[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n a July 3, 1925 editorial entitled “The Circus Comes to Dayton,” the Temple Daily Telegram criticized the carnival atmosphere surrounding the Scopes “Monkey Trial” and dismissed the emotion-charged debate over evolution as a “useless discussion.”
The new law that high school biology teacher John T. Scopes intentionally broke made it “unlawful for any teacher in any of the universities, normals and all other public school schools of the State of Tennessee 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.”
The part-time legislator and full-time farmer who wrote the controversial statute explained his reasoning: “The teaching of this theory of evolution breaks the hearts of fathers and mothers who give their children the advantages of higher education in which they lose their respect for Christianity and become infidels. The evolutionists deny the immortality of the soul, the virgin birth of Christ, the resurrection of the body, and that the Bible is the inspired Word of God.”
