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The following is part three of a four-part series going over the 100^th anniversary of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, courtesy of the Nashville Banner. To read the full story, visit the Nashville Banner’s website, and sign up for the Nashville Banner’s newsletters.

The challenge with teaching evolution in 2025 is the same each semester, said Elizabeth Barnes, now approaching her fifth year on the biology faculty at Middle Tennessee State University.

“I would say one of the biggest things that we face when we go to teach evolution is this perception that in order to accept evolution, to actually believe that evolution is a real thing, that you have to be an atheist or reject religious belief,” Barnes said.

A national survey of biology students conducted by Barnes and other researchers in 2022 showed that 50 percent of the respondents believed acceptance of evolution was a rejection of God.

“That’s just a misunderstanding of the nature of science,” Barnes said.

Although the Butler Act was repealed in 1967 and there’s no current move today to ban the teaching of evolution in Tennessee public schools, introducing students to the subject remains challenging. But it’s a challenge the 38-year-old assistant professor has accepted, determined to convince her students that the topic doesn’t have to negate science or God.

Thomas Huxley, a contemporary and a friend of Charles Darwin, coined the term “agnostic” in 1869 as he was trying to find a way to settle debates about the religious or anti-religious nature of science, Barnes noted.

“Huxley said that science is a process that doesn’t have the means to determine whether or not something outside of the natural world is influencing the natural world.”

In other words, science says that evolution happened. How it happened, well, the debate continues and likely will: everything from the creation narrative found in Genesis to the cosmological slow dance of creation that followed the Big Bang.

“But these ideas of deistic, theistic, agnostic and atheistic evolution are equally compatible with what we know from science, because it’s not really science’s job to tell you whether God exists or whether God had an influence on the natural world,” Barnes said.

Science’s job, she added, “is to determine what did happen in the natural world.”

Although students in Tennessee’s public schools are exposed to evolution in high school biology classes, per the state’s science standards, Barnes has found that many of her students don’t have a firm understanding of evolution when they arrive at her classroom. That may be because students took biology early in high school and did not retain the material. But many, she said, have concerns about reconciling their faith with science.

Barnes was introduced to evolution in a biology class at a community college. She called it “one of the most beautiful, amazing ideas that I ever heard of.” At the same time, Barnes said she also “learned that about 60 percent of the United States doesn’t think that evolution was real.”

A year or so later, when she was taking upper-level biology classes at Arizona State University, she was confounded by research professors who “were talking about evolution in a way that kind of put evolution and religion against one another,” she said. Although Barnes is not a person of faith, she recognized that fellow students who were churchgoers were wrestling with this teaching approach, sometimes to the point of dropping the class.

“It seemed to be very conflict-inflating,” Barnes said.

She wondered if there wasn’t a better way. That prompt led to a major focus of her research: teaching evolution in a manner that reduces conflict.

In the Bible Belt, many students bring religious values fashioned by teachings that are opposed to evolution, Barnes said. Through her research and teaching, Barnes said she’s learned it is possible to nurture scientific inquiry without being dogmatic to the point of negating someone else’s faith.

“What we really want them to be able to do is evaluate scientific evidence, you know, apart from their personal biases. What I’ve said (to students) is that I don’t come in here and teach you science just so you can learn the facts and not be able to do anything with them.”

Her job, she said, is not to make students accept evolution. Every semester, Barnes said she tells her classes: “It’s not my job as an instructor to grade you on what your beliefs are. Or to judge you on what your beliefs are. My job is for you to understand the science.”

She’s confident her approach has made a difference.

“I get emails from students or they come up to me after class, you know, talking about how they have been so relieved to not have to pick between their science and their faith.”

Why William Jennings Bryan agreed to testify isn’t clear. Perhaps he was overconfident, even cocky. Perhaps he felt a providential calling to set the infidel Darrow straight. Perhaps the opportunity for Bryan to call Darrow as a witness was the impetus.

Regardless, the afternoon came to grief for the Great Commoner in the temporary open-air courtroom. For more than two hours, Bryan, fanning himself with the pages of a King James Bible, was peppered with questions that tested his allegiance to biblical infallibility.

Was Jonah swallowed by a whale? Did Joshua make the sun stand still? How old is the earth?

When many people think of this scene, they recall a clip from Inherit the Wind, the stage play based on the Scopes trial that was made into a movie in 1960 starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March as the characters patterned after Darrow and Bryan, respectively. The movie version is a clear takedown of Bryan, a man of conviction who blinks first, a man for whom a seed of doubt was planted. The scene ends with close-ups: of Bryan struggling to find words to repair the damage; of Darrow, smug and quiet.

Many Daytonians do not like the movie, particularly the depiction of locals as slow-talking, ignorant and uncertain of the world beyond the mountains.

A close reading of the trial transcript reveals Bryan delivered many stinging rebukes of Darrow, but it was the answer to one question that turned the tide: Do you think the earth was made in six days?

“Not six days of 24 hours,” was Bryan’s reply.

For many in the press, these six words were interpreted as a seismic rendering. Bryan appeared to have disturbed a fault line, leading to a view that the world was much older than the faithful believed, older than Bryan had testified less than an hour earlier. Even though Bryan had expressed this distinction when he was on the speaking circuit, most of the secular press in attendance took no notice and judged Darrow the winner. Many of their readers did, too.

The seventh day of the trial ended with the protagonists shouting at each other in tandem.

Bryan: “I want the world to know that this man, who does not believe in a God, is trying to use a court in Tennessee…

Darrow: “I object to that…”

Bryan: “…to slur at it and…I am willing to take it.”

But Darrow was through with his witness.

“I am exempting you on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes,” he said, returning to his seat.

After which Judge Raulston adjourned court until the following morning.

On the last day of court, Tuesday, July 21, blessed rain fell from the skies and mist hid the verdant hills surrounding Dayton. The trial resumed in the courtroom, where welcomed breezes streamed through the tall windows.

Bryan did not get to question Darrow or make a closing speech, which he had been preparing for days. The reason? The defense asked that their client, John T. Scopes, be found guilty so the matter could be appealed. Raulston accepted the request, charged the jury and sent them out to deliberate, which they did for a total of nine minutes, returning at 11:23 a.m.

Scopes was fined $100 by the judge, not the jury, and it was based on this technicality that the Supreme Court of Tennessee later overturned the fine even as it ruled the Butler Act was constitutional.  Instead of remanding the case to Rhea County, the justices noted “that nothing is to be gained by prolonging the life of this case.” Instead, they urged the prosecutor to withdraw the matter from further prosecution … and that’s what happened.

The teacher and football coach never had to pay the fine. He left Dayton, went to college in Chicago and became a geologist for the gas and oil industry, living in South America for a time, before settling in Louisiana.

In April of 1970, Scopes accepted an invitation to address students at Peabody College in Nashville. The occasion was the upcoming 45th anniversary of the trial. Three years after his autobiography had been published, Scopes was content to reminisce and offer commentary, especially to aspiring teachers.

On that spring day, he spoke his mind.

“The only place a teacher should ever be interfered with is when the child begins to think for himself. Then that child should be consulted about his own education,” he said. Scopes advised the packed auditorium to hold strong against “outside pressure groups and government controls (that) have dictated to the schools to the point where they do not exercise the one thing man has above other animals — the right to think.” According to newspaper reports, students rose to their feet and cheered, the ovation continuing for several minutes. A photo shows Scopes, leaning on a lectern, hand on his hip. No longer was he the wide-eyed Dayton High teacher, his head topped by a straw hat, his eyes framed by round spectacles, his face the image of youth. Here was a slightly stooped man of 69, assessing lessons he’s learned.

On the question of whether he taught evolution at Dayton High, Scopes told the audience he was at the mercy of a faulty mind — his.

“I substituted for 10 days for the biology teacher … and during that time, I didn’t want to start on any new chapter, so I just reviewed what the class had been over. It may have included evolution. I just don’t remember. But I don’t see how I could have reviewed for 10 days and not touched on evolution.”

That was likely his final word on the subject because the Peabody College visit was his last public appearance. On July 1, Scopes was hospitalized for gall bladder surgery, but the diagnosis was soon changed to terminal cancer. He died Oct. 21, 1970.

The next day, his photo once again appeared in newspapers from coast to coast.  

Leon Alligood is a retired MTSU journalism professor. For 30 years before joining academia, he was a reporter, most of that time at The Nashville Banner and The Tennessean. He is the co-author (with Kathy Bingham Turner) of “Boss Brooks: A True Story of Fraud, Family and Forgiveness from Tennessee to Texas” which will be published by the University of Tennessee Press in November.