AMERICA REVISITED
11RERE is on this continent a combat between a certain type of theological orthodoxy and Science --between the literalism of the " lower " and more old- fashioned Protestant Churches of America and modern naturalism, whether emitted by unbelieving scientists or by modernist vipers within Mother Church's bosom. Fundamentalism is the extreme theological reaction in this dispute. It is usually supposed to be a specific challenge of hard-shell Christianity to the theory of Evolution ; and although this is not strictly accurate, since the Fundamentalists have taken their stand in a number of other equally ultimate ditches, it is true that it is round this particular ditch that the real light rages.
To many in England it will seem inconceivable that such a fight can really rage in " this so-called twentieth century.". It may ke inconceivable, but it is a sober fact. There now exist States in which it is a punishable .offence to teach.Darwinism in any State-aided institution ; t here are others in which it is permissible to teach that a theory called Darwinism was advanced, but illegal to assert its truth. In several of the sectarian Colleges and Universities which abound in America professors have been dismissed for " teaching evolution." Darwinistic hooks have been publicly burned by enthusiastic Baptist Ministers before admiring crowds, and Mr. Bryan will undoubtedly gain for his brother and the Democratic Party the votes of many pious citizens and citizenesses by his unctuous violence against the pernicious heresy.
It is indeed a paradox that in a land in which, first, far more men and wcmen receive a higher education than in any European country, and where, secondly, science in general and biology in particular occupy an honourable portion as part of any general education—that in this very country an anti-biological and anti-scientific move- ment should be virulent. Let us, however, remember hat this is not really a new movement, but rather the .,udden boiling-over of a long-simmering pot.
I had the interesting fate to migrate from Oxford to a ofessorship in Texas before the War. To my surprise 1 found even then that anti-evolutionary feeling ran li.g,h. A conference of Ministers of various Protestant denominations had recently memorialized the Texas State Legislature with a request that a certain school reader_ which stated that evolution was probable during geolvical history might be withdrawn from all State schocis. A year later, a biological colleague of mine gave i hree public Extension Lectures on Evolution—the familiar stuff that was exciting in England about A.D. 1870. A few weeks later the Southern Baptist Conference was held in ,.he town. One of my students overheard on the street cal. a local lady Southern Baptist loudly remark to a visiting ditto, " Yes, my dear, I heard Mr. X. lecture —on Evolution, you know. He really seemed to believe it. Such a nice"-looking young man, too ! . ... What a pity to think he's damned As a matter of fact, over here the pot has never ceased simmering since Darwin. - As the more cultivated classes ceased to bubble, less educated ones began to be aware of the fiery problem, and to grow hot in their turn. This was also true in England, but in England there has always been an educated top to society, from which opinion filters quickly down ; further, the opinion of the unculti- vated masses in intellectual matters counts for less. In America, however, things are very different. Except in the Northern and Middle States of the Eastern seaboard there has never been an intellectual aristocracy or any highly educated class capable of influencing opinion. Over the great bulk of the huge country emergent democ- racy in the process of baking is supreme. There is no proletariat, but there is no upper class ; the voice of the people is the voice of the small farmer or the lower bourgeoisie. The people are educated up to a certain fair average level; but above this level they do not know where to look.
The War turned the long simmer into a fine fury of boil- ing. The insatiable craving for " uplift " characteristic of human beings at a certain stage of development, and therefore of all Middle-Western and Western America, became entangled with patriotism, and that with religion. Post-war disillusionment was very strong. War-organ- ized feelings found an outlet in fears of the foreigner, of Bolshevism, of anything which threatened the sanctified stability of " American institutions." Naturally, in a country where what we should call dissenting Protestant- ism is the most widespread religion, anything which Challenged the literal truth of the Bible became anathema ; and so was generated the violence of the Fundamentalist movement. Many people ask why the Fundamentalists stop at Darwin, and do not go back to Galileo and beyond —does not the Bible imply a flat earth and a geocentric cosmos as much as a specially created man ? The reason, I think, is largely psychological. People have been for one thing lorig accustomed to the idea of a globular earth going round a distant and gigantic sun : the very remote- ness and size of the stars has been made (by some extra- ordinary travesty of logic !) a new evidence for the existence of a personal god. But chiefly the shape and movement of the earth and sun and stars have been felt as too remote from human life to bother much about. With Evolution, however, the emotions are forcibly and immediately touched, and the heart of the literalist interpretation penetrated.
Owing to the convenient property which most people possess of keeping the different parts of their mind divided by thought-proof bulkheads, the average devout, not very highly educated, American Protestant was able to go on not worrying about Evolution for fifty years. But gradually the corollaries of evolutionary thought, in psychology, in history, in comparative religion, began to make their effects felt. Those creeds which had not made numerous structural alterations suddenly saw their whole fabric in danger. They woke up to evolution ; they thought about it for the first time ; and they were profoundly shocked, just as the most highly educated Anglican dignitaries were shocked when they first thought about it in 1859.
It is a natural privilege of human beings to be shocked when their emotions are aroused ; but it is just as obvious a duty to get over the process when evolution or birth-control are the issues as it is for a medical student to subdue his natural and creditable shock on being confronted with a corpse in the dissecting-room. That is what • reason is for. However that may be, -Fundamentalism exists. • The movement is especially active in the :South, the Middle-West, and Far-West, and -reaches up to embrace Canada. But it has needed the Southern atmosphere to bring it to serious pro- portions. Kentucky, the Carolinas, and indeed all the Old South, with Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and the rest of the South-West—they are the storm-centre : further north the agitation is passing away without having really crystallized in any public action. Curious things, however, still take place all over the country. The Sunday before the British Association reached Toronto a clergyman of the city gave his flock a prophylactic injection in the form of a sermon, the gist of which I absorbed in the inch-high headline, " Evolutionist worse than Red Murderer,' says Pastor Blank." A number of ministers hive informed the world that Darwinism is responsible for the depravity shown by Leopold and Loeb, the youthful educated murderers who have shocked the country by their cold-blooded search for sensation in crime. Recently the newspapers have given us the portrait of a clergyman in Butte, Montana, and of the monkey which his daughter held in the pulpit as object lesson while he preached Fundamentals through its screechings. But this is froth ; while in the South things happen. Even there, however, the situation is changing, and changing for the better. Last year the controversy was still in an elementary stage, in which the opponents simply hurled chunks of dogma at each other — chunks of Darwin versus chunks of Moses ; argument, on either side, was superfluous, and not listened to. To-day larger and larger numbers of people are realizing that there is a problem to be dis- cussed, that it must be decided on evidence, and that somehow or another the world has got to reconcile and unify orthodox science and orthodox Christianity if it is to have that single philosophy of life which must underlie all flowering civilizations.
I have just come back from Texas, where I was asked to give several lectures on Evolution, and on the relations between Science and Religion : and I was enormously surprised at the sympathetic interest displayed even in my most heretical remarks. In one large town there I achieved what I am sure is a record—I spoke on evolu- t ionary biology in the Baptist Church ! The local college had no auditorium, and the local Baptists were liberal. Even so, it was unique—and quite embarrassing ; I felt as if I had been invited to a party and then had to insult my hostess ! But I do not think it could have happened a year ago.
I feel as if in the long run it might be the South-West and West which first succeeded in getting right out of the mess. They will not try subtle intellectual com- promises. They will sooner or later get down to hard tacks, throw over the theological superstructure which is the chief reason for the so-called conflict between science and religion, and then turn round and demand of science that she give up the intolerance which is the next most important cause of the conflict. The West is not troubled with the New England conscience or any Eastern high-brow intellectuality. There is a healthy paganism latent in it which may conspire with its anxiety for " uplift " to generate a more sweet- tempered and naturalistic type of religion.
In any event, the Fundamentalist movement, when (after five or ten years) we can look back upon it as a closed episode, will be seen to have served a useful function. It has focused public attention upon the intellectual bases of religion, has brought the evolutionary idea into prominence, and made it once more a living issue to the professional biologist who was apt to take it all for granted, and, in brief, has really prepared the Fay for the downfall of its own "Fundamental!! shibboleths -13Y showing the average man and woman how little they have to do with genuine religion.
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