One hundred years ago, a public high school teacher stood trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching human evolution. His nation is still feeling the reverberations today.
The law books record it as State of Tennessee v. John T. Scopes. History remembers it as the " Monkey Trial ." The case ballooned into a national spectacle, complete with a courthouse showdown between a renowned, agnostic defense attorney and a famous fundamentalist Christian politician who defended the Bible on the witness stand.
In a sweltering, pre-air conditioning courtroom, the trial became a linchpin for a tense debate that wasn't just a small-town aberration.
"This is a broad-based culture war of which the Scopes trial is just one place lightning struck," says James Hudnut-Beumler, professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Today, new state laws requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms are facing legal challenges. As the Supreme Court leans right, there is an ongoing conservative push to infuse more religion - often Christianity - into taxpayer-funded education. Advocates of religious diversity and church-state separation are countering it in capitols, courts and public squares.