He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind... [View All]

[brooklynite]

Last night I went to the Broadway revival of Inherit the Wind, the play about the 1925 "Scopes Trial" on the teaching of evolution. A riveting drama, made better by the performances of Chistopher Plummer (the Clarence Darrow character) and Brian Dennehy (the William Jennings Bryan character). It occured to me afterwards how troubling the actual history of this story was: that in the 20th Century, in a time of "telephones and automobiles and airplanes" (to paraphrase a portion of the play), legislative bodies were imposing new laws banning the teaching of subjects inconsistent with the literal word of the Bible. It also occured to me that, 80 years after the trial and 50 years after the play was first written, we seem to have made so little progress in seperating science and theology.