Abstract
In the spring of 1922, Kentucky’s state legislature became embroiled in a bitter battle over the nation’s first statewide fundamentalist school bill. Frank McVey, president of the University of Kentucky, fiercely opposed the measure.1 During the heated debate, State Senator Harry F. Greene taunted McVey with the challenge, “If he is not teaching evolution what is he hollering for? If the university is not teaching evolution this bill does not hit it.”2 In fact, Kentucky’s so-called antievolution bill would have had a much wider scope. The bill banned evolution, but it would also have prohibited teachers in Kentucky’s public schools from teaching any idea that might challenge students’ religious beliefs. As in Kentucky, state legislators nationwide took sides in fundamentalist school campaigns during the 1920s. Like Senator Greene, most lawmakers considered the central issue to be the teaching of evolution, even as they debated bills that often made much broader claims.
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Notes
William Jennings Bryan, William Jennings Bryan’s Last Speech: Undelivered Speech to the Jury in the Scopes Trial (Oklahoma City, OK: Sunlight Publishing Society, 1925), 46.
William Jennings Bryan, The Bible and Its Enemies: An Address Delivered at the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL: Bible Institute Colportage Association, 1921), 19.
Harold W. Fairbanks, Home Geography, rev. ed. (New York: Educational Publishing Company, 1924), 124.
T. T. Martin, The Evolution Issue (Los Angeles, CA: n.p., 1923?), 34.
Alfred Fairhurst, Atheism in Our Universities (Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing Co., 1923), 30.
William Bell Riley, “Reply to University Regents on the Evolutionary Controversy,” Christian Fundamentals in School and Church [CFSC] 5 (July–September 1923): 51.
R. J. Alderman, “Evolution Leads to Sodom,” Monthly Bible Institute Monthly [Moody Monthly] 23 (September 1922): 12.
Richard David Wilhelm, “A Chronology and Analysis of Regulatory Actions Relating to the Teaching of Evolution in Public Schools” (PhD dissertation, University of Texas–Austin, 1978), 323.
“Science and Religion,” New York Times, April 5, 1925, E4; Kenneth K. Bailey, “The Antievolution Crusade of the Nineteen-Twenties” (PhD dissertation, Vanderbilt University, 1954), 67–68.
Milton L. Rudnick, Fundamentalism and the Missouri Synod: a Historical Study of their Interaction and Mutual Influence (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing, 1966), 75, 79.
Timothy Walch, Parish School: American Catholic Parish Education from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 69–71, 88.
Edward Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 126–27, 262.
Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 55, 72.
Alfred Watterson McCann, God—Or Gorilla: How the Monkey Theory of Evolution Exposes Its Own Methods, Refutes Its Own Principles, Denies Its Own Inferences, Disproves Its Own Case (New York: Devin-Adair, 1922), 272.
Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 304–5.
Michael Lienesch, In the Beginning: Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and the Making of the Antievolution Movement (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 83–114.
T. T. Martin, Hell and the High School: Christ or Evolution Which? (Kansas City, MO: Western Baptist Publishing Co., 1923), 10, 62.
Willard B. Gatewood Jr., Preachers, Pedagogues and Politicians: The Evolution Controversy in North Carolina, 1920–1927 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1966), 153.
. Gene A. Getz, MBI: The Story of Moody Bible Institute (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1969), 261–62;
William M. Runyan, ed. Dr. Gray at Moody Bible Institute (New York: Oxford University Press, 1935), 103–4;
Gregg Quiggle, “Moody Magazine” in Popular Religious Magazines, ed. P. Mark Fackler and Charles H. Lippy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), 342–47.
Mabel E. Kerr, “Why Not Be Up-to-date?” Moody Monthly 23 (April 1923): 336.
LeRoy Johnson, “The Evolution Controversy During the 1920’s” (PhD dissertation, New York University, 1954), 103–19.
E. L. Simpson [Georgia state legislator] to Bryan, 10 July 1923, Bryan Papers; Maynard Shipley, The War on Modern Science (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927), 171; Wilhelm, “Chronology and Analysis,” 324–25; Guy H. Fish [of the Des Moines Bible Association on Christian Fundamentals] to Bryan, 30 January 1923, Bryan Papers; Florida Senate Concurrent Resolution 7, Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Florida 1923, 1789–90, 1840, 2052; J. T. Stroder [Texas state legislator] to Bryan, 18 June 1923, Bryan Papers; Texas House Concurrent Resolution 4, Journal of the House of Representatives of the Second Called Session of the Thirty-Eighth Legislature of Texas 1923, 139.
J. Frank Norris, “Address to Texas State Legislature,” The Searchlight 6 (February 23, 1923): 1.
Norris quoted by James Gray, “Will the Christian Taxpayers Stand for This?” Moody Monthly 23 (May 1923): 409.
J. Frank Norris, “Report from the Fifth World’s Fundamental Convention,” CFSC 5 (July–September 1923): 4.
William V. Trollinger, God’s Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 48; Pat M. Neff to Bryan, 16 March 1923, Bryan papers; J. T. Stroder to Bryan, 24 June 1923, Bryan Papers.
For more about Tennessee’s long struggle over the issue of evolution and schools, see Charles A. Israel, Before Scopes: Evangelicalism, Education, and Evolution in Tennessee, 1870–1925 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2004); Tennessee House Bill 185, House Journal of the Sixty-Fourth General Assembly of the State of Tennessee 1925, 180, 201, 210, 248, 261, 268, 648, 655, 741; Tennessee House
“Paint W. J. Bryan as a ‘Medievalist,’” New York Times, March 2, 1922, 12. Many other writers similarly accused Bryan of “medievalism.” See Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Mr. Bryan and Evolution,” New York Times, March 12, 1922; Frederick F. Shannon, “Bryanism,” Christian Century 39 (March 23, 1922): 428–31.
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© 2010 Adam Laats
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Laats, A. (2010). Early Legislative Battles. In: Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106796_5
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