“The devil can cite Scripture for his purposes,” said William Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. Just as the devil illustrates in this quote, the Scopes trial was a battle for control of American society and culture with fundamentalism as its weapon of choice. At the time, many people were worried about their position in terms of morality and religion. The main players and figures involved in the religious persecution of Scopes were not uneducated or overzealous in attacking the theory of evolution, but rather they were opportunistic in profiting from this cultural chaos. Today, politicians use geocultural, socioeconomic, and other societal dichotomies to align themselves with particular progressive or fundamentalist causes in order to accumulate support. American society has been and always will be an amalgamated culture, and therefore very volatile. It is dynamic and is always facing changes on political, societal and economic fronts which depend on the installations resulting from the tug of war between tradition and progress. The societal boundaries that exist as a result of this tug-of-war further cut off parts of the American past and present as people struggle to find the right answer to a particular problem, even if they know where they fall on the spectrum of fundamentalism versus modernism. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayBoth the Butler Act and the Scopes trial were schemes for personal gain or a biased agenda and were only the point culmination of a power struggle for control of the United States. values ​​and therefore of the American people. The Butler Law is seen by some as a direct attack on science because it denounces "[the teaching of] any theory which denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and which teaches instead that man is descended from a lower order of animals” (Butler). However, the author of the Butler Act, Johns Washington Butler, was a successful tobacco farmer who claimed to have read the Origin of Species and was willing to share the information with his own children (Bradbury). He opposed the teaching of evolution in public schools, seen as a ploy to retain the favor of the overwhelming majority who elected him. The Scopes trial itself was a test that the media used to confront fundamentalists and modernists. William Jennings Bryan represented the state against John Scopes. Bryan was a fundamentalist who led a systematic crusade against evolutionary education in American classrooms. This was probably because he wished to maintain the traditional values ​​he had long supported and because he wished to remain the center of public attention for the sake of his political career ("An Introduction"). Bryan therefore had both fundamentalist and opportunistic reasons for participating in the trial. The ACLU, which recruited John Scopes as its designated culprit for the modernist cause, originally did not want Clarence Darrow as a defender, fearing that his overzealous agnosticism would turn into the unnecessary attack on religion that the ACLU hoped for. avoid (“An Introduction”). The ACLU wanted to avoid the offensive arguments that Darrow might provoke because the trial was not intended to attack religion or science, but to attempt to regain control of American attention and maintain sympathy for the modernist side against power moreover dominant fundamentalists. like the ACLUand Bryan, Flannery O'Connor, a born and raised Catholic, created the story of Hazel Motes as a warning to those who thought they could escape the traditions and core values ​​of America as a nation of Christian origins. In his novel, O'Connor initially constructs Hazel as if he is in control and can get away with rejecting God's light before it slowly destroys him as punishment for his behavior. Christian teachings. Hazel Motes, even in her namesake, is rendered imperceptible and incapable of perception. O'Connor described Hazel as someone with "an expression [that] seemed to open into a deeper void" (162) and as an almost invisible figure for whom "the porter did not stop" (11 ). O'Connor created Hazel to be wrongly obsessed with materialism, and as part of her punishment, she takes away her Essex, the symbol of her power and her emerging religion. With this, she instills the sense of inevitability that even Hazel, one of the most despicable Christians, is incapable of facing anything other than redemption. The novel is yet another example of attempting to control the American population who are close to or already far removed from the traditions of the Christian faith. We can observe many of the same astute phenomena in the passage of the Butler Act and the Scopes trial in 2007. today's political realm. When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, his campaign included little to no support for gay rights. In fact, during a pre-election interview, he expressed his personal definition of marriage as "the union between a man and a woman" and that "for [him] as a Christian, it is also a sacred union [ and] God is in the mix. Once elected and two years into his first term, Obama displayed lukewarm sentiment in attempting to appease both conservatives and progressives by declaring that "[he] has been reluctant to sign same-sex marriage, primarily because of [his] understanding of traditional definitions of marriage” while meekly acknowledging “that attitudes are changing, including [his].” However, when he ran for a second term in 2012, Obama appeared to have a complete reversal of his views five months before the election, stating: "[He] just concluded that for [him] personally, it is important that [it] moves forward. in advance and affirm that same-sex couples should be able to marry” (Weinger). Optimistically, critics would say that Obama changed his mind as his views evolved in office. However, realistically, we are faced with the more likely scenario that Obama, like many presidents before him and probably many to come, used the gay rights agenda as leverage in both of his elections. He adopted very different positions to follow the comings and goings of the majority vote wave. In the first election he sought to gain support from conservatives on the Republican side and in the second election he focused on maintaining a strong Democratic vote with his Hail Mary to move to the plate -progressive form. Obama is an example of many politicians and influential figures who actively obscure their personal values ​​in order to please the majority of voters and their supporters. Instead, they align themselves on the spectrum between conservatives and liberals, hoping to find a perfect balance for victory. Ultimately, politicians are unlikely to care about morality, what becomes more important is elections for office. A major and continuing division represented by the Scopes trial is regionalismlong-established cultural divide between rural and urban, and to some extent between North and North. South. In the 1920s, urban America was changing. Most of this development also occurred in the northern United States, as opposed to the south. Large numbers of immigrants flocked to American cities, leading to rapid demographic change. Technology has further accentuated the divide between rural and urban areas. City dwellers had electricity, running water, radios and cinemas. As lifestyles changed, so did values. Urban America became the center of innovation, cultural festivities, and intellectual experimentation with a place for jazz and flappers. It moves away from the traditional values ​​which still dominated the countryside. The Scopes trial, however, took place in a rural part of Tennessee. The Butler Act, which banned the teaching of evolution, was intended to defend traditional religious ideas against the spread of disease. The influence of modernist ideals of science on religion. This law was an aspect of the fundamentalist attempt to maintain the supremacy of their beliefs and a resurgence of control over American values. The Scopes trial itself also highlighted the differences between rural and urban America. Reporters from urban newspapers and radio stations gathered in Dayton to cover the trial. Many of them, especially H.L. Mencken, described the prosecution and the people of Dayton as backward and narrow-minded. Mencken described Bryan, who led the persecution, as a "pathetic man" whose "cruel mouth was tightly shut" (Mencken). The media clearly sided with the modernists and thus helped propagate the idea that there were fundamental cultural differences between rural and urban communities (“Introduction”). The Scopes trial marked a turning point in the struggle between rural fundamentalist values ​​and those of scientifically inclined urban dwellers. He could have been responsible for preventing laws similar to Tennessee's from being passed in other states that did not want to suffer the ridicule that Dayton had suffered ("The Scopes Trial"). The divisions that exist within America, even on a political and political level. Social separations between the young and the old stem from a weak sense of national identity, something that most other nations hold in high esteem. Often these American characteristics are seen as an advantage because it is an amalgamation of many cultures and philosophies. However, despite this feeling, this quality also serves to fuel a form of cultural and societal chaos. After World War I, this aspect of American society increased morally anxious and restless youth. As a result of these two factors, a mass cultural revolution broke out and a complete abandonment of Victorian values. Rather, they were exchanged for continued experimentation and intellectual stimulation (“An Introduction”). As a result, much of the older generation saw its values ​​and traditions become a barren wasteland, abandoned by the youthful carelessness and moral ambiguity of the younger generation who were becoming youthful and politically conspicuous in the 1920s. Jazz music, flapper culture, birth control for women, and the fight against prohibition were embraced by the younger generation as the older generation looked on in horror at the slowly crumbling institutions they had built ("An Introduction "). often accompanied by a religious argument, still manifest themselves today in the form of..