Is the "Good Book" Really So Good?

Episode Outline:
0:00 Special episode: Jill Hicks-Keeton on why the Bible has to be made into the “good book”
0:25 Bart introduces Jill, her background, and her new book Good Book
3:00 What it means to say white evangelicals “saved the Bible to save themselves”
4:46 Jill’s idea of the “Bible Benevolence Project”
8:17 VeggieTales, Jericho, and how children are taught a sanitized Bible
12:03 How white evangelicals creatively reinterpret Canaanite violence
15:08 Why biblical violence gets framed as both time-bound and timeless
16:41 Misogyny, patriarchy, and why the etymological meaning of “woman-hater” is not enough
19:30 Egalitarian versus complementarian readings of Jesus and women
23:19 The Syrophoenician woman and why “Jesus empowered her” is not a neutral reading
25:54 “Pornodoxic reconstruction” and how ancient sexy women get invented to save Paul
28:50 1 Timothy 2, made-up Ephesian context, and why women supposedly needed discipline
37:43 1 Corinthians 11, veils versus hair, and how interpreters make Paul say the opposite of what he says
43:27 Why Jill focuses specifically on white evangelicals
47:17 How she teaches disturbing biblical texts in the classroom without telling students what to believe
50:01 Why the Bible still matters as both ancient literature and a modern cultural force
51:55 Bart’s closing takeaway: this is not antiquarian trivia but a live social and political issue

Episode Description
In this episode Bart interviews Jill Hicks-Keeton about her sure-to-be controversial book, recently released: The Good Book: How White Evangelicals Save the Bible to Save Themselves. We are all familiar with the disturbing parts of the Bible, with its divinely sanctioned violence from the destruction of Jericho in the Old Testament to the destruction of the world in the New, from the passages that justify slavery to the patriarchal views of ancient Israel and the writings in the name of Paul. How have evangelicals tried to salvage these disturbing passages in order to make them not just tame but "good" for readers today? Listen to this interview and hear Prof. Hicks-Keeton explain.

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