The Hills of Zion by H. L. Mencken


It was hot weather when they tried the infidel Scopes at Dayton, Tenn., but I
went down there very willingly, for I was eager to see something of evangelical

Christianity as a going concern. In the big cities of the Republic, despite the

endless efforts of consecrated men, it is laid up with a wasting disease. The
very Sunday-school superintendents, taking jazz from the stealthy radio, shake
their fire-proof legs; their pupils, moving into adolescence, no longer respond

to the proliferating hormones by enlisting for missionary service in Africa, bu
t
resort to necking instead. Even in Dayton, I found, though the mob was up to do

execution upon Scopes, there was a strong smell of antinomianism. The nine
churches of the village were all half-empty on Sunday, and weeds choked their
yards. Only two or three of the resident pastors managed to sustain themselves
by their ghostly science; the rest had to take orders for mail-order pantaloons

or work in the adjacent strawberry fields; one, I heard, was a barber. On the
courthouse green a score of sweating theologians debated the darker passages of

Holy Writ day and night, but I soon found that they were all volunteers, and
that the local faithful, while interested in their exegesis as an intellectual
exercise, did not permit it to impede the indigenous debaucheries. Exactly
twelve minutes after reaching the village I was taken in tow by a Christian man

and introduced to the favorite tipple of the Cumberland Range: half corn liquor

and half Coca-Cola. It seemed a dreadful dose to me, but I found that the Dayto
n
illuminati got it down with gusto, rubbing their tummies and rolling their eyes

I include among them the chief local proponents of the Mosaic cosmogony. They
were all hot for Genesis, but their faces were far too florid to belong to
teetotalers, and when a pretty girl came tripping down the main street, which
was very often, they reached for the places where their neckties should have
been with all the amorous enterprise of movie actors. It seemed somehow strange


An amiable newspaper woman of Chattanooga, familiar with those uplands,
presently enlightened me. Dayton, she explained, was simply a great capital lik
e
any other. That is to say, it was to Rhea county what Atlanta was to Georgia or

Paris to France. That is to say, it was predominantly epicurean and sinful. A
country girl from some remote valley of the county, coming into town for her
semi-annual bottle of Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, shivered on
approaching Robinson's drug-store quite as a country girl from up-State New Yor
k
might shiver on approaching the Metropolitan Opera House. In every village lout

she saw a potential white-slaver. The hard sidewalks hurt her feet. Temptations

of the flesh bristled to all sides of her, luring her to Hell. The newspaper
woman told me of a session with just such a visiter, holden a few days before.
The latter waited outside one of the town hot-dog and Coca-Cola shops while her

husband negotiated with a hardware merchant across the street. The newspaper
woman, idling along and observing that the stranger was badly used by the heat,

invited her to step into the shop for a glass of Coca-Cola. The invitation
brought forth only a gurgle of terror. Coca-Cola, it quickly appeared, was
prohibited by the country lady's pastor, as a levantine and Hell-sent narcotic.

He also prohibited coffee and tea --- and pies! He had his doubts about white
bread and boughten meat. The newspaper woman, interested, inquired about
ice-cream. It was, she found, not specifically prohibited, but going into a
Coca-Cola shop to get it would be clearly sinful. So she offered to get a sauce
r
of it, and bring it out to the sidewalk. The visitor vacillated --- and came
near to being lost. But God saved her in the nick of time. When the newspaper
woman emerged from the place she was in full flight up the street. Later on her

husband, mounted on a mule, overtook her four miles out the mountain pike.

This newspaper woman, whose kindness covered city infidels as well as Alpine
Christians, offered to take me back in the hills to a place where the old-time
religion was genuinely on tap. The Scopes jury, she explained, was composed
mainly of its customers, with a few Dayton sophisticates added to leaven the
mass. It would thus be instructive to climb the heights and observe the former
at their ceremonies. The trip, fortunately, might be made by automobile. There
was a road running out of Dayton to Morgantown, in the mountains to the
westward, and thence beyond. But foreigners, it appeared, would have to approac
h
the sacred grove cautiously, for the upland worshipers were very shy, and at th
e
first sight of a strange face they would adjourn their orgy and slink into the
forest. They were not to be feared, for God had long since forbidden them to
practice assassination, or even assault, but if they were alarmed a rough trip
would go for naught. So, after dreadful bumpings up a long and narrow road, we
parked our car in a little woodpath a mile or two beyond the tiny village of
Morgantown, and made the rest of the approach on foot, deployed like
skirmishers. Far off in a dark, romantic glade a flickering light was visible,
and out of the silence came the rumble of exhortation. We could distinguish the

figure of the preacher only as a moving mote in the light: it was like looking
down the tube of a dark-field microscope. Slowly and cautiously we crossed what

seemed to be a pasture, and then we stealthily edged further and further. The
light now grew larger and we could begin to make out what was going on. We went

ahead on all fours, like snakes in the grass.

From the great limb of a might oak hung a couple of crude torches of the sort
that car inspectors thrust under Pullman cars when a train pulls in at night. I
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the guttering glare was the preacher, and for a while we could see no on else.
He was an immensely tall and thin mountaineer in blue jeans, his collarless
shirt open at the neck and his hair a tousled mop. As he preached he paced up
and down under the smoking flambeaux, and at each turn he thrust his arms into
the air and yelled ``Glory to God!'' We crept nearer in the shadow of the
cornfield, and began to hear more of his discourse. He was preaching on the Day

of Judgement. The high kings of the earth, he roared, would all fall down and
die; only the sanctified would stand up to receive the Lord God of Hosts. One o
f
these kings he mentioned by name, the king of what he called Greece-y. The king

of Greece-y, he said, was doomed to Hell. We crawled forward a few more yards
and began to see the audience. It was seated on benches ranged round the
preacher in a circle. Behind him sat a row of elders, men and women. In front
were the younger folk. We crept on cautiously, and individuals rose out of the
ghostly gloom. A young mother sat suckling her baby, rocking as the preacher
paced up and down. Two scared little girls hugged each other, their pigtails
down their backs. An immensely huge mountain woman, in a gingham dress, cut in
one piece, rolled on her heels at every ``Glory to God!'' To one side, and but
half visible, was what appeared to be a bed. We found afterward that half a
dozen babies were asleep upon it.

The preacher stopped at least, and there arose out the darkness a woman with he
r
hair pulled back into a little tight knot. She began so quickly we couldn't hea
r
what she said, but soon her voice rose resonantly and we could follow her. She
was denouncing the reading of books. Some wandering book agent, it appeared, ha
d
come to her cabin and tried to sell her a specimen of his wares. She refused to

touch it. Why, indeed, read a book? If what was in it was true, then everything

in it was already in the Bible. If it was false, then reading it would imperil
the soul. This syllogism from the Caliph Omar complete, she sat down. There
followed a hymn, led by a somewhat fat brother wearing silver-rimmed country
spectacles. It droned on for half a dozen stanzas, and then the first speaker
resumed the floor. He argued that the gift of tongues was real and that
education was a snare. Once his children could read the Bible, he said, they ha
d
enough. Beyond lay only infidelity and damnation. Sin stalked the cities. Dayto
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itself was a Sodom. Even Morgantown had begun to forget God. He sat down, and a

female aurochs in gingham got up. She began quietly, but was soon leaping and
roaring, and it was hard to follow her. Under cover of the turmoil we sneaked a

bit closer.

A couple of other discourses followed, and there were two or three hymns.
Suddenly a change of mood began to make itself felt. The last hymn ran longer
than the others, and dropped gradually into a monotonous, unintelligible chant.

The leader beat time with his book. The faithful broke out with exultations.
When the singing ended there was a brief palaver that we could not hear, and tw
o
of them men moved a bench into the circle of light directly under the flambeaux

Then a half-grown girl emerged from the darkness and threw herself upon it. We
noticed with astonishment that she had bobbed hair. ``This sister,'' said the
leader, ``has asked for prayers.'' We moved a bit closer. We could now see face
s
plainly, and hear every word. At a signal all the faithful crowded up to the
bench and began to pray --- not in unison, but each for himself. At another the
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all fell on their knees, their arms over the penitent. The leader kneeled facin
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us, his head alternately thrown back dramatically or buried in his hands. Words

spouted from his lips like bullets from a machine-gun --- appeals to God to pul
l
the penitent back out of Hell, defiances of the demons of the air, a vast
impassioned jargon of apocalyptic texts. Suddenly he rose to his feet and began

to speak in the tongues --- blub-blub-blub, gurgle-gurgle-gurgle. His voice ros
e
to a higher register. The climax was a shrill, inarticulate squawk, like that o
f
a man throttled. He fell headlong across the pyramid of supplicants.

From the squirming and jabbering mass a young woman gradually detached herself
--- a woman not uncomely, with a pathetic homemade cap on her head. Her head
jerked back, the veins of her neck swelled, and her firsts went to her throat a
s
if she were fighting for breath. She bent backward until she was like half a
loop. The she suddenly snapped forward. We caught a flash of the whites of her
eyes. Presently her whole body began to be convulsed --- great throes that bega
n
at the shoulders and ended at the hips. She would leap to her feet, thrust her
arms in the air, and then hurl herself upon the heap. He praying flattened out
into a mere delirious caterwauling. I describe the thing discreetly, and as a
strict behaviorist. The lady's subjective sensations I leave to infidel
pathologists, privy to the works of Ellis, Freud and Moll. Whatever they were,
they were obviously not painful, for they were accompanied by vast heaving and
gurgling of a joyful and even ecstatic nature. And they seemed to be contagious
,
too, for soon a second penitent, also female, joined the first, and then came a

third, and fourth, and a fifth. The last one had an extraordinary violent
attack. She began with mild enough jerks of the head, but in a moment she was
bounding all over the place, like a chicken with its head cut off. Every time
her head came up a stream of hosannas would issue out of it. Once she collided
with a dark, undersized brother, hitherto silent and stolid. Contact with her
set him off as if he had been kicked by a mule. He leaped into the air, threw
back his head, and began to gargle as if with a mouthful of BB shot. Then he
loosed one tremendous, stentorian sentence in the tongues, and collapsed.

By this time the performers were quite oblivious to the profane universe and so

it was safe to go still closer. We left our hiding and came up to the little
circle of light. We slipped into the vacant seats on one of the rickety benches

The heap of mourners was directly before us. They bounced into us as they
cavorted. The smell that they radiated, sweating there in that obscene heap,
half suffocated us. Not all of them, of course, did the thing in the grand
manner. Some merely moaned and rolled their eyes. The female ox in gingham flun
g
her great bulk on the ground and jabbered an unintelligible prayer. One of the
men, in an interval between fits, put on his spectacles and read his Bible.
Beside me on the bench sat the young mother and her baby. She suckled it throug
h
the whole orgy, obviously fascinated by what was going on, but never venturing
to take any hand in it. On the bed just outside the light the half a dozen othe
r
babies slept peacefully. In the shadows, suddenly appearing and as suddenly
going away, were vague figures, whether of believers or of scoffers I do not
know. They seemed to come and go in couples. Now and then a couple at the
ringside would step out and vanish into the black night. After a while some cam
e
back, the males looking somewhat sheepish. There was whispering outside the
circle of vision. A couple of Model T Fords lurched up the road, cutting holes
in the darkness with their lights. Once someone out of sight loosed a bray of
laughter.

All this went on for an hour or so. The original penitent, by this time, was
buried three deep beneath the heap. One caught a glimpse, now and then, of her
yellow bobbed hair, but then she would vanish again. How she breathed down ther
e
I don't know; it was hard enough six feet away, with a strong five-cent cigar t
o
help. When the praying brothers would rise up for a bout with the tongues their

faces were streaming with perspiration. The fat harridan in gingham sweated lik
e
a longshoreman. Her hair got loose and fell down over her face. She fanned
herself with her skirt. A powerful old gal she was, plainly equal in her day to

a bout with obstetrics and a week's washing in the same morning, but this was
worse than a week's washing. Finally, she fell into a heap, breathing in great,

convulsive gasps.

Finally, we got tired of the show and returned to Dayton. It was nearly eleven
o'clock --- an immensely late hour for those latitudes --- but the whole town
was still gathered in the courthouse yard, listening to the disputes of
theologians. The Scopes trial had brought them in from all directions. There wa
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a friar wearing a sandwich sign announcing that he was the Bible champion of th
e
world. There was a Seventh Day Adventist arguing that Clarence Darrow was the
beast with seven heads and ten horns described in Revelations XIII, and that th
e
end of the world was at hand. There was an evangelist made up like Andy Gump,
with the news that the atheists in Cincinnati were preparing to descend upon
Dayton, hang the eminent Judge Raulston, and burn the town. There was an ancien
t
who maintained that no Catholic could be a Christian. There was the eloquent Dr

T. T. Martin, of Blue Mountain, Miss., come to town with a truck-load of torche
s
and hymn-books to put Darwin in his place. There was a singing brother bellowin
g
apocalyptic hymns. There was William Jennings Bryan, followed everywhere by a
gaping crowd. Dayton was having a roaring time. It was better than the circus.
But the note of devotion was simply not there; the Daytonians, after listening
a
while, would slip away to Robinson's drug-store to regale themselves with
Coca-Cola, or to the lobby of the Aqua Hotel, where the learned Raulston sat in

state, judicially picking his teeth. The real religion was not present. It bega
n
at the bridge over the town creek, where the road makes off for the hills.


From: Prejudices: Fifth Series. In its first form this was a dispatch to the
Baltimore Evening Sun, in July 1925. I wrote it on a roaring hot Sunday
afternoon in a Chattanooga hotel room, naked above the waist and with only a
pair of BVDs below.'' --- HLM

Text taken from The Vintage Mencken (ed. Alistair Cooke), pp. 153--161.
Typed 16 March1996 [CRS]

Source: [email protected]