Guess who is Bill Gothard / IBLP's biggest benefactor

[Ralar]

Hobby Lobby and its owners, the Green family have supported the Institute in Basic Life Principles for 10 to 15 years, primarily by obtaining four or five facilities for the ministry.

 

 

• In 2001, the Greens, through a family trust, sold Gothard's group a 2,250-acre campus in Big Sandy, Texas, for $10.
   
• In 2000, Hobby Lobby donated a 529,717-square-foot building in Little Rock, Arkansas, to Gothard's outfit. The company had purchased this property, a former Veterans Affairs building, two years earlier for $299,000. The Institute now runs a prison ministry out of this location, providing curriculum to a faith-based Arkansas Department of Corrections program known as Principles and Applications for Life. For about a decade, according to Gothard, the Institute leased the ground floor of the building for $1 per year to the Little Rock Police Department for use as its downtown station. Now, Gothard says, the police are paying a regular rental fee.
   
• In Nashville, the Institute operates a training center in a former hospital that Gothard says Hobby Lobby purchased for his group. Public records show that in 2005 a corporation affiliated with Hobby Lobby sold the facility to the Institute for $10. The Nashville Business Journal reported that Hobby Lobby bought the building for $3.5 million. It currently houses the Embassy Institute, where the Institute in Basic Life Principles hosts many seminars.
   
• The Green family, according to Gothard, also "bought a training center in New Zealand and gave it to us."

 

 

How's this for scary: Hobby Lobby boasts that it devotes half of its pretax earnings to Christian ministries.

 

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/hobby-lobby-bill-gothard-institute-basic-life-principles

[dawbs]

I've been thumping people w/ this data, that hobbylobby is evil for years--and somehow it didn't get press until SCOTUS was involved.

I was thrilled to see this in my twitter feed today toos:

http://gawker.com/hobby-lobby-funded-th ... 1599083411

(not breaking, gawker)

[Joan of Snarc]

I'm just SICK that I ever shopped there. It was before their anti-contraception lawsuit, so I never knew they were so right-wing. I hate that I ever walked through their doors. Well, it will never happen again, that's for sure.

[Mama Mia]

Off-topic, but an entire VA hospital, over half a million square feet was only worth $300 thousand dollars 15 years ago?? :shock: I can see why all these mega families live in the south!

[louisa05]

Seriously, the Catholics and more mainstream evangelicals who are celebrating all of this need to take a serious look at who they are in bed with.

Of course, my Catholic friends are under the impression that the Greens are Catholic just as a lot of Catholic bloggers and such seem to be.

[FundieWatcher]

I'll never set foot in there again. I've spent hundreds on materials for school projects there. I'm sickened over it. And so much of it is "made in China" junk. I've had to return kits for missing or broken pieces.

[dawbs]

The people celebrating should be embarrassed that they're causing abortions.

[hoipolloi]

Not being of the craft-y persuasion, I've never gone into one of HL's stores although I've known for years that they were a major fundie (and fundie-backed) business like Chick Fil-A.

[Loveday]

We're supposedly getting a Hobby Lobby in my corner of southeastern VA sometime in the near future. I hadn't planned to shop there even before the SCOTUS decision, but now I'm actively dreading the hoopla that's sure to surround the grand opening. Every rabid rightwinger in Virginia will be there. And as we all know, there are a LOT of rabid rightwingers in Virginia. :?

[toejamflipflop]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/02/0 ... with-guns#

The ALERT ACADEMY is involved: The chain of hobby stores that literally can be stated as a funding-front for the Assemblies of God's international missions division (and in particular its targeting of "people of the book"--including Orthodox, Catholic and Maronite Christians--in Israel, Lebanon, and Iraq).

[update]

So let's review; WWCoG sold property to Hobby Lobby, who in turn sold the property to Gothard for ALERT Teams.)

The links to the Assemblies (via Hobby Lobby) are not that surprising--quite a lot of Assemblies walkaways have reported increased popularity of Gothardism (I myself remember hearing the Gothard stories about Cabbage Patch Kids supposedly being "doorways to Satan" as a youth), in stories not dissimilar to that experienced by an ex-Assemblies pastor:

Just a few tidbits from the above link. I read somewhere else that Hobby Lobby is the biggest donator to Gothards Alert Academy. It looks like Gothard is trying to increase his own militia of " christians" to police us all in the future.

THATS DAMN SCARY.

[Rhetorica]

This Hobby Lobby case is troubling for me in multiple ways. In the late 1990s I worked in purchasing for one of Hobby Lobby's sister companies, buying homeschool curriculum. At the time, I never dreamed that the Green family would go in this direction. I knew them to be very devout and to make huge donations for Bible translations, but even though we'd get Gothard's workplace brochures along with our paychecks and Gothard's Character Sketches and seminar textbooks were on display in one of the conference rooms, I didn't get the impression that the material was much of an influence. I never saw an employee (most of whom were some flavor of evangelical) take the brochures seriously either. Mart Green, one of the sons and the president of the company I worked for, started taking out full-page NYT ads during the same time frame. He made a big deal about the ads having a purely evangelistic message--there was no hint of politics. That apparently came later once he teamed up with David Barton and Wallbuilders. See ffrf.org/hlr/HobbyLobby.html My sense is that the Greens' apparent shift follows the politicization of even moderate evangelicals in the past 15 years.

Since I left the company in 2001, I've gone to college, got three degrees and a minor in women's studies. Needless to say my own politics have changed even more dramatically, but in the opposite direction. My fury at the SCOTUS decision is compounded by my sadness about what the Green family has become.

[16strong]

Do I get a cookie or something? Hobby Lobby was my immediate guess. :lol:

[ViolaSebastian]

I'm just SICK that I ever shopped there. It was before their anti-contraception lawsuit, so I never knew they were so right-wing. I hate that I ever walked through their doors. Well, it will never happen again, that's for sure.

Same here, although I always knew they were a Christian company because they like to brag about how they give their employees time off on Sunday to worship with their families--of course, if you're a Seventh Day Adventist or Jewish or Muslim and work for Hobby Lobby, you're just screwed and have to work on your holy day.

I wish I could go back in time and return the frames I bought. Never. Again.

[apple1]

Off-topic, but an entire VA hospital, over half a million square feet was only worth $300 thousand dollars 15 years ago?? :shock: I can see why all these mega families live in the south!

I heard that hospital was very old and decrepit, and the VA had moved on to a newer/better property. There comes a point in healthcare where it is clearly not profitable, even not possible, to bring the old up to date enough to use for patient care.

As with any real estate, property is only worth what someone is willing to pay. Actually, who the heck wants an outdated hospital building anyway? Money pit.

[Aggie2145]

I heard that hospital was very old and decrepit, and the VA had moved on to a newer/better property. There comes a point in healthcare where it is clearly not profitable, even not possible, to bring the old up to date enough to use for patient care.

As with any real estate, property is only worth what someone is willing to pay. Actually, who the heck wants an outdated hospital building anyway? Money pit.

You are correct, it was a money pit...chocked full of asbestos. To properly remediate, the entire hospital would have to be vacated for a month plus reconstruction. When it reaches that point, it is more cost effective for the hospital to sell it at a loss and move on.

[Ralar]

Do I get a cookie or something? Hobby Lobby was my immediate guess. :lol:

How about an ice cream sandwich?

[church_of_dog]

How about an ice cream sandwich?

If not a cookie, how about at least :character-cookiemonster: ?

but even better than that, :bacon: bacon! mmm… love the new emojis...

[16strong]

If not a cookie, how about at least :character-cookiemonster: ?

but even better than that, :bacon: bacon! mmm… love the new emojis...

I already have ice cream sandwiches in the freezer, so I'm gonna have to go with the bacon. :lol:

[FloraKitty35]

I have never shopped at Hobby Lobby and I never will. I usually shop at AC Moore's.

[flojo]

I choose not to shop there because of the Gothard connection but do find that they have the best bathrooms at our local shopping centre. As a pregnant woman, I like to use this to my advantage.

[Grimalkin]

Seriously, the Catholics and more mainstream evangelicals who are celebrating all of this need to take a serious look at who they are in bed with.

Of course, my Catholic friends are under the impression that the Greens are Catholic just as a lot of Catholic bloggers and such seem to be.

Most Catholics never heard of Gothard. I have seen a few threads started about him on CAF and nobody is responding.