Wake Up and Think!

Journalist H. L. Menchen of the Baltimore Sun newspaper came to Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925 to cover the trial of John T. Scopes who was charged with teaching evolution to his high school biology class. People came to Dayton in droves. The town took on a carnival atmosphere and attracted world-wide attention. Three times presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan came to help with the prosecution of Scopes. Bryan, a fundamentalist Christian, would be facing off with the famous Chicago lawyer Clarence Darrow, a brilliant defense attorney and friend of the poor. Darrow was an agnostic and a very unpopular man in Dayton.

The weather was sweltering hot. The courthouse was packed and hundreds more milled about outside carrying signs accusing Darrow of having monkeys for ancestors. The people came to see their hero Bryan show Darrow a thing or two about Godly people. During the trial Bryan used the Bible to support his fundamentalist belief that the world was only 7,000 years old and that God had created the universe in six 24-hour days. But Bryan soon learned that he was over matched and Darrow made him look like a fool as the trial wore on. Bryan was so devastated by this that he took sick right after the trial ended and died within days.

Menchen's observation of the trial and of most people in general was summed up this phrase: "One will never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." I must admit, I am in total agreement with Menchen on this point.

Actually during my almost three score and ten years on this planet, I have come to some definite conclusions concerning large numbers of inhabitants on this celestial ball. One of these conclusions is that vast numbers of folk either cannot (or will not) think for themselves. And often the thinking that does take place is illogical.

For example, most people think that "what it's about is what it's about." But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, what it's about is NEVER what it's about, it's about something else. Mostly, folks thought the Scopes monkey trial was about evolution when in fact it was about Biblical interpretation and Biblical infallibility. Few people in Dayton, Tennessee, had ever heard of Charles Darwin much less had they read his treatise in the "Origins of the Species."

Contemporarily, the flap is over the posting of Judeo-Christian documents in public buildings. To the fundamentalists this is legitimate because our country was founded as a Christian nation. Truthfully, the Founding Fathers were mostly Deists and Unitarians, not orthodox Christians.

Personally as a Baptist, I am often embarrassed by other Baptists who do not have a clue concerning Baptist history and Baptist theology. One of the first Baptists to come to the American colonies was Roger Williams. He believed that Christianity was a democratic religion, that the church and state should be separate and that people should govern themselves. Williams was so radical that he insisted that the native Americans owned the land, not the King of England. He had to flee for his life on more than one occasion. Finally he settled in what is now Rhode Island and named the city of Providence in honor of God.

Unfortunately, many Baptist pew warmers do not have a clue. More tragic still are the ministers who either have no clue (ignorance of history) or choose not to heed the lessons of history (arrogance). Whichever is the case, the words of H. L. Menchen concerning the intelligence of the American people are as true today as when he first uttered them.

Come on folks! Wake up and get with the program! Thinking IS hard when one is not use to it. But with practice, it becomes easier.

SHALOM. This article was first published in the Gainesville Times in 2003