Today marks the 60th the anniversary of the release of Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird.I have read the book, and seen the film many times. Sadly, it is all too relevant in our time. Race hatred and a belief in the absolutes of aberrant forms of Christianity which bless White Racism are rampant in the United States and Europe, many of these groups are overtly Fascist and Authoritarian. Sadly, with the looming 2020 General Election, many of President Trump’s base is Cult of Christians who have forgotten what the Gospel is in their slavish devotion to Trump.
That alone is to make the novel and the film worth reading and watching, especially if you haven’t read the book or seen the film.
Sadly, such people would “kill the Mockingbird” to ensure that they keep their privileged position in society. The Mockingbirds are those that they have condemned to social inferiority and discrimination and eternal punishment, especially gays and the LGBT community, but others as well.
This is especially the case of the preachers, pundits and politicians that crowd the airwaves and internet with their pronouncements against Gays, immigrants, Arabs, poor blacks, political liberals, progressive Christians, and for that matter anyone who simply wants the same rights enjoyed by these Christians.
In the book there is a line spoken by Miss Maudie Atkinson, a neighbor of Atticus Finch and his children. She says to Atticus’s daughter Scout:
“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of another… There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
As I survey the world of Christian conservatives I become surer of this every day. I’ve often wrote about my own fears in regard to dealing with such people as well as the troubling trends that I see. Last week I wrote five articles on the trends that I see in the church, trends toward greed, political power, social isolation and the active campaign of some to deny basic civil rights to people that they hate on purely religious grounds.
The language of some like Matt Staver of Liberty Counsel, Tony Perkins of the American Family Association and a host of others describe actions of governments and courts to ensure equal treatment of all people under the law as threats to Christians, affronts to them and of course to God. Their words are chilling. Matt Staver commented a few years back that if the Supreme Court upheld marriage equity for gays that it would be like the Dred Scott decision. Of course that is one of the most Orwellian statements I have ever heard, for the Dred Scott decision rolled back the few rights that blacks had anywhere in the country and crushed the rights of people in non-slave states.
Again, as a reminder to readers, especially those new to the site, I spent a large amount of my adult Christian life in that conservative Evangelical cocoon. I worked for a prominent television evangelist for several years, a man who has become an extreme spokesman for the religious political right. I know what goes on in such ministries, I know what goes on in such churches. I know the intolerance and the cold hearted political nature of the beast. I know and have gone to church with Randall Terry, the former head Operation Rescue who once said: “Let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good…” I have walked in those shoes, I have been whipped up by those preachers. I fully understand them, and because I do I am in a unique position to critique their words and actions, especially as the supposedly moral majority snuggle up with one of the most amoral men ever to become President, solely to protect and crease their political power. They have surrendered their claim to being a party of morality, and embraced evil for the sake of their power. Without empathy, they judge and condemn others not like them. They are incapable of understanding anything that conflicts with their visions of White Power, racial superiority, and an interpretation of Christianity which needs state support in order to survive.
As Atticus Finch told his children:
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
They cannot, thus I total reject the message of such people now, not out of ignorance, but because I have walked in their shoes. At times I supported their causes, not to any extreme, but all too often my crime was simply said nothing when I knew that what they preached, taught and lived was not at all Christian, but from the pits of Hell.
As far as them being entitled to hold whatever opinion they want, even if I disagree, yes that is their right. But as Atticus said:
“People are certainly entitled to think that I’m wrong, and they are entitled to full respect for their opinions. But before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The only thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
My conscience will not allow me to be silent when I see men like Staver, Perkins, Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Pat Robertson, and so many others preach hatred towards those who are different than them. Their reach and power has only increased with their support of President Trump.
In the movie and the book the Mockingbirds were Tom Robinson, the black man falsely accused of rape and assault and Boo Radley, a shy recluse feared by his neighbors, a man who stories were made up about; stories that turned a simple man into a monster in the eyes of people who did not know him. Today they are others who fit the Mockingbird role, people who just want to get along and live in peace, but who endure discrimination and damnation from those who call themselves Conservative Christians.
Jem Finch, the son of Atticus asks his sister a question in the book and the film:
“If there’s just one kind of folks, why can’t they get along with each other? If they’re all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other?”
Friends’s of Padre Steve’s World, once again I give a shout out to Robert Vella and his always thoughtful and considered blog. If you don’t follow him you are missing out on a lot of good reading.
Friends, of Padre Steve’s World, another chance to to publicize a great military history blogger who picks up so many nuggets of wealth that are missed because they happened in relatively forgotten theaters of WWII. But this, article dealing with the Stars and Stripes newspaper brought back memories of reading it overseas, having to get two subscriptions in the 1980s because since it was a tabloid and there was no internet Judy and I had a hard time sharing it. Getting it in Germany, Japan, Okinawa, and Korea, aboard ship in the Persian Gulf, and while deployed in Iraq. Follow Greg Cox’s Pacific Paratrooper Blog.
Friends of Padre Steve’s World, Another day to promote on of my favorite bloggers, Jill Dennison. She is brilliant, and her knowledge of songs and their history is fantastic. Follow her.
i didn’t get a chance to write last night because I left my iPad in my office and it took forever to do my updates to and get my MacBook Air updated, and my maxed out email storage brought under control. But I’m back and Friday is a good night for Fighting.
Over the past few weeks I have become more and more incensed and angry at the theocratic Christian Conservatives who deny reason, science, and even their own faith to enforce their political culture war agenda of reopening churches. Where allowed, many of the churches that restarted services and claimed to be obeying rules on social distancing and masked, didn’t really do it, just like a lot of bars, restaurants, and businesses. Now the pandemic has exploded across the country and many pastors and Christian leaders are playing the Christian persecution card to the hilt, though they are the ones applying for millions of dollars of government hand outs that they take while fighting against The rights of citizens that they hate politically, religiously, racially, of for their sexual identity or gender, and willingly serve a President who is willing to carry their water for them. President Trump and his theocratic supports is willing to use the police power of the state against their opponents to ensure his political survival. His Attorney General Bob Barr is the key to ensuring that happens.
Likewise, this supposedly “pro-military” President and his followers who proclaim that they “support the troops” have no problem demonizing and attacking military officers like Army LTC Alexander Vindman who in obedience to the oath he took to the Constitution and duty to the American people to testified to the truth of Trump and his administration’s collaboration with Russia and against both the United States and the Ukraine during his testimony during the House impeachment hearings.
Tonight on my Facebook Page I posted these words in response to an article about a pastor of a church in Sacramento California complaining that restrictions on signing during worship were discriminatory and infringements on his congregation’s right of worship and the against the Free Exercise of Religion of the First Amendment. Of course the arguments are spurious, because as our Founders and the Supreme Court have stated that all have limitations, especially when the cost is innocent human lives. I wrote:
I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of me but I am going to be blunt as hell about this. All the preachers of whatever church denomination who protest about their religious liberties being more important than the lives of a deadly pandemic that is blazing out of control, because governments are putting restrictions on their rights to gather are malevolent and need to be called what they are, “evil people” masquerading as saints. The Christian ones especially who claim to be “pro-life” are ministers of death who despite their pious words the the contrary. They don’t give a damn about the lives of their parishioners, those people’s families, friends, or coworkers, They have no problem using government to deny the rights of other citizens using their massed ranks of highly paid and funded lawyers and legal organizations, but want the government to support them with financial hand outs, while fighting against the civil rights of people whose lifestyles, genders, politics, religion, or even race and ethnicity that they hate. They do this for the sake of their political power, to turn the government into a wretched theocracy so they can persecute who they will, when they want to using the police power of the government. I will fight these ministers of death to the death. They eschew reason, science, and facts to claim that they are being persecuted. Well friends, there is religious persecution going on in this country, but it is the radical, politically motivated, and well off Christian Conservatives that are doing it. I will fight them because I believe in true freedom of religion, not their right to subjugate others like previous Christian leaders did from Constantine on. I also believe in the Gospel that they so blatantly deny with their actions. I close with this: “As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.” Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) Inherit the Wind.
By the way if you do not like it, don’t even try to engage me on it here. Too many people are dying because they went to church and spread the virus. Those churches are referred to as “super spreaders” because even the ones who supposedly were practicing social distancing and wearing masks were letting their choirs sing, and not enforcing masks, even if they limited numbers. I say these hard words because I give a damn about human lives, and place them above the right to gather inside a church and spread a killer disease, and I say the hell with anyone who values their right to gather unsafely, not just in church but anywhere, and bring sickness and death to others. However, I hold religious leaders, especially Christians that claim to be “pro-life” to a much higher standard.
I hate to say it but I will say that these Christian Theocrats who like a religious cult support a man whose words say that he is their “chosen one” but in his life and action shows him to be nothing more than a tinhorn wannabe dictator with no respect for the Christian Faith or religious liberty. The fact is that he realizes that gullible Christians whose only concern is taking over the government to establish a theocracy where they make the laws and heretics, dissenters, and skeptics who refuse to two their line are targets for retaliation, the Constitution, Declaration, and Message of Jesus be damned. If there is any threat to liberty or religious liberties in particular, they are at the center of it.
As Spencer Tracy playing Henry Drummond in Inherit the Wind, the fictional version of Clarence Darrow during the Scopes Monkey Trial said: “As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.”
As far as these supposed defenders of religious liberty are concerned I also say the hell with them. That may seem harsh but if the God they supposedly represent takes his or her theology lessons from them, I need a set of asbestos water skis for my eternal vacation on the Lake of Fire. But as Henry Drummond said, said: “As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.”
“As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.” Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) Inherit the Wind
Tomorrow is the 85th Anniversary of the beginning of what became known as the Scopes Monkey Trial which was dramatized in the 1960 film Inherit the Wind. I really do believe that it is well worth watching, especially when a charlatan like Donald Trump, a man with no Christian virtues whatsoever stokes up the hopes of conservative Christians by catering to his base of Conservative Christians who hang on his every word, like a cult, believing that he, through the police power of the state will Christianity great again.
I think that in the time of the Coronavirus 19 Pandemic it is important to confront the science denying cult that surrounds the willfully ignorant Science Denier in Chief, Donald Trump that they are not only wrong but their hands are coated with the blood of every American who has died from this virus. Though he had early warning of it the President and his administration did nothing to prepare for it and hindered the CDC as it attempted to respond. There has been no logic to any of the President’s decisions other than to try to restart an economy shredded by the virus, even though there was not a single state that met the CDC guidelines for reopening, and few that did nothing to mitigate its return by enforcing the only things we have available to slow its spread. Now it has blown up in their faces and now the President wants to pressure schools to open with the virus entering into what could be called a firestorm mode.
Of course the Christianity that Trump and his followers refers to is not that of Jesus, but that of Constantine and every other strongman who has used the Christians and the church to achieve earthly power and to crush any opposition. Noted televangelists have come to Trump’s side, many like John Hagee saying that Christians that God will punish Christians, that vote against Trump. That is why this film is still so pertinent.
It is fascinating that a play and film set about an incident that actually occurred in the 1920s remains so timeless. It is hard to believe that 90 years after the trial and over 50 years after the movie that our society would still be debating the issue in the movie and that legislatures and school boards are still attempting to pass religious doctrine off as science.
It is a film about what is commonly called the “Scopes Monkey Trial”which was litigated in July of 1925 and featured an epic battle between populist three time Presidential Candidate and former Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow. The film is not completely historically accurate. It was adapted from a play by the same name. It came out following the hysteria of the McCarthy Era, when people were condemned and blacklisted for their freedom of speech, association; frequently on the basis of false testimony against them. However, the film captures the blind hatred of religious bigots the willingly ignorant who object to any belief or theory that threatens their superior position in society.
The trial was brought about after the passage of the Butler Actin Tennessee. It was an act that made it a criminal offense to teach evolution in any publicly funded school. The act stipulated:
“That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”
The author of the act was Tennessee State Representative John W. Butler, a farmer and the head of the World Christian Fundamentals Association an interdenominational organization dedicated to a “New Protestantism” based on the Pre-Millennial interpretation of Bible prophecy.
Butler was heavily influenced by William Jennings Bryant who with his followers had gotten legislation banning evolution in 15 states. H.L. Mencken commented that over the years of his public life that Bryant, who had been a progressive advocate had “transformed himself” into some “sort of Fundamentalist Pope.”
Butler was opposed to the teaching of evolution and the act passed the house by a vote of 75-1. No public hearings had been held on it and no debate proffered.
Butler’s legislation did face some opposition in the State Senate. However it passed there on a vote of 24-6 after the famous Fundamentalist evangelist Billy Sunday preached as series of revival meetings to incite public opinion in favor of the bill. Sunday’s message was clear, he preached that “Education today is chained to the Devil’s throne” and praised Butler and the House for their “action against that God forsaken gang of evolutionary cutthroats.” The bill was signed into law by Governor Austin Peay, but Peay expected little to come of it.
The American Civil Liberties Union put the law to the test using high school biology teacher John Scopes who was charged with breaking the law. The trial ended up becoming less about the guilt or innocence of Scopes or even the constitutionality of the law, but rather as the field where the conflict between religious and social issues and faith versus intellectualism was fought. Butler, the man who legislated the law on religious grounds covered it as a correspondent.
Mencken wrote of the trial:
“The Scopes trial, from the start, has been carried on in a manner exactly fitted to the anti- evolution law and the simian imbecility under it. There hasn’t been the slightest pretense to decorum. The rustic judge, a candidate for re-election, has postured the yokels like a clown in a ten-cent side show, and almost every word he has uttered has been an undisguised appeal to their prejudices and superstitions. The chief prosecuting attorney, beginning like a competent lawyer and a man of self-respect, ended like a convert at a Billy Sunday revival. It fell to him, finally, to make a clear and astounding statement of theory of justice prevailing under fundamentalism. What he said, in brief, was that a man accused of infidelity had no rights whatever under Tennessee law…”
It was an epic event covered by news outlets across the nation and the atmosphere in the town outside the courthouse was circus like, something that the movie depicts very well. The defense was not allowed to produce Scientists as witnesses, even to the chagrin of Butler who despite his opposition to evolutionary theory felt that it was not fair. When all was said and done Scopes had been convicted and a fine of $100 assessed, which was overturned on appeal. Bryan died a week after the trial and of the 15 states with similar legislation to Butler passed them into law.
The film is based on the play of the same name written in 1950 by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. It was written during the height of the McCarthy Era and opened in 1955. The first film version starring Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow), Frederic March as Matthew Harrison Brady (William Jennings Bryan), Gene Kelly as E.K. Hornbeck (H.L. Mencken) while Dick York played Bertram Cates (John Scopes). Lawrence and Lee invented some fictional characters including Reverend Brown played by Claude Akins.
The film directed by Stanley Kramer captures the raw emotions of the trial, the participants and the spectators who came from near and far. The depiction of the angry mob of Christians is terrifying to watch. In the film they sing:
“We’ll hang Bertram Cates to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Bertram Cates to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Bertram Cates to a sour apple tree. Our God is marching on! Glory Glory Hallelujah! Glory Glory Hallelujah! Glory Gory Hallelujah! His truth is marching on. We’ll hang Henry Drummond to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Henry Drummond to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Henry Drummond to a sour apple tree, our God is marching on.”
March’s depiction of Matthew Harrison Brady is riveting. The Brady of the film does not do justice to other parts of Bryan’s life. Bryan, outside his fight against evolution was ahead of his time in many ways. Earlier in his career he had pressed for Universal Suffrage, fought against war and labored against the social Darwinism of the banks, business and the Robber Barons. However the loss of three Presidential elections left him bitter and it is believed that he saw the trial as an opportunity to regain the limelight and perhaps build a base to again run for President. This speech by Brady is a fair characterization of Bryan’s beliefs:
“I have been to their cities and I have seen the altars upon which they sacrifice the futures of their children to the gods of science. And what are their rewards? Confusion and self-destruction. New ways to kill each other in wars. I tell you gentlemen the way of science is the way of darkness.”
The problem with the Bryant of the Scopes Trial was that he was a caricature of his former self, he played to the crowds. The trial played to the worst parts of his character and that shows in the movie depiction. Some Christians find this an unfair portrayal and even call it a lie, however even though March’s portrayal is fictional it does fit the spirit of the trial which is captured in the writings of many of the contemporary commentators of the trial. Mencken wrote of the real Bryan: It is a tragedy, indeed, to begin life as a hero and to end it as a buffoon.
Another of those commentators, Marcet Haldeman-Julius wrote of the real Bryan:
“As he sat there in the court room, day after day, silent, fanning, fanning, his face set I was appalled by the hardness, the malice in it. No one who has watched the fanatical light in those hard, glittering black eyes of Bryan’s can doubt but that he believes both in a heaven and in a hell. At the same time the cruel lines of his thin, tight-pressed mouth proclaim, it seems to me, that he would stop at nothing to attain his own ends. It is anything but a weak face–Bryan’s. But it is a face from which one could expect neither understanding nor pity. My own opinion is that he is sincere enough in his religion. Also that in it is included the doctrine Paul so frankly taught–that a lie told for the glory of God is justified…”
But I think that the real drama and tension in the film comes from Spencer Tracy in his portrayal of Drummond. This speech is taken almost verbatim from the trial:
“Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!”
I think that this speech is the real crux of the tension that we face even now. Legislators in a number of States have enacted laws of much the same kind of spirit as Butler and defended them with the same kind of fire as Bryan. Civil libertarians, especially secular ones bring up the same issues as Darrow did. I am a Christian and a Priest and my thinking about this is much like that espoused by Drummond in the movie.
So the film may be a fictional depiction of the Scopes Trial, but it is a film that I think that people would do well to watch. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me or the issues that I agree with brought up by the character of Henry Drummond. However, I think that everyone should watch the film and come to their own conclusions as well as to ask themselves how their particular ethic, whether secular or religious informs them in how they deal with this issue and so many others that divide us today.
Bryant’s death, coming a few days after the trial was nowhere as near as dramatic as the death scene in the movie, sometimes fiction makes the story a bit more entertaining.
But the film also gives a warning to cynics like Mencken. After Brady’s death and the trials end there is a fascinating dialogue between Drummond (Darrow) and Hornbeck (Mencken). It is worth watching:
Henry Drummond : My God, don’t you understand the meaning of what happened here today?
Henry Drummond : YOU have no meaning! You’re like a ghost pointing an empty sleeve and smirking at everything people feel or want or struggle for! I pity you.
Henry Drummond : Isn’t there anything? What touches you, what warms you? Every man has a dream. What do you dream about? What… what do you need? You don’t need anything, do you? People, love, an idea, just to cling to? You poor slob! You’re all alone. When you go to your grave, there won’t be anybody to pull the grass up over your head. Nobody to mourn you. Nobody to give a damn. You’re all alone.
E. K. Hornbeck : You’re wrong, Henry. You’ll be there. You’re the type. Who else would defend my right to be lonely?
I just know when I watch it, that it could have been in the news this week, only with a different cast of characters. My concern is that there is a very loud minority that wants to inflict its particular religious view on everyone and use the public treasure to do it. The attitude of many of these people is much like the characters from the actual Scopes Trial including their view that pushes both demonizes those they oppose and their desire to regulate the secular opposition to the sidelines.
I know that the same accusation is made by religious people of secularists, however I have seen the results of religious wars in Iraq and the Balkans, and from history. Those conflicts and the brutality of religious people in them give me great pause when I see religious and political leaders here suggest curtailing the civil liberties and even using the law against those that they oppose. As Drummond asked in the movie: “Must men go to jail because they find themselves at odds with a self-appointed prophet?”
That is why this film and that trial are still so important, for the very practice of liberty and protection of the First Amendment.
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