American Thought Leaders

What happens when a business decides faith matters more than profit? Apparently, it flourishes.

Hobby Lobby, founded by David and Barbara Green in Oklahoma City in 1972, is a private, family-owned corporation now with over a thousand arts-and-crafts stores nationwide. The stores are closed on Sundays, do not sell any Halloween-themed products, operate debt-free, and are run according to Biblical principles, emphasizing the value of faith and family life.

David Green told me in our recent interview: “God blesses us when we do what we should do, rather than what’s maybe most profitable.”

“When we closed on Sunday, we did less business. When we stopped selling Halloween, we did less business. I can name seven or eight different things that ... cost us, but it was the right thing to do,“ he said. ”So I think God is asking us to do the right thing and not what’s most profitable.”

In 2012, the owners of Hobby Lobby sued the federal government for requiring company insurance plans to cover four specific contraceptives—two morning-after pills and two copper IUDs—that they argued could end life after conception. Facing daily fines of $1.3 million, the Green family filed a lawsuit that culminated in a 5–4 victory at the Supreme Court.

In my interview with Green and his longtime friend and co-author of his many books, Bill High, we talk about their latest book “The Legacy Life.”

How do we build a lasting, meaningful legacy? How do we become good stewards of our resources, time, and talents? How can families ensure their values are truly passed on to later generations—and not lost over time?

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

What if the most potent weapon that America has against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) isn’t nukes or tariffs?

“This isn’t a competition between the largest economy and the second largest economy. This is a competition of ideals—and we’ve got the better ones,” says former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback.

“If you want to hit them where it hurts, hit them on human rights issues, genocides in their own country, religious freedom that they don’t grant any of their people—whether they be Buddhist, Muslim, Falun Gong, Christians. That’s where they’re the weakest. It’s where they’re the most vulnerable.”

Ahead of President Donald Trump’s expected meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, I sat down with Brownback to understand what he sees as the Chinese regime’s greatest vulnerabilities, its deepest fears, and how those can be strategically leveraged by the United States.

Brownback is co-chair of the International Religious Freedom Summit. He previously served as governor of Kansas from 2011 to 2018 and as a U.S. senator from Kansas, 1996 to 2011. His upcoming book is titled, “China’s War on Faith.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.