I'm not especially an admirer of Mencken. He bothers me for much the same reason that Oscar Wilde does: both have a tendency to shoot for the biting witticism, the memorable bon mot, rather than depth. They're sometimes fun to read, but they rarely serve up anything one can sink one's teeth into.
Mencken's A Religious Orgy in Tennessee, a collection of columns about the Scope trial written for "The Baltimore Sun," "The Nation," and "The American Mercury," is more than just entertaining, though. It offers a look at early twentieth-century Christian fundamentalism (Mencken frequently, and incorrectly, calls it "evangelicalism") that is chilling not only for its own intrinsic stupidity--at one point, Mencken cites a woman fundamentalist who boasts that she has no books in her home and that she hates all books but the Bible (p. 54)--but also because it clearly demonstrates that fundamentalism than and fundamentalism now are essentially the same. The fundamentalist hatred of learning, the dogmatic zeal to condemn any theory or opinion not authenticated by scripture, the parochial refusal to look beyond sectarian norms: everything that Mencken encountered in Dayton, Tennessee in 1925 can be attributed to American fundamentalism today. The only difference is that today's fundamentalism is much more organized and media-savvy.
Three chapters in particular stand out: Chapter 2, in which Mencken profiles the fundamentalist mind (calling it "Homo neanderthalensis"); Chapter 7, in which he describes a late night revival; and Chapter 16, in which he defends freedom of thought. The first of these three is especially fine, while the second is one of the best pieces of on-the-spot reporting Mencken ever wrote.
This edition is troublesome. There are numerous typos in the text, and explanatory footnotes for names dropped by Mencken--names that would've been familiar to his 1925 readers but are mysterious today--are at best haphazard. But for all that, these columns are well worth reading. They have far more than mere historical interest--and that's profoundly disturbing.
_______
* p. 111
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C. J. Boorman
the scopes trial report
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 29, 2018Amazon Customer
Very interesting piece of history. And strangely reminiscent
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 16, 2016
