Museum of the Bible opens in DC
THE world’s most famous book – the one at the centre of three religions and 2 millennia of conflict – got its own museum Saturday in the heart of Washington.
The $500 million Museum of the Bible, largely funded by the evangelical billionaires who own the Hobby Lobby craft chain, opened its doors to the public, just blocks from the US Capitol in a city where the separation of church and state remains hotly debated.
Its symbolism wasn’t lost on the visitors who walked through the eight-storey, 40,000-squaremetre space filled with hightech exhibits and thousands of artefacts. The crowd was not nearly as large as the building could hold, but those who explored the museum expressed tremendous enthusiasm for what they found inside.
“I’m 73 years old, and I’ve seen a lot of things, but this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” said Jean Johnson of Crow, West Virginia, who was particularly startled by an exhibit on languages that the Bible has never been translated into and left thinking about how to support more foreign mission work.
Marion Woods, who lives in Greenville, South Carolina, was among the first inside. She had been anticipating this day for two years. When she first heard the museum was in the works, she thought, “I can’t believe there’s going to be a Museum of the Bible.” And then: “Why hasn’t this happened before?”
Woods flew into Washington on Thursday night and will leave today, spending as much time as possible in between at the museum.
Some exhibits were bustling with visitors, particularly the walk-through re-creation of a village from the time of Jesus. At the Milk & Honey café, just a few tables were open at noon as diners bowed their heads in prayer before biting into their chocolate croissants. But the museum was far from capacity. On the lower floors, a gallery on Amazing Grace and another on the Stations of the Cross were nearly empty at 1:30pm. A film about the Bible played to a huge theatre of almost entirely empty seats.
As they exited, a few visitors called the atmosphere inside “peaceful” and “serene”, a marked contrast to the hordes packing many Smithsonian museums on busy weekends.
The lines outside were short. Couples, teenagers and parents with children in strollers snapped selfies in front of the museum’s massive Gutenberg Bible-themed doors as they waited to file through the metal detectors at the entrance.
Brenda McKelvin, a museum employee, greeted everyone with a smile. Originally from South Carolina, McKelvin can read Gullah, a Creole language spoken by African-Americans along the Southern coast. When she learned the museum didn’t have a Gullah translation of the Bible among its artefacts, she purchased one and donated it for the collection.
Other artefacts in the museum span history, from ancient writings to Elvis’s personal Bible. Glitzy attractions include a motion ride, a life-size burning bush and Noah’s ark, and a rooftop garden with Bibleinspired plants.
Nine-year-old Ellie Moiola stood watching New Testament re-enactors, in robes and sandals, explain how they use twine as a measurement tool.
“For the kids to be able to walk into the world of Jesus of Nazareth – that’s a really neat expe- rience they can’t get anywhere else,” said her mother Ayron Moiola, of Brawley, California.
Moiola praised the museum’s varied exhibits: “Just lots of options to tell the story you’ve heard your whole life in a really different way. And to have it so well done, and so thoughtful.”
The Green family, evangelical Christians who own Hobby Lobby and who took their fight against mandatory employerprovided birth control to the US Supreme Court, spearheaded the creation of the museum and supplied much of the funding.
During the construction of the museum, Hobby Lobby was accused by federal prosecutors of illegally importing thousands of ancient artefacts from Iraq. The company was ordered to pay a $3 million fine, though the museum said that the artefacts seized in the case were never part of its collection. Still, the action cast a shadow over the project.
The private museum stands just two blocks from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and its National Museum of the American Indian. Leaders of the Museum of the Bible hope that it too will become a must-see stop.
Jane and Lenny Wells, both pastors from Lorton, Virginia, said they were thrilled to see the museum open in such a prominent location. As they waited outside the entrance, early for their 9am admission, Jane said, “This nation has moved so far from God. Its god is money and power. By having the museum here, it’s in your face.”
Lenny said he thinks the museum will be a good influence on America. “When you think of Washington, you think the Smithsonian and the other museums,” he said. “I think it will have an impact on beliefs, maybe persuade some people that God is real.”
The museum’s leaders have said they want the exhibits not to take sides on the myriad controversial issues in which the Bible gets invoked, from homosexuality to abortion to climate change. Their primary goal is to get people to read the Bible, not necessarily to believe in it.
The Mathemeier family, visting from Winter Garden, Florida, said they were fine with an evangelistic mission. Watching her daughter Evangeline, 7, push a wooden arm of a replica Gutenberg printing press, Chazzalynde Mathemeier recalled when museum chairman Steve Green came to speak at her church in Orlando months ago.
“I looked at my husband and said, ‘We’re going,’” Chazzalynde said. She home-schools Evangeline and her son Eric, because she wants them to have a “Biblical worldview”.
She and her husband Scott said they hope the presence of the Museum of the Bible in Washington will remind the nation that the phrase “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution.
“All faiths should be welcome, but we should remember there was one faith that the country was founded on,” Scott said.
The press operator held up Evangeline’s printed page, fresh with ink from the Gutenberg-style press, and the crowd of visitors oohed and ahhed.