’Scopes Monkey Trial’ tested, strengthened woman’s
faith
|
A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose Eloise
Reed, 93, stands in front of a statue of William Jennings Bryan at the
Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton, Tenn., site of the Scopes trial.
|
Eloise
Reed, 93, stands in front of the historic Rhea County Courthouse in
Dayton, Tenn., where she watched parts of the 1925 “Scopes Monkey
Trial,” in which schoolteacher John Scopes was convicted of breaking
state law by teaching evolution. Reed, a member of Dayton’s First United
Methodist Church, is among the last living witnesses to the trial. At
left is a statue of prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, who agreed to
testify as a biblical witness for Christianity. A UMNS photo by Mike
DuBose. Photo #06-186. Accompanies UMNS story #113. 2/23/06 |
Feb. 23, 2006
A UMNS Feature
By Amy Green*
Eloise Reed was 13, and she was mad. Raised to revere the Bible as God’s
literal and infallible word, she never had heard it challenged before.
“I was just squirmin’,” says Reed, now 93 and a lifelong United Methodist. “I
was ready to get up and holler.”
Reed is among the last living witnesses to the 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial,” in
which schoolteacher John Scopes was convicted of breaking state law by teaching
evolution. It was considered the trial of the century then, pitting a three-time
presidential candidate and a literal belief in the Bible against the
then-burgeoning American Civil Liberties Union and Darwin’s theory of evolution.
The trial drew thousands to pastoral Dayton, Tenn., and shaped how science was
taught in classrooms for decades.
Today the trial still resonates as school boards nationwide grapple with
intelligent design, the notion that the universe is so complex it must be
shepherded by an unseen force. In fact, President Bush sounded a lot like
William Jennings Bryan, the presidential candidate and fiery prosecutor of
Scopes, when he suggested intelligent design should be taught in public schools
with evolution, to let Americans make up their own minds.
As a friend to the sheriff’s daughter, Reed was in the front row for some of
the trial’s most dramatic debate. The trial humiliated Christians because
although Scopes was convicted, they were famously portrayed as fundamentalist
fanatics by the press and in the 1960 film “Inherit the Wind.”
Reed was angered by debate on whether the Bible is stark fact or mere
allegory. It would not be the only trial to her faith. Through the years, she
would lose her husband and other family members well before old age. She now is
frail, suffering from cancer and other ailments, but her faith is strong.
“It was just the Lord’s faith that kept me going,” says Reed, a member of
Dayton’s First United Methodist Church, with a Southern drawl. “I always felt
like through everything I could almost feel him walking by my side.”
A test of law
|
A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose Eloise Reed (right) sits with daughter Donna Taylor in the sanctuary of First United Methodist Church in Dayton, Tenn.
|
Eloise
Reed (right), 93, sits with her daughter, Donna Taylor, in the
sanctuary of First United Methodist Church in Dayton, Tenn. Reed, a
lifelong United Methodist, is one of the last living witnesses to the
1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial.” She recalls hearing prosecutor William
Jennings Bryan preach at the church before the trial started. Taylor is a
member of the church’s altar guild. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose. Photo
#06-187. Accompanies UMNS story #113. 2/23/06 |
Reed was born in Dayton, a slow-paced Southern town in the foothills of the
Cumberland Plateau, and has lived there most of her life, working first as a
schoolteacher and then as head of her husband’s clothing company after he died
suddenly in 1954 of a heart attack. When she sold the company and retired, it
was Dayton’s oldest business and had been in the family for four generations.
She raised a daughter with the same devout beliefs, and after retirement, she
traveled the world with friends. She has been interviewed by reporters and
authors from across the globe about the Scopes trial.
The trial was a test of a state law forbidding public school educators from
teaching “any theory that denies the story of the divine creation.” The American
Civil Liberties Union defended Scopes; eventually his conviction was overturned
because of a technicality, and the law was repealed.
Reed explains the trial really was a publicity stunt designed to bring
economic development to Dayton after a mine closed and laid off thousands. She
tells of how her brother attended the trial every day and discussed it every
evening with the family over dinner. She recalls being shy for the news
photographers.
And she remembers being in the front row for the trial’s climax, a showdown
between defense lawyer Clarence Darrow and Bryan, who agreed to testify as a
biblical witness for Christianity. Darrow’s questioning sought to humiliate
Bryan and put his beliefs on trial. Reed was amazed.
“We lived by the Scripture. My mother was always quoting the Scripture to
us,” she says. “The questioning was really ? disgusting. He was attacking
Bryan.”
Even at her young age, the drama only reaffirmed her faith, she says.
“It didn’t make any misbeliever out of me,” she says. “It is hard to
understand those miracles, but that doesn’t mean you’re not going to believe the
word of the Bible.”
Setting the story straight
Today, Reed is uninterested in intelligent design. In fact, she is
uninterested in the Scopes trial, she says. Seemingly still bitter and cautious
about how the press covering the trial treated Christians all those years ago,
she makes a point to explain she doesn’t discuss the trial with her friends or
neighbors anymore, only with the reporters and authors who visit her. She knows
what she believes, she says.
“As I’ve told you before, I believe the story in the Bible,” she says. “I
don’t even want to hear them talk about Darwin’s theory of evolution.”
Reed agrees to the interviews, despite her ailing health, because she wants
the story of the Scopes trial told accurately, says Donna Taylor, 64, her
daughter.
“She knows that most of the people that she gives interviews to are wanting
the story as it actually was,” Taylor says. “I’m glad that she can sort of set
it straight to where people don’t think we were like the hillbillies they made
us out to be in the movies.”
Reed has been active in her church most of her life, and now that her health
prevents her from attending services, she listens to the sermons every Sunday on
the radio. She feels all the tests to her faith have made her more devout.
“I would like to say my faith has deepened through the years, as I have
acquired more knowledge in several areas,” she says. “Knowing what faith can do
to your life makes better people out of us, and seeing those who do not worship
at all and how some of them turn out. ? I think as you get older, maybe you have
deeper faith, too.”
*Green is a freelance writer based in Nashville, Tenn.
News media contact: Cindy Caldwell or Tim Tanton, Nashville, Tenn., (615)
742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org
Audio
Profile: Eloise Reed
Timeline: Remembering the Scopes Monkey Trial
Related Articles
From Adam or apes? Intelligent design presents a new theory
Science vs. religion is not an either/or issue
Famous Trials in American History
The Scopes Monkey Trial
Resourcess
Creation and Evolution
Evolution Scientists: What We Believe and Affirm
Wikipedia: Scopes Trial
Dayton, Tenn.: Site of the Trial from PBS
Dayton, Tenn.
|