A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan by Michael Kazin (Progressive Era, Politics, Religion)

A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan 

by Michael Kazin 

Progressive Era
Politics
Religion

Thesis:

While the legacy of William Jennings Bryan is mixed, the author argues for his impact as a moral crusader and brilliant turn of the century orator who rewrote the rules of politics.
Bryan was never elected into office, in fact he seldom held an office except a stint as Secretary of State. He was a beloved politician but failed to negotiate the field well enough to gain election.
An ardent Christian, he fought against big business, seeing himself as Jeffersonian by principle, honoring the average man.

Specific examples/evidence that supports the thesis:

Summary:
Bryan focused his education and career around becoming an incredible orater, this brought him into law. He enjoyed the court room 

What does this tell us about Religion in the Progressive Era-WWI?
In 1925 the Scopes trial, Bryan prosecuted a substitute teacher for teaching evolution in class. The trial was widely discussed as religion in education was a contentious issue. Bryan was actually called to the stand by the defense and had to defend his belief that the bible was factual despite the scientific questions it brings up. In the late nineteenth century, the second great awakening spurring a huge movement toward religiosity from most American people, in the Scopes trial you can observe this being phased out as people began to see industrial and capitalist growth bringing about increased quality of life for the average person.
The author also felt that after Bryan passed on, the fundamentalist Christian right took a huge hit, they lost their spokesperson and their leader in politics. They wouldn't find another for a long time.

What does this tell us about Politics in the Progressive Era-WWI?

Bryan spoke to the people. People loved him. He made a living giving speeches and sometimes multiple in one day. He had a huge amount of fans and one might expect this to translate into support for candidacy, so why then did Bryan fail to get elected to president of the US 3 times? Bryan was passionate and refused to back down on his moral convictions, this often meant he couldn't get funding or support from any big business. In his first run for President, companies said that if he were elected they would be forced to lay off a significant part of their labor force because of Bryan's support of lifting tariffs. It also seems that his religious fervor was not always well accepted by the voters.
Bryan's passionately conducted, self-written, brilliant speeches changed how politics was done. He was the inspiration behind

What parts of the book can be applied to lectures?

General Thoughts:

Bryan's argument against teaching Darwin in school was more around the social implications of the theory that were prominent at the time. As promoter of peaceful resolution to problems and a man who wanted his country to avoid war, he saw the way Darwinism was being used to justify violence in the world and did not want that perpetuated and given more merit by being taught to children. He also, obviously, disapproved of how Darwinism discounted the bible's story of creation but that was only part of his argument.

Excerpts from Book Reviews: 

My Highlighted Passages: 

But in the mid-1890s, most Americans assumed that wealth consisted largely of products that were tangible and visible—crops, livestock, iron, coal, textiles, real estate. When calamity struck, they naturally fell to arguing whether the fault lay in a surplus or shortage of the shiny commodities, or specie, on which their dollars were based. Because creditors, industrialists, and the Bank of England favored gold, ordinary Americans who resented their power, and often found it mystifying, rallied to the promise of free silver. They were groping for a flexible currency, tailored for a fast-growing economy, but they trafficked in the argot of conspiracy.

But his immediate task was to flesh out the assault on corporate wealth, to turn the Democrats’ new power into a boon for the majority of American voters who either earned wages or owned a farm or other small business.

What ensued was the greatest rush of reform legislation in U.S. history until the New Deal, one inspired by Bryan’s speeches and the party platforms he’d been drafting since 1896.

he recoiled at any research in biology or geology that denied the supernatural. The acceptance of such work, he believed, opened the door to every manner of immoral behavior, from defiance of the Volstead Act to a lust for war. 34 Surprisingly, he could cite two influential disciples of Darwin to back up his fears. Early in the Great War, Vernon Kellogg, a Stanford professor who wrote widely about evolution, spent several weeks with German scientists who had become officers on the kaiser’s general staff.

democracy. Taxpayers should prevent the public schools they financed from teaching “atheism, agnosticism, Darwinism, or any other hypothesis that links man in blood relationship with the brutes.” Nonbelievers were free, of course, to say whatever they liked in their own private schools, just as Christians did in their sectarian institutions. But the public schools, free and open to any child, should refrain from promoting either a single faith or none at all. Wasn’t that the American way?