Investigative journalist Michael Blanding is out this week with a new book that contains a title and chapters replete with old tropes that have been parroted by antagonists of both Christianity and the retail giant for decades: “The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby: Inside a Billionaire Family’s Quest to Craft a Christian Nation.”
According to the Boston-based writer and his publisher, PublicAffairs, an imprint of Hachette Books, the story of Hobby Lobby is “disturbing” and the Blanding project “exposes the pivotal role the Green family has played in funding and empowering America’s dangerous, ascendant Christian nationalist movement.”
At the outset, let’s be perfectly clear: Strong and committed Christians like the Hobby Lobby founders are not using their resources to help put America over devotion to Jesus, which would be what “Christian nationalism” by definition would be. Instead, the Greens are simply, but quite profoundly, reinvesting profits from their stores into a wide variety of mission-oriented endeavors that emphasize and promote the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Over the years, Hobby Lobby has helped distribute Bibles all over the world while partnering with other ministries such as One Hope and Every Home for Christ and helping fund the YouVersion Bible app.
The varied ways in which the Greens have distributed their resources reflect not only their tremendous giving philosophy but also their earnestness for reaching as many people as possible who might otherwise not be introduced to the Gospel.
“From the very beginning, our purpose was to honor God in all that we did,” David Green has shared. “We worked hard, and God gave the results. As we were blessed by God, we saw it as a great privilege to give back. We’ve been able to provide hope through supporting ministries and planting churches all over the world.”
The Greens didn’t wait to give back until they had excess – they’ve given from the very beginning, even from the meager proceeds of a company that began on a $600 bank loan. According to reports, David Green is worth nearly $14 billion. Hobby Lobby stores generate upwards of $8 billion annually.
Over the years, journalists like Michael Blanding have contended that the Greens possess something of a Machiavellian toolbox of subversive tactics, that the arts and crafts store is a front for stealth and deceptive evangelical advocacy.
First of all, neither the Greens nor Hobby Lobby have been quiet regarding their Christian fervor. Walk into any store or listen to or read any interview, and they’re upfront and unapologetic when discussing their deeply held Christian convictions. In fact, David Green risked the entire company when he refused to comply with the federal government’s mandate under the “Affordable Care Act” (“Obamacare”) requiring employer health plans to cover abortifacients. In 2014, the Supreme Court narrowly ruled (5-4) in Hobby Lobby’s favor, a landmark case and monumental win for religious freedom.
In the new book, Blanding notes that the Greens have chosen to invest their dollars in a wide range of philanthropic organizations and projects. The Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., is the largest and most visible – and it’s all privately funded. The 430,000-square-foot facility is a stunning and inspiring facility that highlights the history, stories and impact of God’s Word.
Not surprisingly, Michael Blanding spends considerable time in his book calling out acquisition errors that the Museum has made over the years. These were mistakes made because they trusted the wrong people and didn’t originally exercise sufficient oversight in the process. The Greens and the Museum have returned those artifacts and changed how they evaluate and acquire new pieces for study and display.
The Greens have also contributed to scores of Christian schools and universities, churches, evangelical non-profits, Bible translation efforts and legal advocacy organizations that help to champion and preserve the very religious liberty that was almost taken from them in 2014.
Critics and cranks making wild claims about the Greens and Hobby Lobby using their own hard-earned dollars to spread the Good News are revealing far more about their own ignorance and bias than they are about the family and their convictions and motivations.
Serious Christians recognize they have an obligation to share their blessings. The ignorant may think believers simply give to their local church or that their faith is isolated and limited to a building or denomination. They don’t appreciate that our Christian faith follows us everywhere we go and should be a part of everything we do. That all-encompassing application might have been most famously summed up by Dutch theologian, journalist and statesman Abraham Kuyper, when he wrote: “There is not one square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!'”
This is what David Green was getting at recently when he wrote, “There’s a huge paradigm change between owning a company and stewarding it, and we want to be stewards of what God has given us.”
Blanding’s book isn’t only filled with wild claims and misleading accusations but also suffers from a poorly worded title: what’s inside isn’t the “Gospel According to Hobby Lobby” but rather tired tales according to Michael Blanding.
