19AR24-15

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AR 24:15 - The Museum of the Bible and its critics

In this issue:

BIBLICAL ANTIQUITIES - "how a personal belief system can infiltrate seemingly public institutions"

WITCHCRAFT - "inseparable from social justice advocacy"

Apologia Report 24:15 (1,423)

April 10, 2019

BIBLICAL ANTIQUITIES

Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby, by Candida R. Moss and Joel S. Baden [1] -- Choice (Apr '18) on the first paperback edition, scheduled for July: "The Museum of the Bible (which opened in Washington, DC, in November 2017) claims to be a nonsectarian museum that will not promote a particular religion and that will offer the Bible itself without commentary. Bible Nation suggests otherwise. Moss (theology, Univ. of Birmingham) and Baden (Yale Divinity School) look closely at the Green family (evangelical Christians who own Hobby Lobby and underwrote the museum), its massive collection of biblical manuscripts and the selective group of scholars who study and promote the collection, its promotion of Bible curricula in public schools, and the construction of the $500 million museum itself. It seems clear by the end of the book that Moss and Baden find the Museum of the Bible's claim to be nonsectarian untenable. The authors point out that Roman Catholics and Jews are associated with the museum, but most of the employees and board members are Protestant. They further argue that presenting the Bible without any commentary or some type of approach to it is impossible. They believe the Green's intentions are good, but they suggest that the way the museum presents itself and the way the museum actually is are quite different: in fact the family is using a huge private fortune to promote personal beliefs in a public space."

Reviews of the hardcover edition add further details. Kirkus (Aug '17 #1) notes that the authors "focus on the lawsuit filed by the Greens that reached the Supreme Court in 2014. The Greens, who have long been major funders of evangelical Christian initiatives, believed they possessed the right as business owners to ignore federal law requiring employers to cover the costs of contraceptives for employees. In a 5-4 decision, the justices sided with the Greens. The authors explain how the family arrived at their view of the prosperity gospel: due to their literal interpretations of the Bible and their generosity to evangelical Christian causes, God rewarded them with widespread business success. Patriarch David Green claimed that the legal battle occurred because the family could not abide abandoning religious beliefs to obey a provision of the federal government's Affordable Care Act, signed by President Barack Obama. The authors began their deep dive into the Green empire after becoming aware of the vast sums the family was spending to inject religion into school curricula, to collect rare biblical manuscripts, and to open a massive Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., which is currently under construction. Moss and Baden portray the Green family members and their key executives as sincere evangelicals and benevolent employers. Throughout the book, however, they also show the Greens as naïve or disingenuous. To be sure, the family's proselytizing is not neutral. Rather, they are promoting a historically inaccurate saga of the U.S. as an exclusionary Christian nation meant to marry church and state. An impressive monograph by two scholars well-positioned to examine the impact of religion on secular life."

Library Journal (Sep '17 #1) reports that the book builds on a 2016 article in The Atlantic <www.bit.ly/2U0PdFF> about Green's procurement of biblical antiquities. In the book, the authors "conduct a full investigation of how company founder David Green '... aspires to personal cosmic impact' by steering the populace toward conservative Christianity. ... This weighty tome is the first look into the heated academic debate over Hobby Lobby's activities aside from their pending judicial cases. Moss and Baden's meticulous research will stand up to the most rigorous scrutiny, as they manage to stay dispassionate without judgement. This book raises serious ethical questions, and the dense prose will be of most interest to researchers. VERDICT A scholarly work of investigative journalism that offers a troubling look into how a personal belief system can infiltrate seemingly public institutions through corporate means."

Publishers Weekly: "This thoroughly sourced and rigorously argued work raises troubling questions about the participation of the Green family (and their employees) in the global antiquities market; their attempts to import business practices, such as nondisclosure agreements, into educational research settings (thus hampering peer review); and their resistance to accepting that their own Christian nationalist vision is rooted in a Protestant understanding of the Bible. While depicting the Greens as well-intentioned, Moss and Baden make an impassioned case for fighting against the family's efforts to limit access to their questionably sourced collection and to misrepresent their work as nonsectarian when it is entrenched in a deeply American evangelical worldview. The antiquities (many of which were recently forfeited after federal prosecutors discovered they were smuggled out of Iraq) include Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets, Torah scrolls, papyri, a fragment of a copy of Paul's letter to the Romans from the third century, and rare fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, among others."

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WITCHCRAFT

"Witchcraft becomes a political stance - and a booming business" by Tara Isabella Burton (RNS, Feb 14 '19) -- "New Age spirituality is increasingly inseparable from social justice advocacy. 'Witchcraft' is no longer the fringe spiritual practice it once was but a political marker of resistance."

At Catland Books, an occult store in Bushwick, Brooklyn, you can "buy a zine about the ethics of cursing by Dakota Stalkfleet - aka Dakota Bracciale, the store's ... co-owner - that makes clear that curses may be used as the last resort of those without access to the criminal justice system. In other words, magic may be used to seek justice - or accountability, or plain influence - when the mainstream has failed or marginalized the practitioner.

"'Folk magik is what arms the poor, the downtrodden, and the outcast,' Stalkfleet writes.

"According to Stalkfleet, contemporary witch culture is a reflection of wider transitions in feminism. While the New Age movement of the 1960s and '70s tended to be largely white and geared toward a celebration of the 'divine feminine,' contemporary witchcraft is more concerned with tearing down gender divisions altogether.

"To the extent the female is celebrated at all, it is as a force to be wielded against the powers that be. ...

"While still far from being a majority religion, these objectors to the 'system' seem to be reaching some sort of critical mass.

"So while witchcraft/witch culture has become an anti-capitalist platform for #resistance, it has also become a highly marketable aesthetic. As Corin Faife wrote <www.bzfd.it/2IhVN8w> in his BuzzFeed essay 'How witchcraft became a brand,' the handicraft and vintage selling platform Etsy returns 28,000 results for the search term 'witchcraft.' The Instagram hashtag #witchesofinstagram yields a staggering 700,000 results." <www.bit.ly/2WPDQCq>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby, by Candida R. Moss and Joel S. Baden (Princeton Univ Prs, 2019, paperback: 252 pages) <www.amzn.to/2UxYM3t>

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