7/8: 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
⏱️ 11 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
“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 Bryan on the witness stand examined by Darrow in the heat.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI in the world. |
| 0:05.9 | I'm John Batchel with Brenda Wineapple, the author of the new book Keeping the Faith, |
| 0:10.1 | God Democracy and the Trial That Riveted a Nation, heartily recommend the drama, |
| 0:15.2 | but we're going to go to the seventh day. |
| 0:17.2 | How do these things happen? |
| 0:18.5 | On the seventh day, God rested. |
| 0:20.2 | On the seventh day, Jen rested. On the seventh day, |
| 0:21.7 | Jennings testified. Not inside. The judge, Judge Ralston, trying to be extremely |
| 0:27.1 | fair-minded, was also aware that the floor was sagging. There were so many people inside the |
| 0:32.3 | courtroom. And so wisely, even the, and the jury was begging to share his electric fan. |
| 0:38.7 | There weren't enough fans in the courthouse for the heat waved, wafting over people. |
| 0:44.2 | All the men took their coats off, so there are photographs of Brian and Jennings and Darrow and Malone and Hayes, |
| 0:51.1 | all without their lawyerly jackets. |
| 0:55.2 | However, they move outside. |
| 0:57.4 | The judge has a good idea. |
| 0:58.7 | So the loudspeakers, the radio broadcast, there are photographs of this. |
| 1:03.6 | You can see the faces contorted with the heat that's pouring off of them at the same time. |
| 1:09.5 | Darrow has a genius idea. |
| 1:12.5 | And Brenda reports it walking one night back to where they've been staying in town. |
| 1:18.5 | And what is that idea, Brenda? |
| 1:20.6 | That idea is a shocking legal maneuver that may or may not be legitimate, but it certainly was as a trial. |
| 1:33.6 | Since Brian had said he was an expert on the Bible, Darrow and Hayes decided to put William Jennings Bryan on the witness stand and interrogate him. |
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