Christian tourist attractions, mythmaking, and identity formation /edited by Erin Roberts and Jennifer Eyl.

Includes bibliographies and index.

Introduction : myth, our bloodless battleground / Erin Roberts -- Promoting biblical exceptionalism to naturalize an evangelical America / Stephen L. Young -- The materiality of myth : authorizing fundamentalism at Ark Encounter / James Bielo -- Rival epistemologies and constructed confusion at the Creation Museum / Steven Watkins -- "It is what it is" : mythmaking and identity formation on a Christian Zionist tour of Israel / Sean Durbin -- "That their heart might throb with love for Israel!" : celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles with charismatics and messianic Jews in Jerusalem / Katja Vehlow -- Anachronism as a constituent feature of mythmaking at the BibleWalk Museum / Jennifer Eyl -- Identity construction and the social logic of Descent at Holy Land Experience / Erin Roberts -- On the myth of religion's uniqueness / Craig Martin.

Religious attractions in the form of museums, theme parks, and guided tours allow visitors to interact directly with specific narratives about the past, present, and future. As such, they are often viewed as providing historical and doctrinal education, wholesome entertainment, or sacred space for participants. Christian Tourism, Myth-Making and Identity instead shows the extent and the strategies through which the narratives are constructed, by analyzing religious tourist attractions that locate visitors within tradition- specific historical narratives. Case studies considered include Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum in Kentucky, the Bible Walk Museum in Ohio, Christian Zionist Tours in Israel and the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem. 0This book approaches these tourist attractions as active sites of myth-making that construct the past in particular ways that serve present and future interests related to identity. In this way, the sites are shown to be functionally equivalent to non-religious tourist attractions that also utilize these strategies. By examining the "religious" sites in terms of the common social practice known as myth-making, the book contributes to recent efforts within the academic study of religion to explain religious practice in recognizable, human terms.

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