Hobby Lobby’s unholy purchase of stolen artifacts

The evangelical Christian owner of Hobby Lobby made a deal with the devil, and got busted. The company has agreed to pay a $3 million fine for having illegally imported thousands of ancient artifacts smuggled out of Iraq, and it agreed to return the objects. This after the company paid $1.6 million to purchase the precious clay tablets and other artifacts.

Hobby Lobby president Steve Green said in a statement, “We should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled.”

The company said it did not “fully appreciate the complexities of the acquisitions process.”

To which government lawyers responded (and I’m paraphrasing here): Bull.

In part because an expert hired by Hobby Lobby warned the company that the artifacts may have been looted from ancient sites and that the purchase process might not exactly be on the up and up. And they still purchased them. And because the company labeled the boxes in which the objects were shipped as “ceramic tiles” or “clay tiles,” and did other things that prosecutors said were consistent with “cultural property smugglers.”

It’s not the kind of behavior you might expect from Hobby Lobby, whose owner and his family are the driving force behind the $500 million Museum of the Bible set to open later this year in Washington, D.C..

It’s not what you’d expect from a firm that fought and won a landmark Supreme Court case saying a familyowned business shouldn’t be made to violate its Christian values and pay for contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

That was a high-profile case, making Hobby Lobby’s President Steve Green a minor celebrity.

This perhaps explains why Gov. Doug Ducey invited him to Arizona to tout that Supreme Court victory as the keynote speaker at the governor’s annual prayer breakfast this past April.

There was a lot of talk at that event about Christian values.

Green might have a more difficult time these days espousing those hallowed beliefs in a convincing way.

Some critics of the case’s settlement believe Green and maybe others got off easy with a deal that included only fines.

Experts in the region from which the artifacts originated say it’s possible they were looted by ISIS or some other terrorist organization.

For his part, Green said, “Our passion for the Bible continues, and we will do all that we can to support the efforts to conserve items that will help illuminate and enhance our understanding of this Great Book.”

I’m no expert on the subject, but I believe there is something in that book about not stealing. And not lying. And not coveting what belongs to your neighbor.