"INHERIT THE WIND": WHEN GNOSIS AND FUNDAMENTALISM MET IN COURT
RE: "A PICTURE SAYS A THOUSAND WORDS" (AND A MOVING PICTURE SAYS
EVEN MORE!) ABOUT THE "SCOPES MONKEY TRIAL"
"THE BRADY BUNCH" REVISITED: ESCAPING "GILLIGAN'S ISLAND" RE-RUNS
To purchase a DVD of this movie: http://tinyurl.com/4nhoqa
http://www.amazon.com/Inherit-Wind-Spencer-Tracy/dp/B00005PJ6V
http://www.salvationscience.com

This movie, "Inherit the Wind" portRays the proverbial battle
between the indoctrination of closed-minded sectarian fundamentalism
and the rational enquiry of open-minded science. False religion is
worse than no religion at all! Those churches who own the most of
these misinformed slaves of ignorance, in bondage to the Eight-Fold
Suffering, will have the most to lose when these slaves are freed.
There would be no need for a "Second Coming of Christ", had you been
theologically correct. Being absent, the prospect for an Inner
Christ Within You now returns.

And to make it even more ironic, the slaves will fight against their
own Salvation and will struggle for their own enslavement! Does this
sound like America and its subordinate nations? Just open your eyes
and ears and hearts to the ignoring of the True Revealed Gospel and
the persecution of its very few advocates, who all knew were only
trying to help those hell-bent to undo their Righteous deeds. I knew
it was the end when they would not read The Tantrayudha and
continued to persecute the helpful peacemakers.

There is suffering and death in the act of rejecting Salvation. Is
it any wonder that poverty, famine and plague now loom on the
horizon? As Holy Scriptures have said: "They will fall into the same
pit they dug for others." In this 1960 version of the movie, Spencer
Tracey represents the position of Salvation Science, while the
prosecution represents sectarian fundamentalism. God made what is
true or false in Science, and is no respecter of man's non-Saving
religions.

This is required viewing for all students of Salvation Science. I
hope you enjoy it. Former Presidential candidate, William Jennings
Bryant (alias Matthew Brady) lost his audience, only by grace of the
eloquence of the defense attorney. Note that this was a high-ranking
American politician, trying to ram his stupid arrogant, narrow-
minded views on the rest of us. Like the Bible states: "He who
troubles his own house (by rejecting the Longer, Happier Life) shall
inherit the wind."

Like Jesus said: "Beware the wolves (religions) in Lamb's clothing."
Salvation does not exist for religion. Religion exists for
Salvation. Jesus came to Save mankind - not to start a new religion.
Since men refused to be Saved, a religion-without-Salvation was
formed. Are you tired of living like a vagabond on an island,
isolated by repetitive mediocrity and conformity? Like Moses said to
the "Chosen People": "Rise up from bondage!"
- Jai Om. Sw. Tantrasangha

A teacher is jailed for teaching evolution in the South bringing two
legal giants, one an athiest and one a creationist, to battle for
more than the teacher's fate in a sweltering southern courtroom.
This first rate drama was based on the real "Scopes Trial" in which
Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryant were the attorneys. Gene
Kelly plays H.L. Mencken. Academy Award Nominations: 4, including
Best Actor--Spencer Tracy, Best (Adapted) Screenplay.

This gripping adaptation of the Jerome Lawrence-Robert E. Lee play
examines an issue that still causes great controversy: the role
religion should play in the schools.
Bertram T. Cates is arrested and put on trial for teaching Darwin's
theory of evolution in his classroom. The incident causes a furor in
the religious southern community he lives in and Matthew Harrison
Brady, a famous fundamentalist attorney, arrives to prosecute the
young teacher. Luckily for Cates, the equally-acclaimed lawyer Henry
Drummond agrees to defend him.
As a result, the two master attorneys square off in the courtroom
while the teacher's life hangs in the balance.

Florence Eldridge, who plays Fredric March's devoted wife in the
film, was the actor's real-life wife. This was the seventh movie
they appeared in together.

The film and the play it was adapted from were based on the real-
life 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial that took place in Dayton, Tennessee.
Henry Drummond, Matthew Harrison Brady, reporter E. K. Hornbeck and
teacher Bertram T. Cates were modeled after Clarence Darrow, William
Jennings Bryan, Baltimore reporter H. L. Mencken and teacher John T.
Scopes, respectively. The trial was labeled the "Monkey Trial" by
some of the country's newspapers because of the concept of evolution
which was at issue.

Screenwriter Nathan E. Douglas also goes by the name Nedrick Young.

A Lomitas production.

The film was remade for TV in 1988, with Kirk Douglas and Jason
Robards in the Fredric March and Spencer Tracy roles.

The play "Inherit the Wind" was produced and directed on stage by
Herman Shumlin.

To purchase a DVD of this movie: http://tinyurl.com/4nhoqa
-------------------------------------------------------

State v. John Scopes ("The Monkey Trial")
by Douglas O. Linder

Darrow questions Bryan during the Scopes Trial (July 20, 1925)
(Smithsonian)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The early 1920s found social patterns in chaos. Traditionalists,
the older Victorians, worried that everything valuable was ending.
Younger modernists no longer asked whether society would approve of
their behavior, only whether their behavior met the approval of
their intellect. Intellectual experimentation flourished. Americans
danced to the sound of the Jazz Age, showed their contempt for
alcoholic prohibition, debated abstract art and Freudian theories.
In a response to the new social patterns set in motion by modernism,
a wave of revivalism developed, becoming especially strong in the
American South.

Who would dominate American culture--the modernists or the
traditionalists? Journalists were looking for a showdown, and they
found one in a Dayton, Tennessee courtroom in the summer of 1925.
There a jury was to decide the fate of John Scopes, a high school
biology teacher charged with illegally teaching the theory of
evolution. The guilt or innocence of John Scopes, and even the
constitutionality of Tennessee's anti-evolution statute, mattered
little. The meaning of the trial emerged through its interpretation
as a conflict of social and intellectual values.

William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic candidate for
President and a populist, led a Fundamentalist crusade to banish
Darwin's theory of evolution from American classrooms. Bryan's
motivation for mounting the crusade is unclear. It is possible that
Bryan, who cared deeply about equality, worried that Darwin's
theories were being used by supporters of a growing eugenics
movement that was advocating sterilization of "inferior stock." More
likely, the Great Commoner came to his cause both out a concern that
the teaching of evolution would undermine traditional values he had
long supported and because he had a compelling desire to remain in
the public spotlight--a spotlight he had occupied since his
famous "Cross of Gold" speech at the 1896 Democratic Convention.
Bryan, in the words of columnist H. L. Mencken, who covered the
Scopes Trial, transformed himself into a "sort of Fundamentalist
Pope." By 1925, Bryan and his followers had succeeded in getting
legislation introduced in fifteen states to ban the teaching of
evolution. In February, Tennessee enacted a bill introduced by John
Butler making it unlawful "to teach any theory that denies the story
of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that
man was descended from a lower order of animals."

The Scopes Trial had its origins in a conspiracy at Fred
Robinson's drugstore in Dayton. George Rappalyea, a 31-year-old
transplanted New Yorker and local coal company manager, arrived at
the drugstore with a copy of a paper containing an American Civil
Liberties Union announcement that it was willing to offer its
services to anyone challenging the new Tennessee anti-evolution
statute. Rappalyea, a modernist Methodist with contempt for the new
law, argued to other town leaders that a trial would be a way of
putting Dayton on the map. Listening to Rappalyea, the others--
including School Superintendent Walter White--became convinced that
publicity generated by a controversial trial might help their town,
whose population had fallen from 3,000 in the 1890's to 1,800 in
1925.

The conspirators summoned John Scopes, a twenty-four-year old
general science teacher and part-time football coach, to the
drugstore. As Scopes later described the meeting, Rappalyea
said, "John, we've been arguing and I said nobody could teach
biology without teaching evolution." Scopes agreed. "That's right,"
he said, pulling a copy of Hunter's Civic Biology--the state-
approved textbook--from one of the shelves of the drugstore (the
store also sold school textbooks). "You've been teaching 'em this
book?" Rappalyea asked. Scopes replied that while filling in for
the regular biology teacher during an illness, he had assigned
readings on evolution from the book for review purposes. "Then
you've been violating the law," Rappalyea concluded. "Would you be
willing to stand for a test case?" he asked. Scopes agreed. He later
explained his decision: "the best time to scotch the snake is when
it starts to wiggle." Herbert and Sue Hicks, two local attorneys and
friends of Scopes, agreed to prosecute.

Rappalyea initially wanted science fiction writer H. G. Wells to
head the defense team. "I am sure that in the interest of science
Mr. Wells will consent," Rappalyea predicted. Wells had no interest
in taking the case, but others did. John Neal, an eccentric law
school dean from Knoxville, drove to Dayton and volunteered to
represent Scopes. When William Jennings Bryan offered to join the
prosecution team--despite having not practiced law in over thirty
years--, Clarence Darrow, approaching seventy, jumped to join the
battle in Dayton. Darrow was not the first choice of the ACLU, who
was concerned that Darrow's zealous agnosticism might turn the trial
into a broadside attack on religion.The ACLU first preferred former
presidential candidates John W. Davies and Charles Evans Hughes, but
neither was willing to serve alongside Darrow. Instead, it
dispatched Arthur Garfield Hays, a prominent free speech advocate,
to join the defense team. The final member of the defense team was
Dudley Field Malone, an international divorce attorney (and another
volunteer who the ACLU might have preferred to stay at home).
Completing the prosecution team in Dayton were present and former
attorneys general for Eastern Tennessee, A. T. Stewart and Ben B.
McKenzie, and Bryan's son, federal prosecutor William Jennings
Bryan, Jr.

A carnival atmosphere pervaded Dayton as the opening of the
trial approached in July of 1925. Banners decorated the streets.
Lemonade stands were set up. Chimpanzees, said to have been brought
to town to testify for the prosecution, performed in a side show on
Main Street. Anti- Evolution League members sold copies of T. T.
Martin's book Hell and the High School. Holy rollers rolled in the
surrounding hills and riverbanks.

Nearly a thousand people, 300 of whom were standing, jammed the
Rhea County Courthouse on July 10, 1925 for the first day of trial.
(Judge John T. Raulston, the presiding judge in the Scopes Trial,
had proposed moving the trial under a tent that would have seated
20,000 people). Also in attendance were announcers ready to send to
listeners the first live radio broadcast from a trial. Judge
Raulston, a conservative Christian who craved publicity, was flanked
by two police officers waving huge fans to keep air circulating. The
proceedings opened, over Darrow's objections, to a prayer.

A jury of twelve men, including ten (mostly middle-aged) farmers
and eleven regular church-goers, was quickly selected. The trial
adjourned for the weekend. On Sunday, William Jennings Bryan
delivered the sermon at Dayton's Methodist Church. He used the
occasion to attack the defense strategy in the Scopes case. As Bryan
spoke, Judge Raulston and his entire family listened attentively
from their front pew seats.

On the first business day of trial, the defense moved to quash
the indictment on both state and federal constitutional grounds.
This move was at the heart of the defense strategy. The defense's
goal was not to win acquittal for John Scopes, but rather to obtain
a declaration by a higher court--preferably the U.S. Supreme Court--
that laws forbidding the teaching of evolution were
unconstitutional. (That goal, however, would not be realized for
another 43 years, in the case of Epperson v. Arkansas ). As
expected, Judge Raulston denied the defense motion.

Opening statements pictured the trial as a titanic struggle
between good and evil or truth and ignorance. Bryan claimed that "if
evolution wins, Christianity goes." Darrow argued, "Scopes isn't on
trial; civilization is on trial." The prosecution, Darrow contended,
was "opening the doors for a reign of bigotry equal to anything in
the Middle Ages." To the gasps of spectators, Darrow said Bryan was
responsible for the "foolish, mischievous and wicked act." Darrow
said that the anti-evolution law made the Bible "the yardstick to
measure every man's intellect, to measure every man's intelligence,
to measure every man's learning." It was classic Darrow, and the
press--mostly sympathetic to the defense--loved it.

The prosecution opened its case by asking the court to take
judicial notice of the Book of Genesis, as it appears in the King
James version. It did. Superintendent White led off the
prosecution's list of witnesses with his testimony that John Scopes
had admitted teaching about evolution from Hunter's Civic Biology.
Chief Prosecutor Tom Stewart then asked seven students in Scope's
class a series of questions about his teachings. They testified that
Scopes told them that man and all other mammals had evolved from one-
celled organism. Darrow cross-examined--gently, though with obvious
sarcasm--the students, asking freshman Howard Morgan: "Well, did he
tell you anything else that was wicked?" "No, not that I can
remember," Howard answered. After drugstore owner Fred Robinson took
the stand to testify as to Scope's statement that "any teacher in
the state who was teaching Hunter's Biology was violating the law,"
the prosecution rested. It was a simple case.

On Thursday, July 16, the defense called its first witness, Dr.
Maynard Metcalf, a zoologist from the Johns Hopkins University. The
prosecution objected, arguing that the testimony was irrelevant to
Scopes' guilt or innocence under the statue. Before ruling the
prosecution's evidence, Judge Raulston decided to hear some of Dr.
Metcalf's testimony about the theory of evolution. The testimony
evoked Bryan's only extended speech of the trial. Bryan mocked
Metcalf's exposition of the theory of evolution, complaining that
the evolutionists had man descending "not even from American
monkeys, but Old World monkeys." Dudley Malone countered for the
defense, arguing in a thundering voice that the prosecution's
position was borne of the same ignorance "which made it possible for
theologians...to bring Old Galilee to trial." It was a powerful
speech. Anti-evolution lawmaker John Butler called it "the finest
speech of the century." Members of the press gave Malone a standing
ovation and most courtroom spectators joined in the sustained
applause. The next day, Raulston ruled the defense's expert
testimony inadmissible.

Raulston's ruling angered Darrow. He said he could not
understand why "every suggestion of the prosecution should meet with
an endless waste of time, and a bare suggestion of anything that is
perfectly competent on our part should be immediately overruled."
Raulston asked Darrow, "I hope you do not mean to reflect upon the
court?" Darrow's reply: "Well, your honor has the right to hope."
Raulston responded, "I have the right to do something else." The
insult earned Darrow a contempt finding, which was later dropped
when Darrow, to a big hand from spectators, apologized for his
remark. Darrow and Raulston shook hands.

After expressing concern that the courtroom floor might collapse
from the weight of the many spectators, Raulston transferred the
proceedings to the lawn outside the courthouse. There, facing the
jury, hung a sign--attached to the courthouse wall-- reading, "Read
Your Bible." Darrow asked either that the sign be removed or that a
second sign of equal size saying "Read Your Evolution" be put up
along with it. Raulston ordered the sign removed. Before a crowd
that had swelled to about 5,000, the defense read into the record,
for purpose of appellate review, excerpts from the prepared
statements of eight scientists and four experts on religion who had
been prepared to testify. The statements of the experts were widely
reported by the press, helping Darrow succeed in his efforts to turn
the trial into a national biology lesson.

On the seventh day of trial, Raulston asked the defense if it
had any more evidence. What followed was what the New York Times
described as "the most amazing court scene on Anglo-Saxon history."
Hays asked that William Jennings Bryan be called to the stand as an
expert on the Bible. Bryan assented, stipulating only that he should
have a chance to interrogate the defense lawyers. Bryan, dismissing
the concerns of his prosecution colleagues, took a seat on the
witness stand, and began fanning himself.

Darrow began his interrogation of Bryan with a quiet
question: "You have given considerable study to the Bible, haven't
you, Mr. Bryan?" Bryan replied, "Yes, I have. I have studied the
Bible for about fifty years." Thus began a series of questions
designed to undermine a literalist interpretation of the Bible.
Bryan was asked about a whale swallowing Jonah, Joshua making the
sun stand still, Noah and the great flood, the temptation of Adam in
the garden of Eden, and the creation according to Genesis. After
initially contending that "everything in the Bible should be
accepted as it is given there," Bryan finally conceded that the
words of the Bible should not always be taken literally. In response
to Darrow's relentless questions as to whether the six days of
creation, as described in Genesis, were twenty-four hour days, Bryan
said "My impression is that they were periods."

Bryan, who began his testimony calmly, stumbled badly under
Darrow's persistent prodding. At one point the exasperated Bryan
said, "I do not think about things I don't think about." Darrow
asked, "Do you think about the things you do think about?" Bryan
responded, to the derisive laughter of spectators, "Well,
sometimes." Both old warriors grew testy as the examination
continued. Bryan accused Darrow of attempting to "slur at the
Bible." He said that he would continue to answer Darrow's
impertinent questions because "I want the world to know that this
man, who does not believe in God, is trying to use a court in
Tennessee--." Darrow interrupted his witness by saying, "I object to
your statement" and to "your fool ideas that no intelligent
Christian on earth believes." After that outburst, Raulston ordered
the court adjourned. The next day, Raulston ruled that Bryan could
not return to the stand and that his testimony the previous day
should be stricken from evidence.

The confrontation between Bryan and Darrow was reported by the
press as a defeat for Bryan. According to one historian, "As a man
and as a legend, Bryan was destroyed by his testimony that day." His
performance was described as that of "a pitiable, punch drunk
warrior." Darrow, however, has also not escaped criticism. Alan
Dershowitz, for example, contended that the celebrated defense
attorney "comes off as something of an anti-religious cynic."

The trial was nearly over. Darrow asked the jury to return a
verdict of guilty in order that the case might be appealed to the
Tennessee Supreme Court. Under Tennessee law, Bryan was thereby
denied the opportunity to deliver a closing speech he had labored
over for weeks. The jury complied with Darrow's request, and Judge
Raulston fined him $100.

Six days after the trial, William Jennings Bryan was still in
Dayton. After eating an enormous dinner, he lay down to take a nap
and died in his sleep. Clarence Darrow was hiking in the Smoky
Mountains when word of Bryan's death reached him. When reporters
suggested to him that Bryan died of a broken heart, Darrow
said "Broken heart nothing; he died of a busted belly." In a louder
voice he added, "His death is a great loss to the American people."

A year later, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the decision
of the Dayton court on a technicality--not the constitutional
grounds as Darrow had hoped. According to the court, the fine should
have been set by the jury, not Raulston. Rather than send the case
back for further action, however, the Tennessee Supreme Court
dismissed the case. The court commented, "Nothing is to be gained by
prolonging the life of this bizarre case."

The Scopes trial by no means ended the debate over the teaching
of evolution, but it did represent a significant setback for the
anti-evolution forces. Of the fifteen states with anti- evolution
legislation pending in 1925, only two states (Arkansas and
Mississippi) enacted laws restricting teaching of Darwin's theory.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/evolut.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Inherit-Wind-Spencer-Tracy/dp/B00005PJ6V
http://www.salvationscience.com