Describe the ways in which the Scopes Monkey Trial was symbolic of the larger debate raging in society between "modernity and tradition."

The Scopes Hearing, popularly named to as The System of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and generally referred to as Scopes Monkey Court, had been an American prosecution in July 1925 during which a high school instructor, John T. Scopes, was charged with breaching Tennessee's Butler Act, which had rendered it illegal to educate human development at any government-funded classroom.

The court was purposely designed to draw attention to the tiny town of Dayton, Tennessee where it took place. Scopes was uncertain as to if he had once personally learned science, but he deliberately perjured himself because the trial would have a complainant.

The trial highlighted the Fundamentalist – Modernist dispute that put Modernists, who claimed development was not incompatible with religion, against Extremists, who argued that the God's word as expressed in the Scriptures took precedence over all rational awareness.