Among many gems in Rich Hall's BBC Four programme about depictions of the American South was his explanation of the Scopes Trial depicted in Inherit The Wind. It was in fact about what was then the compulsory teaching in Tennessee of what was officially called Civic Biology, but was in fact eugenics as applied to race and disability. The Genesis account, and the Bible generally, was held to provide an alternative view. It certainly does.
William Jennings Bryan was a Christian Socialist, and he was therefore a passionate opponent of Social Darwinism. That was why he took the stand that he did. He did not believe the seven days to be literally so, but rather to be vast geological epochs, since Young Earth Creationism dates only from the publication of The Genesis Flood in 1961. Have you got that? 1961.
Bryan is a truly fascinating figure, a way into exploring how America once had a proper Left, and a populist, Christian-based, largely rural, totally non-Marxist Left at that. No wonder that there have been four Hollywood adaptations of Inherit The Wind. We cannot have people knowing the truth about figures and movements like that, now, can we?
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Exactly. "A Civic Biology Presented in Problems," which Scopes used in his classroom, was full of eugenic ideas, like using guided selection to breed a better race of humans, just as we breed dogs and horses. A good discussion of the Scopes Trial can be found on the invaluable website Eugenics Watch:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.eugenics-watch.com/roots/chap08.html
I am happy to say Bryan is being slowly rehabilitated by left-populists who understand that he was fighting against both Social Darwinism and laissez-faire capitalism, the two being closely related.
Unfortunately, there are some progressives that hate anything that even looks like an attack on Darwin or Darwinism. These are the people that are more interested in striking (often imaginary) blows against religion than actually bettering the lot of working people, if they even care about working people at all.