Monday, Dec. 20, 1926

Hint

What with the Methodist-Episcopal Church, through its board of temperance and public morals, redeclaring war on intemperance (see p. 10); what with religionists evading injunctions against the teaching of religion in public schools, by obtaining rules to release pupils from school in order that they may attend Bible classes elsewhere but on school time; and what with new anti-Evolution bills coming up in Arkansas and other state legislatureshow far the Fundamentalist determination to reform the country extends. News from Atlanta, Ga., contained a hint of notable latitude. There the loudest speaker of all Fundamentaldom, Dr. John Roach Straton of the Calvary Baptist Church, Manhattan, had been imported to address the mother chapter of "The Supreme Kingdom," a high-powered crusading fraternity founded last winter (TIME, Feb. 1) with the paid assistance of Organizer Edward Young Clarke, who built up the Ku Klux Klan for a fat commission on each member pledged. The first feature of the meeting was Organizer Clarke's announcement that the Kingdom would hold a convention at St. Louis in March, "to wage an aggressive warfare against every doctrine and every theory which seeks to rob God of His Supreme Majesty as Creator and reflects upon man as His highest creation." In a word, to write an anti-Evolution statute into the nation's law books. Dr. Straton was then brought forth to inflame the gathering's righteous zeal with some of his astonishing pulpit oratory: "Man or Monkey, Which?"

Now many a Fundamentalist can irk men of reason by simply opposing steadfast faith to inquisitive logic. But Dr. Straton's dogma is not merely steadfast; it is wild and violent. His answers to reasonable inquiry would irritate a St. Francis of Assisi. Dr. Witherspoon Dodge of Atlanta, mild-mannered pastor of the Central Congregational Church, was in the audience. Startled by the Northerner's tone and manner, Dr. Dodge ventured a question on Dr. Straton's interpretation of evolution. Dr. Straton's reply was as the bolt of a self-appointed God of vengeance. Nettled, Dr. Dodge asked another question. Again the reply was bitter. Dr. Dodge grew warm, warmer, hot, and was answered by the shout of a fanatic: "I know what I am! You don't know what you are! And I know, too, that any man who believes in Evolution won't be saved. I know I will go to Heaven!" "I doubt it," snapped back Dr. Dodgewere drowned by a Fundamentalist bedlam.