The Culture Wars at 100: A Century After Scopes

One hundred years is a long time in politics, less in science, and even less in religion. This year marks the centennial of the best-known intersection of those three forces in American culture: the “Tennessee Monkey Trial.” Seen narrowly, Tennessee v. Scopes was a small-town criminal prosecution under a largely symbolic state law against teaching about human evolution in public schools. Given a broader meaning in a culturally divided era, it came to represent a complex clash pitting resurgent American evangelicalism against progressive notions of science, religion, and liberty that some saw as a battle for the soul of America. Over time, it grew to symbolize the sort of multi-sided and highly-charged confrontations that continue to divide Americans over laws, regulations, and court decisions involving contested visions of individual rights, religious freedom, and popular control over matters of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.