The role of ideology in the interpretation of the Bible in the so-called “Monkey Trial.”
In July 1925 a small Tennessee town, Dayton, experienced what no other American state has ever gone through before. A high school teacher John Thomas Scopes has agreed to participate in a set up trial to act as the defendant charged with the violation of the statute prohibiting teaching of Darwin’s concept of evolution. [1] This short paper will analyze the role of ideology in the interpretation of Biblical “truths”. It will argue that no single meaning allegedly emerging from the Bible itself arises independently of the already existing political, social and cultural thought-forms present in people’s minds. On the basis of the Dayton trial the essay will demonstrate the process that constructs the fashions in which people approach the Bible according to their already established ideologies. Finally, it will conclude that to interpret the reality outside of an ideological framework is utterly impossible. Ideologies serve as the positive drive in the human existence unless abused to dominate others and to dictate themselves as the absolute realities.
Before the discussion proper it must be made clear what the term “ideology” stands for, as very often its associations do not strike a positive note. As Thompson points out, the common understanding of “ideology” refers to “the other”. [2] Others hold ideologies, we hold beliefs. However, most scholars interpret the concept of ideology in different categories. Seliger calls it simply a “belief system”; [3] Gouldner refers to it as “a rational project” [4] whereas the English political theory states that ideology represents “systematic bodies of beliefs”. [5] Clines completes the above definition adding that ideology stands for the ideas that influence the whole outlook of groups of people. [6] It is to this notion of ideology that the essay will consequently refer.
Ideologies grow substantially following the outstanding events in politics, economy, science, religion, etc. Such was the case in the 1925 United States. The First World War left a great number of people disillusioned, anxious, lost, and often void of any deep meaning or hope. Many of them began to devotionally resort to God as the only remaining foundation offering them stability and protection. They turned to Biblical myths including the one of Genesis and held on to them tight as nothing else provided them with the sense of permanency and the guarantee of order in the shattered postwar reality. Many of them became religious fundamentalists opposing the emerging trends of modernism. Furthermore, in some likelihood the war left people with the desire to cling to any piece of evidence indicating human uniqueness and superior goodness as suggested in the Bible creation myth, a belief that the “animalistic” armies of Hitler might have perhaps broken. The theory of evolution and the relation of the humankind to monkeys did not fit into the communities’ understanding of the reality; or rather the reality they desired to have faith in.
Society turned to the Bible to seek the reinforcement of the believed in reality. What did the Bible represent for Scopes’ opponents, the citizens of Dayton and the greater America? They did not look to the Bible as to the text by itself. They did not take into consideration its opacity and probably they were not even aware of the fact that the Bible constituted, as Davies puts it, the recent, even technological invention, [7] or that it in fact represented the “human artefact”. [8]
They did not consider that. However, they cannot be blamed. They did not look into the Bible’s objective meaning (although they obviously thought they did) precisely because no such meaning ever exists. Carroll explains that texts never mean anything by themselves but rather need situations in the context of which they acquire meaning. [9] The Scopes trial demonstrates this well.
Ricoeur insists that texts do have autonomy and no social ideology affects their interpretation. [10] His theory fails after a careful analysis of the situation in Dayton. The way both camps interpreted the Biblical genesis reflected the way they viewed the reality themselves; it reflected their ideology. Or phrased differently, their choice to interpret the Bible the way they did can serve as the lens that offers the insight into what their personal, or rather collective, community ideologies were. Christians opposing Scopes sought in the Bible the confirmation of their values; they meaning of the Bible emerged out of their contemporary then values; out of the ongoing battle between the fundamentalist and modernist view of the universe.
Scopes’ rivals used the Bible to sustain the domination of the ideology they themselves produced and abided by. This phenomenon has functioned since the beginning of its creation and continues to this day. The ideology, the desire for ideology and the desire for meaning supporting the chosen ideology create the meaning and this is what took place in the Scopes trial. Scopes’ opposition fought not for the Bible but for the biblical meaning that they, rather involuntarily, created collectively themselves. “Truth is not something that we find…, but something that we make true.” [11] The Bible did not create the ideology of the Christian community opposing Scopes; instead it supported the one already produced.
The described process of creating meaning out of the “preheld” ideologies is unavoidable. Furthermore, ideologies themselves constitute the “necessary feature of any society”. [12] They might indeed represent the “imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”; [13] they nevertheless make up the entire human existence. We all have ideologies. No one is spared. Everyone in the Scopes trial including the seemingly worldview-free cynic reporter manifested their own ideologies. All represented “interested parties” [14] playing by the rules dictated by the reality creating, smirking perhaps at it all, human consciousness.
The existence of ideologies is not a negative phenomenon. It remains within the nature of life to create meaning out of itself. As some religions teach, the entire physical creation owes its existence to the emerged desire within the Divine God to create reality out of Himself. The only difference being, God might have been aware of the process He originated. Ideologies, on the other hand, emerge usually not voluntarily and remain taken for granted. They arise out of the human desire, innocent as it often appears, to pursue the absolute Truth. However, as Aesop’s The Lion and the Statue [15] fable illustrates, there is no such a thing as the objective truth; there are only perspectives. To live by one’s ideology is a key to the personal fulfillment and represents an internal drive that fills life with meaning. However, to dictate one’s own ideology to others not recognizing it as a “mere” manifestation of one’s own relationship with Life becomes uncalled for and fringes on arrogance. The Scopes trial demonstrated Christian community’s lack of insight into this (or can it be called so?) truth. And still, after it all, can they really be blamed?
Bibliography:
Carroll, R. P., Wolf in the Sheepfold. The Bible as a Problem for Christianity, SCPK, London, 1991
Clines, D. J. A., Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible, Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1995
Davies, P. R., Whose Bible is it Anyway, Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1995
Gunn, D. and Fewell, D. N., Narrative in the Hebrew Bible, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993
Stuhlmacher, P., Historical Criticism and Theological Interpretation of Scripture; Toward a Hermeneutics of Consent, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1977
Thompson, J. B., Studies in the Theory of Ideology, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1984
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, On Ideology, Hutchinson, London, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Johannesburg, 1978
Internet sites:
McCabe, L., ‘The Scopes “Monkey Trial”-July 10, 1925-July 25, 1925’, Inherit The Wind, http://www.xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/inherit/1925home.html, American Studies Program, The University of Virginia, 1996 (accessed 20 August 2004)
[1] Lyndsey McCabe, ‘The Scopes “Monkey Trial”-July 10, 1925-July 25, 1925’, Inherit The Wind, http://www.xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/inherit/1925home.html, American Studies Program, The University of Virginia, 1996 (accessed 20 August 2004)
[2] J. B. Thompson, Studies in the Theory of Ideology, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1984, p. 1
[3] Thompson quoting Martin Seliger, p. 76
[4] Thompson quoting Alvin Gouldner, p. 83
[5] Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Hutchinson, London, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Johannesburg, 1978, p. 9
[6] D. J. A. Clines, Interested Parties: The Ideology of Writers and Readers of the Hebrew Bible, Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1995, p. 11
[7] P. R. Davies, Whose Bible Is It Anyway, Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield, 1995, p. 58
[8] ibid, p. 69
[9] R. P. Carroll, Wolf in the Sheepfold. The Bible as a Problem for Christianity, SPCK, London, 1991, p. 14
[10] Thompson quoting Ricoeur, p. 134
[11] P. Stuhlmacher, Historical Criticism and Theological Interpretation of Scripture; Toward a Hermeneutics of Consent, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1977, p. 75
[12] Thompson quoting Paul Hirst, p. 90
[13] Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, G. McLennan, V. Molina, R Peters, ‘Althusser’s Theory of Ideology’, p. 95
[14] Clines, p. 23
[15] D. Gunn and D. Nolan Fewell, ‘Readers and Responsibility’, in Narrative in the Hebrew Bible, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993, p. 189