Summer of the Gods Essay Example for Free

Summer of the Gods Essay The Butler Act refers to the law prohibiting teachers in Tennessee to teach their students, theories that purport to go against the creation theory as found in the bible. It prohibits teaching of any theory that would allude to the notion that man has gradually evolved from a lower primate. This law passed in January 1925. The passing of this law sparked a lot of controversy pitting more than half of the Christians living in the state of Tennessee against political and civil rights activists. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had been vehemently opposed to this act and vowed to offer its services in defense of any teachers accused of violating the Butler Act. It is in the bid to accomplish this that ACLU and other civil rights activists placed an advert seeking for a volunteer teacher. John Scopes responded and volunteered to test the act. A case was built out of this on the belief that Scopes had indeed taught against the creation theory to his student in Clark County High School. Scopes with the help of the civil right movements deliberately incriminated himself in the greater mission of bringing to the public limelight the unfairness of this act and how it was a grave violation of a teacher’s freedom. The trial that would follow would see the meeting of great legal minds. One of this was Clarence Darrow,a self proclaimed atheist and William Jennings Bryan, assisting the prosecution at the request of the World Christian Fundamental Association. A look at this trial indicates that Scopes was just being used as pawn in what had become an ideological turf of war as demonstrated by the sort of the high profile personalities it attracted. William Jennings Bryan had been alleged to have been instrumental on drafting the Butler Act in the belief that citizens should have a say in what was taught in schools. Clarence volunteered to join the defense to further use it as a forum to propagate his beliefs and attack the basis of Butler Act especially the foundation of Christian beliefs. The American Civil Liberties Union on the hand was seeking to mount its opposition and challenge the constitutionality of the Butler Act. (Carson 91) Clarence Darrow was highly agonistic and used this trial to attack the fundamental Christians. It is to be noted that the main aim of the trial as projected by ACLU was to defend Scopes by invalidating the Butler Act. However, Clarence Darrow would go ahead and take it to a level where he sought to invalidate Christian teachings, a radical shift and diversion from ACLU key intention. Darrow’s argument in courts and his cross examination of William Jennings Bryan was supposed to be a clear illustration of his stand. In this cross examination and the argument regarding whether the Jonah was swallowed by a big fish or by a whale was supposed to invalidate the bible and hence attack the very foundation of Christianity, diminishing its importance and hence the Creation theory. This trial, as Carson says, was important not only to Darrow and ACLU but even to the rest of the Americans. It sought to embody the characteristically American struggle between liberty and majoritarian democracy (265). Darrow had an intention of throwing a spanner in the already turbulent debate that had dominated the public domain for long; science and religion. The stand of ACLU was that the Butler act was inappropriate and unconstitutional, it impeded on teachers independence and freedom of imparting knowledge to the students. They agreed that teaching of evolution theory did not in any way contradict the teachings in the bible but rather was merely giving a science perspective of the origin of man to students (Carson 89). Darrow’s cross examination of Bryan was meant to cast a doubt to Bryan’s convictions in the biblical teachings. Bryan was fronting an argument that Butler Act was but a well meaning effort by the legislature to have a say in the curriculum that students were exposed to. Clarence Darrow was maintaining that the arguments given by the prosecution were invalid. He saw the Butler Act as an unconstitutional strategy by the legislature to promote the views of one religious group over others. Butler Act had outlawed any teaching that was contrary to the biblical teachings. The Scopes trial brought a lot of attention to the issues of evolution and biblical teachings. It is this trial that would ignite and spark a far reaching debate wishing to delink religious views from science. The defense was trying to argue that Scopes was trying to teach the various perspectives of the origin of man and not seeking to contradict biblical teachings. It was been by Christian fundamentalists as a wider war on culture. Teaching of evolution theory was seen as way of putting into disrepute the biblical teachings. Most religious groups have come to note that this debate is inevitable and have demanded that evolution theory be taught as one of the many theories of the origin of mankind but not be taught as a scientific fact. Works cited Edward J. Larson. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion. Basic Books New York, NY, 1997, 99-269