The trial was in the hands of three people. Judge Raulston, of course, had the power to overrule, to include and to exclude. From reading the transcript (with the disadvantage of not being familiar with court procedure and the nuances of legal language) it seems indisputable that the Judge was more inclined to favor the prosecution. For the prosecution, the lead was taken by Attorney General Stewart who did most of the talking and arguing. Stewart had the advantage of knowing the laws of Tennessee better than anybody on the defense did. The defense was co-ordinated by Darrow. Darrow was the master mind, and he did not regard deviations from his plan with indulgent complacency.

When the battle to hear expert witnesses was lost, the burden of responsibility for recovering the losses fell to Darrow, Darrow who had already run afoul of the judge, Darrow who had only grudgingly been admitted to the defense by the ACLU after their first choice bailed out, Darrow the village atheist writ large, who consorted with socialists in their prison cells, who was already known as the Attorney for the Damned. Darrow stood to loose as much as Bryan actually did by the cross-examination. Should the cross-examination fail to expose Bryan, Darrow’s unorthodox and legally pointless move would have served only to make him and his cause appear that much more perverse.

Darrow needed to win a case that was lost. Because of the power of the judge, the defense had to score a popular triumph. A popular triumph would include, in the mind of the world, the parts the judge could exclude from the record. It is significant that the jury was not present for most of the trial. The judge could control what the jury witnessed. But the trial became a paradox of exclusion and inclusion, and the world became the jury, making the actual jury’s verdict insignificant. This is what Darrow achieved.

Still, Darrow did not do it alone. He had aid, but not only from his own team.* For the world to be his jury, Darrow needed the press to make the world his audience. Bryan brought the press. For the cross-examination, Darrow needed an expert witness from the prosecution to validate the argument of the defense. Against the wishes and continued protestations of Stewart, Bryan agreed to be the expert witness for the cross-examination. It came down to Darrow’s wit, skill and experience. And his confidence in the ignorance of Bryan.

Bryan came to Dayton looking for a final, public triumph over the forces of evolution. The battle against evolution had not really been joined until Bryan took up the cause after the triumph of Prohibition. The remarkable effect of one of Bryan’s speeches at the right time and in the right place was notorious. If the argument could be brought to a head with all the attention of the world focused on the moment, then Bryan could deal a decisive blow. The plan all along was to have Bryan deliver a much anticipated speech in the closing arguments. It was, in Bryan’s opinion, his best speech, better even than the “Cross of Gold” speech that had catapulted him at the age of 36 to a candidate for the highest office in the land.

What Darrow got Bryan to admit was exactly what the defense wanted their expert witnesses to say. The defense had wanted to call scientists to explain evolution and clergymen who could say Christianity was compatible with it. Bryan admitted that he did not believe in a literal six-day creation. He not only showed he did not understand evolution, but that he had everything needed to fit it into Genesis. In other words, Darrow exposed Bryan’s position as arbitrary. Bryan’s position was not altogether arbitrary, or uniformed, as his undelivered speech attests. Darrow, however, had maneuvered Bryan into sounding bigoted and ignorant.

Attorney General Stewart tried both to stop Bryan and to get the judge to stop Bryan more than once during the cross-examination. It is ironic that Stewart did not really object to evolution himself. He was just trying to stick to the case. But Stewart had no taste for the drama of a public spectacle; he was interested in a legal trial, in upholding the laws of Tennessee and no more.

Darrow’s last move was to have the closing arguments waived. Everybody was tired of the long trial. They wanted no more legal wrangling, no more of the oppressive heat of Dayton, and they were tired of wasting whole days doing things that were stricken from the record. The only objection to Darrow’s plan, of course, came from Bryan. Bryan had been outdone by Malone, humiliated by Darrow, and still had the speech of a lifetime to deliver. But nobody listened to Bryan. The closing arguments were waived. The jury was instructed to find Scopes guilty, and the trial was over.

*Although he did receive help inadvertently from his team when Malone trumped Bryan’s speech in a speech that Darrow was afraid would hang the jury. Darrow did not realize the help the speech provided at the time and tried to stop Malone. Like Stewart with Bryan later, though, Darrow was unsuccessful.

Fundamentalists have viewed the notion of a confrontation of cultures with suspicion, partly because the argument was put to them not in terms of theology, but in terms of culture. Modernists like Cole wanted to make the issue an issue of learning and cultivation, an issue of progress, an issue of the advance of civilization. This was a maneuver calculated to privilege the Modernist argument. Fundamentalists believed they stood for orthodox theology and that Modernists, who had a sub-orthodox theology, wanted to obscure or avoid the real issue by arguing about culture and progress.

Both sides were partly wrong.

The Modernists believed the dispositive power of modern culture greater than the determinative power of ancient theology. They went to culture to get their theology. They believed in the rightness of the assumptions of the spirit of the age. They had learned the learning of their times and they believed it to be right. So they wanted to reinterpret Christianity in light of secular culture. They also believed they could see the end of a long and arduous process which with a little effort could be culminated. If only the petty and antiquated concern for mere doctrinal precision could be overcome, the task of filling the world with the Christian spirit of universal brotherhood and global peace would come at last.

Fundamentalists believed the determinative power of theology to be greater than the dispositive power of culture. Theology, for them, was primary and all other concerns secondary. Because of this, theological orthodoxy was the great rudder-setter. Right belief led to right practice so that secondary considerations (questions of practice, questions of culture) could remain mostly unattended. It was enough to look at the deleterious effects a preoccupation with modern culture had on historic Christianity to know that theology was more important than culture.

Both sides were partly right.

The Modernist knew the power of culture to shape hearts and minds. Theology, for them, must be a part of the cultivation which culture nurtures. Culture gave a disposition toward the world, and attitude from which to order all other considerations. Orthodoxy alone could not move them, it needed the resonance of meaning that culture provides. The crucial refinements of learning could not be neglected without paying a price. And the vitality of culture depended on its attachment to the modern way of life.

The fundamentalist saw a departure from orthodoxy as a betrayal of Christianity. They accused the Modernists of a sort of mysticism, an undisciplined following of mere feeling at the expense of thorough thinking. They knew that right religion must have a shaping and molding influence on culture, instead of being shaped and molded to modern culture. They resisted the impulse to shape religion in the mold of the spirit of the age, to change the charge of the great commission for the goals of alien, secular ideas.

Neither side was right enough.

Because the Modernist urged exclusive attention to the climate of culture, the fundamentalist urged exclusive attention to right theology. Both made a mistake with regard to culture. By seizing on modern high culture, the Modernists departed from orthodox religion. In a way, they neglected religion and ended up with a sub-orthodox one. But in neglecting matters of culture, the fundamentalists indiscriminately seized a modern, popular culture, for nobody can live without the stuff of culture. To neglect it means only to have something inferior, to live by indiscriminate choices. Both cultures were dispositive. Both proved hostile to orthodoxy. And both resulted in a casual attitude toward doctrine. The Modernists boldly advanced heresy from the centers of culture. The fundamentalists sought shelter for othodoxy in the popular culture.

The person who offered a third way was J. Gresham Machen.