In "Keeping the Faith," Brenda Wineapple finds an ongoing battle over the soul of America in a century-old trial.
...[Darrow] was a man in the mold of Robert Ingersoll, a.k.a. the Great Agnostic, the freethinker who tore through the lecture halls of the 19th century smashing all the idols of Christian America. The labor leader Eugene V. Debs, the women's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois and a very long list of philosophers, writers, education reformers and politicians were of the same, heretical stripe.
These were Darrow's people — his friends, his admirers, his clients, his forebears, his fellow dreamers — and some of them get cameos in this book. They saw themselves, rightly, as part of a movement that, extending back to the Republic's enlightened founders, defied the orthodoxies of the time to keep America true to its democratic promise. They played a critical, underappreciated role in navigating the economic and social conflicts that roiled the Progressive Era.
It all came to a head once again in the crucible of a Tennessee summer, when Darrow and Bryan faced off. At stake was the very idea of self-government. One man held that the safety of the nation demanded the enforcement of a common creed revealed from on high. The other maintained that the foundation of human freedom rests not on the uniformity of belief but on the contest of ideas among an educated public at the bar of reason.
Under Darrow's ruthless cross-examination, Bryan's ignorance even of the Bible (never mind Darwin) was exposed. Scopes was found guilty (no surprise there), but the idea of government of, by and for the people lived another day.
Wineapple prefers not to draw as many explicit connections with the American past and future as this reviewer would have liked. She is also not nearly as judgmental. But I will get over it. "Keeping the Faith" is history at its most delicious, presented free from the musty smell of the archives where it was clearly assembled with great care. And if you have been awake for the past 16 years or so, you won't miss the point. The struggles of yesteryear between reason and ignorance do not merely illuminate those of the present. They are the same struggle. This is a story from a past that isn't even past.
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KEEPING THE FAITH: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation | By Brenda Wineapple | Random House | 509 pp. | $38
nyt
...[Darrow] was a man in the mold of Robert Ingersoll, a.k.a. the Great Agnostic, the freethinker who tore through the lecture halls of the 19th century smashing all the idols of Christian America. The labor leader Eugene V. Debs, the women's rights activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois and a very long list of philosophers, writers, education reformers and politicians were of the same, heretical stripe.
These were Darrow's people — his friends, his admirers, his clients, his forebears, his fellow dreamers — and some of them get cameos in this book. They saw themselves, rightly, as part of a movement that, extending back to the Republic's enlightened founders, defied the orthodoxies of the time to keep America true to its democratic promise. They played a critical, underappreciated role in navigating the economic and social conflicts that roiled the Progressive Era.
It all came to a head once again in the crucible of a Tennessee summer, when Darrow and Bryan faced off. At stake was the very idea of self-government. One man held that the safety of the nation demanded the enforcement of a common creed revealed from on high. The other maintained that the foundation of human freedom rests not on the uniformity of belief but on the contest of ideas among an educated public at the bar of reason.
Under Darrow's ruthless cross-examination, Bryan's ignorance even of the Bible (never mind Darwin) was exposed. Scopes was found guilty (no surprise there), but the idea of government of, by and for the people lived another day.
Wineapple prefers not to draw as many explicit connections with the American past and future as this reviewer would have liked. She is also not nearly as judgmental. But I will get over it. "Keeping the Faith" is history at its most delicious, presented free from the musty smell of the archives where it was clearly assembled with great care. And if you have been awake for the past 16 years or so, you won't miss the point. The struggles of yesteryear between reason and ignorance do not merely illuminate those of the present. They are the same struggle. This is a story from a past that isn't even past.
________________________________
KEEPING THE FAITH: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation | By Brenda Wineapple | Random House | 509 pp. | $38
nyt
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