Coming to Faith, Coming to Science: Lula Pace, Ethos Strategies, and Demarcation in a Pre-Scopes Evolution Controversy

ABSTRACT

Lula Pace (1868–1925), a Texas Baptist science professor, ultimately weathered an antievolution campaign that roiled her denomination. Responding to this controversy, Pace engaged in demarcation (that is, discursive boundary-work) regarding the relationship of science and religion. Pace employed ethos strategies that blended the scientist’s supposedly gender-neutral expertise, the engaged educator’s concern for students, and the sincere Christian’s exercise of those individual freedoms privileged in Baptist tradition. This blended ethos highlights how scientific expertise and religious identity may serve as resources for developing a personal rhetoric to negotiate diverse community values and how ethos strategies depend upon demarcation.

Notes

1. I thank RR reviewers Emily Cope and Michael Zerbe for their generous feedback. Special thanks to my colleague, Michael-John DePalma, for reading an early draft and to Lisa Mastrangelo, Coretta Pittman, and Lisa Shaver for their tireless support. Thanks to several Baylor University groups: the Texas Collection, the Institute for Oral History, and the Christ and Nature discussion group. Finally, thanks to Elise Verzosa Hurley and those at RR for this article.

2. For example, in 1920, Martin attacked Wake Forest University President William Poteat (Marsden 319). Beyond the Baylor case, Ronald Numbers describes additional such incidents (48).

3. Patricia Ward Wallace provides an engaging biographical overview of Pace (116-20).

4. A professional geology association at the end of the nineteenth century had higher requirements for women who desired membership (Rossiter 83). In addition to botany, Pace regularly taught introductory and special topics geology courses. One student, William Robert “Bob” Poage, recalled taking from her “a military course. Dr. Pace taught a course on the military geography of Northern France” (55). Poage served in the Texas legislature from 1925-1937 and the U.S. House of Representative from 1937-1978, and he made donations to Baylor in memory of Pace.

5. That year, Bryan gave an antievolution address at the Waco Auditorium. While the auditorium manager was no fundamentalist, Gussie Oscar capitalized on controversies and popular sentiments (for example, booking Black musician Jules Bledsoe and screening Birth of a Nation) (Wallace 164-65).

6. The developmental perspective does not necessarily suggest the kinds of racial hierarchies prevalent in the broader evolution debate. Prominent scientists accepted a biological basis for racialist hierarchies and eugenics, including AAAS committee on evolution members and Coulter (Pavuk; Rodgers). Likewise, white supremacist assumptions informed Norris’s wide-ranging attacks (Hankins 161-70).

7. U.S. federal funding for research on gun-related injuries and deaths has long been restricted—illustrating the implications of boundary-work for science.

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T J Geiger

T J Geiger II is an assistant professor of English at Baylor University. He teaches courses in rhetoric, spiritual writing, persuasive writing, creative nonfiction, and technical writing. His research centers on religious rhetorics and feminist rhetorics in both contemporary and historical contexts. His work has appeared in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, College English, Composition Studies, Peitho, and elsewhere. His current book project focuses on enclave deliberation within evangelicalism in light of the #MeToo movement. He also helps facilitate a veterans’ writing group. He can be reached at [email protected].