Kaylee Cook is a first-year Ph.D. student at Princeton University and completed her master's degree at the University of Missouri in Columbia. She wrote her thesis about Eureka Springs history, centering around one landmark. Last month, Cook won the James L. Foster and Billy W. Beason Award for the Arkansas Historical Association for her work, titled "Big Jesus." Jack Travis has more on Cook's award-winning research into Christian tourism and far-right influence in the Ozarks.
Eureka Springs has a storied past. What once began as a small settlement advertising the healing properties of spring waters flowing from the hills eventually transformed into a regional destination. A little more than halfway through the 20th century, a man named Gerald Smith developed a hot spot for Christian tourism in the Ozark town, one that may look more at home in Rio de Janeiro.
Historian Kaylee Cook wrote her master's thesis at the University of Missouri on the history of a 60-foot statue that locals call Big Jesus.
“It refers to the Christ of the Ozarks statue in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. A notorious far-right figure named Gerald L.K. Smith built it there in 1966 and eventually expanded it into a large, successful Christian tourism enterprise.”
She says this created a dilemma for local residents because Smith had a reputation for hatred.
“Though Christian tourism provided much-needed economic revival. It also required collaboration, or at least association, with a very hateful, controversial figure. This eventual compromise between local residents and the far right, and their search for economic gain, creates the stark juxtaposition still seen in Eureka Springs — a well-known bright blue dot in the red sea of the Ozarks.”
Cook is from the Ozarks on the Missouri side. She says the contrast of Eureka Springs' alternative reputation with its staunchly religious tourism attraction intrigued her.
"I noticed that firsthand. I had traveled to Eureka Springs. I knew people there. Specifically, I knew people who were in the metaphysical business there, who are very much involved in this sort of new age, countercultural, progressive hippiedom in Eureka Springs. And that made sense for the town. It didn't really make sense for the Ozarks to me. It stood out. And I think Eureka Springs stands out to a lot of folks for that reason. It's been called a gay Mecca or an alternative oasis in the Ozarks. But those things make sense for the town when you're there. What didn't make sense was this big, stark white, 67-foot boxy Jesus statue jutting out above town. And so as a person, I was very curious about that. As a historian, I knew that I could hopefully better contextualize what that is."
Christ of the Ozarks founder Gerald Smith was relatively unknown to Cook before she started digging deeper.
“He is mentioned in histories of the far right and histories of 1940s and 1950s politics. Before coming to Eureka Springs, he spent decades building this far-right fringe — what he calls the Christian Nationalist Crusade. He is really shunned by the mainstream, sort of kicked out to this pretty irrelevant place on the political sphere.”
However, Smith wasn't just a right-leaning politician.
"Gerald Smith was a proud bigot. Proud Christian nationalist. This was well known. This was his career and people knew that. But economic incentive seems to have somehow allowed him this stage, this opportunity, this compromise."
After he builds the Christ of the Ozarks in 1966, he also starts live productions of the Great Passion Play, which is troublesome in its own right, as Smith added in his own brand of anti-Semitism.
“He revises the script to really highlight these anti-Semitic tropes. But the show is very popular regardless. And interestingly, again on this idea of compromise for local residents, many local residents are performing in the play."
During Gerald Smith's rise in Eureka, the area was becoming a place for people engaged in the back-to-the-land movement and homesteading in the Ozark hills. They were hippies from Smith's perspective. Yet Cook says that these so-called hippies protested the Passion Play in the day, then took to the stage at night.
"Why on earth would they be willing to endorse, support, or at the very least associate with a far-right figure who's notorious? It's not that they didn't know. They were very aware of his ideas and publications. He'd been very lambasted by the public. As you look at protest and pushback, you have to understand that it wasn't an easy compromise for most people, and it wasn't a desired outcome for most people, but it was seen as necessary to some for this economic revival. The Ozarks region was very impoverished, sparsely populated, late to be industrialized.”
And although this was changing with the rise of Walmart, Tyson and some major recreation projects across the region, Eureka still needed a boost. The city's first economic boom came from visitors searching for healing springs, so Cook says that tourism seemed like an easy way to revitalize the town.
"This makes sense for them. This makes sense. Again, besides the association, this seems like a necessary compromise, and a lot of the residents around Eureka Springs are living gig to gig. It's a very unsteady economy. And so Smith appears to be a really profitable addition to a lot of these weak streams of income, especially with the Passion Play. And they're taking up these roles — hundreds of them are taking part in the play. I've spoken with some of these people as I'm interviewing for this project. Many of them do not endorse Smith, at least now, or don't support him personally, but did really enjoy being in the Passion Play."
Cook says that we still see these compromises in modern-day Eureka Springs, but the Ozarks aren't unique. People all over the country make these kinds of compromises every day.
"And I think that's one of the important parts of this project is the present-day relevance. Thinking about compromise, thinking about collaboration, thinking about what becomes mainstream and how easily it becomes mainstream if there is something to be gained, or if the perception is that there's something to be gained. I don't think it's too surprising that I began this project in the fall of 2024, and was very interested to pinpoint what moral values otherwise progressive people were willing to forfeit in order to achieve perceived economic gain. So what will you do if you think you'll have lower gas prices? What will you do if you think you'll have cheaper groceries? Those questions are really influencing my own thought process as I was considering these local residents."
Kaylee Cook won the Arkansas Historical Association's James L. Foster and Billy W. Beason Award for her University of Missouri master's thesis, "Big Jesus: Christian Tourism and Far-Right Influence in the Arkansas Ozarks."
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