WASHINGTON — For the family behind Hobby Lobby, fighting the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptives mandate all the way to the Supreme Court was a calling, not a choice.
Since the company’s creation in 1972, Christianity has infused the culture of the chain of craft shops, dictating everything from its hours of operation to the choice to remain privately controlled.
“We believe wholeheartedly that it is by God’s grace and provision that Hobby Lobby has been successful,” David Green, the company’s chief executive and founder, said in September 2012, announcing the company’s plans for a lawsuit. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”
Mr. Green, the son of two Oklahoma pastors, turned to retail while his siblings flocked to the ministry. He rose through the ranks of the five-and-dime chain TG&Y, then started Hobby Lobby in Oklahoma City with a $600 loan. He used that money to buy a frame chopper, and, on the family’s kitchen table, he made miniature picture frames with his wife and sons doing most of the gluing.
Within three years, Mr. Green’s company had $150,000 in annual sales. Now, Hobby Lobby has $3 billion in yearly revenues, with nearly 600 stores across 47 states. The company, which employs more than 13,000 workers, donates a tenth of its profits to charity and carries little debt.
Christianity is pervasive at its stores, which are open 66 hours a week, play evangelical music and close on Sundays. Mr. Green has said that Hobby Lobby has no Christian requirement for its workers, but that it sets “a positive environment that happens to be based on biblical principles.” Full-time employees earn a minimum of $15 an hour.
Hobby Lobby’s fight against the contraceptive coverage mandate is not the first example of the company’s culture clashing with secular America.
“They don’t see their secular and their spiritual life as bifurcated. They see it as intertwined,” said Rob Hoskins, president of the OneHope ministry and friend of the Greens.
In the mid-1990s Mr. Green, displeased with how local newspapers were writing about Christian holidays, took out Christmas and Easter ads in newspapers across the United States, spreading the message of his beliefs and referring readers to a toll-free help line for spiritual help.
The ads angered some who accused the retail chain of mixing religion with business. One person even sent a bomb threat emblazoned with the image of Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people when he detonated a truck bomb at an Oklahoma City federal building in 1995.
For a company with roots in Oklahoma, the response was chilling. But its leaders were not deterred, and have gone on to make promoting Christianity a central part of their business. Affiliated companies, also run by the family, sell furniture and Christian educational supplies.
“There is no getting around the fact that Jesus offends some people,” Mr. Green wrote in “More Than a Hobby,” his book about the business. “Nevertheless, he is too important in my life for me to cower in fear of mentioning his name.”
That sentiment also applies to Steve Green, who is Mr. Green’s son and Hobby Lobby’s president, who is planning the construction of a Bible museum near the National Mall in Washington for his multimillion-dollar collection of ancient Bibles, Torahs and religious manuscripts. With plans to open in 2017, the museum will feature 40,000 ancient biblical texts, including private collections of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a New Testament papyrus from the second century A.D.
His 72-year-old father, who according to Forbes data is worth more than $5 billion, has also been a benefactor to Christian causes, famously aiding the troubled Oral Roberts University with more than $70 million in 2007. “Hobby Lobby is an extension of the Green family,” said Mark Rutland, who took over as the university’s president in 2009. “He sees the purpose of holding Hobby Lobby as a closely held company to extend his personal mission.”
It is not a mission that some of his former employees completely embrace. Rebecca Lynch, who worked as a cashier for Hobby Lobby in Warner Robins, Ga., in 2012, said that while she considered herself to be a religious Christian, she was disappointed with the court’s decision. She needs to take one of the types of birth control that the company will no longer have to cover and said she would not be able to afford it without insurance.
“If I were working there right now and they weren’t able to pay for it, I might not be able to get the medicines I needed,” Ms. Lynch, 22, said. “It’s good that they are fighting for religious rights, but at the same time, if you need the medicine and you can’t get it, sometimes you have to move on.”
As for the Greens, they believe their prayers have been answered.
Said Barbara Green, David Green’s wife, “We are truly thankful for a decision that allowed us to continue to run our family business according to our principles.”