Evolution and Voices of Progressive Catholicism in the Age of the Scopes Trial

Bibliographic Data

ID4517510
AuthorsAlexander Pavuk (0000-0002-5453-5196, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume26
Issue1
Pages101-137
Publication date2016-01-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligion and American Culture A Journal of Interpretation (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1052-1151 • E-ISSN: 1533-8568
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1525/rac.2016.26.1.101
OpenAlexW2557868307
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited19

Belying assumptions about Catholics and science grounded in the old science-religion warfare model in the 1920s, two liberal Catholic intellectuals contributed in some important but overlooked ways to the discourse where prominent scientist-popularizers and other intellectuals constructed the public understanding of evolution and the Scopes Trial in the mid-1920s US. This article explores publicly-disseminated articles and archival correspondence between Catholics and non-Catholics on these topics, concluding that the manner in which the former supported evolution and opposed the Scopes prosecution may have unintentionally fostered scientism and religious modernism, rather than Catholicism, in the public square. Conditioned by their own Progressive-Era experiences and intellectual training, renowned liberal Catholics Fr. John A. Ryan, board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Michael Williams, editor ofCommonwealmagazine, framed their arguments directed at non-Catholic intellectual elites almost exclusively in social and biological science to the exclusion of religion. They did so even as public intellectuals and prominent scientists of modernist faith, like Henry Fairfield Osborn of the Museum of Natural History, constructed a public image of evolution that blended religion, philosophy and science when assigning meaning to the Scopes Trial. This study broadens the view of science-religion conversations surrounding evolution in the 1920s by integrating voices usually omitted from the story while further complicating the still-resonant 'creationist-' evolutionist' paradigm

Aesthetics · Creationism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Evolutionism · Faith · Intelligent design · Political science · Scientism · Social science · Sociology · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History of Science and Natural History · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub