The American Bible Society has introduced that it’ll shut its Religion and Liberty Discovery Middle (FLDC), a Bible museum during which it has invested greater than $60 million, after lower than three years of operation.
ABS projected that the museum, centrally positioned on Philadelphia's Independence Mall, would appeal to 250,000 guests yearly. Museum ticket income reveals a a lot decrease quantity, maybe as few as 5,400 guests in fiscal yr 2022 (the museum's program income was $54,000 and full-price tickets value $10).
New ABS CEO Jennifer Holloran, who arrived final month at a company with varied monetary and mission challenges, mentioned in an e-mail to workers on Wednesday that she and the board agreed at their February assembly that “now could be the time to get on with it. a tough however crucial motion.” She quoted Ecclesiastes 3, the place she wrote that “every thing that occurs on this world occurs on the time of God's selecting.”
“The FLDC, as conceived, was a splendidly revolutionary thought,” she wrote to workers. “This concept got here with nice potentialities and necessities to be purposeful in the long run. Sadly, regardless of the valiant efforts of our management and the FLDC staff, we have now not been in a position to obtain the long-term sustainability that such an expertise must succeed.”
The museum opened in Might 2021, when locations have been nonetheless experiencing pandemic ripples, however by no means rebounded like different locations. CT visited the museum final month, and solely three guests confirmed up in additional than two hours.
The ABS described the FLDC as a $60 million museum when it opened in 2021 and had an expenditure of $11 million in fiscal yr 2022. The 2023 ABS Stewardship Report confirmed the group contributed a further $9.4 million to the museum.
The ABS leases the museum premises, so it’s unlikely that the funding can be recouped, however this determination will cease the bleeding of a few of that cash. The group pays about $1.3 million a yr in occupancy, in keeping with its tax returns. ABS declined to touch upon what the lease answer can be.
Donors to the museum embody a number of church buildings, corresponding to Elevation Church and Houston's First Baptist Church. Passion Foyer can be a sponsor. The Museum of the Bible, supported by the Greens, who personal Passion Foyer, loaned the objects to the museum. Different notable donors embody Linda Bean of the LLBean household.
“I'm dissatisfied. I'm certain I'm not the one one,” mentioned Peter Rathbun, who donated to the museum along with his spouse as a result of he was enthusiastic about it whereas serving as ABS common counsel. “I'm dissatisfied as a result of I believed it was an exquisite imaginative and prescient , and at this level I’ve no cause to assume it's not an incredible imaginative and prescient but.”
“It was an enormous waste,” mentioned one former ABS worker, who was not approved to talk on the report.
Based on a number of sources, ABS didn’t ship donors common experiences in regards to the museum. The 2023 ABS Stewardship Report merely thanks everybody who visited the museum.
ABS had a windfall from promoting its New York constructing for $300 million in 2015 to maneuver into leased workplace house in Philadelphia. The museum turned one of many promoting factors of the relocation to the “Birthplace of America”.
“The Religion and Liberty Discovery Middle would by no means have been doable if we had moved to Atlanta, Orlando or Dallas.” It's an ideal match for Philadelphia,” former ABS CEO Roy Peterson mentioned in feedback to DickersonBakker in 2021. Peterson oversaw the launch of FLDC.
The FLDC Board of Trustees consists of ABS senior administration, however the museum has its personal govt director.
Some former workers in interviews noticed the museum initiative as one symptom of ABS' seek for an identification as a company that’s shifting away from a few of its international work to assist People have interaction extra with the Bible.
The museum's acknowledged purpose is to hint “the connection between religion and liberty in America … by illuminating the affect of the Bible.” The museum focuses on the Bible, however doesn’t completely spotlight Christians. Her thesis is extra common—that religion has been a part of the American story—with options from figures like Jewish educator and philanthropist Rebecca Gratz.
The reveals are largely digital, with high-quality animated movies and interactive shows developed by the identical staff that did the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York. Historic objects from ABS' personal intensive archives are on show, corresponding to Helen Keller's Braille Bible. Additionally on show is an ABS copy of John Wesley's 1775 “calm deal with to our American colonies,” during which Wesley requires loyalty to the British crown.
Different organizations have contributed objects: Reverend Billy Graham's notes for a sermon he gave within the former Soviet Union in 1988 are on show courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Affiliation. A Voice of the Martyrs has contributed copies of Bibles which can be being smuggled into North Korea utilizing a climate balloon.
Organized across the themes of “religion, liberty, justice, hope, unity,” the reveals clarify the Bible's position in occasions from the founding of the USA to the pressured assimilation of Native People to desegregation to temperance to labor reform. The museum has a staff of students who draw from some Christian faculties in addition to church buildings.
Guests can put on a “lamp” and use it to the touch varied reveals to retailer info that they’ll entry later. Within the present store, guests can buy a Religion and Freedom Bible revealed by ABS primarily based on the Good Information translation.
In a press launch asserting the closure, Holloran mentioned, “We look ahead to reimagining what the way forward for content material may appear to be by a publicly accessible, digitized format.”
Because the Museum of the Bible offers many objects on the FLDC, CT requested Robert Briggs, then ABS CEO, in a 2020 interview how the FLDC would differ from the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. Briggs mentioned the FLDC will inform a “extra focused” story about “the influence of the Bible on the event of this nation.”
The museum can be closed to the general public on March 28.
