As reported in the New York Times on December 29, 2015, Vonette Zachary Bright, an important Evangelical leader, has died at age 89. She was born in 1926, the daughter of a farmer in Cowetah, Oklahoma. She received a bachelor’s degree in home economics from Texas Woman’s University, and went on to a master’s degree in education from the University of Southern California (definitely a step up). Subsequently she wrote a dozen books. It strikes me that she was born one year after the so-called “monkey trial” in Dayton, Tennessee, when a schoolteacher was tried for teaching evolution in defiance of state law. The trial, written up by H.L. Mencken, turned into a historic battle about the veracity of the Bible between Clarence Darrow, the famous defense attorney, and William Jennings Bryan, an equally famous Evangelical politician, who spoke on behalf of the prosecution. Bryan’s public humiliation in this debate was a turning point in the history of American Evangelicals, who retreated for several decades into a subculture despised by the cultural elite. Vonette Bright’s life span saw not just one but several changes in that turbulent history. This invites reflection.
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