episodes
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S5:E31 Inherit the Wind
McCarthyism and Inherit the Wind US Senator Joseph McCarthy unleashed an era of suspicion on the American people as he went looking for communists. His trials, both public and behind closed doors, focused on the government as well as Hollywood and the Army. He claimed...
S5:E30 The Scopes “Monkey” Trial Part 2
Did William Jennings Bryan kill fundamentalism when he took the stand? The trial was basically over. The prosecution won. John Scopes was moments away from being convicted of teaching evolution in Dayton, Tennessee. The ACLU and the prosecution had what they wanted....
S5:E29 The Scopes “Monkey” Trial (part 1)
src="https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=CHRTDY2490836383" width="100%"> The modern stage on the side of the courthouse This is a photo from the Rhea County Museum of the monkey brought to Dayton for the trial An original Bryan pin "A Civic Biology" was the textbook in...
S5:E28 Are All Christians Anti-Evolution?
Not all evangelicals or fundamentalists are against evolution In the 1600s, an Irish Archbishop named James Ussher did a bunch of math. The Bible is full of numbers and genealogies. He sat down and calculated that, in his opinion, the Bible dated creation at 4004 BC....
S5:E27 Leopold and Loeb
The perfect murder goes completely wrong Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were wealthy young men in the early 1920s. They lived in big homes in Chicago and had world-class educations. They were both pushed hard academically, and Richard was sexually abused as a child....
S5:E27 Eugenics
The history of eugenics and Buck v. Bell Eugenics. It's one of those words that gets thrown around these days, often by people accusing "the other side" of wrongdoing. But what is eugenics? I invited law professor Paul Lombardo, author of "Three Generations, No...
S5:E25 The Battle for the Presbyterian Soul
Harry Emerson Fosdick was the "bad boy" of modernist preaching Harry Emerson Fosdick had a certain reputation. He was the theological "bad boy" of modernist theology when he stood at a lectern in the 1920s and delivered his famous sermon "Shall the Fundamentalists...
S5:E24 Mr. Fundamentalist
William Bell Riley was the real "Mr. Fundamentalist". And few have heard of him. So far this season I've covered William Jennings Bryan, a man who enjoyed the nickname "Mr. Fundamentalist". But he wasn't really a fundamentalist. Experts point to another man as the...
S5:E23 World War One and the Modernist – Fundamentalist Controversy
The Great War Helped Create the Modernist-Fundamentalist Controversy The modernish/ fundamentalist controversy was heating up in the early 1900s. Conservatives saw this coming a long way off but could not stop modernism from taking control of seminaries and popular...