Does Scripture Speak for Itself?: The Museum of the Bible and the Politics of Interpretation

by Jill Hicks-Keeton, Cavan Concannon

Is the Bible the unembellished Word of God or the product of human agency? There are different answers to that question. And they lie at the heart of this book's powerful exploration of the fraught ways in which money, race and power shape the story of Christianity in American public life. The authors' subject is the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC: arguably the latest example of a long line of white evangelical institutions aiming to amplify and promote a religious, political, and moral agenda of their own. In their careful and compelling investigation, Jill Hicks-Keeton and Cavan Concannon disclose the ways in which the Museum's exhibits reinforce a particularized and partial interpretation of the Bible's meaning. Bringing to light the Museum's implicit messaging about scriptural provenance and audience, the authors reveal how the MOTB produces a version of the Bible that in essence authorizes a certain sort of white evangelical privilege; promotes a view of history aligned with that same evangelical aspiration; and above all protects a cohort of white evangelicals from critique. They show too how the Museum collapses vital conceptual distinctions between its own conservative vision of the Bible and 'The Bible' as a cultural icon. This revelatory volume above all confirms that scripture - for all the claims made for it that it speaks only divine truth - can in the end never be separated from human politics.

Genres: Religion, Christianity

248 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2022

About the author

Jill Hicks-Keeton is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches courses on biblical literature and on ancient Judaism and Christianity.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never been to the Museum of the Bible (MOTB), which opened in Washington, DC in 2017. Even though I'm very interested in the history of the Bible, I could never stomach the idea of giving money to the Green Family, the Hobby Lobby billionaires who successfully lobbied the Supreme Court to disallow Obamacare to cover contraception. The book isn't a systematic takedown of the MOTB (that apparently, was reserved for "The Museum of the Bible: A Critical Introduction", a collection of essays edited by the same co-authors of this book.) I believe this book has a liberal point of view, but it is far from polemical. That said, if you're conservative, you're probably going to hate it.

The book examines how the MOTB constructs a bible that serves the world view of white evangelical Christians. This is done in part with a critical analysis of the exhibits in the MOTB. I found these sections particularly useful. I am not thoroughly convinced that the MOTB would annoy me to no end. I am no longer curious about what I have been missing. The book also examines how the Green family has leveraged their philanthropy to the MOTB (which is a lucrative tax write off for Hobby Lobby) to establish themselves as experts on the Bible, and how the MOTB feeds into their Christian business. Along the way, the authors give a history of the close relationships between evangelicals and business.

This is an academic book, a bit less accessible to a general audience than "Jesus and John Wayne." It has stirred my interest on other academic books referenced in its copious notes.

[Sarah Tschetter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some people don’t want the honest truth, and that truth is what has been preached to them has been passed through down a long train of a game of telephone. The truth has become distorted and meanings of things lost. It leaves much up to the interpretation of those preaching, adding in their contemporary thoughts and opinions to things they don’t fully understand.

This book delves into that, exploring how the Bible and Evangelicals are interpreting it, bending the stories to their whims and using them to enforce their beliefs onto others.

[Mark Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A measured (that is to say non-sensationalist) critique (or, as the authors demurely call it, “interrogation”) of the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, a museum funded by the multibillionaire Christian activist Green family (of Hobby Lobby). Going floor by floor, exhibit by exhibit, the authors identify the white evangelical assumptions and social advocacy implicit throughout the displays. The authors are religious studies professors at state-run U.S. universities.

[Rob O'Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am reviewing this book for the Englewood Review of Books.

[Nathan Woll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, very detailed