Bible culture
Influences on music, movies, and more
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A few blocks south of the National Mall, there’s a 1920s-era former refrigerated warehouse. It’s an Art Deco structure with six vast floors, covering 430,000 square feet, that, at an estimated cost of $500 million, have all been dedicated to the Bible. This huge museum is filled with history, artifacts, descriptions, explanations, translations, quotations, publications, videos, interactive exhibits, lights, sounds, a gigantic gift shop, and an extensive focus on details, details, details. As might be expected, much of the content of this, the recently opened Museum of the Bible, is focused on the long-ago past. But for those who lean toward a more modern interpretation of the signature subject of the museum, there’s a vast amount of space upstairs that’s dedicated to biblical-influenced music, movies, fashion, architecture, art, and culture. After entering the museum through 40-foot-tall bronze doors depicting the Latin text of Genesis and passing through a free-standing art-glass entry vestibule with a translation of the 19th Psalm in 16 languages, visitors can walk up a wide span of stairs to the
second floor, where the theme is Impact of the Bible. There are four major exhibit areas:
Bible in the World, with 23 exhibits, interactive experiences and personal testimonials that concern the Bible’s impact on worldwide culture.
Bible in America, which shows how the Bible became a powerful influence in America, from the arrivals of the first Christian and Jewish settlers to today.
Bible Now, where the Bible can be experienced in real-time media feeds.
Washington Revelations, which chronicles the Bible’s presence in inscriptions, place names and monuments in Washington, D.C.
From there, upper floors examine the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the world of Jesus (to say that there’s much more would be to make a massive understatement).
But don’t hurry up the rest of the staircases. Hang around on the second floor for a while. That’s where an array of fascinating, involving and often familiar cultural displays serve to articulate how the Bible fits into contemporary society.
Head into the cozy confines of an egg-shaped sound shell, similar to a modern music studio, with several video screens mounted along the curved walls. This is where an assortment of rock, country, pop, and blues songs with biblical lyrics is playing. The video screen shares the name of the artist and the song. Each song falls within one of five themes: Adam and Eve, Exodus, Psalm 23, Life of Jesus, and Apocalypse, and echoes or references a particular Bible verse that impacts each artist’s work.
Example: Nina Simone, category Apocalypse, singing “Sinnerman,” which opens with Oh, sinnerman, where you gonna run to? Sinnerman where you gonna run to? Where you gonna run to? All on that day/We got to run to the rock. The lyrics, according to the video, are based on a verse in Revelation (They called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!”)
This is more fun than it sounds. The collection of artists currently playing on 12-minute loops includes the Hooters, whose “All You Zombies” is jam-packed with Old Testament-influenced lyrics. Example: Holy Moses met the Pharaoh/Yeah, he tried to set him straight/Looked him in the eye,
“Let my people go!” This stanza is followed by another on the subject of Noah as he worked on his ark, all by
himself: Only Noah saw it comin’/40 days and 40 nights/Took his sons and daughters with him/Yeah, they were the Israelites!
There are many more:
Arcade Fire (lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Win Butler has said he is interested in religion and has studied scripture).
Bob Marley (if you’re wondering why he’s here, read Dean MacNeil’s book The Bible and Bob Marley: Half the Story Has Never Been Told).
Coldplay (frontman Chris Martin describes his religious views as “alltheism,” a word he invented to describe how he believes in everything).
Coolio (from his song “Paradise”: As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death/I take a look at my life and realize there’s nothin’ left/‘Cause I’ve been blastin’ and laughin’ so long/That even my momma thinks that my mind is gone).
Dolly Parton (She’s been quoted as saying, “My grandpa was a preacher, and I guess at an impressionable age, I believed that through God I could do everything … and that’s why so many of my songs have an inspirational feeling”).
Sam Cooke (The Gospel Soul of Sam Cooke with the Soul Stirrers, a 12-song compilation, is considered by many to be his best work).
Leonard Cohen (the grandson of two Canadian rabbis; his compositions draw heavily from Jewish and biblical inspiration).
Johnny Cash (who once told a reporter, “Being a Christian isn’t for sissies”). The Rolling Stones, who famously offered “Sympathy for the Devil”: I was ’round when Jesus Christ/Had his moment of doubt and pain/Made damn sure that Pilate/Washed his hands and sealed his fate.
Queen (Freddy Mercury wrote “All God’s People,” with the phrase We’re all God’s people/Gotta face up/ Better grow up/Gotta stand tall and be strong).
The Clash (listen to Joe Strummer’s song “The Sound of the Sinners” on the album Sandinista!).
Squeeze (“Tempted,” with the lyrics tempted by the fruit of another, tempted but the truth is discovered, echoes the words of of a verse in Genesis).
Nearby is a Bible once owned by Elvis. Conspicuously missing is any mention of Bob Dylan; according to the website Jews for Jesus, Michael J. Gilmour, a professor of English and biblical literature at Providence University College in Manitoba, Canada, dedicates his book Tangled up in the Bible: Bob Dylan & Scripture “To Bob Dylan, my favorite theologian” in reference to Dylan’s use of themes from both the New Testament and Hebrew Scriptures, especially in his early lyrics.
Guidelines for song choices, according to MOTB content manager Chelcie B. Hunt, are: In the English language; familiar within popular culture rather than what might be expected (such as Christian music), and reflective of themes from the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible. Will the songs change? “Yes, they can, in time,” she says.
When the music is over, step over to a nearby elevated runway with strikingly
garbed mannequins posed along its length, showing off fashions with biblical references. Front and center are elaborate designs by Italian luxury house Dolce and Gabbana, whose 2013 collection offers prints of the Virgin on T-shirts and floral sweaters. One shirt, according to GQ, showcases Jesus’ crucifixion alongside patterns of sewn-in jewels.
There’s an interactive mirror that invites visitors to design their own styles.
For readers, a do-it-yourself interactive display lets participants explore the presence of the Bible in literature by connecting titles, excerpts and illustrations to their biblical sources.
Fans of fine art will want to spend some time in two gallery spaces that display works curated by biblical themes. Want some context with that? A video projection presents the Madonna and Child iconography across art history.
And probably the most entertaining exhibit is a small theater where a lineup of clips demonstrate the influence of the Bible throughout the history of film.
“Originally we had roughly 80 film clips that had strong allusions to or quotes from the Bible and were wellknown and popular,” said content manager Hunt. “But in the end, we had a major struggle to get rights to many of them. So we decided to have a 12-minute film of various clips.”
Some are funny, like Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part 1 (1981) in which Moses drops a stone tablet, reducing what he claims are the original 15 Commandments to 10. Others combine humor with thoughtfulness, as in 1984’s Ghostbusters in which Ray
(played by Dan Aykroyd) and Winston (Ernie Hudson) ponder the reason for the increase in the ghost-busting business, with Ray throwing in a reference to a verse in Revelation: “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood …”
Animation gets its due with what now looks like a primitive computer-generated scene showing the parting of the Red Sea in 1998’s Prince of Egypt. A young Kevin Bacon makes an impassioned Bible-referencing plea to permit dancing in 1984’s Footloose. A more melodramatic take on Moses than that of Mel Brooks is offered by a handsome, brooding Charlton Heston in 1956’s The Ten Commandments.
Other segments come from 1973’s Jesus Christ Superstar (definitely looking dated), the Christian Hindi film Daya Sagar (1978), X2: X Men United (2003), the brutal World War II drama Fury (2014), and Selma, with a moving speech by Martin Luther King Jr. during his work to secure equal voting rights (2014).
The privately funded Museum of the Bible, which opened Nov. 17, was founded by evangelical Christians (the billionaire Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby Inc.), but claims to have no sectarian or evangelical agenda.
“They never tried to impose their point of view, which is an evangelical point of view, on this museum, ever,” says museum president Cary Summers in an interview with NPR. “We only have one mission statement, and that is to engage people with the Bible.”