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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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The Scopes Monkey Trial was kayfabe, with both sides of the case being backed by a local newspaper in order to generate publicity for a small town in Tennessee. (See Wikipedia)

I think there are two very different Christian lines of criticism of evolution. The position of the conservative faction of Anglicanism in Darwin's day, and of the Catholic Church until JPII's 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy, is roughly-speaking that evolution is unfortunate if true (because it makes eugenics possible, and because it makes atheism more intellectually respectable and therefore more dangerous) but nevertheless a proper matter of scientific enquiry, not theological debate. In England, the conservative bishops left the attacks on Darwin to scientifically-trained clerics like Sedgwick, who tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to attack him on scientific grounds.

The position that evolution should be rejected based on theological arguments is unique to the tradition of non-denominational American Protestantism that we loosely categorise as "evangelical". That is the position that was being pushed by the prosecution in Scopes, because that is what made the kayfabe show appealing to American culture warriors on both sides. (The culture war in question was mainline vs evangelical, which maps onto the modern blue vs red surprisingly well).