Helga without the H

Full disclosure: I visited this museum in bad faith (faith! get it? harharhar.I’msorry.)

When I came up with my idea to visit as many museums as possible this year, that very much included the idea of pushing my own boundaries by going to see museums that I did not expect to enjoy. Museums that to me seem to be money grabs, or with bad messaging. The first museum that comes to mind is the Museum of the Bible. My train to work passes this monstrosity, and I found myself wondering why I’d never heard of or noticed it before, given that it is absolutely HUMONGOUS and has HUGE lettering across the top so that it can be identified from outer space, I guess. Turns out this thing was only built a few years ago.

Why the distrust and skepticism? I’m pretty sure the Bible has plenty to say about humility, and this mega-building is not humble. I associated this museum with gross megachurch evangelicals who manipulate vulnerable people for personal gain and who preach wacked-out views. Real faith is quiet and introspective. The bible’s teachings should be preached through good works and compassion. But this gargantuan screaming building, with its $35 entrance fee and it’s flashy displays, is none of those things. I was expecting complete lack of sincerity and a total bastardization of everything that religious should actually be about. But was I right to be so scathing? Can I really claim that something is bullshit when I’ve never actually experienced it? Maybe I should give this place a chance.

The problem is that I don’t want to give a cent of my money to this enterprise, and the entry fee is hefty. Thirty-five bucks is a lot for any museum, but it’s especially ludicrous in DC where most of the best museums are free. Then a friend pointed out to me that, for the entire month of July, the Museum of the Bible is free after 3pm. The thing is, July was almost over, I work on most weekdays, and I was gone for the remaining weekends. But then the stars aligned: I was in my downtown office one weekday when my afternoon meeting got suddenly canceled, and I had the rest of the day blocked off. It was 3pm. I could make it. [I logged a couple more hours when I got home that night, FYI] By the time I got to the museum and through the (total overkill) security, I had 90 minutes.

This museum is MASSIVE, and there is no way to really get the full experience in such limited time. So now we’ve got to take this review with TWO grains of salt: my bad faith, and my lack of proper timing. That being said, this museum is mostly bullshit, so I don’t want to spend any more time in it. Some tourists walking out were talking how they were looking forward to coming back the next day. NO! WHYYYY???? There’s so much great and amazing stuff to see and do in DC, and you’re going to waste TWO days in this shithole? So weird. Anyway… I asked the woman at the ticket booth what is the must-see material that I absolutely shouldn’t miss since I only had 90 minutes, and she directed me to the 3rd floor (I think… I’m writing this thing a month late and memory is fuzzy.) Great, here I go!

But on my way up the stairs, I passed the 2nd floor and saw the door to an exhibit I definitely wanted to see: The Bible and American History. Or maybe The Bible as An American Document. Impact of the Bible on America? Or something. I’m failing to find the official title on the website at the moment. I was extremely interested to see how the museum would spin the bible’s influence on US history. This has been a hot button topic this year, since Louisiana passed that bullshit law that forces classrooms to display the 10 Commandments, claiming that they are one formative documents of American history. That’s complete bullshit of course, and an obvious violation of the 1st amendment. But it’s also historically inaccurate, right? So if there’s one place that seems like it would have tried to put together a cohesive argument for why the bible is a founding US document, you’d think it would be this place mascaraing as a museum. “What nonsense will they spew?” I wondered. Turns out this section wasn’t too bad. It didn’t make any major claims about how crucial the bible is. It also didn’t have any historical inaccuracies as best as I could tell. This section was basically just a bunch of examples of historical figures owning or quoting a bible. That’s pretty much it. Just a whole exhibit saying “Hey, this guy had a bible. Also this other guy had a bible. This lady had a bible.”

It did an adequate job highlighting where bible-thumpers weren’t exactly the good guys (acknowledged genocide of Native Americans, for example) and acknowledged multiple religions with dignity, even the ones that aren’t bible-centric! It was a surprisingly fair, if somewhat boring, exhibit that didn’t make any wacky claims. Alas, it was still kinda boring. I noticed that all the other visitors were just zipping through this section without stopping to read, well, pretty much anything. There were actually a bunch of historic bibles laying around, which was kinda cool, except for the fact that once you’ve seen the first 40 bibles of so, you’ve kinda seen them all. Nobody was stopping to read about them, which means nobody was learning a thing. They had a replica of the liberty bell, and some idiots walked in and said “Is that the real one?” I already thought this was dumb, because I’m a judgmental nerd who looks down on people whose geographic and historic knowledge doesn’t match my own. But what makes me not feel bad about judging these people is the fact that the bell had a big old sign on it that says “reproduction, real bell located in Philadelphia.” Like… what is the point of museums if nobody reads any of it??????

At the end of the surface-level “bible quotes in US history” section there is an interactive display where you can answer a few survey questions, and there is a big display that circulated through the survey results amongst all visitors. The results are all pretty skewed, of course, because it’s only sampling people who are into surface-level Christianity enough to shell out $35 for a bible museum. And the questions were phrased in pretty leading ways. “True or false: the Bible doesn’t get enough respect” or “write a word that you think describes the bible.” It was kinda neat even if the results were suspect, and I dutifully waited my turn to take the survey. Oddly enough my answer of “weaponized” didn’t pop up as one of most commonly selected words. I admit I approached this exhibit with frustration towards most of my fellow visitors. I’d passed too many MAGA hats and overheard too many stupid comments. But the main reason I hung around the survey display for so long was to try to overhear other patrons having their discussions. I was visiting at the same time as a high school group who were also trying to capitalize on the free entry. Given where we were, I assumed Christian private school, and I was curious to overhear their indoctrination. But, to my happy surprise, they were actually having really healthy, informed, thoughtful discussions. They weren’t falling for the leading questions. They were being mature. It was pretty dang awesome.

This is a good time to back up to what I was mentioning at the start of the review. I want to visit places I wouldn’t normally visit, and try to do so with as open of a mind as possible. The friend who told me about the free entry was also a friend who sounded surprised when I voiced my assumptions that this place was evil bullshit. And another friend had posted recently about her visit to the museum with her family. These are smart and kind people, so maybe I was wrong. So far the history section was perfectly uncontroversial. And these kids, who seemed to be approaching with a legitimate level of open-mindedness that I was failing at myself, were giving me hope. So maybe this place isn’t evil after all? I continued on…

By this point time was wasting away, and I hadn’t even made it up to the “good stuff” yet. So I basically just flew through the entire rest of this floor and didn’t get deep into any displays. In this way, I fit right in with all the other visitors. Even my new buddies the highschool kids were skipping over this stuff, as I heard their chaperone urging them on “We only have an hour to close! We have to get upstairs stat!” So this section was a big mish-mash of all sorts of stuff, and I don’t feel it would be fair to review here. But some brief highlights:

• A display on Sir Isaac Newton claiming he believed that his scientific teachings aligned with bible teachings. And next to that, a Galileo display with the quote that the bible teaches us “how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” In other words: science is good! I found this encouraging since I’d expected more of a creationist approach here, and there was zero sign of that nonsense.
• A wall of common phrases that originated in the bible. Similar to something you’d see in the Word museum, or books I’ve read listing phrases originated by Shakespeare. They were also displayed in multiple languages, I assume to emphasize the global appeal of the text.
• An entire room just about Billy Graham
• A pile of burned books with a plaque explaining that the Soviet regime banned religion and people had to smuggle bibles. As a Latvian-American granddaughter of a minister who had the flee the Soviets, this one hit close to home. What struck me, though, was that right now in America religious leaders are trying to ban books in public schools. There was no mention of that here. The same display condemned Nazis for burning down synagogues. And yet plenty of Evangelical Christian leaders have no problem shitting on Muslims and other faiths. The hypocrisy is a bit thick, no?
• A few runway dresses from a Bible Museum Fashion Show fundraiser. Seems a bit immodest, no? I can see her ankle!!!

Okay, I was finally on my way upstairs! The first door was for some sort of “show” that was starting in 15 minutes and would run 20 or 30 minutes. So I headed off to the next area to kill 10 minutes. The next area was… strange. It was like bible Epcot. You basically walk into a room that’s been designed to look like bible times, complete with plastic food and sheep. On the walls there were displays that told you about some aspect of life during that time. “People got water from the well!” That sort of thing. I walked into a little fake hut that was decked out with fake foods and was presumably about to tell me about cooking and hospitality. There was a mannequin in bible garb in the corner. Suddenly the mannequin started talking and moving and I screamed out, “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!!!” I couldn’t stop myself- it just slipped out! I immediately profusely apologized. Even if I was skeptical of the museum, I’m still not going to go disrespecting it by committing blasphemy. Except that’s exactly what I dud cuz holy cow (idolatry) that lady scared the crap out of me. She said something clever like, “You walk into my house unannounced but I’m the one scaring you?” I awkwardly looked at her plastic fish and bread and scurried out. I’m under the impression that maybe this living history section has some sorts of presentations happening at set times or something, and I’d likely missed all of that. There were a couple more people in period garb scattered about, chatting with other visitors. At least I really hope there was more to this part, because as-is it was a bit of a nothingburger (especially at $35 a head.)

Finally it was time for THE BIG SHOW!!! The thing that, presumably, the woman at check-in wanted me to see! We entered a small theatre, and bible stories start projecting onto a wall in front of us. It was well done visually. It wasn’t just a rectangle with a movie on it, it had shapes and lights and surrounded the audience, etc. This is terrible description, but anyway, visually it was good stuff. Then a voice from the heavens prompted us to move along. So we got up and walked along to the next section. Again, this description is terrible and I apologize. The basic idea here is just that you walk from room to room where different bible stories keep being told, and there is some sort of visual element. When we’re talking about Moses parting the red sea, for example, we walk through a hallway with blue lights on the wall. I think some mist came in at parts. I remember very few details. I left kinda confused and conflicted. If someone doesn’t already know the bible and its stories, then this show is kinda useless. It doesn’t do a good enough job telling the stories in a coherent way (though maybe that’s how it should be, given the bible itself wouldn’t win any Pulitzers if it were published today. It’s not exactly Steinbeck.) Now if you do know the stories, then this was all kinda neat, but also… just kinda. I think with this giant admission fee, if they wanted to do an interactive, experience the bible type of thing, they could have gone way bigger and better. Here’s the “Noah’s Ark” section, for example:

I got out of the show with only 5 minutes to kill, so I ran upstairs into the next exhibit. This area seemed like it might have actually been educational IF it had been executed correctly (it wasn’t) and of course if I’d had time to read. This section talked about the history of the world at the time that the bible was actually being written. Honestly, this is history I do not know well and could definitely stand to learn. There were “artifacts” all over the place, but, of course, most of these were reproductions (in which case, what’s the point? Seems disingenuous to call yourself a museum but not actually have the items you’re claiming to display). But what bugged me with my little time there was how little I was actually learning from the plaques. Like the American history section, I’m sure there’s plenty of real material to cover there, but everything seemed a little surface level. That being said, if the entire museum had centered on this section, and if it were better executed, this would have been a worthwhile visit. Real history is awesome!

As I departed my whirlwind visit, I tried to piece together my thoughts. Okay, I’ve been here. Now… what did I think? Honestly… I don’t know. My main takeaway is just that the museum seems confused. It’s unclear to me what it was really trying to do or say. There’s potential value here, for a good-faith and in-the-weeds execution. But it doesn’t deliver on that really. It touts itself for being interactive and fun, but those elements didn’t quite deliver for me, either. It was just such a weird little hodgepodge of everything and nothing, and I couldn’t tell who it was really for. Thinking back on it now, a month later, I felt like I was visiting a school science fair or school art show or whatever else we did in school. It felt like a whole bunch of school assignments strung together, where some kids put in more effort than others, some understood the material better than others, some had parents who were way better with a glue gun than others. Like, ok, this is what you threw together to show people who come by, but… why? Why like this? I just don’t get it.

Would I return? If I did return, it would be to give this place a fair shake since my visit was rushed. Do I have desire to return? No. This place was kinda depressing and creepy. Also, some of the stuff I missed was the stuff where you pay extra money for interactive rides or some bullshit, and that all sounds so tacky that I think visiting those would only hurt my review.

Bottom line: Would I recommend this museum to others? NO. I would not. This is not worth the time or money, especially in DC where were are a million better options. Even if it’s free… the Air and Space museum is free and only like 2 blocks away. Do that instead.