Does Scripture Speak for Itself?
The Museum of the Bible and the Politics of Interpretation
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- $26.99
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- $26.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Religious studies professors Hicks-Keeton (Arguing with Aseneth) and Concannon (Profaning Paul) deliver a scathing examination of the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. Studying the museum's exhibits and funding, the authors contend that it "produces and advertises a white evangelical bible, one which authorizes white evangelical privilege in the United States." Hicks-Keeton and Concannon provide a meticulously researched account of how the evangelical Green family, who own Hobby Lobby, used their fortune to found the museum and amplify what the authors describe as the family's "capitalist," "patriarchal," and "white supremacist" interpretation of the Bible. The museum presents an overly rosy view of the Bible's historical role in U.S. politics, the authors suggest, noting, for instance, that exhibits downplay slaveholders' uses of scripture to justify slavery. Describing a "theme-park-style ride" at the museum that points out biblical inscriptions on D.C. monuments, Hicks-Keeton and Concannon posit that it "teaches" visitors to view the country as a "Christian nation in need of restoration to its ‘biblical' roots." The sharp analyses of the exhibits are as convincing as they are disconcerting, and the exposé of the Green family serves as a stark warning about the outsize power of the wealthy to influence biblical interpretation by "building institutions, funding missionary work, or sponsoring evangelical preachers." The result is a damning critique of the Museum of the Bible.