Cedarville Magazine, Fall 2014

6 | Cedarville Magazine My father was a preacher’s kid, one of six children, and all of his siblings went into the ministry. Faith was integral to everything they did. My father felt a bit like a black sheep for not being in the ministry, but his faith became part of his business. Scripture guides us in all areas of our lives — in the home and in the business — and teaches us to be honest, to have integrity, to work hard. All this is instruction fromGod’sWord. To do anything otherwise would go against what we believe. Looking through the Christmas Day newspaper one year, my father realized no one was recognizing the true meaning of the season. It was “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy Holidays,” and he felt frustrated. He heard God speak to him, “Well, neither are you.” Our company had run our normal ad, and we said “Merry Christmas,” but we weren’t recognizing the true meaning of the holiday. He felt convicted that, as a company, we needed tomake a statement. That is when we began running newspaper ads proclaiming the Gospel at Christmas and Easter, starting a ministry side of the business. We started offering chaplains to the employees at our corporate office if they were dealing with personal problems — family, marriage, finances, or anything else. We offered financial stewardship classes. We recognize that if we can help themwith their finances, they will not have that burden when they come to work, and they’re better employees. Trouble on the Horizon We have always provided health care for our employees, and we work very hard to provide good health care. When our legal counsel saw that a new mandate called the Affordable Care Act was coming, he knew there was going to be a big problem. After the Supreme Court ruled that the new law was legal, he informed us how it would affect our company. We would be forced to cover contraceptives in our employee health care policy that we considered to be abortion-causing. That’s when we held a family meeting at my brother’s house. There were about 19 of us — including parents, cousins, and older children — and everyone got to share their thoughts. We made the decision unanimously to fight the mandate in the courts. To us it seemed like a clear violation of what our founders put in the Constitution. We eventually won our case in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, and then the government selected it to go to the Supreme Court. We were very relieved when the Supreme Court ruled in our favor. We live in a country that has religious freedoms, and we have no intent or desire to impose our religion on our employees. We were simply asking that the government not force us to become an abortion provider by freely providing products that would take life. To me, it was a no-brainer. The Bible and American Culture Our family has a love for the Bible. It speaks into every area of our life. For us to be ignorant of this book is to be ignorant of our heritage and our culture. Many of the principles within our government, foundational principles, are biblical concepts. To not understand its foundational roots is to not fully understand our government as well. I was once interviewed on CNN, and the news story before me was on the Good Samaritan. If you don’t know the Good Samaritan story from the Bible, you would have had no context for that news story. That’s a simple example within culture of how ignorance of this book leads to ignorance of our culture. Basic principles like “all men are created equal” — that’s a biblical concept. There are other worldviews that won’t embrace that. Religious freedom is another biblical principle. There are other worldviews that won’t accept religious freedom. Even the understanding of the separate roles of the church and the state is a biblical concept. Many of the concepts that our nation is built upon are biblical, and we think people ought to know about it. You don’t have to embrace it, you don’t have to accept it, but you ought to know about it. If separation of church and state becomes ignorance of church and state, we’ve misunderstood what church and state really is. And, at least in our nation, ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of both church and state. Steve Green is the President of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Hobby Lobby is considered a leader in the arts and crafts industry. The company was the subject of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in June 2014, which ruled the Greens did not lose their religious freedom because they owned a family business. Love for Scripture sparked historic supreme court case Excerpted from remarks made by Steve Green at the Religious Freedom Summit on October 9, 2014