Another Thought on Inherit the Wind

I wrote about the impact the play Inherit the Wind has had on me. I wrote about how, as I watched the whole audience laugh at bigoted caricatures of Christianity, I realized we are in a culture war.

There was something else about the play which stood out to me. In the original film, Drummond, who is supposed to be Clarence Darrow, cross-examines Brady, who is supposed to be William Jennings Bryan. Drummond asks Brady to imagine if only evolution were taught to children and not the Bible. Drummond thought it would only be fair if both ideas were presented equally, and not suppressed. In that case, the idea being suppressed was evolution, today it’s creationism. Of course, that line was omitted in the modern version of the play. Why? Because even though Drummond believed in evolution, he knew that only teaching evolution and dismissing other theories would hinder critical critical analysis. Such an idea was deplorable even to the anti-Christian bigots who wrote this play. Today, we have gone far beyond what Drummond envisioned. If he were alive today, he would probably support school choice, and be labeled a backwards fundamentalist by the modern secular elite. In this culture war, the enemy has captured the education system, allowing them to indoctrinate generation after generation of impressionable children.