Bible Nation: The United States of Hobby Lobby is neither a history of the Bible in America nor a study of retailer Hobby Lobby. Rather, it is a work of “investigative journalism” and a valuable resource for those interested in the seamy nexus of corporate accounting and philanthropy, antiquities dealing, the financing of scholarly research and public history, and evangelical Protestantism (p. ix). In clear, clever prose, theology professors Candida Moss (University of Birmingham) and Joel Baden (Yale Divinity) argue that the Green family of Oklahoma City, the owners of closely held Hobby Lobby, is perpetrating a multifaceted deception. The Greens, by this telling, are uneducated but well-meaning Christian zealots dressed in unconvincing nonsectarian clothing.

The Greens, the authors explain, use Hobby Lobby's profits to purchase Biblical antiquities rendered cheap by their dubious provenance (legal chain of ownership). They then hire scholars with impeccable evangelical credentials to vet the artifacts and allow them to publish the ones that support the authenticity of the King James version of the Bible (KJB)—the Bible for many evangelicals. The Greens then donate the artifacts, often fragile papyrus scrolls, to their own Museum of the Bible (MOTB) at appraisals that are far higher than the original acquisition cost of the texts and reap the resulting tax deduction.

Texts that differ from the KJB—such as the Gnostic Gospels, the Gospel of Judas, or an early version of the Gospel of John that does not contain the famous line about those without sin casting the first stone—remain unacquired by the Greens or, most disturbingly of all, are deliberately buried in the collection unpublished and potentially lost forever due to the Greens’ cavalier attitude toward conservation of artifacts not core to the story they want to tell. Most infamously, the Greens allowed their cavalcade of hired minions to destroy Egyptian funerary masks that they thought might contain scraps of Scripture despite the fact that top scholars argued the masks predated Christ's crucifixion by decades. The Greens used to openly avow that their goal was to spread the key tenets of evangelical Protestantism (most importantly, that KJB is the infallible word of God), but recently they have claimed that their research and educational efforts are “nonsectarian” (p. 16).

Except for irrationally destroying precious cultural artifacts and illegally importing an unknown number of antiquities (the Green's collection consists of about forty thousand items, not counting those seized by federal authorities), the Greens have done nothing illegal or immoral, the authors insist. The Green's entire project, however, from the Green Scholars Initiative (chapter 2) to the inane high school–level Bible textbook they commissioned, which argues that evidence for the historical existence of Jesus and David is as strong as that for Martin Luther King Jr. (chapter 3), to MOTB (chapter 4), is unethical because they market it as constitutional and nonsectarian when in fact it is inherently evangelical Protestant in orientation. The Greens interpret Judaism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy through the prism of their Pentecostal and Baptist faith traditions and exclude even the mention of other religions, including those, like Mormonism and Islam, related to Christianity. The Greens claim that they want only to disseminate “the facts” but they believe that mere exposure to KJB will win acolytes to their cause. Ergo, they can proselytize (as their faith commands) through “education” alone, without traditional fire and brimstone sermons.

The Greens, the authors explain further, are proponents of “prosperity gospel,” the belief that success in business and generous donations to God's causes are codetermined, a virtuous cycle of faith, philanthropy, and material wealth. Lacking college educations, the Greens seem incapable of critical thought and hence actually may believe in prosperity gospel, the infallibility of KJB, and absurd interpretations like biblical abhorrence of slavery. Nevertheless, the authors conclude, “at a certain juncture, after multiple false starts, vocal public and academic objections, and several public relations makeovers, the naivete begins to look willful” (p. 194).

The book includes a six-page bibliography and hundreds of references including magazine articles, Facebook feeds, and personal interviews. (In response to my email query, the authors replied that, unfortunately, the interviews will not be publicly available.) A few discrepancies, however, remain unexplained. Most importantly, after detailing the tax donation arbitrage described above, the authors twice assert that the artifact collection “has always been the property of the Green family” (pp. 172, 174). Moreover, after thoroughly critiquing the Greens’ faith commitments, the authors expose their own by asserting that “modern museum-goers are woefully undereducated about even the contents of the Bible” (p. 152).

The authors disclaim holding any personal animus toward the Greens, whom they respect for their deeply held faith commitments, or other personal motivations for writing this exposé, other than trying to profit from the performance of what they believe is a public service (which, ironically, is also the Greens’ motivation). Starting with its hyperbolic title, the volume's commercial intent is clear. The authors, who have both previously published with major commercial publisher HarperOne, released this book to coincide with the launch of MOTB (and hence the quincentennial of the Protestant Reformation) instead of waiting for MOTB to open and be widely reviewed. Moreover, the authors believe that humanities professors are “undercompensated” and “overworked” and hence entitled to more than “magic beans” (pp. 190, 191). I concur, but because the authors are not business historians they greatly overestimate the importance of the Greens when they assert that the family's “market share of the American religio-industrial complex approaches a monopoly” and imply that money fundamentally influences the nation's spiritual landscape (p. 187). The authors do not mention, for example, the failure of the well-endowed Chautauqua Institution, founded in 1874 to spread the Gospel, and Gideons International, which formed in 1899 to distribute bibles globally, to stymie sin or secularism.