movement from 1942 to 1967 -- and yes, the leaders were thought to be Christian radicals. Yes, this is why there are fools today telling us the Texas flood victims got what they deserved. Somehow, we are supposed to cheer when the weak are destroyed. But the deeper truth of the Texas floods is the deeper truth about America and Christianity in 2025. This nation is not prepared to shed or repent of its Christian ethos. The extraordinary outpouring of generosity, charity, and caring into the small communities of central Texas is honestly more than local officials can coordinate. Neighbors love their neighbors far beyond the borders of Texas. And the ethos of loving your neighbor is not one handed down by Darwin or by Nature. The ethos that Darwin and other scientism fanatics champion imagines a world where we glibly enjoy the deaths of those who are weak. Secular historian Tom Holland makes the point that the killing of children in the ancient world prior to Christianity was in fact commonplace. If a father found a baby to be somehow defective or lacking aesthetic appeal, they were cast off to die. That is survival of the fittest and it is an ugly shameful ethos characterizing the human past. It is little wonder that humanity never grew to a population of one billion until the early 1800s. Killing the innocent was the meaning of political dominion.

The question at the center of the 1925 Scopes Monkey trial was much more than the origins of human beings. A deeper question was what type of human beings would we be as we sanitized the realm of ethics to be purely “evolutionary.” That path was rightly appealed by Bryan. The world has never been short of those who believe that “might makes right.” The dream that the last should be first is a uniquely egalitarian vision that topples the hierarchies of the world. On the 100th anniversary of Scopes, it is an ideal time for Americans to recover a truer history of themselves than the Hollywood fantasy or an Atwood novel. The deeper truth traverses the river bends of central Texas, looking for the lost. Their deaths have profound meaning that is more than the herd shedding its weaker members. 

Dr. Ben Voth is professor of rhetoric and director of debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is the author of several academic books regarding political communication, presidential rhetoric, and genocide.

Image: Smithsonian Institution