One of America’s most famously
Christian businesses is amassing a vast collection of Biblical
antiquities. The problem is some of them may have been looted from the
Middle East.
In
2011, a shipment of somewhere between 200 to 300 small clay tablets on
their way to Oklahoma City from Israel was seized by U.S. Customs agents
in Memphis. The tablets were inscribed in cuneiform—the script of
ancient Assyria and Babylonia, present-day Iraq—and were thousands of
years old. Their destination was the compound of the Hobby Lobby
corporation, which became famous last year for winning a landmark Supreme Court case
on religious freedom and government mandates. A senior law enforcement
source with extensive knowledge of antiquities smuggling confirmed that
these ancient artifacts had been purchased and were being imported by
the deeply-religious owners of the crafting giant, the Green family of
Oklahoma City. For the last four years, law enforcement sources tell The
Daily Beast, the Greens have been under federal investigation for the
illicit importation of cultural heritage from Iraq.
These tablets,
like the other 40,000 or so ancient artifacts owned by the Green
family, were destined for the Museum of the Bible, the giant new museum
funded by the Greens, slated to open in Washington, D.C., in 2017. Both
the seizure of the cuneiform tablets and the subsequent federal
investigation were confirmed to us by Cary Summers, the president of the
Museum of the Bible.
From its founding in 1970, the Greens’ Hobby
Lobby chain has been more than simply a suite of craft stores. The
Greens have used it as a model of a business run on Christian values.
Stores are closed on Sundays in order to give employees time to attend
church. The company employs four chaplains, and offered a free health
clinic to staff at its headquarters long before free health care came
into political vogue. The Greens have also used the Hobby Lobby platform
to spread their Christian message far and wide: The company annually
places full-page ads celebrating—in their words— “the real meaning of
Christmas, Easter, and Independence Day” in newspapers across the
country.
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Source: The Daily Beast
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