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Bible Nation

Two biblical scholars who investigated efforts by the billionaire owners of Hobby Lobby to increase the Bible’s influence on American society will visit the University of Dayton campus to discuss the family's controversial collection of biblical artifacts and recently opened Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

Candida Moss and Joel S. Baden, authors of Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby, will speak at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 30, in the Jesse Philips Humanities Center’s Sears Recital Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Moss, the Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology at University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, is also the papal news correspondent for CBS and a Daily Beast columnist. Baden is professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School.

Bible Nation was selected as a Publishers Weekly 2017 best book in religion.

“This is an opportunity not only for students to engage the important critical work that Moss and Baden have done around the Museum of the Bible, but also their larger body of work, including their important engagement with mass media around a wide range of topics relating to issues of faith,” said Meghan Henning, assistant professor of religious studies.

The lecture is part of a series of fall semester events organized by University Professor of Faith and Culture Sandra Yocum and Department of Religious Studies faculty to encourage interfaith dialogue on campus. Advancing dialogue concerning the mutually enriching relationship between faith and reason in the Catholic intellectual tradition is one of the foundational commitments of the University’s strategic vision.

The Green family, owners of the Hobby Lobby craft stores chain, first came to national attention in 2014 after successfully suing the U.S. government over their religious objections to provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

Bible Nation follows the Greens’ efforts to use their fortune to promote personal faith in the public sphere, which include supporting attempts to inject religion into school curricula, collecting rare biblical manuscripts and building the $500 million Museum of the Bible, which opened in November 2017.

“It was our hope from the beginning that the book would open people’s eyes, not just to the details of what the Green family was and is doing, but to the kinds of larger social networks that were supporting them, especially among the axis of faith and business,” Moss said.

Moss and Baden originally wrote about the Greens in a 2016 article for The Atlantic about the family’s rapid acquisition of biblical manuscripts, Torah scrolls, Dead Sea Scrolls and cuneiform texts. As they dug into their research, the authors soon realized there was more to the story than just an antiquities collection.

“One of the advantages we had was getting in on the ground floor, so to speak,” Baden said. “Members of the organization, from Hobby Lobby President Steve Green on down, were very willing to speak openly with us, in a way that they have not since. So, the book contains quotes and other information that is now far less accessible, which has made it a resource for those scholars and journalists who are continuing to look into the Greens and the museum.”

In July 2017, Hobby Lobby agreed to forfeit thousands of ancient Mesopotamian artifacts and pay a $3 million fine after a federal investigation revealed the items had been illegally imported from Iraq.

On Oct. 22, the Museum of the Bible acknowledged five fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls it had on display were forgeries.

“We hope that we can all agree, regardless of our faith backgrounds, that the kind of ethics demonstrated in the antiquities trading and the kind of narrow presentation of the Bible at the museum should be avoided,” Baden said. “The museum presents itself as non-sectarian, and as a mixture of Jewish, Catholic and Protestant views — though it is in fact decidedly Protestant, and evangelical at that. So, perhaps a closer look at what the museum says versus what it does can help to illustrate what real, as opposed to merely rhetorical, interfaith discourse about the Bible might look like.”

The Professor of Faith and Culture event series also includes Tolton: From Slave to Priest, a professional Catholic theater production based on the life of Fr. Augustus Tolton — the first African-American priest — at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 4, in the Sears Recital Hall.

Marshall Weiss, founding editor and publisher of the Dayton Jewish Observer, will discuss the history of the Jewish community in the Dayton region at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8, in the Kennedy Union ballroom.

University of Dayton faculty Susan and Bill Trollinger will discuss their book, Righting America at the Creation Museum, at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 14, in the Sears Recital Hall.

All events are free and open to the public.

- Dave Larsen, communication coordinator, College of Arts and Sciences

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