Tennessee teacher John T. Scopes.
Writing in The Tennessean (March 12, 2025), NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch revisited the Butler Act, the 1925 law under which John Thomas Scopes was prosecuted and convicted in Dayton, Tennessee, in the celebrated "monkey trial."
The act's sponsor, who admitted that he "didn't know anything about evolution," was evidently motivated by the fear that teaching evolution was a threat to religion. But, Branch observed, "from the Scopes era to the present, people of faith who accept evolution — scientists, clergy, and laypeople alike — have sought to explain that acceptance of evolution is not intrinsically a threat to religion."
As evidence that their efforts are making a difference, Branch cited a recent study (by a team of researchers, including Branch, led by Jon D. Miller of the University of Michigan) that "found a hefty shift in acceptance of human evolution among fundamentalists, from 8 percent in 1988 to 32 percent in 2019," inferring, "Evidently a substantial proportion of fundamentalists are finding ways to keep their faith while accepting the science of evolution."
Branch thus concluded on a hopeful note, writing that "a century after the Butler Act, there is reason to hope that legislative attacks on the teaching of evolution will dwindle and ultimately disappear."
