Levan Institute Book Chats—Jill Hicks-Keeton, Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves

A discussion of Jill Hicks-Keeton's book, Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves (Fortress Press, 2023). The author will be joined in conversation by Jennifer Quigley (Emory University) and Daniel Vaca (Brown University), moderated by Richard Flory (USC). Co-organized by the USC School of Religion. Registration is required. REGISTER HERE

About the Book: Good Book interrogates how white evangelical Christians in the US make the Bible the "Good Book." An inanimate object with a contested table of contents ripe for multiple meanings and uses, the Bible cannot be a moral agent on its own. People must make it so, as indeed they have. As prevailing social norms change, evangelical Christians confront intellectual and interpretive challenges as they quest to make an ancient book newly relevant and ever benevolent, especially for historically oppressed populations. While histories show us that white Christians in the US have frequently appealed to their Bibles in support of issues now judged to be on the wrong side of history, including racism, sexism, and colonialism, contemporary white evangelical figures have in recent years worked steadfastly to defend the Bible against charges of complicity in harm. This is especially the case when it comes to patriarchy and the place of women, as evangelicals conscript the Bible into arguments for and against patriarchal normativity in response to changing conceptions of what is good.

The Bible's historical origins in the hierarchical, patriarchal contexts of the ancient world create challenges for any Christian seeking to interpret their Bible as fundamentally liberative. Good Book shows the creative negotiations that Bible-benevolence projects demand, as evangelicals wrestle both Jesus and Paul into advocates for women. The quest to maintain the Bible's goodness is ultimately a respectability project for evangelical Christians in the US who seek to maintain moral authority in an increasingly diverse religious landscape. Whether they rebrand patriarchy or seek to untangle the Bible from sexism, white evangelical Bible-benevolence projects perpetuate misogyny.

About the Author: Jill Hicks-Keeton is Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California. She is a specialist in ancient Judaism and Christianity and has also published on how the Bible is mobilized in contemporary U.S. politics. She is the author of Arguing with Aseneth: Gentile Access to Israel’s Living God in Jewish Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2018), Does Scripture Speak for Itself? The Museum of the Bible and the Politics of Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2022; with Cavan Concannon), and Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves (Fortress Press, 2023).

Open to attendants outside of USC. An excerpt of the book will be made available to registered attendants. Registration before the event is required. 

This event is part of the Levan Institute for the Humanities' “Book Chats” series, conversations about new books published by USC scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. To see more events in this series, including recordings of past events, visit https://dornsife.usc.edu/levan-institute/book-chats/.