Brenda Harms: Play not exactly unbiased toward questions of evolution, faith
My sophomore English class saw a riveting rendition of “Inherit the Wind” at the Gallo Center. Great job!
As I sat with my class, it occurred to me that some students in the audience perhaps didn’t know much about the actual trial. I wish I could have told them that John Scopes wasn’t a science teacher and never really taught evolution. I would have asked my students if they thought the Christian was portrayed negatively by playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, or reminded them that accepting as fact evolution without intelligent design takes as much – or more – faith than believing in the creator God of the Bible.
But, I couldn’t and didn’t. We were ushered into the daylight and bused back to school. So I hope that anyone who sees the play will consider looking into the actual events it is based on, and will see the influence of the ACLU and think seriously about their own beliefs regarding where we all came from. I hope they realize that one of the consequences of accepting naturalism is the absence of a moral standard of right and wrong.
In that sense, America truly has inherited the wind.
Brenda Harms, Ripon
This story was originally published November 30, 2015 at 6:20 PM with the headline "Brenda Harms: Play not exactly unbiased toward questions of evolution, faith."