Media Watch: centenary of the “Scopes Monkey Trial”

BBC on the Assisted Dying Bill

The BBC News website extensively covered the passing of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which will now progress to the House of Lords where it will face further scrutiny, clearly setting out the next stages for the Bill as it progresses through Parliament.  Here you can read the comments and points of view of MPs and others leading up to the vote, along with comments from the Chief Executive of Dignity in Dying, Sarah Wooton, and Dame Esther Rantzen, who herself lives with a terminal illness. You can also see a recording of the moment the Bill passed and, if you live in the UK, you can look up how your MP voted. The Bill was also discussed on BBC Radio Four’s Sunday programme on 22 June, with the Bishop of Liverpool, John Sheringham (against) and Rabbi Jonathan Romain (for)–two men of God with sharply contrasting views. On this occasion the programme did not see fit to seek the humanist view.

John T. Scopes, wearing a straw boater hat and glasses, poses for a portrait in 1925, the year of the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tennessee (public domain)

Centenary of the “Scopes Monkey Trial”

The 20 July edition of the Sunday programme featured a short item marking the centenary of the

Scopes “Monkey Trial”, when a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating the Butler Act, a Tennessee state law which outlawed the teaching of human evolution in public schools. A commemorative event took place in Dayton, Tennessee, the scene of the 1925 trial, and Nick Spencer, senior fellow at the Christian think tank Theos, gives a very interesting report from there (24:46).

Scopes was found guilty and fined $100. The Tennessee Supreme Court later overturned the conviction on a technicality. The Scopes Trial was a symbolic turning point in the US debate over science and religion in education, even though its immediate legal outcome upheld the anti-evolution law.