![]() ![]() The point, staff members say, is simply to engage an America that is losing its connection with the Bible. And many, many examples of the Bible's effect on things as diverse as calendar systems, fashion and language - most presented without overt judgment on whether that influence was good or bad. The museum, which will be among the largest in a city chock-full of museums, presents broad, sometimes abstract concepts about the Bible, communicated through cutting-edge technology and immersive experiences.Ĭhildren's arcade games about "courage." A sensory room with images of animals, minor-key music and creaking boat sounds meant to evoke the "chaos" on board Noah's Ark (a marked contrast from the Ark Encounter recently opened in Kentucky, which presents a life-size literal vision of Genesis). ![]() All the museum asks about the Bible: Just try reading it. In this new moment in America, the museum that is set to open Nov. 17 has a simpler message for the nation, a pitch that seems to have more to do with capturing the attention of a distracted populace than with saving souls. And Washington changed, too - from a capital where white evangelical Christians felt they were under attack to one where the man they voted for in overwhelming numbers, President Trump, is shaking up the halls of power just blocks from the new museum. The family's lightning-fast acquisition of troves of historic artifacts wound up in federal court, landing them a $3 million fine for trafficking in thousands of smuggled goods. Their company became a byword not just for craft supplies but also for a battle in the Supreme Court against all forms of mandatory contraception coverage for employees. ![]() Much has changed in the years since the Greens began building the museum. Its role is to present facts and let people make their own decisions.” It doesn’t overtly say the Bible is good - that the Bible is true,” said Steve Green, the Hobby Lobby chief executive and chair of the museum. The approach today, while still viewed with skepticism by some scholars, appears to be more modest: “The museum has fence posts - limits. to inspire confidence in the absolute authority” of the Bible, the book at the institution’s center. At the time, the museum’s mission statement promised to “bring to life the living word of God. This isn’t the evangelism that the billionaire Green family first promised a decade ago when they set out to build a museum dedicated to Scripture. And on floor after gleaming floor of exhibitions, there is very little Jesus. The museum doesn't encourage visitors to take the Bible literally or to believe that the Bible has only one correct form. The $500 million museum, chaired and largely funded by the conservative Christian family that owns Hobby Lobby, doesn't say a word about the Bible's views on sexuality or contraception. The Museum of the Bible, a massive new institution opening next month just south of the Mall, is just as notable for what it includes - vivid walk-through re-creations of the ancient world, one of the world’s largest private collections of Torahs, a motion ride that sprays water at you, a garden of biblical plants - as for what it leaves out. ![]()
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