Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

100 years ago this week was a court case that was known as the trial of the century, at least until the trial of O.J. Simpson.

It was in July of 1925 that hundreds of reporters descended on the small fledgling town of Dayton, Tennessee,

to cover Tennessee v. John Scopes, which has been immortalized since as the Scopes Monkey Trial.

For eight days, that small community was at the center of the media world, and a focus of national

and international attention. And afterwards, it even became a bit of a staple of popular culture. For example,

Johnny Cash's song, A Boy Named Sue, was inspired by the prosecuting attorney for the state of Tennessee,

Sue Hicks. Now, according to popular myth, the Scopes trial was a climactic battle in the ongoing

war between religious fundamentalism and science. At least that's how the story was told by the

loosely based play-turned movie, inherit the win. But in reality, the whole thing was a setup.

Dayton was not a hotbed of fundamentalist zealotry, persecuting courageous teachers who championed

science over religion. The previous year, the state of Tennessee had passed an ordinance that made it illegal

to, and I quote, teach any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the

Bible, end quote. The ACLU, a fledgling legal organization at the time that employed a strategy of

suing laws and high-profile cases cases had advertised in newspapers across the state that they

were looking for a defendant to challenge this law. Dayton City leaders saw that ad and hoping

to save their dying town through tourism basically voluntold John Scopes, a local gym teacher

who once substituted in a biology class. It's not clear that Scopes even ever taught Darwinism.

But still, he became the defendant.

Now, supporters of the law saw evolution as an affront to human dignity,

a means of undermining the faith of young people.

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