Aimee Semple McPherson's Pentecostalism, Darwinism, Eugenics, the Disenfranchised, and the Scopes Monkey Trial

This article posits that the cultural battle waged by Aimee Semple McPherson in concert with William Jennings Bryan over evolution and modernism was largely focused on a popular social theory linked to eugenics. On July 21, 1925, in the city of Dayton, Tennessee, a twentieth-century watershed event...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Pneuma
Main Author: English de Alminana, Margaret (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Brill [2019]
In: Pneuma
Year: 2019, Volume: 41, Issue: 2, Pages: 255-278
IxTheo Classification:CA Christianity
CH Christianity and Society
KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history
KBQ North America
Further subjects:B the poor
B Social Darwinism
B modernist controversy
B disenfranchised
B William Jennings Bryan
B Scopes Monkey Trial
B Eugenics
B Aimee Semple McPherson
B Darwinism
B Modernism
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Summary:This article posits that the cultural battle waged by Aimee Semple McPherson in concert with William Jennings Bryan over evolution and modernism was largely focused on a popular social theory linked to eugenics. On July 21, 1925, in the city of Dayton, Tennessee, a twentieth-century watershed event became a harbinger of the age: The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, popularly known as the Scopes Monkey Trial. The public remembers the event as spotlighting the fundamentalist-modernist controversy with respect to the teaching of evolution in the public-school curriculum against the protests of fundamentalist Christians who advocated Creationism. The historical event was far more complicated than the popular recollection. By revisiting primary materials, this investigation will demonstrate that much of the protest voiced by McPherson and Bryan involved Social Darwinism and eugenics and a concern over the impact of these popular theories upon the Social Gospel.
ISSN:1570-0747
Contains:Enthalten in: Pneuma
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/15700747-04101029