Brad speaks with Dr. Jill Hicks-Keeton, Associate Professor of Religion at Oklahoma University and co-editor of The Museum of the Bible: A Critical Introduction, about the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. Started by the Green family, who own the Hobby Lobby franchise, the Museum of the Bible is what happens when an evangelical megachurch tries to transform into a Smithsonian museum--it mixes Evangelical propaganda with Christian nationalist rhetoric and a supersessionist theology that sees Judaism ending as soon as Christ comes on the scene. The result is more of a monument to White American evangelicalism rather than a museum operating at the highest standards of scholarship and curation. Dr Hicks-Keeton provides a critical view from the standpoint of biblical studies and the study of religion.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty in religion, Skidmore College.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB, and I am here today with Dr. Jill Hicks-Keaton, who is associate professor at Oklahoma University in the Department of Religious Studies.
She holds a PhD from Duke University, teaches courses on biblical literature, ancient Judaism, and early Christianity.
She is the author of Arguing with Asenath, Gentile Access to Israel's Living God in Jewish Antiquity, which is out from Oxford University Press, came out in 2018.
Also a co-editor of The Ways That Often Parted from SBL Press, and that also is in 2018, has written for outlets such as Religion and Politics and Ancient Jew Review, and has a new book coming out next year called Who Owns the Bible?
And that will be with Cambridge University Press.
But today we're talking about a book that came out just a little while ago, and it is called The Museum of the Bible: A Critical Introduction.
And Dr. Hicks Keaton was a co-editor of this book, along with Cavan Kankanen.
And it really introduces folks to this enigmatic museum right in the heart of DC, which is the Museum of the Bible.
And so we're going to get into that and talk about it today.
So first of all, say, Dr. Hicks-Keaton, thanks for joining me.
Thanks for being here.
I'm thrilled to be here.
This is a fascinating topic.
I think the Museum of the Bible is something a lot of folks know about, but they don't actually really know about it.
And so I want to just sort of start by asking you, what is the Museum of the Bible?
There's some sort of debate about, is it a museum?
Is it a monument?
You know, who started it?
Who came up with the idea?
And what is this sort of massive institution right in the heart of the District of Columbia?
The Museum of the Bible is, I mean, you're exactly right that there's some debate, both in the headlines, but also among scholars in my subfield and in scholars who are thinking about American religion and politics, about what this institution is.
But the basics of it are that the Green family, the Oklahoman owners of Hobby Lobby, funded and founded this institution, which ultimately culminated in a Smithsonian-looking, though privately funded, museum.
Very close to the National Mall in DC.
So it sits among the publicly funded Smithsonian institutions.
And it is, I think it's safe to say, a white evangelical institution that doesn't claim itself as such.
And so some of the controversy around this institution is about whether it is promoting a conservative politics that aligns with white evangelicalism, or whether it can be something more of like a neutral arbiter of the Bible for the public.
I used to live in DC and pass the Museum of the Bible.
I'm wondering if you would just take a minute to explain to folks just the sort of like layout and structure.
It's not an insignificant building in a district with many significant buildings.
Like it really is something to behold.
And so would you mind just giving us a little bit on the kind of structure of the museum?
Sure, so it's built in an old refrigerated warehouse that has been absolutely renovated and sort of made technologically beautiful.
And in fact, one of the PR campaigns, the rhetoric that they use to describe the museum is that it is very technologically advanced.
It feels, when you enter, it feels a bit majestic, like a modern cathedral, and it has five floors, three of which house permanent exhibits that span from something like a Disney-fied Old Testament Hebrew Bible experience to an actual thrill ride where you will get sprayed with water, and then also to a floor that has a lot of ancient manuscripts and older things that would be in a more traditional
So it's got both the, like, edutainment, but also sort of fun for the whole family is how they describe it.
But it does, it feels like a very modern museum crossed with sort of like a Christian Chuck E. Cheese that has a very imposing presence in the political center of our nation.
And I will mention that it also has an outlet here in Oklahoma.
So I live in Oklahoma and so the headquarters are just up the road from me in Oklahoma City.
And so while it is like there's a building in D.C.
that is a very imposing structure and it also has these other arms that are reaching out outside of the nation's capital.
It really brings, for me, it brings back, it's almost like an evangelical megachurch, like in the form of a museum.
Like there's, you know, it's family friendly, you walk in, there's all these like shiny things and bright lights, and as you said, edutainment.
It's almost like a Smithsonian, you know, reproduced with an evangelical megachurch.
It's kind of amazing in that way.
Well, the book we're talking about, Museum of the Bible, is an edited volume.
And so you are one of the co-editors.
You also have an essay in the volume that we'll talk about.
But I wanted to just start by asking this.
Margaret Mitchell is a contributor.
And she makes the claim that the Museum of the Bible aims to mold visitors into boosters of the Bible, rather than interpreters of it.
And I think most of us are used to going to museums and looking at art or artifacts.
And it's supposed to be, and we all know it's not the case, but it's supposed to be a kind of neutral space where we learn, we kind of are able to develop our own interpretations, our own takeaways.
But there seems to be a consistent idea here that the Museum of the Bible is not neutral, and it tries to make people into a certain kind of reader of the Bible, or a certain kind of interpreter of the Bible.
Would you mind talking about that?
How does that work?
What does that mean?
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