Abstract
In December 1981, a stream of reporters, theologians, scientists and gawkers converged on the federal courthouse in Little Rock, Arkansas. As the Scopes trial had for their grandparents’ generation, the trial of McLean v. Arkansas promised a showdown between the rationality of science and the entrenched beliefs of fundamentalist religion. The issue was an Arkansas law mandating equal time for the teaching of scientific creationism and evolution in public schools. Not surprisingly, many observers called the trial “Scopes II.”1 The New York Times even reprinted 1925 commentaries by both H. L. Mencken and Clarence Darrow.2
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Notes
Reginald Stuart, “U.S. Court to Hear Arguments on Creationism,” New York Times December 7, 1981, A21; Reginald Stuart, “‘Creation’ Trial: Old South Against New,” New York Times, December 13, 1981, 38; Marcel C. La Follette, “Creationism in the News: Mass Media Coverage of the Arkansas Trial,” in Creationism, Science, and the Law: The Arkansas Case, ed. La Follette (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), 189–207.
Duane Gish, Teaching Creation Science in Public Schools (El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1995), v.
See also Jerry Bergman, The Criterion: Religious Discrimination in America (Richfield, MN: Onesimus Press, 1984), v.
Ronald L. Numbers, Darwinism Comes to America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 91.
The Gallup Organization, “Public Favorable to Creationism,” http://Gallup.com , February 14, 2001, http://www.gallup.com/poll/2014/public-favorable-creationism.aspx (accessed December 17, 2007); Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 1.
Paul F. Parsons, Inside America’s Christian Schools (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), x.
Alan Peshkin, God’s Choice: The Total World of a Fundamentalist Christian School (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 26.
See Adam Laats, “Inside Out: Christian Day Schools and the Transformation of Conservative Protestant Educational Activism, 1962–1990,” in Inequity in Education: A Historical Perspective, ed. Debra Meyers and Burke Miller (Lexington, KY: Rowman and Littlefield Press, 2009), 183–209.
Phillip Smith, personal interview, June 5, 2008; Walter Fremont, “The Christian School Movement Today,” speech delivered July 31, 1989, audiotape in Bob Jones University Archives; A. A. Baker, The Successful Christian School: Foundational Principles for Starting and Operating a Successful Christian School (Pensacola, FL: A Beka Book Publications, 1979). See also Adam Laats, “Forging a Fundamentalist ‘One Best System:’ Struggles over Curriculum and Educational Philosophy for Christian Day Schools, 1970–1989,” History of Education Quarterly, 50 (February 2010).
Gary Coombs, “ACE, An Individualized Approach to Christian Education,” Interest (September 1978): 9–10; Gary Coombs, “History and Development of ACE,” CLA Defender 1 (1978): 6, 25–26; Accelerated Christian Education, Facts about Accelerated Christian Education (Lewisville, TX: Accelerated Christian Education, n.d.); Walter Fremont, “The Christian School Movement Today,” audiotape of lecture given July 31, 1989, in Bob Jones University Archive.
Gerald Skoog, “The Coverage of Human Evolution in High School Biology Textbooks in the 20th Century and in Current State Science Standards,” Science and Education 14 (2005): 398, 404–5.
Lloyd P. Jorgenson, The State and the Non-Public School, 1825–1925 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1987), 135;
R. Freeman Butts, The American Tradition in Religion and Education (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950), 192.
R. B. Dierenfield, Religion in American Public Schools (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1962), 51.
Dorothy Nelkin, Science Textbook Controversies and the Politics of Equal Time (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977), 27–30; Skoog, “Coverage of Human Evolution,” 405.
Sean Cavanagh, “‘Intelligent Design’ Goes on Trial in Pa.,” Education Week 25 (October 5, 2005): 1, 16–17.
Abington School Dist. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963); Donald E. Boles, The Bible, Religion, and the Public Schools (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1963), 131–44.
Kenneth M. Dolbeare and Phillip E. Hammond, The School Prayer Decisions: From Court Policy to Local Practice (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1971), x, 28.
“The Supreme Court Speaks,” Moody Literature Mission News 4 (1963), Moody Literature Mission [MLM] File, Moody Bible Institute [MBI] Archive. See also Adam Laats, “The Quiet Crusade: Moody Bible Institute’s Outreach to Public Schools and the Mainstreaming of Appalachia, 1921–1966,” Church History 75 (September 2006): 565–93.
Joel A. Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 3.
Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 131–211.
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© 2010 Adam Laats
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Laats, A. (2010). Epilogue. In: Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106796_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106796_13
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