Most Americans know Hobby Lobby as a craft store. Investigative journalist Michael Blanding says the bigger story is how the Green family has used the fortune behind the company to advance its understanding of the Bible in American law, culture, education, and politics.
Blanding joins Faithful Politics to discuss his new book, The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby. We trace the family’s rise from an Oklahoma craft business to the 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case, which held that closely held corporations could receive protections under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
We also examine the Museum of the Bible, the Green family’s controversial acquisition of antiquities, relationships with conservative Christian organizations, Dominionism, Christian nationalism, and Blanding’s reporting on the museum as a gathering place for religious and political networks in Washington.
The conversation asks a larger question running through Blanding’s book: what happens when sincerely held religious convictions are backed by billions of dollars and an effort to shape a pluralistic democracy?
BOOK
Book: The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby: Inside a Billionaire Family’s Quest to Craft a Christian Nation
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9781541703940
GUEST BIO
Michael Blanding is an investigative journalist and author whose work has appeared in The New York Times, WIRED, Smithsonian, Slate, The Nation, and other publications. He is the author of The Map Thief, In Shakespeare’s Shadow, and The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby, which examines the Green family’s religious, cultural, and political influence. Blanding is a former senior writing fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights and a former senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.
