Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation

A magnificent history of the 1925 Scopes trial and how the teaching of evolution in public schools exposed profound divisions in America that still resonate today--freedom, censorship, religion, and the meaning of democracy--by the award-winning author of The Impeachers

In 1925, hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the "trial of the century," where a young schoolteacher named John T. Scopes was charged with teaching evolution to his biology class. Darwin's theory that species evolved over time through natural selection (misunderstood to suggest that humans descended from monkeys) was viewed as a threat to the nation. Two legendary attorneys, Clarence Darrow for the defense and William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution, drew massive crowds in a trial that quickly became a circus-like media sensation--but it was much more than that. Darrow was arguing that people should be free to worship, or not to worship, and be free to learn, particularly about science, while Bryan declared that evolution undermined the literal truth of the Bible and created a society without morals, meaning, or hope.

Prize-winning historian Brenda Wineapple brings to vivid life the entirety of this dramatic and colorful period that exposed foundational divisions across race, region, and religion, as factions used the courts as tools to buoy up their own ideologies. Bryan, three times the Democratic nominee for President, had been Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State, and his populism and political ambitions, vividly chronicled in this book, culminated in Dayton. Darrow was the celebrated and successful advocate of labor and a fervent believer in civil rights, as protected by the Constitution. Along with the newly-formed ACLU, he defended Scopes, declaring, "No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry, and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America."

In Keeping the Faith, Brenda Wineapple illuminates this electrifying, pivotal legal showdown, which at its heart was a struggle over the fundamental values that define America, and in doing so calls attention to a crisis almost a century ago that continues to reverberate in the present.

Author: Brenda Wineapple
Publisher: Random House
Published: 08/13/2024
Pages: 544
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
ISBN: 9780593229927


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 03/01/2024 pg. 1

About the Author
Brenda Wineapple is the author of the New York Times Notable Books The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and Ecstatic Nation, as well as White Heat, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has won a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. Her essays have appeared in many publications, among them The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, and The American Scholar.