On a humid afternoon in early July, I pulled into the parking lot of a nondescript warehouse just off Highway 65 in Springfield, Missouri. Flanked by a used luxury car dealership and organic food grocer to the west and a Sam’s Club wholesaler to the east, this was the 30,000 square foot home of Passages: Treasures of the Bible, a traveling exhibit comprised of a selection from evangelical business magnate Steve Green’s private collection of biblical artifacts. A Southern Baptist from Oklahoma and the president of the highly profitable craft store chain Hobby Lobby, Green has made headlines this year as chief litigant in the fight against the contraception mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Yet as consequential as the Hobby Lobby decision has been, Green’s footprint in American public life extends beyond the arenas of policy and law. Passages is one aspect of a larger effort to shape the very narratives Americans use to make sense of their lives, their faith, and their nation.
I grew up in Springfield, “the Queen City of the Ozarks,” in the southwestern corner of Missouri. I’ve never met Green or his family, but I recognize them in my own family and childhood community, in the people with whom I often disagree on matters of politics and religion but whom I love and admire for their faith and their convictions. It would be easy for many commentators to reduce Passages to the periphery of American culture, or to prop it up as a pivot point in the unrelenting culture wars. I had a hunch that this was bigger, of greater consequence, than a Hobby Lobby coattail. Still, I found something curious in the promotion of a “Founding Father’s Exhibit” on the Passages website and in the installation’s glossy presentation of academic credentials. Was this Sunday School or civics? Biblical scholarship or public history? Could it be both, and to what end? I had to find out.
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