This week in Christian history: Self-flagellation, Thomas More, John Scopes

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, October 20, 2019

Scopes Monkey Trial defendant dies – October 21, 1970

Tennessee educator John Scopes (1900-1970), the defendant in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. | (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

This week marks the anniversary of when John T. Scopes, the public school science teacher at the center of famed legal battle over whether schools could teach evolution, died of cancer at age 70.

Only 24 when the famous “Monkey Trial” began in the summer of 1925, Scopes was found guilty and fined $100. However, the verdict was overturned on a technicality.

The case represented a major public relations defeat for fundamentalist Christianity, though it would take many decades before the Theory of Evolution became the norm for public school curricula across the nation.

Scopes’ funeral was held in Shreveport, Louisiana in a Roman Catholic Church, as he converted to the denomination later in life, according to a New York Times obituary.