On May 5, 1925 John Scopes was charged with teaching the theory of evolution in his high school class room in direct violation of Tennessee's Butler Act.
The ACLU had been searching for a test case to challenge the law and eventually found a willing teacher, Scopes, to break the law so that they could challenge its constitutionality. The case itself very quickly evolved into a media showcase with William Jennings Bryan joining the prosecution team and Clarence Darrow the defense.
The trial was followed on radio across America with newspaper reporters converging on the small town of Dayton, Tennessee including H.L. Mencken for The Baltimore Sun.
The trial was a grand media event with Darrow calling Bryan to the stand and questioning him on the biblical literalism. Scopes was found guilty on July 21, 1925 and fined $100. The case was appealed and eventually overturned on a technicality.
The trial resulted in a huge public relations loss for biblical literalists. However, with a guilty verdict in hand creationists sought similar laws in other states. By 1927 13 states had considered anti-evolution laws. At least 41 separate bills were brought before various state legislatures. Only Mississippi and Arkansas passed anti-evolution laws. More importantly perhaps, of the major science textbooks of the late 1920's and 1930's only one contained a section on evolution and it was offset by quotes from the bible.
One can only imagine the sermons evangelical pastors engaged in over the next few years in favor of biblical literalism and against that devilish science.
What follows is a fascinating letter from my grandfather Garfield V. Cox from his home in Chicago to his mother back on the farm in rural Indiana that I came across in a box of his letters I received last Thanksgiving. I was rather amazed by it so I took a guess, did a little research, and realized the context of the letter was the aftermath of the Scopes Trial playing out in my family and captured in this letter.
The letter is rather long for a diary but I highly recommend reading it through. My grandfather was a prize winning public speaker in college and later a professor of public speaking at Wabash College in Indiana prior to moving on to the University of Chicago where he studied and taught finance, business and economics. Having read the letter a few times now (as well as much of his other writings) it is clear to me that this is a carefully and skillfully constructed letter and as such there isn't much that can be done to cut it down to size without damaging his careful construction. So I present it in toto.
March 26, 1926
Dear mother,
I was sorry we didn't have an opportunity to carry further our discussion of the religious questions you raised the morning I left. I have thought about it since quite a good deal and feel impressed that I ought to write you of some things that weigh on my mind.
The student of history is forced to recognize that in religion as in other things the beliefs and viewpoints of humanity change from generation to generation. For instance, there was a time when every Christian was a Catholic who believed in the infallibility of the Pope. There was a time when it was thought that the surest way of salvation was to withdraw from the world and live the life of a hermit in fasting and prayer, thus dodging what all of us today consider our Christian duty of serving other people who need our help. There came a time when the ablest of the church fathers spent their lives in building up a system of theology much of which would now appear to you and father as positively absurd. Finally came a period in which it was a mark of great piety to burn at the stake or to boil to death anyone who challenged the authority of the pope, or questioned any proposition in the theology or doctrines of the church fathers. Furthermore the priests could decide who should go to heaven & who to hell.
Finally came an increasing disposition of men to ask questions about the reasonableness of the religious faith they had been taught. Out of this heretical spirit grew the movement which we call the religious reformation. The essence of this new attitude was that the individual is not to be told by churchmen what he must & must not believe, but is to decide for himself through his own communion with God and his own study of the bible.
Now the point I wish to make is this: The protestants rejected the religion of authority and substituted a religion of personal, inner conviction, and from that day forward religious thinking has been more or less in a ferment. If a man was to go not to his priest but to his bible for truth, then he must study his bible. At first scholars were content to translate into their own language the Latin bibles which the Catholic church had used for centuries. But more recently protestant scholars have been searching in ancient libraries for copies of the books of the New Testament in the early Greek in which they were originally written and from which they had been translated into Latin by the early Catholic church. A large number of these early Greek manuscripts have been found and translated. Incidentally, Henry Cadbury, a personal friend of ours, is one of the foremost of these scholars, as is also Edgar Goodspeed, author of "The New Testament in Modern Speech." All these students are helping us to get back to a more accurate conception of Jesus and of what he actually did and taught. They study not only the language but the life of the Jewish people at the time of Christ so that they may better understand the parables and other utterances of Jesus. They have also discovered that a few of the statements that are in the Latin, the King James, & the American Revised versions of the bible weren't in the original books at all, but were subsequently tacked on by medieval monks.
Meanwhile students of Hebrew history & language have been throwing new light upon the Old Testament and helping us much better to understand what the people who wrote those books were really trying to say to their people at the time they wrote.
To one who brings this background of knowledge to his study of the scriptures it seems clear that the practice of building up theology and rules of conduct on the basis of the literal interpretation of isolated texts is often utterly misleading. By such a method one can take two different biblical texts and from them build up contradictory arguments. If we could only free ourselves from what others have told us from infancy that the bible says on this and that, and could read it as a new book to be interpreted for the first time and in the light of an understanding of its authors and of the life of the age in which they wrote, it would be a great blessing to us all.
One difficulty we have with the bible is, as I have already indicated, that we read a statement made thousands of years ago with one purpose in mind and in one set of circumstances, and we apply it to a very different present day situation and from a different point of view. For example, Genesis gives us two very different accounts of the story of creation. The first of these ends with verse 3 of Chap. 2, and the second begins abruptly where the last one leaves off and continues to the end of chapter 3.
The first story is a very poetic one handed down by word of mouth for untold ages before it ever got written down, and it was many more centuries still before it got incorporated in our bible. The story is quite evidently an attempt to impress upon the Hebrew people the idea that God made the universe and the life that dwells within it, including man. There appears no evidence that anything beyond this profound belief was intended to be stated, except to argue that there should be one days’ rest in seven. Yet many thousands of good men have mistakenly insisted upon a literal belief in that account of the process of creation as a necessary prerequisite to personal salvation. To those of us who cannot believe in the literal truth of the details of that story it is comforting to know that in all the teachings of Jesus there is no hint that our souls’ salvation depends in any manner upon our belief in or rejection of the scientific authenticity of that story of creation. Practically every primitive people has had some poetic tradition as to how God made the earth, & life, & man, some of them even more beautiful than the story in Genesis. Beliefs of certain American Indian tribes are cases in point. But no one seriously supposes that their account is literally true in detail! If the ancient Hebrews had had our present knowledge of geology & biology they would have said God created the universe and the life that is in it and would then have proceeded to mention briefly that this universe and this created life are evolving according to a divine plan.
The second story of creation, beginning with verse 4 of chap. 2 is quite different from the first. (Notice that the advocates of literal interpretation have never told us which one to believe). This story, too, says that God created the world & life, but it is not concerned primarily with explaining the process by which it was done. Instead it is trying to account for the existence of evil in a world created & governed by a good god. Incidentally, if one is to take literally either of these stories of creation, whom did Cain marry?
Again in Chapters 6 to 8 you will find jumbled together two different stories of the flood. Which one am I to believe was accurate? Personally I don’t see that it matters whether either is accurate. I find nothing in the teachings of Jesus to indicate that to follow in his footsteps I have to have any opinion at all on the subject of the flood. Geologists suppose that the flood was caused by the Atlantic breaking in at Gibraltar, and flooding the valley which is now the Mediterranean. At any rate geologists find evidence that the Mediterranean was once an inhabited valley instead of a sea, and every ancient people who dwelt on its shores had some legend about "the flood."
Now, as to the question you asked about one’s soul being lost after death. Perhaps there is no question on which it is harder for one to come to an examination of the teachings of Jesus with one’s mind free from second hand opinions as to what he teaches on the subject. The Catholic church developed the doctrine of eternal punishment and used it quite effectively as a means of keeping people in subjection to the church. At the period of the Reformation some protestant churches took over this doctrine & some did not. An excellent example of a church that accepted the Catholic doctrine of punishment wholeheartedly was the Presbyterians. An example of a group that rejected it was the Quakers. (Some Quakers in rural communities in the middle west now believe it, having gotten the idea during the evangelistic movement which Methodists carried into this region a generation or more ago). Most protestants today, however, definitely reject the idea of eternal damnation, while the Catholics officially still hold to it. [Of course living Catholics can gain the release of relations from purgatory by payments to the Church].
Turning to Jesus, one searches his teachings in vain for proof that he believed in eternal punishment, and there is abundant ground for assurance that he did not. The Heavenly Father whom he came to reveal was a God of love and kindness, not a God of vengeance. The only places in which Jesus used terms which might be twisted into support of the Catholic & Presbyterian doctrine of eternal damnation are incidental phrases in two or three of his parables, and in these the real lesson he was trying to draw was on an entirely different subject.
I know that what I have written is in conflict with some of the things that well meaning pastors at Fairmount have taught. But before you reject these views in favor of theirs please remember that I have searched for the truth just as earnestly as they have, and that I have had the advantage of more education than have any of them. Remember that in the middle ages scientists were put to death for believing that the earth was round, or that the earth revolved around the sun instead of the sun around the earth. They were suppressed in the name of the Christian religion which their slayers feared their heretical beliefs would destroy. Today the theory of evolution is as definitely accepted by scientific men as is the notion that the earth revolves around the sun, and in a few generations all Christian people will probably accept it, and wonder why religious people raised such a protest when the theory was first proposed, just as we now wonder why religious people in the middle ages opposed the idea that the earth was not the center of the universe. Indeed, if the theory of evolution does not become universally accepted, it will be because the scientists themselves discover facts which indicate some new explanation to be a truer one.
Remember also that the same ministers who scoff at scientific evidence because it conflicts with a literal interpretation of the bible story of creation, themselves refused during the war to give a literal interpretation to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill." They even dodged a literal interpretation of such words of Jesus as, "Love your enemies," "Turn the other cheek," & "They that take the sword shall perish by the sword."
I have written this letter not because of a desire to disturb beliefs which you now hold & with which you are satisfied. In fact the only reason I have written at all is because I gathered from your remarks the other day that you are not satisfied. Furthermore, as I think over the things father has said in the past and, even more, the things he has not said, I am inclined to suspect that he isn’t altogether happy either. So may I ask you to share this letter with him? My one desire is that both of you should have a deep and vital religious experience, and should be as happy in your beliefs as I am in mine. And since I suspect that the influences which are disturbing you in your later years are the same influences that have been forcing me in my youth to think my religious problems through independently of traditional beliefs, I have felt called to share these thoughts with you for whatever they may be worth.
In conclusion I want to set down what seems to me to be the four fundamental elements in the Christian religion: -
- There is a personal God who is our heavenly Father.
- Jesus was a perfect revelation of the character of God.
- To be a Christian is to live Jesus’ way of life.
- The more nearly one lives that way of life the better fitted one will be to live the life to come.
I don’t think these points need lengthy comment. It is clear that Jesus lived in daily consciousness of companionship with his Heavenly Father and turned to him for guidance and support. Jesus told us to do likewise, and he helped people to understand the character of this Heavenly Father. We are not only to commune with God, but we are to love and to serve his earthly children. In fact, that is the only way we have of serving Him. In so far as we do this we are Christians and both this life & the life to come will be worth living. In so far as we are mean and selfish we are not Christian and both this life & the life to come will be lacking in both the joy of human service, and the consciousness of divine companionship.
Think this over and if there is anything more than this to Christianity, tell me what it is. Also, think it over and consider whether you don’t qualify as Christians even better than some of your neighbors who make a loud profession at revival meeting time, but forget to be kindly to their neighbors during the rest of the year.
Tell me also what there is in the belief that life is evolving that is inconsistent with Christianity. If life owes its existence to God and if life evolves according to His laws does that need to undermine anybody’s faith? Why quarrel over differences of opinion concerning the path humanity has traveled when the thing that matters is the path we shall travel in the future? If the honest, and industrious, but poorly informed Christians, who are so bitterly attacking modern science and scholarly research would quit their criticizing, and spend equal energy in loving service to their fellowmen, they would, I feel certain, please very much better the Master whom they desire to serve.
I must close. If you would like to discuss these or any other religious problems further I hope you’ll write me about them, and I’ll help if I can.
With love,
Garfield
It is clear to me from this letter and others he wrote to my grandmother, in some of which he worked out deciding against entering into the ministry, that my grandfather had very seriously studied the bible and Christianity. This probably occurred during his high school years at a Quaker School, Fairmount Academy, in Fairmount, Indiana. Hints point at that time as one of religious ferment for him but the written record is sparse so I shall probably never know for certain exactly what happened.
It is fascinating not only to have such a clear view into his beliefs as contained in this letter but to see an important piece of American history captured in it as well.
The Cox family history was a Quaker one but my grandfathers grandparents had been married outside of the Quaker Meeting which was a no-no in those days. As such they left the Quaker Meeting and joined with the Wesleyan Methodist Church which is the faith they raised their children in and that presumably my grandfather was raised in prior to his re-finding his roots in Quakerism as a young lad at Fairmount Academy. The letter implies strongly that his mother was hearing biblical literalism preached at her by her evangelical Wesleyan pastor and this was her liberal Quaker sons response. He was 32 at the time.