Creationism - National Center for Science Education

the students. That is probably the reason why in some cases Christian freshmen become infidel seniors.
[1924:117]
Besides Nietzsche and Headquarters Nights, two other books frequently cited by
Bryan and other fundamentalists as proof that Darwinism led to atheism and immoral
behavior such as exhibited by Germany were Benjamin Kidd’s The Science of Power
(1918), and James Leuba’s The Belief in God and Immortality (1921). Kidd’s book
(already mentioned as cited in Townsend’s Collapse of Evolution; discussed in Bryan
1922:126) also argued that Darwinism swept away the moral restraints imposed upon
civilizations by Christianity, and became a justification for war, especially in Germany.
Leuba’s book is subtitled “A Psychological, Anthropological and Statistical
Study.” Leuba, a psychology professor at Bryn Mawr College, sent questionnaires to
college students and to scientists regarding their belief in God and in the immortality of
the soul. As Bryan pointed out, in his intended closing address to the Scopes Trial
(National Book 1925:329-330) and elsewhere, Leuba’s survey showed that scientists
were much less likely to believe in a personal God than non-scientists, and that students’
belief in God and in immortality declined significantly in college: a finding which Bryan
and many other fundamentalists found highly alarming.
Dan Gilbert, in Evolution: The Root of All Isms, discussed Leuba’s study as proof
that evolution was the root of atheism (1935:93-94). Arthur I. Brown, in Miracles of
Science, a series of Moody Bible Institute radio lectures designed to demonstrate the
“indisputable, scientific fact of a personal Creator-God,” also cites Leuba’s study
(1945:244). It is interesting to discover that despite the widespread appeal to Leuba by
anti-evolutionists, his study does not even mention evolution. None of the survey
questions or answers deal with evolution, nor does Leuba discuss it in his analysis,
though fundamentalists have naturally assumed that the teaching of evolution has been a
prime cause of students’ loss of belief.
More than anyone, William Jennings Bryan made antievolutionism the most
prominent issue on the fundamentalist agenda. A three-time presidential candidate,
Bryan had been Wilson’s Secretary of State (resigning when Wilson allowed the U.S. to
be drawn into World War One), and had been a progressive, anti-imperialist politician
(he strongly opposed American intervention in the Philippines, for example). He was
also a leader of the Populist movement, and campaigned for a graduated income tax,
women’s suffrage, and many other progressive reforms, thus transforming the often
radical socialist tendencies of Populism into effective political reformism and guiding it
into the Democratic Party. Both before and after the war, peace and moral reform
remained Bryan’s chief concerns. After the war, he dedicated himself to promoting
fundamentalist Christianity as the necessary—and only—basis for peace and morality.
The “Great Commoner,” he distrusted elites—especially scientific elites who promoted
evolutionism in public education even though ordinary citizens objected to it as
destructive to their religion. Bryan differed from most fundamentalist leaders in that he
never advocated premillennialism: Marsden describes his reformist views on culture and
religion as amounting to “a very vague sort of postmillennialism” (1980:135).
All this came to a head, of course, in the 1925 Scopes Trial. This was during the
peak of fundamentalist influence. Prohibition was now law, and fundamentalists were
seeking other ways to use their new political power to stem the precipitous decline in
American morality.