The scope of William Jennings Bryan

The centennial of the Scopes trial has come and gone. For at least this calendar year, the print media gave substantial attention to what happened in and outside the Rhea County Courthouse in July 1925.

Commentators focused on whatever they believed the most important issue: the “conflict” between science and religion; the backwardness of Southern fundamentalists; the indignation that religious objections to the theory of evolution still persist; the heroism of Clarence Darrow.

Yet, for all the attempts to place the trial in a larger context, perhaps the most important context fell by the journalistic wayside. No one adequately noted the “scope” of William Jennings Bryan.

Bryan was the greatest orator of his day. What was the subject matter of the countless speeches of The Great Commoner?  He railed against American imperialism, corporatocracy, the oligarchs, Wall Street war profiteering, the military-industrial complex, colonialism, American entry into foreign wars, loans by American banks to warring countries, the pernicious influence of corporate media.

Finally, after failing three times to win the presidency, yet rising to the lofty position of secretary of state, Bryan resigned from that office to protest President Woodrow Wilson’s doctrine of “preparedness,” which he thought would lead inevitably to American entry into the European war we now refer to as World War I.

The similarities between the America of Bryan’s time and today are strikingly obvious.

Politicians are owned. Oligarchs are the real rulers. Corporate power is unchecked. The military-industrial complex has grown exponentially from what it was in Bryan’s day. The ill-effects of colonial meddling still foment wars and jeopardize world peace. Yellow journalism dominates today’s media.

Is there a difference? Just one. No one holding the office of secretary of state in today’s world would ever have the moral fiber to resign in order to make an anti-war statement.

“Bryan referred to McKinley’s foreign policy as ‘the gunpowder gospel.’”

In his own time, Bryan stood firmly against right-wing Republican Christian fundamentalist William McKinley. Bryan referred to McKinley’s foreign policy as “the gunpowder gospel” — possibly the most overlooked political phrase in American history.

Bryan saw McKinley’s “gun powder gospel” as a gross perversion of “the Nazarene’s” message of peace.” McKinley’s imperialist war in the Philippines cost the lives of 200,000 Filipino civilians. Madeleine Albright upped the bidding to 500,000 Iraqi children.

Subsequent American colonial “liberations” in Central and South America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, right up through Bush’s “crusades” in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Trump’s bombing of Iran, show McKinley’s foreign policy of the “gunpowder gospel” — war to “thrash the natives until they learn who we Christians are” —is alive and well in the 21st century.

One can only imagine how the course of history would have been changed if Bryan had had the opportunity to discuss the evils of colonialism with Lord Balfour. Perhaps the century of horrors unleashed by the ill-conceived Zionist project would have been averted.

How could such an erudite, far-sighted, principled American statesman now be overlooked and even reviled?

If Bryan is remembered at all, it is as a Bible-thumping prosecuting attorney in the Scopes trial. The damage was done, albeit unintentionally, by the 1960 movie loosely based on the Scopes trial, Inherit the Wind. The image of Bryan as the anti-science yokel was imprinted on the national consciousness.

Intentional damage was done in real time by the press covering the trial — most notably, H.L. Mencken. Mencken was an unapologetic heavy drinker, militant atheist, Social Darwinist and public intellectual along the lines of the late provocateur Christopher Hitchens.

Mencken’s puerile denunciations of Bryan were particularly mean-spirited, even after Bryan’s death. “He died of a busted belly,” wrote Mencken.

For precisely what was Bryan discredited? Did he oppose the teaching of evolution? Was he opposed to science?

Bryan correctly warned that the theory of evolution was being used to justify the inhumanity of Social Darwinism and eugenics — both viewed as legitimate progressive movements in Bryan’s day.

With respect to the law that gave rise to the Scopes trial in the first place, many observers misunderstand it even 100 years later. Its official title is Tennessee House Bill No. 185 (1925), An Act prohibiting the Teaching of the Evolution Theory — commonly known as The Butler Act.

Despite its name, the law did not outlaw teaching evolution — the evolution of plants, insects, fish, reptiles, etc. Rather, it simply declared it unlawful to “teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

Bryan did not want “the little ones” to be taught they are living in a godless universe. It is supremely ironic that Clarence Darrow himself voiced a similar concern a year earlier in his successful defense of two Chicago teenagers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, convicted of murdering Loeb’s 14 year old cousin.

Bryan preferred to believe man was created in the image of God. There are worse things to believe in.

Bryan looked foolish in court when he agreed to be questioned by defense attorney Darrow regarding his belief in the literal truth of the Bible. There’s no hiding that fact. Yet, we do a disservice to Bryan, to our understanding of the Scopes trial, and to our understanding of American history if we stop there — if we fail to consider the “scope” of William Jennings Bryan.

 

David Haddad is the author of the play The Scope of William Jennings Bryan. It has been staged in New York at the Chain Theater and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he currently resides. The play re-creates the last speech given by Bryan, in Winchester, Tenn., four days after the end of the Scopes trial. Bryan died the next day. Haddad has a degree in history from Michigan State University. His satirical play Yahweh the Floorwalker was awarded second prize in the 2024 New York International Theater Competition.

 

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