Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park by James S. Bielo (review)

This work offers simultaneously an anthropology of Christianity, religious tourism, and project management. In Ark Encounter, James Bielo serves as a decidedly moderate observer of a $150 million USD “to-scale” re-creation of the vessel described in Genesis 6–9, the inaugural book in the Hebrew Bible. The result of this re-creation is Ark Encounter, a creationist theme park in Kentucky that opened in 2016, featuring the 510-foot-long ark as the centerpiece of a multifaceted immersive experience of religion-entertainment. Much of the book’s originality derives from Bielo’s 43 months spent observing the design studio where the four members of the Answers in Genesis core creative team did their work planning Ark Encounter.

Bielo locates Ark Encounter in the global effort to materialize the Bible through tourist attractions such as biblical gardens, creation museums, biblical history museums, and re-creations. For their designers, developers, and investors, these tourist stops demonstrate the historic and scientific plausibility of Genesis and prove the logic of immersive entertainment as a form of religious evangelism.

Answers in Genesis is not the only organization that supports the development of such recreation, but it is the one with an especially American knack for eager branding. A self-described apologetic ministry, Answers in Genesis points to Deuteronomy 6:7 in its promotion of “Creation Vacations”: “Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away.” As the Answers in Genesis website explains, “Opportunities to see and explore God’s amazing creation abound, whether at a national park, a Christian-themed venue, or a natural history museum.”¹ In addition to offering creationist guides to natural formations like Devil’s Tower, Carlsbad, and the Badlands, Answers in Genesis also opened the Creation Museum in Kentucky in 2007. The development of such Christian-themed venues allows families to—in their idiom—enjoy purpose-filled vacations. As Bielo discovers, Answers in Genesis is unambiguously seeking to reach all tourists, Christian and not, in their effort to encourage a better appreciation for the Creator and correct the secular propaganda of natural history. Surveys about biblical understanding are rarely precision instruments, but most sociologists of religion agree that fewer than ten percent of Americans adhere to a strict creationist outlook in which the words of Genesis are interpreted literally. Ark Encounter is not only for that ten percent. Indeed, among the more revelatory findings of Bielo’s research is the realization that the audience that consumed most of the design team’s attention was “the bête noire of creationists: skeptics, dogmatic evolutionists, and self-identified atheists” (88).

If you have read anything addressing the secular in the last 20 years of scholarly writings on religion, this finding won’t exactly surprise you. Studies on the secular, secularism, and secularity repeatedly note that there is no idea of the “religious” that is not engaged with a formation of the secular. It is nonetheless striking to see and hear through Bielo’s reporting how overtly obsessed Christian designers are with non-Christian tourists. This is, as Bielo understands, a historic shift. Once upon a time, Christian tourism like Chautauqua or pilgrimages sought to revive a presumptively Christian world; now Christian tourism seeks to compel non-Christians to attend to Christian argumentative suppositions. Bielo’s work focuses on this as a missionary tactic bent ultimately upon conversion. Yet, I remain unconvinced that Answers in Genesis measures its success by recruiting new parishioners for off-site churches. Bielo’s research findings lead me to think that Answers in Genesis is more interested in gaining a place on the tourist map for itself than expanding the rolls in any given church. Bielo sees Ark Encounter (and other materializations of the Bible) as a “form of public culture seeking to bolster fundamentalism’s cultural legitimacy” (11). But the design team he follows, as well as the resultant theme park and museum...