“A visit to a Kentucky replica of Noah’s Ark reveals as much about politics as it does about a faith built around certainty.”

“When we arrived at the Ark Encounter, just a few minutes after it opened for the day, the parking lot was already full. We sat and watched families wander from their cars — many with license plates from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin still crusted in ice and salt — to purchase tickets and board buses that would shuttle them to the ark.

“My husband and I had been in high spirits on the hour-long drive from Louisville, listening to music and pointing out bands of deer grazing in the fields on either side of the highway. Northern Kentucky is a landscape of in-betweens: not quite hilly or flat; neither wholly southern or midwestern. The land itself, in mid-February, seemed to hover between seasons: the yellow winter grass was crisp with frost, while the morning’s sun was so warm I didn’t need a coat.

“A 500-foot-long replica of Noah’s Ark might seem strange anywhere, but this monument to certainty felt especially out of place in this particular place, where nothing seemed quite settled. In the parking lot, a stony silence settled over us as we watched large families — some wearing suspenders, trim white bonnets, or long denim skirts — climb out of their minivans and church buses and stretch their limbs.”

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