Missouri’s GOP still mention Creationism in the party platform. We visited Branson’s ‘Creation Experience Museum’ to find out why

Art by Teddy Rosen

Did you know the Missouri Republican Party remains one of the only state GOP affiliates that features a mention of creationism?

Though it remains a part of the 2024 party planks that gave way for President Donald Trump to unsurprisingly win Missouri in the Electoral College, mere mention of creationism at this point in our collective history as a society is disquieting and raw.

Missouri’s primary election is on August 4. While the deeply progressive congressional districts around Kansas City and St. Louis face tumultuous elections that could define the fate of politics for Missouri’s left-wing for years to come, my alarm rests on how far Republicans have gone in recent years to win the praise of their congressional districts. One way to examine that is through the Republican Party itself, and what it envisions: Conservative policies, calls for strong national and state borders, restrictions on transgender youth and adults, and a return to “Christian values.”

Those “Christian values” include heterodoxy over critical issue areas: public education, public health and safety, the welfare state, the size of the bureaucracy, and whether to trust experts and settled facts about science, culture, and humanity. Frankly put, the midterm elections remind us that Missouri’s socio-political shift to the fringes of the far-right is made possible by those who claim Christian values but act contrary to scripture and most depictions of the Jesus Christ figure.

The Missouri GOP platform doesn’t explicitly state that they endorse the teaching of creationism as a statewide educational policy. Under the “Freedom” section of the state GOP’s platform, the position they stand for is “[e]mpowering local school districts to determine how best to handle the teaching of creationism and the theory of evolution.” While not an explicit endorsement, the mere mention of it is telling, as I’ve presented throughout. The platform’s suggestion that local school districts should have the power to decide how to handle the teaching of creationism and evolutionary science is an implicit position that invites doctrinal harm and constitutional tension.

In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) found that a law adopted by the state of Louisiana at the time, the Louisiana Creation Act of 1981, violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The Establishment Clause prevents the government from endorsing a preferred religion over others. The case, Edwards v. Aguillard, dealt with whether the Louisiana Creation Act was constitutionally justified to require the teaching of evolution and creationism in science classes.

This was a bridge too far for the high court. An overwhelming majority of the justices found that mandating science teachers to teach so-called “creation science” in public schools while the job is to teach actual scientific theory was unconstitutional. It isn’t to say that creation science and creationist theories can’t be taught; rather, they should be taught in courses related to social studies, history, philosophy, or world religions. Missouri’s present-day politicians overlook this.

If you consider this shift further, you can account for the resurgence of Christian nationalism that calls for a return to supposed biblical values and preferred interpretations of Christendom, Christology, and relationships to the state as an institution. Missouri is home to a large concentration of conservative Christian denominations and adherents. In Springfield, the Assemblies of God hold headquarters for their global organization. The doctrine AG’s follow is a very literalist theology that notes that the Holy Bible “accurately communicates God’s creation.”

To experience this systematic sentiment of “creation science” and the accompanying viewpoints, I visited the Creation Experience Museum near the Christian tourism hotspot and family entertainment hub of Branson, Missouri. The museum, founded by Dr. Rod Butterworth, attempts to apply so-called scientific rigor to confirming the teachings of the Holy Bible. Dr. Butterworth, of note, holds no formal education in applicable fields like archaeology, geology, or anthropology. He only has advanced degrees in biblical studies. Butterworth retired as museum leader in 2022, and a leadership team, led by Curtis Baker, the other co-founder and current president, remains at the helm. It is an operation found in a small building visible from south-bound U.S. Highway 65, but is overtaken by the overwhelming size of the Branson Cross.

The Branson Cross, individually, is an ostentatious and pretentious cruciform structure built by a so-called “visionary,” Kerry Brown, on behalf of his father, Dean Brown. Kerry Brown has said to media outlets, including Ozarks First, that his father was given a “God-given” vision for such a giant cross decades prior to its construction and completion. That’s besides the point. I point to the Branson Cross monument because it sets an environmental tone upon entering the parking lot of the Creation Experience Museum. Once I parked in the gravel parking lot, there were several multi-person vans and cars with license plates from as far as New Mexico. Tours are free, and I was able to secure a same-day walkthrough an hour before my arrival. I locked up my Buick in the car park and walked into a reception area with three young 20-somethings behind the desk.

I was greeted by the receptionist, who asked for my name and reservation time. I gave him all the requested information, and I was invited to have a seat on some benches in a waiting area or to walk around their tiny bookstore of materials about the museum, creationism, the organization’s interpretation of Christianity, and an array of “evidence-based” books about culture war topics.

Informed that the wait was about 10 minutes, I browsed the bookstore. I couldn’t help but laugh in disgust. I picked up a small “pocket guide” book succinctly titled Social Issues: What Does the Bible Say About Morality? The book was published in 2021 by the biblical literalist ministry Answers in Genesis (AiG). Founded by Australian immigrant Ken Ham, AiG is the gargantuan nonprofit ministry that owns and operates the Ark Encounter theme park in the small Kentucky city of Williamstown—roughly 45 minutes south of Cincinnati, Ohio. While there is a large body of journalistic and academic work refuting Ham’s claims and the pseudoscience of AiG, Ham is a prolific YouTube content creator who tries to “respond” and “fact-check” critics in the media. For example, Ham recently posted a video in response to a popular political columnist for Salon who linked his work to Christian nationalism and the pro-Trump insurrection on January 6, 2021.

Nevertheless, seeing this AiG book in the Creation Experience Museum’s bookstore was enough to validate what I have gotten myself into.

Refraining from the laugh I had initially, the museum guide attached to my group approached me, noticing my reaction to what I was reading. He then asked me, “Is that something you recognize?” I responded, “Oh, I am just looking around.” The guide noticed I wasn’t interested in speaking to him, so he went to go help another patron of the bookstore. I started flipping through the book, and it was replete with talking points popular with the far-right Christian nationalists who have won favor with the Trump administration and those in power. A section on “transgenderism,” a common dog whistle used by anti-trans extremists, is presented as an evil spiritual crisis, and gender fluidity is false—only the Holy Bible affirms the “gender binary” claim. I thought to myself, “There’s nothing binary in nature.” If you believe me or not, that is your hang-up, but my thought stands.

After a few more minutes of milling about and a break in the restroom, the tour guide whom I’ve decided to leave unnamed in this column played an introductory video prefacing the museum, its claims that the Holy Bible confirms science and that science confirms the Holy Bible, a few reminders about flash photography, and the tour began. I was not prepared for how amateurish the museum’s scientific “exhibits” were. We were allowed to take pictures with no flashes, and so I blended in by snapping shots of some choice displays.

One display was a diorama of a Native American figure fighting a pterodactyl. Another was a painting of a Christian medieval knight fighting some sort of bipedal dinosaur that was displayed in a viewing room where they showed AiG-produced “reenactments” of creation.

I contained myself and prepared for something I’ve never experienced before. For over an hour, I witnessed uninterrupted explanations of Earth’s natural history and a story of humanity’s origins that were built around the belief that evolution was inaccurate and that the Great Flood allegory in the Noah’s Ark story in the Old Testament accounts for species going extinct or surviving. As a journalist with multiple advanced degrees, never have I felt put in a situation where misinformation and Christian mythology were viewed as scientific dogma. I’m not a scientist, either, and I was raised in a conservative Catholic household growing up. This was frightening to see, including from the communicators of this information: the 20-somethings who met me at the reception of the museum and led the group of four people I was placed with to experience the tour. One thing I’ve done my best in my journalism is to be sure to highlight that I don’t scrutinize people for what they believe; I scrutinize what they do to others through acts of willful social harm and organized persecution in the name of their beliefs. The tour is Christian fundamentalism packaged as a display of family-friendly, Jesus Christ-approved natural history.

The most revealing observation came toward the end of the walkthrough, when our guide made a particularly telling remark. Explaining common ancestry and origins of humanity, the tour guide made an astounding claim: “Racism doesn’t exist.” The guide was trying to justify that humans are of the same species; therefore, racism isn’t an actual issue. He shared literalist interpretations of the Tower of Babel story from the book of Genesis. While most of the supposed “mainstream” young Earth creationists proclaim opposition to discrimination based on a person’s skin color, the interpretation of the Tower of Babel presented to me was laced with white supremacy. The Babel allegory tells of the supposed God figure punishing humans for building a tower to reach heaven.

As humans had a single language at this point in the Old Testament, God chose to confuse the speech and language of humans into different tongues and to force the distribution of people across the Earth. It was this allegory adopted by white segregationists along with the “Curse of Ham,” a misinterpreted Genesis story that precedes Babel. Both of these allegories were popular among pro-slavery clergy in the Old South and pro-segregationist clergy amid the Jim Crow era.

I don’t dismiss that this might not be the spoken intent of the tour guide, or really the belief of the ministry that runs the museum. But it is beliefs and interpretations like these that cause so much discord and disharmony as it relates to social issues in our society. In fact, this is still a derivative of both white supremacy and Christian supremacy agendas. The tour finally ended after the four of us were led through a dark hallway with neon-painted murals depicting space and the cosmos.

We all emptied back into the small bookstore where, again, the selection of books and souvenirs was all prominently displayed. I saw even more books published by AiG, Ken Ham, and other creationist ministries and authors. We were all thanked for our patronage, and then I returned to my car. Truly, I was in shock, and all I could do was laugh. It was not even a mocking laugh; it was a laugh that I let out after experiencing extreme discomfort.

Certainly, there is so much more to unpack.

I went through the tour and shared what happened to illustrate how Missouri is a stronghold of white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and extremism. While much has yet to be decided in this year’s election, the shift toward this political dogmatism is flagrant and duplicitous. I started researching this column earlier this summer—June 30, right as the conservative-led U.S. Supreme Court decided that state governments can ban transgender youth from competition in interscholastic sports. Every GOP member of the Missouri delegation to the House and the Senate praised the high court’s ruling.

Amid texts of anxiety and anger from my dear friends and colleagues, many trans and gender fluid, I realized things will only get better if all of us engage in resistance and activism, while showing solidarity with those who need it most. My experience at the Creation Experience Museum confirmed to me that we as people collectively witness very powerful beliefs, and many choose to believe them. That’s not the issue at hand, to me. The real problem is the echo chamber Missouri and the United States have become. Individuals face fear and ignorance in these spaces.

The Missouri Republicans’ continued accommodation of creationism reflects a broader political shift in which white Christian nationalism, anti-scientific thinking, and cultural fear increasingly shape the state’s public institutions and civic life.

There is no other way to put it, but we are truly living in a dark age made possible by the same ignorance and fear.

People can believe what they choose—this is the United States, and we all have First Amendment protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The difference between benign belief and flagrant ideological capture of the government is where the power to force people to live by your beliefs starts, and the role of clear dissent and advocating for secular pluralism ends. Secular cultures can protect religious liberty and belief. Christian and creationist supremacy, like what we still deal with as voters in Missouri, threaten our religious liberty and belief.

Please, dear readers, vote your conscience and stand by it.

Michael McGrady Jr is a political columnist for The Kansas City Pitch.