The ideas and doctrines of Fundamentalism were codified and preached by urban Protestants, yet the public during the 1920s and later the movement to the more "backward" and rural parts of the nation. H.L.Mencken, the acerbic newspaperman and editor of the American Mercury, was one of the many reporters who covered the trial of John T. Scope in Dayton, Tention. Mencken's report, "The Hills of Zion," was widely read and helped t o establish this viewpoint. "In the big cities of the Republic, despite the endless efforts of consecrated men, [evangelical Christianity] is laid up with a wasting disease," Mencken wrote. "Even in Dayton . . . [the] nine churches of the village were all half empty on Sunday, and weeds choked their yards. He went on to elaborate upon the squalor and ignorance or the people he encountered...