Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park

by James S. Bielo

Behind the scenes at a creationist theme park with a mission to convert visitors through entertainment

Opened to the public in July 2016, Ark Encounter is a creationist theme park in Kentucky. The park features an all-timber re-creation of Noah's ark, built full scale to creationist specifications drawn from the text of Genesis, as well as exhibits that imagine the Bible's account of life before the flood. More than merely religious spectacle, Ark Encounter offers important insights about the relationship between religion and entertainment, religious publicity and creativity, and fundamentalist Christian claims to the public sphere.

James S. Bielo examines these themes, drawing on his unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to the Ark Encounter creative team during the initial design of the park. This unique anthropological perspective shows creationists outside church contexts, and reveals their extraordinary effort to materialize a controversial worldview for the general public. Taking readers from inside the park's planning rooms to other fundamentalist projects and diverse Christian tourist attractions, Bielo illuminates how creationist cultural producers seek to reach both their constituents and the larger culture.

The "making of" this creationist theme park, Bielo argues, allows us to understand how fundamentalist culture is produced, and how entertainment and creative labor are used to legitimize creationism. Through intriguing and surprising observations, Ark Encounter challenges readers to engage with the power of entertainment and to seriously grapple with creationist ambitions for authority. For believers and non-believers alike, this book is an invaluable glimpse into the complicated web of religious entertainment and cultural production.

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion

240 pages, Paperback

Published July 3, 2018

Reviews

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 3 out of 5]

An anthropological study of the Ark Encounter, and creationist museums more broadly. Bielo places his work in a larger anthropological discussion, which didn't mean much to me as a historian (y'all's subjects are alive?), but overall I found his observations fascinating. His experience in the museum, and with its creative team, was also interesting. I found that the investigations into other creationist museums distracted from the central study, though it is quite intriguing that Bielo traveled from Connecticut to Croatia, Indiana to Israel, to see religious museums and related sites. Ark Encounter is one to read if you are interested in fundamentalist material culture.

[H. Givens · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author wanted this to be an ethnography of the creative team behind Ark Encounter. I'm not sure why, because that sounds mindnumbingly boring. And perhaps relevant to some very specialized future studies, but how many? He lost his access to the team partway through though (from no fault of his own) and in the end it benefited the book. He had to include comparative studies of other Bible-recreating sites, and talk about the finished product, and those are the best parts of the book, talking about the site's significance and not just the creative process behind it.

Even so, I can only recommend this as a companion to Righting America at the Creation Museum by Susan and William Trollinger. Righting America takes you through the Creation Museum in incredible detail, so much that I feel like I've been there, and then talks about the mechanics of the arguments being made and what's really being done in each section of the museum. It was much more in-depth and satisfying. It came out just before the Ark Encounter opened, though, so at least I got some comparable information about that from this book.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent ethnographic study of one of my favorite weird institutions.

[Gunnar · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the better books I have read for class, assigned in my anthropology thesis course, was very interesting to read and decently written! Wouldn’t read again but certainly would recommend

[OvercommuniKate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pop culture analysis can easily turn into a Buzzfeed list in book form. This book is different, as Bielo strikes the right tone in research of other religious parks in the USA with first-person research for the Ark Encounter.