| The author explores how Protestant millenarian dispensationalism influenced religious and public debate over evolution from the nineteenth century until the Scopes trial in 1925. Until World War I, a faction of people, who were post-millennialists, resolved biblical and evolutionary conflict by marrying the idea of evolution with the idea of a historically progressive social perfection of humans. In the wake of World War I, disillusionment with human social perfection challenged the post-millennialists’ beliefs. Scientists worked to salvage evolution's ties to religion by applying naturalism to New Testament theology, giving birth to a new breed of Protestants, dubbed Modernists. Until the Scopes trial, the debate over evolution existed mainly between scholars. However, mass media coverage of the Scopes trial expanded the debate to the public. By that time, the media had become generally accessible. Further, these Protestants had been traditionally raised to subscribe to pre-millennial, fundamentalist beliefs, within what had become a standardized educational system, nationally reigniting a controversy that persists to this day. Recent debates over evolution, fundamentalism, and the notion of "intelligent design" are all rooted in these earlier debates. |
