As book bans and religious censorship again become increasingly prevalent, America is witnessing an alarming repetition of patterns from our history. Brenda Wineapple‘s most recent book, Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation, is a compelling account of censorship and successful far-right religious lobbying during the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial that continues to influence America today.

For this week’s episode of The State of Belief, Interfaith Alliance’s weekly radio show and podcast, Brenda joins host Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush to discuss the resurgent threat of censorship and extreme religious influence in America. Over a century after the 1925 trial, her book – recently featured on the front page of the NY Times Book Review –  recounts a fascinating story mirrored by recent attempts to mandate Christian curriculum and indoctrination in public schools.

“We know that books are being banned in libraries, and in schools themselves, by school boards that take upon themselves the idea of what children should read and they legislate that. There’s also censorship more widely about what people can do in their private lives: who they can love, for example; whether or not women have rights to their own bodies. This is the kind of legislation and these are the kinds of issues that are still with us. And sometimes, they form in different ways. I’m not sure a woman’s right to choose was on the boards at that particular time. Women had only just gotten the right to vote. But in point of fact, women were very much part of what was going on. Because suddenly in 1925, as now, the world seemed to be changing, and the question of who decides what the direction of the country should be was really what’s at stake.”

– Brenda Wineapple, distinguished author of seven books who is widely celebrated as a literary artist. The New York Times named her book The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson one of the ten best nonfiction works of 2019, while Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848 to 1877 was recognized as a best book of the year by The New York Times and other publications in 2013. Brenda’s literary works have been honored with numerous awards, including the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship. She has also received three National Endowment Fellowships, including its Public Scholarship Award.