2/8: Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation Hardcover – August 13, 2024 by Brenda Wineapple (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 November 2024
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Faith-Democracy-Riveted-Nation/dp/0593229924/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.JDRqUc36UiUIH3eK1_Pqbjxg6Sx8dBlH9BsLvmHdHafp_9Muk2_yEUhSCVX__F0MdOA4DhC69ktDYCzLlsPHGTcm-frb_k2Hnexz13sMaJxDWfyq4IUe0ILOyiUrFYPU_NYz6u09C36A1AtGqgDqw-0-ZLbsGdLDtipkKF2KSkk07atZvK0AX5heVgt9YYHDgNjftDlcWA5itjSpDZyEvB8zB6lDdr4CX5yJWAy-aRc.53SKRbwc3rF4M4p-RAjIj8VWAu0wIY5LjLXsK3oVBwM&qid=1730836318&sr=1-1
The dramatic story of the 1925 Scopes trial, which captivated the nation and exposed profound divisions in America that still resonate today—divisions over the meaning of freedom, religion, education, censorship, and civil liberties in a democracy
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“No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America.” So said legendary attorney Clarence Darrow as hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the trial of a schoolteacher named John T. Scopes, who was charged with breaking the law by teaching evolution to his biology class in a public school.
Brenda Wineapple, the award-winning author of The Impeachers,explores how and why the Scopes trial quickly seemed a circus-like media sensation, drawing massive crowds and worldwide attention. Darrow, a brilliant and controversial lawyer, said in his electrifying defense of Scopes that people should be free to think, worship, and learn. William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic nominee for president, argued for the prosecution that evolution undermined the fundamental, literal truth of the Bible and created a society without morals, meaning, and hope.
In Keeping the Faith, Wineapple takes us into the early years of the twentieth century—years of racism, intolerance, and world war—to illuminate, through this pivotal legal showdown, a seismic period in American history. At its heart, the Scopes trial dramatized conflicts over many of the fundamental values that define America, and that continue to divide Americans today.
1925 The Dayton drugstore table where the Scopes trial was hatched.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI on the world. I'm with Brenda Wineapple. Her new book Keeping the Faith, God Democracy, and the Trial that riveted a nation, |
| 0:11.5 | aka the Scopes Monkey Trial, AKA Inherit the Wind with Spencer Tracy. All of that. A hundred years later, |
| 0:19.2 | tales very differently than it did in the mid-20th century or at the time of the trial itself. |
| 0:25.8 | The ACLU, it has a distinguished history at this point coming through the war. |
| 0:31.2 | It's led by men who are extremely valuable and honored in their world. |
| 0:37.2 | Secretaries of state, justices from the Supreme Court, distinguished Harvard graduates, all of that. |
| 0:45.1 | They depend on a woman named Lucille Milner, however, to look for test cases that will raise their profile. |
| 0:52.0 | Lucille Milner sees the item about the Scopes trial. |
| 0:55.6 | Do they recognize it right away, Brenda, as their kind of talk? |
| 1:00.1 | Absolutely. |
| 1:00.9 | They recognize it. |
| 1:02.5 | Louise Miller brings the cutting from the newspaper into the head of the ACLU, |
| 1:09.6 | excuse me, a man named Roger Baldwin, and they both decide immediately |
| 1:14.6 | to go to the board and propose this is a test case, and it's immediately passed that they will |
| 1:22.2 | be able to use this if they can get someone to volunteer, and because they, the ACLU, was founded to protect civil liberties. |
| 1:32.3 | And to them, this law violates the guarantee of religious liberty. |
| 1:37.3 | And they want the case. |
| 1:39.3 | And they are willing to defend it. |
| 1:43.3 | So this is important for them. |
| 1:45.3 | The ACLU is only five years old at this time. |
| 1:48.3 | It's not as established as it may be today. |
| 1:52.1 | And they're looking also to make a name for themselves. |
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