As I thumbed through Time magazine this week, I stopped to read an interview with Sting. (Just for the record, I dislike Time magazine. For some unknown reason, it just started appearing in my mailbox about 9 months ago.)
In this story, Sting told the reporter, “I’m essentially agnostic. . . I have a problem with religion. I’ve chosen to live my life without the certainties of religious faith. I think they’re dangerous.” (Time, November 21, 2011; p. 64.
This anti-religious sentiment is nothing new. In the U.S., ever since the “Scopes Monkey Trial,” Evangelical Christians in particular, who follow very definite, rock-solid teachings about God, have often been regarded by those in secular academia, publishing, and entertainment as ignorant hayseeds, bigots of the worst sort who would gladly drag unbelievers to the gallows and stakes of the past. The 1925 Scopes trial centered around a challenge by the ACLU to a Tennessee statute forbidding the teaching of evolution in that state’s public schools.
Teacher John Scopes violated the law and in the ensuing trial, was represented by the brilliant attorney, Clarence Darrow. The aging Christian orator William Jennings Bryan led the prosecution. The sweltering courtroom became the center of a national debate about creation v. evolution, God v. science, and because of Bryan’s faltering abilities, as well as a groundswell of support for Scopes in the media, orthodox Christianity fell into national disfavor.
The Sunday after the trial ended, Bryan died suddenly of a heart attack at his home, a man at peace with God and ready to meet his Savior. Years later, an ardent admirer interviewed Clarence Darrow in his home, asking how the lawyer would sum up his life. To his surprise, Darrow immediately walked over to a coffee table and picked up a Bible, the same book he’d spent his life ridiculing. He said, “This verse in the Bible describes my life,” and he opened to Luke 5:5. Changing the “we” to “I,” he read aloud, “I have toiled all the night and taken nothing.”
He replaced the Bible and caught the man’s eye. “I have a lived a life without purpose, without meaning, without direction. I don’t know where I came from. And I don’t know what I’m doing here. And worst of all, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me when I punch out of here.” (Janney, Great Stories in American History, p. 127)
The Bible says those are blessed who do not “sit in the seat of mockers.” (Psalm 1:1) I hope this is something that Sting is able to come to terms with.
Tags: Clarence Darrow, Scopes Trial, Sting, William Jennings Bryan
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