Jitterbugging for Jesus

Every week in America seems to get more bizarre than the previous week.

Which is to say that every week has more of the stories that make you go “Wow!”–and not in a good way.

This week was really out there, starting with the Fourth of July.

Public Radio (NPR) observed the day on Tuesday morning by tweeting out the Declaration of Independence, line by line, in 113 consecutive posts.

And for a good long while during the tweeting, a lot of Trump supporters totally lost their minds about it.

Well it does sort of fit him, but–LO!–this wasn’t about Darling Leader.

You’ll recall if you’ve read the Declaration of Independence since your school daze that it includes lines like this:

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Trump supporters who’ve been conditioned to hate all things NPR by Darling Leader jumped to the bizarre conclusion that the tweet, among many others, was NPR trashing Trump!

Others took to social media to report that PBS must have been hacked, since it was posting terrible things about Darling Leader.

You can’t make this stuff up. See more on the story here.

That’s the kind of knee-jerk, reactionary weirdness that makes you go, “Wow!”

The tweeting, by the way, was in keeping with NPR’s “Morning Edition’s” broadcast of a reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 4 each and every year–something the public radio station has done for almost 30 years.

But thousands of conservatives who think of themselves as patriots obviously aren’t very informed patriots when it comes to our nation’s greatest documents.

That said, they would know the Second Amendment in a tweet in a New York Trump Tower minute–the one part of the United States Constitution they know by heart.

But there was another story this week on the Christian front involving the popular retail giant Hobby Lobby, which got into trouble buying and smuggling a huge number ancient artifacts from Iraq.

Steve Green, president of the family-owned Hobby Lobby, is brazenly lying about his defense of him and his family and the company smuggling ancient artifacts out of Iraq by a lot of intentional, crooked means. He would never dream, of course, of robbing Israel of its ancient Christian artifacts because Israel isn’t Iraq.
(Photo by Brianna Bailey /The Oklahoman via AP, File)

Hobby Lobby, which doesn’t open on Sundays in observance of the Sabbath, is of course famously owned by fundamentalist Christian Steve Green and family.

If there were any justice, Green and family members would be in a federal pen with other blatant smugglers–drug smugglers, for example.

Green and company produce films with Evangelical biblical themes and operate a chain of Christian bookstores selling some theologically bizarre Christian books and movies.

The pious family is also spearheading the giant Bible Museum in Washington D.C. Its attractions will include–I am not making this up–a 1,045-pound Bible.(Learn more about it at this Business Insider story.)

This week’s story about Steve Green concerned his getting in hot water with the (Trump) Justice Department for smuggling more than 5,500 ancient artifacts from an unnamed dealer for $1.6 million.

A clay cuneiform tablet, one of the artifacts the owners of Hobby Lobby illegally imported into the United States from Iraq. Hasn’t Iraq suffered enough without rich American Christians stealing its stuff?

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday settled with Hobby Lobby in a sweetheart deal that requires the company to return all of the pieces, and to forfeit to the government an additional $3 million.

That, of course, is pocket change to the Greens and their $3 billion Hobby Lobby company.

This punitive (slap on the wrist) action was taken by the Trump-appointed Attorney General and his prosecutors in New York because the ancient artifacts from Iraq belong to the sovereign nation of Iraq, which has suffered enough at the hands of Americans without an American Evangelical Christian family stealing from it, hasn’t it?

I mean, we just can’t seem to crap on Iraq enough.

* * *

Lest you think this widely reported story about deplorable Holly Hobby and Mr. Green the popular Evangelical Christian is “fake news”–and even Trump can’t dismiss this as so much “fake news”– read the Trump Justice Department’s complaint about HH’s serious illegal smuggling on the Department of Justice page here.

But Mr. Green has his side of the story, of course.

He said that the Hobby chain’s collection of historical Bibles and artifacts was “consistent with the company’s mission and passion for the Bible.” (A passion for the Bible that apparently includes robbing another country of its ancient Christian belongings.)

Of course, Mr. Green and company would never dream of smuggling ancient Christian out artifacts out of Israel, but plundering god-forsaken Iraq is OK.

Anyway, the Hobby Lobby company mission includes a lot of underhanded acts, like using a lot of incredibly blatant deception to get around U.S. Customs to get Green’s bootie into Oklahoma, where God resides when not in D.C at the Bible Museum or of course in the White House.

Green said the company had planned to display the items it bought in various museums and public institutions.

He pleaded ignorance of the law, saying that his family’s company is “new to the world of acquiring these items, and did not fully appreciate the complexities of the acquisitions process.”

He added that “regrettable mistakes” were made and that he should have “exercised more oversight.”

All kinds of crooks make “regrettable mistakes” when they get caught but anyway…….

Green’s defense is so much brazen lying, which the Bible somewhat clearly condemns as, you know… a sin.

Prosecutors noted that in 2010, as a deal for the tablets was being struck, an expert on cultural property law who had been hired by Hobby Lobby warned company executives that the artifacts might have been looted from historical sites in Iraq, and that failing to determine their heritage could break the law. (My italics for emphasis.)

Despite this warning, prosecutors said, Hobby Lobby bought the 5,500-plus artifacts–ancient tablets and clay talismans and so-called cylinder seals–from an unnamed dealer for $1.6 million in December 2010.

And, again, the smuggling required a lot of serious deception to get by US Customs that Green the family had a hand in.

This the kind of story that gives Christianity such a god-awful name.

It’s the kind of story that millions of people who’ve left the church and others who’ve become atheist activists to condemn all people of faith and say, “See! Those Christians are all hypocrites!”

It’s the kind of story that makes you go “Wow! What is it about the 1,045-pound Museum Bible, and supposedly being a follower of the Lord Jesus, is it that Holly Hobby and its company president just don’t get?”

The week has had plenty more stories that make you go “Wow!” in a bad way.

But you can bet next week will top it, so tune in here next Saturday for another edition of stories that will blow your mind.

This book, which won’t be on display in the Hobby Lobby Museum of the Bible in D.C.–which will feature a 1,054-pound Bible–will definitely NO be on display there. The book is available for you to buy online, however, at Amazon Books and at Barnes & Noble.

Chapters in The View From Down in Poordom, which Christian Bookstores owned by the Hobby Lobby Empire won’t sell and the author is glad.