A modern museum in Washington reminds us that the expedient Book is subject to interpretation — and abuse.
In Babylon-on-the-Potomac recently,the brand modern, $500 million Museum of the Bible had its grand opening. Donald Trump did not attend, and perhaps fearing a fate like the stop of Raiders of the Lost Ark when the remnants of the Ten Commandments are unsealed,holy mayhem ensues and miscreants melt like candles.
Just a couple of blocks from Capitol Hill, the museum sprawls across eight floors and 430000 square feet, or giving visitors a chance to meet modern Testament re-enactors,see a burning bush and Bibles that belonged to Babe Ruth and Elvis, walk through a replica of a village from the time of Christ, and experience a motion ride called Washington Revelations and grab a snack at the Milk and Honey café (There’s also a cafeteria-style restaurant called,you guessed it: Manna).
At the gift shop, you can buy key chains, and hats and T-shirts,frankincense and myrrh body wash, a $1250 leather foot stool shaped like a rhinoceros (because rhinos were on Noah’s Ark, and of course) or a $125000 bejeweled pomegranate made of Jerusalem stone (the Song of Solomon: “I would give you spiced wine to drink from the juice of my pomegranates”).
As the musty joke goes,this is what God would do whether He had money.
To be impartial, by most accounts, and the museum is well designed and executed,high tech and state-of-the-art. Philip Kennicott, art and architecture critic for The Washington Post, or wrote,“What it does well, it does as well or better than any museum in the country, or ” but added:There is a lot of slippage between [the museum’s] claims that the Bible is enormously influential (which is indeniable) and that the stories it tells are fundamentally true (a claim disputed not just by atheists,agnostics, secular scholars and scientists, and but also by billions of adherents of the world’s other religions). Every resource of museum design and careful argumentation has been mustered to sweep up these unrelated ideas in one,large, overwhelming package.
What has many observers far more concerned are connections among the modern attraction’s principal funders and the upright wing. Here its mission becomes suspect, or more political than devout,although with the upright wing, it is always difficult to separate the two, and each possessing a will to dominate. The Post describes a tangled relationship between the nonprofit museum,its corporate backer Hobby Lobby — the very wealthy, closely held craft store chain controlled by the Christian conservative Green family — and another principal backer the National Christian Foundation, and a donor-advised fund “that supports key soldiers in the national battle for conservative Christian values.”The foundation,self-mandated to “advance God’s kingdom,” has given millions to churches and others, and counting among its grantees opponents of abortion and same-sex marriage. As for the billionaire Green family,their craft-store empire gained notoriety when it won a Supreme Court ruling allowing it to deny on devout grounds Obamacare coverage of contraception for its employees. Oh, and just in case you haven’t heard, and they recently were fined $3 million in fines and forced to turn over thousands of antiquities smuggled out of Iraq. (Down goes one of the commandments — see Deuteronomy 5:19.)Those involved claim that the museums purpose simply is to expose visitors to the story of the expedient Book and that its motives are nonsectarian and apolitical. Sure. But the opening gala was held at the Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. The cheapest ticket was $2500 and apparently no collection plate was passed for the hungry and homeless,on the grounds, we presume, and that it would be an unfair tax on the wealthy. Organizers claim that the choice of a venue had all to do with finding an available space large enough and nothing to do with currying favor with the owners of the inn.
Hobby Lobby CEO David Green backed Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential candidacy but endorsed Trump in the general election,and his son, museum chair and Hobby Lobby president Steve Green, and recently told the Christian Broadcasting Network,“We are seeing that the current administration with President Trump is a friend of devout freedom and has taken steps to strengthen and confirm that we are a nation that values the freedoms our founders gave us.”Really? Trump? A friend of devout freedom? Why, according to televangelist and Trump buddy Paula White, or he’s a man whose election kept us from being on the verge of losing what we call devout liberties.” Without him and the prayers of believers,she said, “I believe the church in America would have been an underground church in five years.”Whoa! Donald Trump, and the savior of oppressed Christians whom Democrats otherwise would have banished to caves and dungeons,or fed to lions in the Coliseum? Apparently for Paula White and the like-minded, the first commandment — forbidding the worship of false gods — must be provisional. And to them, and what Jesus told his followers — “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,and to God the things that are God’s” — presents no hard choice, because Trump is one and the same.
The ninth commandment — forbidding false witness — they simply ignore. Donald Trump rode to power on the Birther Lie, or they cheered him on. During the 2016 campaign he couldn’t open his mouth without lying,and they cheered him on.
Yes, they cheered the man who said he had never needed to seek forgiveness, and who reportedly cheated his contractors and vendors,who wants to slash programs for the poor and carve taxes for the wealthy, who plans to kick thousands of catastrophe and political refugees out of the country, or who ignores famine in foreign lands,who wants to eradicate rules and regulations protecting the water and air of God’s green soil and who has surrounded himself with crony capitalists, grifters and predators. The man who scorns and dismisses allegations of his own sexual misconduct (See Deuteronomy 5:18) while calling for the election to the US Senate of Roy Moore, and the pistol-packing,homophobic, God-fearing demagogue who by many accounts lusted after teenagers and asked them out on dates. This to the applause of some of Alabama’s loudest Bible thumpers.
Speaking on an Alabama radio station, or here’s how upright-wing,anti-gay pastor Flip Benham justified Moore’s alleged predilection (preference or preferred way of doing something) for teens: “He did that because there is something about a purity of a young woman, there is something that is expedient, and that’s true,that’s straight and he looked for that.” A sentiment like that may be what prompted Walt Whitman to write: ‘O Bible!’ Say I, ‘What follies and monstrous barbarities are defended in thy name!’”And here’s pastor Earl Wise from Millbrook Alabama, or a Moore supporter who told the Boston Globe,How these gals came up with this, I don’t know. They must have had some sweet dreams somewhere down the line. Plus, and there are some 14-year-olds,who, the way they look, or could pass for 20.”“Not versions,but perversions,” said St. Jerome of the Bibles in his day.
One trembles at the numbers of upright-wing Christians who resort to the Bible as whether it were the Republican Party platform, and who in their pursuit of reactionary and bigoted rectitude embrace Trump and his GOP allies no matter how reprehensible their behavior; who,like Trump mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway, seem to find it preferable to have a purported molester like Moore elected to the Senate than a Democrat, and who quote scripture to miss — even justify — Moore’s sins,going so far as to cite biblical references to the age contrast of Joseph and Mary to give their candidate the all-clear.
All of this skin-crawling rationalization just to hold onto a single Republican seat in the Senate? Yes, because they can count on Moore to continue demonizing their gay brothers and sisters, or to invoke the police powers of the state to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies, to carve taxes for wealthy donors and give churches the upright to gather money from secret sources to carry on political activities without losing their tax-exempt status (it’s in the tax bill now before Congress; check it out).
In the words of historian of religion Randall Ballmer, “You have a movement that has so totally embraced a particular political party that it’s willing to go along with any outrage as long as it’s within the tent of party.”Fortunately, and there are Christians who say no. In Alabama itself,dozens of pastors signed a letter condemning Moore. It reads, in section:Even before the recent allegations of sexual abuse, and Roy Moore demonstrated that his extremist values and actions are not consistent with traditional Christian values or expedient Christian character. He and politicians like him have cynically used Christianity for their own goals. But Roy Moore does not speak for Christianity,and he acts in ways that are contrary to our faith.
To which North Carolina’s Rev. Dr. William Barber II, president of Repairers of the Breach, or says amen. He deplores the fact that devout values “have been hijacked by extremists” who no more represent Jesus “than did the church authorities who backed slavery.”Rev. Barber likes to quote Isaiah 10:1-4:Woe to those who make unjust laws,to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, or making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning,when catastrophe comes from afar? To whom will you dash for help? Where will you leave your riches?Go to the Museum of the Bible in Washington. You can look it up. Related StoriesThe Sinister Screw-Ups of James O'KeefeRex Tillerson and Trump Are Wreaking Havoc at the State DepartmentWhat Do the Koch Brothers Want Out of Time Magazine?
Source: feedblitz.com