Religion and Education: The Scopes Controversy in Utah

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 51, 1983, No. 2

Religion and Education: The Scopes Controversy in Utah

BY ANN WEAVER HART

A RESURGENCE OF FUNDAMENTALISM, THE BEGINNING of which was signaled in 1910 by the publication of a series of pamphlets entitled The Fundamentals, reheated a controversy among American Christians over the issues of Bible literalism and evolution. The ensuing fight was carried to the state legislatures of the country where thirty-seven bills designed to bar the teaching of evolution in publicly supported schools were introduced. In addition to legislative efforts, resolutions and policies against evolution were adopted by boards of education across the nation. Aided in their efforts by their charismatic new leader, William Jennings Bryan, the fundamentalists were able to secure the passage of the Butler Act in Tennessee forbidding the teaching of evolution in any state-supported school or college. When a young teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, agreed to test the law, one of the more famous and publicized confrontations over evolution began. The story of John Scopes has been told and retold in American letters and literature. The ordeal of the Tennessee high school teacher (who according to his memoirs never even taught evolution) has been relegated to American folklore by portrayals of the dramatic confrontation between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in a Dayton, Tennessee, courtroom during those sultry July days in 1925. Darrow embodied the image of the new scientific agnostic, Bryan the old and uncomplicated religious faith that had sustained hard-working Americans in the past.

There have been some misconceptions formed about Utah that might lead some to believe that it was probably a center of evolution controversy in the 1920s. Utah was named as the first state in the United States to pass anti-evolution legislation in that tense era in Separation of Church and State published in 1948. The particular legislation referred to, however, was a bill entitled Sectarian Doctrines in Public Schools. It was aimed at preventing any religious denomination from dominating instruction in Utah's schools. Alvin W. Johnson was apparently convinced that the prohibition of "atheistic" and "infidel" doctrines in the Utah act demonstrated that the bill was aimed at evolution. Considering the fact that all fortyeight states in the nation at the time had similar legislation, much of which had been passed almost a hundred years earlier, Johnson's conclusion seems unfounded. Utah's legislation was, instead, part of a well defined American trend toward the establishment of sectarian public schools.

The Scopes trial may have been the major religious event in America in the 1920s. Given the preconceptions that many hold about the religious climate in Utah, one might expect that strong feelings would have surfaced here as they did elsewhere in the nation, yet the response in Utah was comparatively unemotional. School boards along the Wasatch Front apparently ignored the issue in their formal proceedings, introducing no regulations or resolutions. Professional educators spoke out in favor of scientific education, the libraries escaped censorship, and the state legislature passed no legislation restricting the teaching of evolution. Utah's press coverage of the Scopes trial was moderately pro-Scopes on the major issues raised by the trial: academic freedom, the right of patrons to control the schools, the law's constitutionality, the philosophical conflicts between science and religion, national politics, and the science of evolution; but both sides in the controversy received Utah publicity.

A very real fear in Utah was ably expressed by the Ogden Standard-Examiner on May 17, 1925, that limiting the freedom to teach and to learn, not the truth of evolution, was the real issue in the case: "[A person] may be sure of his ideas, but if he is intelligent he knows there is room for doubt and debate and he welcomes both." Academic freedom and the right of experts to teach information that is accurate in their best judgment was a recurring theme. The Standard-Examiner headline for June 11, 1925, stated: "Scopes Says He Is 'Goat': Evolution Teacher to Fight for Freedom of Thought." The primacy of the school freedom issue was brought home by the July 13 DeseretNews article that began: "With the educational liberties of the American people at stake ... the trial of John Scopes continues."

Bryan had a different concept of school freedom — the right of school patrons to decide what could be taught in their schools, and that was also represented in the Utah papers. Convinced that Scopes was forcing boards of education to question teachers on their personal views of controversial issues before hiring them in order to protect themselves, Bryan felt deeply that those who paid the bills for the public schools had the absolute right to determine what subjects would be taught there. He argued forcefully that "evolution is not the issue . . . the real issue is whether the scientists or the people who support the schools shall control the schools."

The constitutionality of a law delineating the subjects that may be taught in the public schools was also questioned in the Utah press. Constitutional issues, including due process guarantees, were thoroughly examined. A Deseret News editorial compared the evolution question to a 1925 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against an Oregon statute requiring all children to attend public schools.

It is evident that the question to be decided by the court is the right or power of the state legislature to prescribe what shall or shall not be taught to the school children of Tennessee. The question involves the constitutionality of legislative action in this particular field. It is closely akin to the Oregon school law in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that a state statute requiring all children to attend the public schools was in violation to the Federal Constitution and an unreasonable encroachment on individual liberty.

However, the Ogden paper pointed out that many prominent constitutional lawyers felt that the Butler Act might be legal.

Though the defense and the prosecution argued vociferously that other issues were really at stake and that their battle was over academic freedom and the control of the public schools, Utah coverage gave more publicity to the religious and political issues that both spawned and were nurtured by the movement and seemed to blur the focus of the educational issues. A Salt Lake Tribune article on July 9, "Scopes Trial Now Accepted as Last Call," argued that this event was either fundamentalism's nemesis or the birth of a new political force in the nation. Bryan sharpened the religious conflict when he stated: "If Darwinism is true, Christianity is false. The Deseret News, however, took a different view when it editorialized on the religous implications of the Scopes trial: "Evolution is not on trial, neither is the literal truth of the Bible story. Many who subscribe in part to the theory of evolution find it not incompatible with belief in divine creation and guidance." Judge Raulston had ruled that it was not improper to begin the trial with daily prayer, but when the prayers turned into a forum for speeches pleading for the defendant's eternal soul, as they sometimes did, the Salt Lake Tribune suggested that "argumentative prayers which might have influence on the jury" had no place in the trial.

There was also some feeling that the Tennessee trial atmosphere somehow violated the principles of fair play. The Salt Lake Tribune's headline article on July 14 voiced the opinion that Scopes's "jury of his peers," consisting of "east Tennessee Mountain Farmers," could not possibly decide his case "impartially, according to the evidence." The Provo Herald also suggested that the issue of Scopes's guilt or innocence was moot; people in Dayton would probably find Scopes guilty "because the dominant anti-evolution view of the jury was well established.

William Jennings Bryan was a political personality of the first order, a man about whom controversy swirled like a dust devil. His role in the passage of the Butler Act and Scopes's subsequent indictment and prosecution for violating it made great political press. Although his admirers argued that Bryan involved himself in the evolution controversy as part of a personal commitment to give the remainder of his life to God after a long political career, there were many, including some Utahns, who doubted the altruism of his motives. "Politics Creep into Evolution Struck Town," a Salt Lake Tribune copyrighted article, argued that Bryan might try for the presidency once again on a fundamentalist platform. One of Will Rogers's articles in the Tribune, "We Might as Well Be Monkeys as Long as We're Going to Act Like Them," claimed Bryan's behavior was very politically motivated. Critical political cartoons and articles continued to appear in the major Utah papers throughout the trial. The belief seems to have persisted that Bryan might run for the presidency once more on a fundamentalist platform and was using the trial to further his political career.

Bryan's world view also received some criticism in Utah. Darrow and Malone were often quoted on the issues involved in the litigation, but the personality of William Jennings Bryan, long well known to westerners, seemed to engender as much interest as his opinions. His vitality and accomplishments were a source of admiration for those following the progress of his last great battle, and there was considerable support and admiration from official LDS periodicals for his devotion to religion and his anti-alcohol politics. But his "capacity to ignore logic, to keep himself free from those weak embarrassments that attend a man able to see all the facts in their proper proportions" was hardly an attribute one would want to emulate. The one admirable quality universally attributed to Bryan, regardless of feelings toward him personally, was his sincerity. After his death in Dayton just a few days after the trial, the Utah papers praised him as a sincere man who stood up for what he believed in, the "mighty democrat" and leader of the fundamentalists.

Many lacked sufficient background to judge the Scopes trial on any scientific merit. The Utah media offered its readers testimony that supported both evolution and faith. Dr. W.J. Mayo, who argued that scientific men no longer questioned evolution ("Not that we are descended from monkeys, which is mere nonsense. . . ."), and Kirtley Mather were representative of the experts whose opinions were given Utah exposure. "Not one scientific fact conflicts with the teachings of Jesus Christ" was one assertion seen in print in Utah. The Ogden Standard-Examiner carried a series of articles by Percy W. Cobb, M.D., explaining aspects of evolutionary theory. Other attempts to present the scientific point of view, however limited the space and necessarily abbreviated, appeared in the Utah papers.

The apparently balanced portrayal of the issues of the Scopes trial can be explained in part by Utah's educational and religious climate at the time. A lack of consensus among Mormon leaders on evolution's merits in the 1920s, the BYU controversy over evolution that preceded Scopes by over a decade, the nature of Utah Protestantism, strong support for a secular and nondenominational approach to science in the public schools and libraries by Utah educators, and a tradition of interest in science in the state were all part of the context from which Utahns viewed the national conflict.

Although absolutely no concessions were granted to agnostic or atheistic perspectives of evolution by Mormon authorities, many prominent Mormons were attracted to the theory's theistic interpretations and wrote extensively on the subject. Nels Nelson, a BYU professor, John A. Widtsoe, James Talmage, Frederick Pack from the University of Utah, and B. H. Roberts all wrote more or less positively about evolution. They discussed the ideas of Thomas Huxley, Herbert Spencer, and Charles Darwin, comparing the theistic application of evolutionary theories to LDS theology. Expressing beliefs on both sides of the controversy, numerous articles appeared in the Improvement Era, the Juvenile Instructor, the Contributor, the Millennial Star, and the LDS Conference Reports that were both sympathetic to and hostile to the scientific interpretations of biological, geological, and paleontological data.

The conflicts that roiled and churned the Protestant waters were not ignored by the Mormons either. Many items appeared in the Improvement Era column "Passing Events" documenting the increasingly heated and bitter confrontation developing in the American Protestant denominations. However, while Protestant congregations were debating the issues, firing their pastors, and confronting one another at national conventions, the structure of LDS leadership precluded a duplication of the Protestant debate and controversy. In 1909 a statement from President Joseph F. Smith reaffirmed the LDS commitment to the concept of man's creation in the image of God, asserting that the issues in the evolutionary conflict were "not vital from a doctrinal standpoint" though "closely connected with the fundamental principles of salvation."

There was also an ambiguous contemporary LDS reaction at the time of the Scopes trial. LDS periodicals continued to print articles that sympathized with evolution or excoriated evolutionary theory, including some very positive articles by William Jennings Bryan and about his life and work. The church publicized its official viewpoint on the subject of evolution in July, during the Scopes trial, by distributing it to newspapers throughout the country over the signatures of Heber J. Grant, Anthony W. Ivins, and Charles W. Nibley, the First Presidency of the church. Emphatically expressing the church's commitment to the direct participation of God in the creation of man, in his anthropomorphic nature, and in the principles of eternal progression as taught by the church, this statement made no direct mention of the debate central to the issue at the time — could God have employed some particular and identifiable method (evolution?) when he organized the elements out of which the earth was created? At this point it became necessary for Latterday Saint members to find their own explanations for creation, providing they remained believers in Good's divine fatherhood and creative power and in the mission of Jesus Christ.

The second factor that influenced the Utah climate was a serious confrontation over the issues of evolution, higher criticism, and interpretations of academic freedom at Brigham Young University in 1911 that developed between several relatively new professors with excellent academic qualifications from American universities and some of the established faculty at the BY High School and some Utah Valley residents. In what they felt was an attempt to upgrade the program at the college, these nationally educated young professors taught biology, philosophy, and education using the evolutionary perspective from which they had been taught. They organized a series of visiting speakers from around the country who spoke on eugenics, communism, and the impact of Darwinism on history, education, and science; and they openly promoted a doctrine of rational creation which they argued provided "an aid to faith" rather than a corruption of faith.

The church commissioner of education, Horace Cummings, expressing an intense concern over the possible effect of these professors' teachings on the testimonies and spiritual life of the students under their influence, called for a special church committee to investigate the numerous charges against them. Ultimately, Joseph and Henry Peterson and Ralph Chamberlin were ordered by the trustees of the university to cease their objectionable teachings or resign.

The Deseret News criticized the "evolution school" of "so called 'scientists' " who imposed their objectionable views on others, while the Salt Lake Tribune and the Provo Herald accused the opponents of the beleaguered professors of "holding in contempt the advance of knowledge" and fostering the suppression of academic freedom. Volleys of charges and countercharges were exchanged, and by the time the Petersons and Ralph Chamberlin were forced to resign, Utah had been exposed to more than a month of passionate debate over the issues of academic freedom, evolution, and higher criticism of the Bible. In April 1911 President Joseph F. Smith explained the church's action in both the Improvement Era and the Juvenile Instructor. Recognizing that the issues were not amenable to simple solutions, Smith maintained that "philosophic theories of life have their place and use, but it is not in the classes of the Church schools. . . ." Advocating a different philosophy of education, Milton Bennion criticized the action taken by the church in an editorial in the Utah Educational Review, questioning the desirability of its impact on both the LDS church and on education in the state.

The importance of the BYU incident for this investigation lies in the extensive and intense publicity it received throughout Utah. The messages were not clear. Before the committee's decision was announced, the Deseret News had editorialized on evolution, expressing concern about its effects on faith but encouraging students to "find any light" they could through any branch of inquiry. After the committee's official condemnation of the professors, the News condemned their work and perspective. The widespread and intense publicity the BYU incident provoked resulted in a cultural context quite different from the environment in states where the fundamentalist revolt took place a decade later.

Another factor that made Utah different from fundamentalist power centers was the strength of its mainstream Protestant community. The comity agreements common between Protestant denominations in Utah and the rest of the nation in the early twentieth century resulted in fewer small local churches and larger memberships for individual congregations. The Baptist churches that, along with a conservative wing of the Presbyterians led by William Jennings Bryan, accounted for much of the leadership and interest in anti-evolutionism did not fare well in Utah. Only small pockets of activity in the more populated areas survived the comity consolidations. In 1926 both major branches of the Baptist church together made up only the sixth largest Protestant denomination in Utah within an already small Protestant population. The strength of the more central and liberal Protestant voices can be illustrated by the publicity the Scopes confrontation received in Ogden, a city with a higher than average Protestant population, and the interest Odgen Protestants showed in the philosophical and scientific issues raised by the trial. There were also calls for moderation and caution in accepting the revisionist perspective.

On June 28, 1925, a lecture entitled "The Conflict between Science and Theology as Interpreted by Matthew Arnold" was delivered by Professor Garnett Sedgewick at the Orpheum Theatre. According to Sedgewick, this battle of modern science was over, and the churches, in England at least, had accepted evolution. Americans, he said, stumbled along sixty years late in the controversy.

The mistake which most people make is in a literal interpretation of the Bible. The average person does not seem to understand the literary significance of myths.

And yet the Genesis story is a myth, and one of the finest myths ever written, a sort of poem, full of imaginative beauty and religious significance. And it is a dreadful mistake to take most of the Bible literally, because practically all of the world's best moral teachings are in the nature of parables.

Sedgewick maintained that Christ had pointed the way toward faith in a "power that makes for righteousness." He also emphasized the religious value of the creed of science, whose articles of faith are, first, "truth is discoverable," and, second, "truth is good for us."

George Craig Stewart, an unabashed evolutionist and prominent Episcopalian from Evanston, argued in the Ogden Standard- Examiner for the truth of evolution. In "Evolution Is Termed Truth," Stewart explained that truth must be welcomed from whatever horizon — it does not change. Having nothing to fear from science or from any other source of truth, Christianity's God and his truth remain discoverable and, he said, all truth has the same ultimate source.

In addition to the voices advocating Christian support for evolution, a moderating viewpoint, criticizing ideas the modernists promoted too enthusiastically, was delivered in a sermon at the Christian church, calling upon Christians in Ogden to avoid extremism in all forms. Don't be a "hard shell fundamentalist" or an "ultra-modernist," it pleaded: just be a Christian. Moderation was the primary theme of this message aimed at all denominations of Protestants.

Christian theology did not monopolize the attention of Ogden's Protestants; the Orpheum Theatre also sponsored a lecture by Professor Raymond Franzen, a psychologist at the University of California, who explained the evolution of human morals. This presentation extended the debate into social sciences, ethics, and philosophy where many had adopted the evolutionary paradigm. Not neglecting biology, Ogdenites could attend a lecture by Dr. W. C Allee, a biologist from the University of Chicago, at the Congregational church for fifty cents. Allee explained the naturalist theory of evolution as taught by Charles Darwin.

The religious, philosophical, and scientific messages delivered to this Utah Protestant community during the trial period did not resemble either extreme in the national debate. Utah was not a center of radical Bible revisionism, but it provided a climate where the philosophies predominant in mainstream Protestantism in the rest of the country were more readily available than was fundamentalism.

Finally, Utah educators, scientists, school boards, legislators, and libraries supported moderation. The stand taken by educators in Utah at the time is significant because historians have postulated that the success of the fundamentalists in Tennessee was partly the result of a lack of energetic opposition from professionals in science and education to criticism of science and evolution's application to modern intellectualism. Scientific professionalism was not lacking in the Utah public school system in the 1920s. In 1924 the secretary of the Utah Academy of Sciences, C Arthur Smith, a teacher at East High School, wrote a series of articles on the teaching of science for the November 1924 issue of the Utah Educational Review. Other science articles also appeared in this publication during the period.

The Review was only published during the nine months of the regular school year, so that it was not in publication in July 1925, but the January 1926 issue showed a definite and carefully calculated response to the developments in the nation during the past months. The editorial page for that month, entitled "The Scientific Spirit in Modern Education," stated;

All we know about our universe comes to us through our senses. . . . Science proceeds by experiment to give us new experience which may help us to make a critical test of our conclusions.

Mysticism has no place in science except as a phenomena to be studied.

This entire number of the Review was devoted to science and the teaching of science. The educational tone set by the editors, echoing the views Milton Bennion had expressed fourteen years earlier, was amplified by a series of quotations on the value of modern science to society. Some of them were effusive in their praise of science. Among them, one credited to President Calvin Coolidge concluded: "We ask no recantations from honesty and candor. We know that we need truth, and we turn to you men of science and of faith, eager to give you all encouragement in your quest of it."

J. R. Tippetts, superintendent of schools in Morgan County, expressed what was being taught in the public schools in Utah this way:

. . . high schools are teaching the subjects which deal with the origin and function of living things in both animal and plant kingdoms. . . . Our rural schools have their departments of agriculture which have to do with the breeding and production of domesticated plants and animals and in which the students seek the basic ideas of organic descent and selection. The high schools, undoubtedly, are laying the foundation for scientific conclusions and attitudes which will function greatly in the student's mature life.

Questioning why anyone would feel that being a scientist automatically disqualified one as a religious person, Tippetts explained the advantage he felt this scientific orientation would be to the future leaders of Utah and to the future of society. He offered an enthusiastic defense of science education, which he felt was vital to the prosperity and progress of mankind. Tippetts was a successful superintendent in a small rural Utah school district. Particularly compelling, his arguments in favor of the study of science for the advancement of agriculture could have found wide support in a state whose economy depended so heavily on the success of cultivation and husbandry.

Interviews with teachers active in education during the time of the Scopes trial did not reveal anyone who could recall any restrictions in a particular school. Because of the age of this group only nine could be reached, but their recollections were fairly clear. Almost all of them recalled the incredible publicity the trial received, particularly the role of William Jennings Bryan, but they recalled no influence on their own teaching experience or the experiences of their closest colleagues. One administrator, a principal in charge of a nearby Wyoming high school at the time, agreed. He felt that the controversy had no affect on his school. Dr. Ralph Backman, who began his career as a science teacher at Irving Junior High in Salt Lake City in January 1927 just after the trial, expressed the opinion that the community did not acknowledge the controversy at all in educational programs and decision making. If he had wanted to teach evolution as fact, not merely theory, he felt perfectly free to do so in his own classroom.

An investigation of the minutes of board of education meetings in the Salt Lake Valley school districts yielded no mention of the evolution issue in 1924 or 1925. There was no discussion of curriculum in the Jordan or Salt Lake School District minutes. Granite School District held curriculum meetings, and funds were appropriated in their board meetings for curriculum study but only at the elementary school level. A $300.00 appropriation mentioned in the Granite minutes for the purchase of laboratory equipment for the science department at Cyprus High School evidently had no strings attached, and the national conflict over the theories of science might have occurred in Mozambique for all the attention it appears to have received in official school meetings.

Since Utah did not have a state textbook commission until the 1930s, school districts were free to choose the books they felt were most appropriate for their needs. The Granite minutes indicated the presence of an approved textbook list, but it could not be located in their archives. Whenever a principal or group of teachers requested that a particular book be added to the district's list the petition was recorded in the minutes, and every request encountered in the 1924-25 period was granted by the board.

The performance of Utah's scientists also seems to support the impression that Utah somehow coped with the "uncomfortable interface" of evolution and theology. Utah has contributed a higher proportion of scientists per capita to the nation in its twentiethcentury history than any other state. In a study of the origins of scholars and scientists in America, Utah was found to be the most productive source and was first in nurturing biological scientists.

Library facilities can prove to be one of the most serious restraints on the freedom of a teacher. Because there are no records of the books available in the school libraries and because the state textbook commission has not retained any of the materials used in the schools at that time, it is not possible to ascertain what effect the viewpoints of some anti-evolutionists might have had on school libraries. However, no evidence exists in the media or in the memory of those interviewed of any attempt to limit the purchase of evolutionary materials by public libraries in the 1920s. The reading material available in the Salt Lake City Public Library covered the widest possible variety of books on Darwin but included a much greater number of volumes by those who philosophized on the implications of his theories. Volumes ranged from the passionate agnosticism of Ernst Haeckel to many authors in the full spectrum of religiosity, including arguments against evolution. Recognizing the hand of divine or directed evolution, some authors were simply deistic. Others, like Kirtley Mather, an expert witness at the Scopes trial, continued as active members of mainstream Christian religious groups that held fast to the major premises of Christian dogma, rejecting only a literal interpretation of the Bible's geological time scale and maintaining that evolution served as one possible explanation of God's creative methodology. The library also included the writings of Ralph Chamberlin published in Provo at the time of his dismissal from BYU. The original writings of Darwin were represented as well as those of Thomas H. Huxley, Darwin's loyal advocate and defender. A total of forty-one books on the subject of evolution published before or shortly after the Scopes trial are still in the storage stacks or catalogs of the Salt Lake City Library.

In conclusion, the evidence of Utah's calm response to the evolution issue in education in the 1920s can be partially explained by the primary influences in the area at the time: an equilibrium that had been established between conflicting points of view on evolution among Mormon authorities and ambiguous reactions of LDS officials to the evolution issue when it arose in 1925, the highly publicized confrontation over evolution and higher criticism of the Bible at Brigham Young University fourteen years before the Scopes trial in Tennessee that had provided a public forum for pro- and antievolution advocates, the predominance of mainstream theologies among Utah's Protestants, and traditional support for science and education in Utah born of a commitment to educational excellence in the state from all denominations of Christians.

No evidence was found of a viable Protestant fundamentalist force in Utah. Unlike some neighboring states, Utah passed no legislation designed to prohibit the teaching of evolution in the public schools either through LDS or Protestant sponsorship. The record of interest in the scientific, philosophical, and theological implications of evolutionary theory that Utah Protestants demonstrated at the time of Scopes's trial indicates the presence of a mainstream theology among them.

It has become traditional in Utah's system of higher education that "the common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition." 36 This search for truth and its exposition has led to many sincere conflicts of philosophy both in and out of America's schools. In the 1920s Utahns chose to support the constitutional requirement that the public schools should foster a nonsectarian educational environment. Many forces combined to produce this result. It is apparent from the historical record, however, that this was a much less difficult and emotional era in Utah education than it was in much of the United States.

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