Creation Museum Research Articles

Of dinosaurs and intergenerational culture wars: dinomania, nostalgia, and the ‘missionary lizards’ of young earth creationism

For over a century, dinosaurs have drawn crowds to natural history museums, where visitors learn about evolution and deep time. Towards the end of the twentieth century, certain young earth creationists began using dinosaurs as ‘missionary lizards’ to attract audiences and promote a biblically literal interpretation of the planetary past. Though long extinct, dinosaurs are thus significant figures in the ongoing U.S. culture wars. This article demonstrates how the Creation Museum in Kentucky uses dinosaur displays to legitimate a young earth and anti-evolution worldview. It also analyses how mainstream science museums and creation science museums alike leverage dinomania and a related sentiment, nostalgia, to draw crowds and create potent emotional experiences. A comparison of marketing materials for the Creation Museum and the Smithsonian's Deep Time fossil hall, both of which target children and their families, show how dinosaurs are intergenerational artifacts that connect people to personal and planetary pasts.

Practicing Atheism: Culture, Media, and Ritual in the Contemporary Atheist Network by Hannah K. Scheidt

Reviewed by: Practicing Atheism: Culture, Media, and Ritual in the Contemporary Atheist Network by Hannah K. Scheidt Charles McCrary Hannah K. Scheidt, Practicing Atheism: Culture, Media, and Ritual in the Contemporary Atheist Network (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021) Like scholars of religion, but also unlike them, American atheists spend a lot of time and energy thinking about religion. To study their ideas and rhetoric, then, can offer a window—at times a fogged or tinted one, or maybe a funhouse mirror—onto American religion writ large. If we want to know how certain Americans imagine "religion," or how they critique relationships between religion and politics, or why they leave religion, then atheist discourses offer a trove of data. Atheists have a lot to say about religion. But what do they do? In Practicing Atheism, Hannah Scheidt analyzes not just contemporary atheist discourses but also their networks, famous figures, and rituals. As yes-or-no questions go, "is atheism a religion?" is not a very good one. But, to use the tools of religious studies, as Scheidt does, to study atheists—to study atheists like one might study religious people—is an intriguing project. Somewhat surprisingly, for a book about practicing atheism, the tools employed are mostly discourse analysis. Across five chapters, Practicing Atheism analyzes "deconversion narratives," television shows, charismatic authority, formal debates, and parenting. The sources include the media themselves, such as television shows or atheist parenting manuals, but also discourse about these materials, in the form of blogs, comments, and posts. [End Page 128] Scheidt's focus on discourse is shaped by how she defines her object of study, which she describes as "on-the-ground theorizing of religion: how religion comes to be understood as much more than a set of beliefs and is also associated with specific formations of identity and modes of authority, with certain practices, traditions, and ways of organizing. The analyses that follow," she continues, "observe a robust and multidimensional theorizing" (13). In short, she is analyzing the theorizing. Discourse and practice are always related, of course, and some of Scheidt's most interesting contributions come when she analyzes those complex relations. Still, though, I admit that I found myself wanting more practicing—more, for lack of a better term, lived religion. But what is a practice, anyway? Scheidt's book shows how participation in a public, "the kind of public that comes into being only in relation to texts and their circulation," is fundamentally discursive.1 Scheidt did not interview atheists or send out a survey or conduct an ethnographic study of atheist organizations. Instead, her book focuses on "the stories and artifacts of contemporary atheist culture—the works and words that circulate through a complex network of institutions and individuals," taking as her "source material the rich, vast (and ever-expanding) archive that already exists" (7). As students of religion and media know, texts and infrastructures are not neutral vehicles for religious ideas and practices but are, rather, the very stuff of religion. As these atheist communities make themselves through the circulation of discourse (much of that discourse being about religion, differentiating it from science or reason), they make new communities through rituals of subjectivation. TLDR: posting is religion now. The arguments come together most compellingly in the fourth chapter, which analyzes the ritual of staged debates between atheists and religious people. Scheidt opens the chapter with a description of a 2014 debate about evolution, hosted by the Creation Museum, that pitted Bill Nye "The Science Guy" against Ken Ham, the evangelical creationist who founded the museum. The debate itself is interesting enough, but more so is Scheidt's analysis of such debates as "a site for the creation and circulation of culture" (102). She argues, then, that debate is a "ritualized practice [that] … effectively does 'ritual work'" (102). What kind of ritual work? Here, Scheidt picks up a thread that runs throughout the book: the relationship between ritual and sincerity. She draws from the work of Adam Seligman and others, who argue that rituals posit "a subjunctive world: a world 'as if' or as it could be. To act 'sincerely' on the other hand, is to act 'as is'" (11...

Review: Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to Life, by Kathleen C. Oberlin

Review: <i>Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to Life</i>, by Kathleen C. Oberlin

Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to Life. By Kathleen C. OberlinStorytelling the Bible at the Creation Museum, Ark Encounter, and the Museum of the Bible. By Paul Thomas

Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to Life. By Kathleen C. OberlinStorytelling the Bible at the Creation Museum, Ark Encounter, and the Museum of the Bible. By Paul Thomas

Monumental Jesus: Landscapes of Faith and Doubt in Modern America

Monumental Jesus: Landscapes of Faith and Doubt in Modern America

James S. Bielo, Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park

Reviewed by: Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park by James S. Bielo Omri Elisha James S. Bielo, Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park (New York: New York University Press, 2018) It seems a lifetime ago when creationism was the biggest thorn in the side of public science education. The old fundamentalist-modernist skirmishes, played out in brick-and-mortar courtrooms, schools, and churches, seem almost quaint compared to the toxic controversies and conspiracy theories traversing the ether today, dangerously eroding public confidence in scientific institutions and expertise. But if, in an age of radical denialism and paranoia, creationism has lost some of its media buzz, it has achieved something far more privileged: normalization. Despite their aversion to evolution, Christian creationists have evolved from culture warriors to cultural producers, deftly weaving secular technologies and aesthetics together with a religious ideology that infuses everything from textbooks and museums to entertainment media and amusement parks. Gauging such productions requires that we look not only at how creationists advance fundamentalist ideals but how they transform them as well. New ministry strategies bring new practical, procedural, and ethical concerns, especially when some of these strategies draw legitimation from sources that are considered less than “holy.” James Bielo captures just such a dynamic in Ark Encounter, his ethnography named after the centerpiece of a creationist theme park in northern Kentucky. [End Page 110] With his usual penetrating insight, Bielo documents the creative process behind the construction of a “full-scale” realization of Noah’s ark, funded by the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum. Standing at a length of 510 feet (converted from biblical cubits), the 100 million dollar ark is a multimodal, immersive environment, a monument to modern “edu-tainment,” complete with animatronic displays, reproductions of living spaces and ancient nautical technologies, a live petting zoo, gift shops, and a zipline ride (situated, fortunately, outside the ark). Most of Bielo’s fieldwork took place before the park’s official opening in 2016 and focused on the daily labors of a small team of creative professionals, including artists and production designers with backgrounds in secular entertainment. The team members were all committed Christians and creationists themselves. They also shared in common a principled determination to beat the world’s major culture industries at their own game. Working from modest cubicles and storyboards, the team embodied an ethos of corporate perfectionism, a studied commitment to achieving the highest professional and technical standards of their respective fields, in service of what Bielo calls “devotional consumption.” Among the key interventions of this book, Bielo highlights the inadequacy of “religion versus science” as a primary framework for making sense of creationist enterprises such as the Ark Encounter. To be sure, we cannot ignore the movement’s efforts to cast doubt on evolutionary science, or their attempts to co-opt scientific inquiry in order to do so. Indeed, Bielo spends nearly an entire chapter analyzing one exhibit in which ancient “dragon legends” are presented as proof of the historical co-existence of humans and dinosaurs before and after the Genesis Flood. But even here we see that in the process of taking dinosaurs, those cherished mascots of secular science education, and repackaging them as emblems of a Bible-centered “heterodox past,” creative creationists invoke “the strategies and imperatives of modern entertainment,” conjuring legitimacy through symbolic, affective, and sensory cues as much, if not more, than through logical propositions or appeals to biblical faith. By demonstrating that contemporary tensions between religion and science are bound up in complex and intimate entanglements of religion, science, and entertainment, Bielo adds considerable depth and nuance to our understanding of a politically fraught field of historical representation and contestation. In a world where knowledge is power, but fun is everything, the Ark Encounter team set out to create a commercially viable experience, an immersive, multisensory environment along the lines of the best Hollywood films and Disney theme parks. While obsessively attentive to matters of historical and biblical “authenticity”—a work ethic, Bielo notes, fueled by a desire to reconnect with the origins of Christian faith—these creationist “imagineers” (as they called themselves) are like generations of evangelists before them who recognize...

Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to Life, by KATHLEEN C. OBERLIN

Creating the Creation Museum: How Fundamentalist Beliefs Come to Life, by KATHLEEN C. OBERLIN

Silk Road Museums: Design of Inclusive Heritage and Cross-Cultural Education

This work is the result of a study on the characteristics that define some of the museums created on the Silk Road. The approach to these museums has focused especially on the observation of the educational and heritage aspects that define these institutions. Since 1988, numerous actions related to the Silk Road have been promoted by UNESCO. This old trade route has now become a route of dialogue between cultures. Each museum studied is characterized by promoting local and national issues that define it. Educational issues stand out, since the tradition of silk production is very important in each place. Another aspect observed is that heritage issues manage to strengthen the characteristic features of each community. I have interviewed those responsible and personally observed their facilities and collections. Each museum has chosen to highlight local differential factors, enhancing the aesthetic arguments of cultural identity. Finally, I examine the specific case of the Valencia Silk Museum, the most recent creation museum but also the oldest institution. In the conclusions, I highlight the importance of education in most of these institutions.

Religion, Cultural Politics, and Public Knowledge

Almost all of the discussions surrounding educational policy focus their attention on particular places, especially various kinds of formal schooling. While this focus is of course crucial, it tends to ignore other educational sites where acts of teaching go on and where challenges to accepted understandings are waged. These include libraries and the topic of this essay, museums. Creating the Creation Museum clearly documents why such sites are worthy of our most serious attention. The book is a substantive contribution in a number of ways. It offers important critical insights about the Museum and its overt role in “advancing a long standing movement goal: advancing the cultural authority of creation science.” It also provides us with an expanded set of methodological tools for engaging in such work.

Monumental Jesus: Landscapes of Faith and Doubt in Modern America by Margaret M. Grubiak

Reviewed by: Monumental Jesus: Landscapes of Faith and Doubt in Modern America by Margaret M. Grubiak Karen E. Park Monumental Jesus: Landscapes of Faith and Doubt in Modern America. By Margaret M. Grubiak. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2020 Monumental Jesus: Landscapes of Faith and Doubt in Modern America is a fascinating exploration of some of the most iconic American Christian landmarks of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries including Notre Dame's famous, "Touchdown Jesus," Answers in Genesis's Creation Museum and Ark Experience, and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's now defunct Christian amusement park, Heritage USA. Grubiak's approach to these sites and the others treated in the book, complements the work of scholars of sacred space and material religion including Colleen McDannell, David Morgan, James Bielo, and others who seek to understand the ways in which believers inscribe meaning onto buildings, landscapes, and other material objects and spaces. In Monumental Jesus, landscapes of faith (murals, statues, Christian amusement parks) are interpreted alongside landscapes of doubt—a category which includes all manner of outsider reactions to the religious buildings and sites—reactions which range from good-natured nicknames to outright ridicule, scorn, and derision. This approach recognizes that meaning is not only made or controlled by those insiders and believers who build and then worship at or frequent these sites, but by outsiders who are "involuntarily confronted by religious buildings in the course of daily life." Where do silly nicknames, derisive graffiti, satirical comic strips, and scathing Architectural Digest reviews fit into [End Page 108] the landscape of religious meaning? This is the question Grubiak sets out to address. The book is divided into five chapters of varying lengths ranging from approximately 40 pages to as few as ten. The first chapter explores the phenomenon of "Touchdown Jesus," the enormous Word of Life mural on the Theodore M. Hesburgh Library visible from the football stadium. While this mural and its meaning has been addressed by other scholars, here Grubiak deftly explores the tension between the intended meaning of the mural—a bold assertion of the seriousness and authority of the Catholic intellectual tradition—and the silliness and even blasphemy of the simultaneous assertion that Jesus cares about and exerts an influence over his favorite football team. Catholic insiders can simultaneously believe and doubt when it comes to "Touchdown Jesus'' and this "landscape of doubt" provides Grubiak with a fruitful site for the exploration of religious meaning. The first chapter is the only one which deals with a Catholic setting. The other examples, with the exception of the Mormon Temple outside of Washington, DC, come from various corners of evangelical Protestantism. The lengthy chapter on Heritage USA and Oral Roberts University is particularly strong, as is the chapter on the Creation Museum and Ark Experience. Grubiak's reading of these sites demonstrates her deep knowledge and familiarity with architectural history—her description of the various architectural styles used at Heritage USA and their meanings made me wish the place had survived so I could visit it. Similarly, the chapter on the Creation Museum and Ark Experience could stand alone as an architectural and material exploration of those sites and the controversy surrounding them, and would be useful in an undergraduate class on Religion in America, Religion in Popular Culture, or Religion and Sacred Space. The book is notable for its many illustrations and photographs, and where permission was not granted (for example in the case of MAD Magazine's satirical response to the Creation Museum) Grubiak encourages her readers to look the images up online in order to follow her interpretation, which I did and found very helpful. The bibliography and notes are also particularly strong. The final chapter, on the giant Jesus "Christ of the Ozarks" is quite short and while it raises important questions about the anti-Semitism and racist hatred of the statue's originator, it is unable to adequately engage with these questions, asking whether visitors are "unwillingly complicit in the perversion of Christian beliefs in their consumption of this evangelical theme park" without fully dealing with that important question. Racist and anti-semitic Christian beliefs are, sadly, Christian beliefs nonetheless...

Faith Displayed as Science: The Role of the 'Creation Museum' in the Modern American Creationist Movement

Since the 1960s, the U.S. has seen a remarkable resurgence of the belief in the literal truth of the Bible, especially in a “young” (less than 10,000 years old) Earth. Somewhat paradoxically, this new biblical literalism has been accompanied by an increased emphasis on scientific legitimacy among creationists. The most recent tool in young-Earth creationists’ quest for scientific legitimacy is the “creation museum.” This thesis analyzes and compares the purposes and methods of four creation museums, discusses their repercussions for science as a discipline, and explains their significance for the larger creationist movement.

Consumer identification and oppositional organizational identities

PurposeOppositional organizational identities are fraught with conflict and often evoke powerful social and cultural identities. Such identities may be a divisive force among consumers. The purpose of this paper is to understand how consumers construct frames that facilitate identification with oppositional organizational identities.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use online reviews from TripAdvisor.com and Yelp.com of the Creation Museum in Kentucky, USA. The Creation Museum is an ideal research context due to its location within American public discourse regarding religion and science. Through a grounded theory approach of the reviews, the authors propose three identity frames.FindingsThe data suggest that consumers primarily construct three frames to identify with the Creation Museum: transformational experiences, interpretive bricolage and oppositional scripts. Together, these frames engender resonance and facilitate consumer identification.Originality/valueThis paper is one of the first to examine how oppositional organizational identities garner consumer support. Given that consumers are increasingly attentive to organizational processes and the ubiquity of information technology, which reduces the costs of information and interaction, the study provides a much more holistic perspective on oppositional organizational identity and offers a multitude of future avenues for further research.

Fossilized Jews and Witnessing Dinosaurs at the Creation Museum: Public Remembering and Forgetting at a Young Earth Creationist “Memory Place”

The Creation Museum (Petersburg, KY) embraces dinosaurs and their bones as witnesses to the historicity of the biblical creation narrative. While many have critiqued the institution’s presentation of the past, approaching this space as a memory place reveals previously unrecognized implications that its historical claims entail. In particular, expanding the place of dinosaurs within the Young Earth creationist memory of the past has compelled a parallel diminution in the representation of ancient and modern Jews in exhibits and related literature. In other words, having incorporated paleontology into its theological worldview, the Creation Museum is compelled to present Jews as quixotic fossils with no particular function in the divine plan for history. As the museum’s profile as a memory place for American evangelicals grows, this could undercut the theological foundations that have encouraged robust relations between that group and Jews over the past half-century.

Fossilized Jews and Witnessing Dinosaurs at the Creation Museum: Public Remembering and Forgetting at a Young Earth Creationist “Memory Place”

The Creation Museum (Petersburg, KY) embraces dinosaurs and their bones as witnesses to the historicity of the biblical creation narrative. While many have critiqued the institution’s presentation of the past, approaching this space as a memory place reveals previously unrecognized implications that its historical claims entail. In particular, expanding the place of dinosaurs within the Young Earth creationist memory of the past has compelled a parallel diminution in the representation of ancient and modern Jews in exhibits and related literature. In other words, having incorporated paleontology into its theological worldview, the Creation Museum is compelled to present Jews as quixotic fossils with no particular function in the divine plan for history. As the museum’s profile as a memory place for American evangelicals grows, this could undercut the theological foundations that have encouraged robust relations between that group and Jews over the past half-century.

Creating charisma online: the role of digital presence in the formation of religious identity

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the construction and transmission of charisma through online channels and its role in the formation of religious identities. Mindful of Max Weber’s observation that charisma inhabits the relationship between a leader and his/her followers, I argue for a critical reappraisal of the theoretical model in the light of the ubiquity in the twenty-first century of new, virtual forms of social encounter. I focus my analysis on the Christian creationist movement in the United States and particularly on an influential leader called Ken Ham. Using digital ethnographic methods, I show how Ham constructs charisma online and how a virtual community forms itself around his charismatic claims. I illustrate how this virtual community intersects with offline worlds and suggest that the theme park attractions that Ham’s organisation runs (Creation Museum, Ark Encounter) are imbued with deflected charisma by virtue of their association with his online avatar.

Guest Editor's Introduction: Toward an Archaeogenealogy of Post-truth

Guest Editor's Introduction: Toward an Archaeogenealogy of Post-truth

「情報」とはなにか 第7回 ■情報×遊戯性:創造博物館のアトラクション的手法から考える

「情報」とはなにか 第7回 ■情報×遊戯性:創造博物館のアトラクション的手法から考える

BELIEF AND SUNBURN IN THE WEIGHT ROOM

1 0 6 Y B E L I E F A N D S U N B U R N I N T H E W E I G H T R O O M B R U C E F L E M I N G Not long ago I had a conversation with a former student of mine from the U.S. Naval Academy, where I have taught for three decades , a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. I had some credibility with him, both as his professor of several years earlier and as a fellow weight-room user. Indeed, our conversation took place in the weight room we both use, which meant it didn’t last very long because serious conversation in the weight room is impossible. So that left me mulling over what we might have said and its implications long after the brief interaction was over. We had shaken hands and exchanged grunts, which is about the extent of weight-room conversation (there are places where words do not rule, and the weight room is one of them), and so I felt I could make a brief comment about the brick-red color, obviously the result of too much sun that weekend, of his normally beige face. ‘‘Slather on that sunblock,’’ I encouraged him, I hope in an avuncular tone. To avoid any appearance of telling him what to do – after all, I’m not in his chain of command now – I immediately added, ‘‘My mother has to go to the dermatologist every year or so to get stu√ cut o√ her face. And she never really even went in the sun.’’ 1 0 7 R The captain’s response was interesting. ‘‘I believe,’’ he said, ‘‘that heredity has as much to do with whether you get that stu√ as going out in the sun.’’ The captain was telling me what he believed. I immediately had a thousand questions, reasons why what he was suggesting might well be false – was heredity an equal player with sun exposure in producing skin problems? – or in any case could not be asserted without substantiation. He was o√ering me belief; my impulse was to respond with analysis. The distinction between belief and analysis is a distinction between two fundamental manners of doing things. It’s the dichotomy played out in the ongoing public discussion between matters of faith and matters of science. Currently in the United States, this is couched in terms of a conflict between teaching what the Hebrew Bible is held to say about the creation of the world and teaching what science, building on Darwin, says on the same subject. As one example of how timely this conflict is, the Creation Museum that opened in 2007 in Petersburg, Kentucky, makes clear that it is founded on belief. Its website opens with the words ‘‘Prepare to Believe.’’ It tells us, ‘‘The state-of-the-art 75,000square -foot Creation Museum brings the Bible to life, casting its characters and animals in dynamic form.’’ The site, to be sure, suggests that there is no conflict between belief and science – but only if you accept a di√erent sort of ‘‘science,’’ one based, in fact, on belief: Creationists love science! In fact, the word science means ‘‘knowledge.’’ We invite you to dive into the Bible and the scientific evidence with us to gather as much knowledge about God’s creation as you can. You’ll learn about the different types of science and discover facts and logical arguments you might have never considered. When you start with the Bible as your ultimate authority, your mind is unlocked and ready to discover creation science. By ‘‘di√erent types of science,’’ the museum means types that scientists would not consider science: they are not based on scienti fic inquiry. The museum suggests that there is at least one other kind: ‘‘creation science.’’ It speaks of ‘‘the Bible and the scientific 1 0 8 F L E M I N G Y evidence,’’ suggesting that the two are di√erent – but the Bible is the ultimate authority. ‘‘The Creation Museum shows why God’s infallible...

ОРИГИНАЛЬНОЕ ПРОЕКТНОЕ РЕШЕНИЕ МАЛОГО РЕКРЕАЦИОННО-ТУРИСТИЧЕСКОГО КОМПЛЕКСА

The article deals with the architectural design of the recreational and tourist complex “School traveler Fyodor Konyukhov” in the Domodedovo district of Moscow region, near the village Bityagovo. The paper notes the problem of quality recreation spaces and their organizations for teenagers analyzes the necessary steps to arrange such spaces on the basis of the bottom of the project where you will be training and preparing children and their parents to family travel. The basic concepts of architectural complex formation, given the technical characteristics of the project goals and objectives of the project. The main objectives of the project “clearing rallies”: spiritual and moral education; promoting tourism and a healthy lifestyle; the military-Patriotic upbringing of youth in spirit of devotion and love for his Homeland; physical training of children and youth to challenging treks and expeditions; the development of creative and sporting talent in children; help the youth in determining their life path. The plans of the investors of the project cultural events: organization of meetings of youth groups from all over Russia; celebration of important historical dates; the holding of thematic festivals and exhibitions; festivals and finding new talent; contests and events; creation Museum travelers and the Russian walk of Fame; the creation of children’s theatre; classes in astronomy with experts, workshops; planting and study of trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants, including medicinal.

Preaching to Convert: Evangelical Outreach and Performance Activism in a Secular Age by John Fletcher

Reviewed by: Preaching to Convert: Evangelical Outreach and Performance Activism in a Secular Age by John Fletcher Jay Ball Preaching to Convert: Evangelical Outreach and Performance Activism in a Secular Age. By John Fletcher. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013. 412 pp. $44.00 cloth. Part ethnography, part polemic, John Fletcher’s new book provides a landmark survey of contemporary American evangelicalism’s vibrant culture of performance. It is also a provocation addressed to “secular Left” scholars who might (falsely) believe they have cornered the market in theatre for social change. These two themes—the range and sophistication of evangelical performance versus the smug hypocrisy and dismissiveness of antitheistic critics—form the double helix of Fletcher’s well-researched and closely observed study. It deserves to be widely read and debated. As the lengthy introduction explains, Fletcher sets out to identify and categorize the array of performance strategies that “evangelicals in the United States use to change their world, to win converts to their faith and worldview” (5). Fletcher places particular emphasis on “the challenges they face, and the solutions, innovations, or compromises they create” in the context of a society whose norms are regarded as increasingly antireligious and tolerant of difference, that is, the “secular age” of his title, which he takes from the Canadian philosopher of identity Charles Taylor (5). Structured as eight lengthy chapters, Fletcher covers everything from traditional door-to-door “soul winning” (or “kerygmatic” performatives) to alternative Halloween immersive theatres known as “Hell Houses,” from Ken Ham’s Kentucky-based Creation Museum to “seeker-sensitive [Church] services” pioneered by Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church. Fletcher also discusses evangelical debates about “sexual orientation change efforts,” also known as “conversion therapy,” in the penultimate chapter of the book. In most of these case studies, Fletcher’s rhetorical criticism is grounded in firsthand “thick descriptions” based on his wide-ranging fieldwork. But Fletcher is no disinterested observer on these travels. Eschewing “paranoid criticism,” which he defines as the reflexive ascription of “hegemonic ideologies” to anything but the most politically radical practices, he instead adopts the perspective of “critical generosity,” or the “good faith” approach (29). Drawing on scholars of activist performance such as Jan Cohen-Cruz and David Roman, Fletcher seeks to employs “deep empathy” with American evangelicals in order to render their aims and methods with greater nuance and complexity. (For a work that engages so many theorists so well, it may seem ungenerous to wish Fletcher had employed others. However, one cannot help but wonder how [End Page 323] he might have engaged with Michael Walzer’s notion of “connected criticism.”) Further, this challenge to the values of left-progressive theatre historiography is intended to lift “significant limitations on the critical and political imaginations of theatre and performance activist-scholars” (29). Fletcher demonstrates that evangelicals are social-change innovators whose practices are worthy of admiration and possibly even theft. The chapter “Hell and Judgment: House of Distinction” may be the strongest application of this method for the way in which it complicates the premise that all evangelical performance is “preaching to convert.” Originally devised by Colorado pastor Keenan Roberts during the 1990s and now circulated nationally through so-called Outreach Kits (sold for $299), the typical “Hell House” stages a procession of harrowing tableaux depicting the wages of sin, especially teenage forms of moral misadventure: fatal drunk-driving accidents, drug overdoses, rape, abortion, and demonic possessions brought on by dabbling in the occult, all of which consign the victims to the just torments of hell. As Fletcher records, Roberts’s original has inspired numerous variants, including Judgment House, Revelation Walk, and Rapture House. According to Fletcher, all of these productions create what he memorably terms “interactive eschatological theatre” (160). However, in one of the more important takeaways from this study, Fletcher problematizes the notion that Hell Houses are designed to interpellate the unconverted. Drawing on Baz Kershaw’s theory of “authentication” in community-based theatre, Fletcher writes, “In order to ‘work,’ Hell House relies on an audience of people willing to buy into (authenticate) the picture of reality that Hell House presents. For those who do not already believe in demons or God or the...