Here is what progs think of you....spoiler alert....it ain’t complimentary.

As anyone who has ever visited a Hobby Lobby knows, the bric-a-brac described below comprise perhaps 5% of floor space, since the overwhelming vast majority of merchandise in the store is devoted to craft and home hobby items.

Yet that detail aside, funny how an affinity for traditional conservative values horrifies them while people looting, ransacking and burning things are considered normal and acceptable activities.

quote:

To understand the culture of white evangelicals, look no farther than your nearest Hobby Lobby.

Owned by the wealthy evangelical Green family, Hobby Lobby has donated tens of millions of dollars to evangelical outreach and charity work. (Its most prominent evangelistic enterprise is the newly constructed Museum of the Bible, which has been in the news of late for its purchase of illicit artifacts.) The corporation has also flexed its political muscle in recent years, waging a successful legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate. But the big box store’s significance to the evangelical world isn’t primarily due to its religious and political activism. Rather, Hobby Lobby has long served as the beloved purveyor of white evangelical culture.

Greeting visitors just inside the doors of any Hobby Lobby are racks of Christian books. Christian publishing has played a key role in shaping evangelical ideals, and with the decline of brick-and-mortar Christian bookstores, Hobby Lobby has stepped into the market, selling an assortment of Bibles (including the conservative ESV Study Bible), books by members of the Green family, and titles penned by representatives of the conservative evangelical world: Franklin Graham...

Women outnumber men in American evangelicalism, and it is quickly apparent that Hobby Lobby caters to its female clientele. Shelves are stocked with decorative items emblazoned with Bible verses. One section of the store, however, has a decidedly masculine feel. Gone are the sparkles and soft pink hues. Instead, one finds an impressive assortment of decorative cowboy paraphernalia: a cowboy figurine kneeling beside his horse at the foot of a rugged cross, another wearing spurs and holding a six-shooter, an array of fake longhorn skulls, a cross wrapped in a bandana, and a small sign bearing an inspirational John Wayne quote. Additional shelves are stocked with wall décor celebrating the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment, and others emblazoned with Ronald Reagan quotes (“If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”) There are also plaques celebrating each branch of the U.S. military, soldier bobbleheads, and assorted army figurines.

The whiteness of the Hobby Lobby masculine ideal is everywhere apparent. Aside from a couple of hackneyed Native American figurines in the cowboy aisle, the masculine hero of the evangelical world is a white man. Mythical cowboys hark back to an era when white men brought order through violence. An aisle over, patriotic wall signs proclaim: “Kneel for the Lord, Stand for the Flag.” (Unlike Tim Tebow, Colin Kaepernick is no hero to white evangelicals.) In the law enforcement section, “thin blue line” American flag wall canvases come adorned with various Bible verses promising divine protection. (The blue line, of course, symbolizes the line that keeps society from descending into violence, and the flag itself has become a symbol wielded in defense of police and in opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement.)

Evident throughout this section is the glorification of violence. Not only are there multiple decorative items celebrating guns and gun culture (“God, Guns & Guts Made America Free—Let’s Keep It That Way”), but also several conveying thinly veiled threats: a “welcome” sign festooned with two six-shooters; another similarly adorned with six-shooters, bullet cartridges; and a warning that “We Don’t Call 911.” A metal plaque declares: “This Home Protected by the 2nd Amendment,” and another advises: “If you don’t stand behind our troops feel free to stand in front of them.”

Purchasers will no doubt insist that these threats are tongue-in-cheek, but the militancy running through the evangelical masculine ideal is undeniable, particularly when juxtaposed with the soft, inviting evangelicalism marketed elsewhere in the store.

From their pulpits and through their political messaging, religious leaders such as James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Mark Driscoll promoted this rugged and at times merciless model of Christian manhood, but it was largely through evangelical popular culture that the ideal shaped the hearts and minds of ordinary believers. Evangelicals watched movies, attended conferences, and purchased millions of books promoting a vision of manhood where Christian men didn’t flinch from violence in defense of faith and family.

White evangelicals often deride “identity politics,” but their own cultural identity—and the gender ideals at the heart of that identity—dictate their political allegiances. Evangelical support for Trump was never merely transactional. Militant white masculinity binds evangelicals to the politics of the Trump administration, and this affinity explains why evangelical support for the president has remained largely impervious to critique, and why so many evangelicals are unable to see the fundamental contradictions between their political convictions and the faith they purport to believe....