Hobby Lobby president visits state

FORT SMITH -- About 500 people turned out Friday to hear Hobby Lobby President Steve Green speak at the mayor's annual prayer breakfast, but candidates for top Arkansas offices turned out to see the crowd.

Showing up at the 43rd annual Mayor's Prayer Breakfast at the Fort Smith Holiday Inn were gubernatorial candidates Democrat Mike Ross and Republican Asa Hutchinson; Republican senatorial candidate 4th District U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton; Republican attorney general candidate Leslie Rutledge of Little Rock; and Republican lieutenant governor candidate 2nd District U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin.

They circulated among the attendees fueling up on scrambled eggs and biscuits and gravy, shaking as many hands as they could before the program began.

For the candidates, the 6:15 a.m. prayer breakfast was the first stop in a long day of campaigning.

"You don't stop campaigning," Hutchinson said, adding he had a few stops to make in Fort Smith after the breakfast before heading back to Little Rock for an evening event.

Ross spent Friday morning in Fort Smith and Greenwood in south Sebastian County before going to Fayetteville in the afternoon and then back to Little Rock. On Thursday, he said, he spent the day in Mountain Home and Jonesboro.

Rutledge said she attended Friday's prayer breakfast to show her support to the community and told Green and other business leaders that, if elected attorney general, she would defend their right to exercise their religious liberty within their businesses.

"Arkansas needs an attorney general that will join cases and file friends of the court briefs in cases such as Hobby Lobby to defend our religious freedoms," she said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month in a case brought by the Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts giant that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance coverage for contraception under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom.

Green didn't mention the ruling during his 30-minute speech. Others, such as Cotton, praised the Green family for living their faith and standing up for their religious convictions in challenging the Obama administration in court.

Hutchinson said he and Arkansans supported Green in standing up against what he called "the most powerful and intrusive laws we have seen in our country."

"I was down in east Arkansas yesterday and I just mentioned to the crowd that I was coming to hear the CEO of Hobby Lobby and they broke out in applause," he said.

Green, whose company grew from a 600-square-foot store in Oklahoma City in the 1970s to one with $3.7 billion in projected sales this year, talked about the family's reliance on God to make the business prosper and its support of several religious ministries.

He also talked about plans for a Bible museum in Washington, D.C., which he said he hopes to open near the National Mall in 2017.

He said he plans to fill the museum with 40,000 biblical artifacts he has spent $30 million accumulating over the past five years.

"We probably are more ignorant of this book than we've ever been in this country because we don't teach it in our schools as we used to," he said.

Religion aside, he said, the book has influenced our world.

"We should know about it," he said.

Hobby Lobby

NW News on 07/19/2014

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