WHEN plans for the Museum of the Bible, which opens to the public in Washington, DC on November 18th, were first unveiled many predicted it would be a big, glossy advertisement for fundamentalist Christianity. The museum was founded and part-funded by Steve Green, a prominent evangelical and president of Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft shops that in 2014 persuaded the Supreme Court that it deserved a religious exemption from a requirement in Obamacare that employers provide their workers with certain contraceptives. Later that year Mr Green, who has said that the Bible is “a reliable historical document” tried, unsuccessfully, to insert a Bible course into public schools in Oklahoma City, where his company is head-quartered.
That did nothing to reassure those who worried that a privately-funded $500m Bible museum only three blocks from Capitol Hill would seek to press conservative evangelicals’ already-huge influence unduly. Nor did the institution’s original mission statement, which was to “inspire confidence in the absolute...Continue reading
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