Columbia University professor ( an adjunct professor in the Writing Program at School of the Arts) Brenda Wineapple’s goal in writing Keeping the Faith (faith in evolution) appears to be to present William Jennings Bryan (and creationists in general) in the worst possible light. Consistent with this, she also strives to present evolutionists (in this case, the atheist/agnostic Clarence Darrow in the best possible light. The author succeeds marvellously in achieving both. The author undertook an enormous amount of research, as evidenced by the 58 pages of references in her bibliography section. Sadly, her book is also widely successful, being rated number nine in its category on Amazon and earning 386 ratings, 92% of which are very positive and 22 reviews as at 14 July 2025. On Goodreads, the book has 710 ratings, 85% of which are very positive and 120 reviews as at 14 July 2025. It is in 721 libraries.

With so many people in the USA wedded to evolution including many who believe they are Christians, and the fact we are in the Biblical prophesied last days before Jesus returns when persecution of Christians escalates a Christian revival is unlikely. However, there is no doubt that God has given the USA a reprieve with the election of Donald Trump and the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk has seen a significant turning to God by university students and Gen Z.

Wineapple has cherry-picked thousands of pages to present William Jennings Bryan as a white supremacist—a position Bryan openly condemned in writing. She mentions Bryan in conjunction with the KKK fully 39 times, such as the claim that “Bryan from the pulpit preaches the domination of Christ; in politics, he practices Ku Kluxism and white domination, the bulwarks of which are lynching, murder, rape, arson, theft, and concubinage.” As one reviewer of Keeping the Faith stated: “Bryan gets a lot more attention [than Darrow] and it is mostly to denigrate him as a racist Christian fundamentalist … . She spends way too much time on the Ku Klux Klan when they do not figure at all in the Scopes Trial. They seem to be in the book because [she claimed] they align significantly with Bryan’s views, but Bryan was not in the KKK … . In fact, Bryan’s beliefs were over half a century ahead of the civil rights movement. In the magazine he edited, The Commoner, Bryan frequently wrote about his strong support for black civil rights. None of Bryan’s support for civil rights for blacks made it into Wineapple’s book!

Neither does she ever mention that all of the evidence the scientists submitted in support of evolution (which was included in the transcript of the trial) has been fully refuted. Piltdown Man has been exposed as a forgery. Java Man consisted of only a skull cap, a portion of femur and two teeth, not all of them closely associated with each other. The femur portion is indistinguishable from that of a gracile (‘modern’) human, or a robust human such as Homo erectus. The skull cap was more than once thought to be that of an extinct ape, but is now generally acknowledged to be that of a robust human, i.e., H. erectus, consistent with the teeth found.

ronically, Wineapple acknowledges that evolution is based on instances of damage to the DNA code, called ‘mutations’. Evolution teaches that humans are the result of billions of such genetic mistakes. However, most mutations are either deleterious or near-neutral. They do not add viable information, which is what evolution requires. Instead, many of those mutations that are not repaired (99.9% are repaired) cause diseases, including cancer. They do not take you from GOO to YOU.

Much information regarding the supreme value of academic freedom is covered by Wineapple, but she ignores the fact that, as a result of the Scopes Trial and its progenitive precedents, the American courts have ruled that it is illegal to present information against the evolutionary worldview and in favour of the creation worldview. Consequently, only information in favour of the evolutionary worldview and against the creation worldview can be taught without risking termination. This is not education, but indoctrination. Wineapple’s book serves to strongly support this one-sided brainwashing, which will significantly worsen the situation concerning the importance of academic freedom.