analysis

Sensational Devotion Evangelical Performance in Twenty-First-Century America

JILL STEVENSON

The University of Michigan Press

Ann Arbor

The Creation Museum as Engaged Orthodoxy

5

Articles in popular media outlets have not only raised awareness about the $27 million Creation Museum, but such press coverage has also imbued the venue with important symbolic value. In a sense, the museum functions as a kind of shorthand—a codeword for conservative Christianity or an emblem of political divisions within U.S. culture and politics generally.1 Like the “Great Passion Play” and the other Sacred Projects in Eureka Springs, the Creation Museum constructs a cultural paradigm fueled by notions of em­ battled Christianity and then supplies visitors with a resonant, comforting encounter that validates their position within that paradigm.

The great majority of articles appeared when the museum opened in May 2007, but more recent pieces, such as a 2010 piece in Vanity Fair, testify to people’s ongoing curiosity about the venue.2 In my own experience, the Creation Museum prompts more questions from friends and colleagues than any of the other venues I examine in this book. It is not simply the museum’s antievolution message that fascinates people. Even more compelling is how the Creation Museum actually conveys that message. By coupling the physi­ cal form of a traditional natural history museum with a radical community- • based agenda, the Creation Museum empowers and gives public voice to a community that perceives itself as threatened, disenfranchised, and misreP' resented by mainstream culture. Using performative tactics, the Creation Museum appropriates both scientific evidence and the natural history mu­ seum encounter for the creationist agenda, while simultaneously align111-1’ the creationist identity with characteristics such as intellectual rigor.

As a performance of community, the Creation Museum does- -and

128

The Creation Museum as Engaged Orthodoxy 129

probably must—employ the kinds of "discriminatory elements” that John pletcher suggests are “necessarily present in any expression of coinmuni- ly."' However, because the museum’s performance relies in great part on the premise that the exhibits simply give visitors “the freedom to see what they want to see,'"' museum employees refract any allegations of discrimination back onto traditional natural history museums, most of which "proclaim an evolutionary, humanistic worldview.", For creationist-visitors who ap­ proach the Creation Museum believing that “secularized" science's evolu­ tionary narrative has misled and corrupted society, encounters with the mu­ seum's space provide them with religiously real re-experiences that supply feelings of stability and certainty, as well as strategies for sustaining—and perhaps enhancing—those feelings in their daily lives. By allowing visitors to “live in" a materially realized re-representational creationist narrative, the Creation Museum transforms belief into meaningful embodied experience. Thus, as with trips to Holy Land recreations, physically engaging the mu­ seum space forms an intimate script that can help visitors resolve real-world problems.

Testaments in Brick and Mortar: Creationist Museums

The website Creationism.org lists thirteen creation science centers and mu­ seums in the United States.6 This number is not altogether surprising given statistics on U.S. opinions regarding evolution. In a Pew Research survey released in August 2006, “42% of respondents directly rejected evolution, choosing the option that humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the creation.” Among those who said they believe evolution occurred, 21 percent believe it was guided by a supreme being, a view that is roughly the one proposed by the “intelligent design” movement. Only 26 percent of all respondents said they believe in evolution through natural selection/ Religion appears to be a significant determining factor with respect to these views; according to the Pew Forum 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Study, seven in ten members of evangelical Protestant churches, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses reject the evolutionary account.8

These figures suggest that creationist centers and museums have a viable audience in nearly half of the nation’s population. Admittedly, these venues do not only serve—nor are they exclusively targeted at—evangelical Chris­ tians. However, many of them, including the Creation Museum, promote a

130 Sensational Devotion

Christo-centric creationism founded upon biblical infallibility, a message that likely appeals to many evangelical believers.9

Although simpler in design, early creation science museums initiated a critical shift toward employing empirical data as evidence. For example, as the Creation Evidence Museum’s website explains, “Dr. Carl Baugh, the museum’s Founder and Director, originally came to Glen Rose, Texas to critically examine claims of human and dinosaur co-habitation." When his initial excavations along the Paluxy River “yielded human footprints among dinosaur footprints,” Baugh decided “that a museum needed to be estab­ lished in order to appropriately display this evidence, along with sustained excavations and other areas of scientific research for creation.”10 This mu­ seum officially opened in 1984. Today, for only S5 per person, guests can see displays of the museum’s most important artifacts and fossils, visit excava­ tion sites, and attend lectures.

Newer venues have maintained this focus on scientific evidence but add­ ed more sophisticated exhibits and placed a greater emphasis on “edutain­ ment."11 For example, in 2001 Kent Flovind, a former public school science teacher turned minister, opened Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, Florida. Before the park closed suddenly in August 2009, due to Flovind's legal battles with the IRS,12 guests visited a discovery center and museum, and played interactive games, in order to learn the “truth” about dinosaurs from a creationist perspective. The games were primarily oriented toward children, with each one linking a “science lesson" to a “spiritual lesson.”13 For example, the “Nerve-Wracking Ball” taught kids that a swinging object will never come back higher than the point from which it is released. The game consisted of children standing before a bowling ball dangling on a rope from a tall tree branch. A park guide released the ball and if children didn’t flinch when it swung back toward them, stopping just in front of their faces, they had not only learned the science lesson, but also demonstrated “faith in God’s laws."14

As 1 noted in Chapter Four, for many years the “Great Passion Play' grounds hosted a creationist-themed museum, the contents of which have since moved to a $2 million facility in Dallas, Texas, called the Museum of Earth History. According to the museum’s website, it opened for special tours in July 2011. Similar to Dinosaur Adventure Land, this venue promises to provide “an enjoyable and educational experience exploring the Biblical perspective of Creation and Earth history through the use of scientific dis

The Creation Museum as Engaged Orthodoxy 131

plays, artifacts, and historical data."15 The museum, a joint venture between Christ for the Nations and the Creation Truth Foundation,16 promotes the idea that “Christians don’t have to be afraid of scientific evidence anymore.” Until fall 2011, the museum’s website was more extensive and contained many more pages and links. A project description on that site claimed that the museum “will be a place that has the courage to display breakthroughs in creation science through lectures, exhibits, multi-media displays, dino­ saur fossils, and relics.”17

These venues constitute one of many high-profile tactics that the con­ temporary creationist movement has used to gain traction in public debates over science education.18 As Elizabeth Crooke explains, twentieth-century social movements have typically gone through four stages. An initial period of unrest or agitation is followed by a period of popular excitement that builds feelings of belonging and morale. This general interest then devel­ ops into a more formal ideology-—“creation science” or “intelligent design” versus simply creationism—before the movement finally becomes institu­ tionalized by means of formal tactics.19 The presence of large-scale creation science venues—like Dinosaur Adventure Land, the Museum of Earth His­ tory, or the Creation Museum—may be an indication that the creationist movement has reached this final institutionalizing phase.

One of the important things that museums offer the creationist move­ ment is cultural validation; as Crooke notes, “the very fact that we tend to ascribe the museum with authority and influence is useful for the social movement.”20 According to a 2001 national survey by the American Asso­ ciation of Museums, 87 percent of Americans “find museums to be one of the most trustworthy or a trustworthy source of information among a wide range of choices. Books are a distant second at 61%.”21 A more recent study corroborates this data. In a 2006 survey of over 1,700 adults conducted on behalf of the Institute for Museum and Library Services, respondents were shown various communication modes and asked to rank the “trustworthi­ ness of display/items or information about them” using a five-point scale, with five being “extremely trustworthy” and 1 being “not at all trustworthy.” The average rating for “in-person” visits to museums was 4.62.22 Further­ more, a museum’s authority is particularly empowering because it is demon­ strated publicly,23 a fact that visitors to creationist-themed venues recognize and appreciate. As one guest at Dinosaur Adventure Land remarked, “We’ve been to museums, discovery centers, where you have to sit there and take

132 Sensational Devotion

the evolutionary stuff.... It feels good for [our children] to finally hear it in a public place, something that reinforces their beliefs.”24

The Creation Museum is the largest and most sophisticated of these ven­ ues. When it comes to giving creationists authoritative public visibility, it may even exceed expectations. Run by the Christian ministry group An­ swers in Genesis (AiG), the Creation Museum uses dinosaurs and fossils to assert the “truth” of biblical history. Ken Ham, a public school teacher from Queensland, Australia, launched AiG in 1979 and is the organization’s president. He also founded the museum and serves as its director. AiG’s “Statement of Faith” web page begins by listing the organization’s two key “Priorities”: “The scientific aspects of creation are important, but are sec­ ondary in importance to the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer, and Judge” and “The doctrines of Creator and Creation cannot ultimately be divorced from the gospel of Jesus Christ.”25 This “Statement of Faith” continues with seven points labeled “Basics.” For example, the third point states: “The account of origins presented in Genesis is a simple but factual presentation of actual events and therefore provides a reliable framework for scientific research into the question of the origin and history of life, mankind, the earth and the universe.” These points are followed by thirteen tenets of “Theology.”

AiG’s central mission is to disseminate young earth creationism, and the final section of the organization’s “Statement of Faith,” entitled “General,” outlines six core principles of this theory:

The following are held by members of the Board of Answers in Genesis to be either consistent with Scripture or implied by Scripture.

1. Scripture teaches a recent origin for man and the whole creation, spanning approximately 4,000 years from creation to Christ.

2. The days in Genesis do not correspond to geologic ages, but are six [6] consecutive twenty-four [24] hour days of creation.

3. The Noachian Flood was a significant geological event and much (but not all) fossiliferous sediment originated at that time.

4. The gap theory has no basis in Scripture. 5. The view, commonly used to evade the implications or the authority

of biblical teaching, that knowledge and/or truth may be.divided into secular and religious, is rejected.

6. By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any fie^’ including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts

The Creation Museum as Engaged Orthodoxy 133

scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information, (original emphasis)26

As I will demonstrate, these central principles, which resonate strongly with the evangelical tenet of biblical infallibility, not only guide the content with­ in the Creation Museum’s exhibits but also the manner of their visual and physical display.27

The Creation Museum Souvenir Guidebook maintains that AiG “is dedi­ cated to proclaiming the Bible’s literal history with logical, reliable answers in a skeptical world."M The Creation Museum represents the perfect mani­ festation of this agenda. As Ham’s welcome note in this guidebook asserts, the Creation Museum “stands as a monument not only in the physical as­ pect of brick and mortar, but also in the spiritual as a global testament to the truth of God's Word."i') Certainly the considerable size of this physical monument has significantly helped to establish its legitimacy and value; the 70,000-square-foot museum and the surrounding grounds cover forty-nine acres in total. However, like Holy Land Experience and the Sacred Proj­ ects, the Creation Museum uses various dramaturgical tactics to encour­ age visitors to feel a sense of intimacy and immediacy that will promote a religiously real re-experience, in this case, a re-experience of the Genesis creation narrative.

“Walk through the Pages of God’s Word”

The Creation Museum is located on the Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio bor­ der, seven miles west of the Cincinnaii/Northern Kentucky airport; the mu­ seum advertises the fact that it is “within a day’s drive (650 miles) of almost two-thirds of the U.S. population.”50 According to its online newsroom, the museum had welcomed 1.6 million visitors as of 13 April 2012. Currently, tickets cost $29.95 for adults and S 15.95 for children five to twelve. In the past, the museum offered a discounted two-day package, which is what 1 purchased when 1 visited the museum in July 2009. Now all tickets are valid for two consecutive days.

The Creation Museum’s central attraction is the sixteen-exhibit, two- floor “Museum Experience Walk.” Exhibits include a dinosaur dig site, many different fossil and science displays, a journey through biblical his­

134 Sensational Devotion

tory, the Noah’s ark construction site, and various point/counterpoint exhib­ its. Animatronic displays, videos, and short films are scattered throughout this “Experience Walk.” In addition, the museum houses a special-effects theater that shows the twenty-two-minute “comic” film Men in White ev­ ery half-hour throughout the day; a dinosaur fossil exhibit that is visually similar to those found in traditional natural history museums; the Star­ gazer’s planetarium (an additional $7.95 with museum admission); various food venues (such as Noah's Cafe); and the Dragon Hall Bookstore. AiG interprets dragon tales from the Middle Ages as evidence that dinosaurs lived alongside humans. In the Dragon Theater, visitors watch a ten-minute video—“filmed in England at a real castle” and featuring an academic expert who holds a PhD from Harvard—that explains this connection.

The Creation Museum’s website promises visitors that the sophisticated special-effects theater and life-size animatronic dioramas will allow them to "experience the Bible and history in a completely unique way—walk through the pages of God’s Word and encounter creation, corruption, catas­ trophe. Christ, the Cross, and consummation through a number ol engag­ ing exhibits.”M The exhibits bring “the pages of the Bible to life, casting its characters and animals in dynamic form and placing them in familiar set­ tings.”32 Museum literature boasts that these state-of-the-art animatronics were created by Patrick Marsh, who also designed the Jaws and King Kong rides at Florida’s Universal Studios theme park, another effort to legitimate the venue’s cultural credentials.33 The museum grounds also contains a bo­ tanical garden, picnic areas, and petting zoo.34 Although these areas are less high-tech, they also offer visitors physically interactive encounters.

The Creation Museum attracts guests, in part, because it promises an empirically based foundation for creationism. Significantly, young earth cre­ ationists maintain that those who endorse the evolutionary narrative are simply misinterpreting the scientific data. Therefore, while evidence like fossils proved problematic for earlier generations of creationists, they sup­ ply young earth creationists with empirical evidence that corroborates the biblical account of God's plan. Moreover, as Vincent Crapanzano explains, according to many evangelical creationists,

evolution is not science but philosophy—a worldview whose hypothetic >1 indeed, fantastical, nature is masked by a series of altogether questionable1 observations and deductions from these observations that arc expressed as though they were scientific certainties. They do not, so they claim, question

The Creation Museum as Engaged Orthodoxy 135

science; they question “bad science,’’ like evolution. They argue that good science, like theirs, confirms the account of creation in Genesis.35

li is therefore important to recognize that the Bible is the primary credible source for young earth creationists; although scientific data may support the biblical account, that account's validity does not rely upon such external data. Rather, the relationship between the two operates in the reverse direc­ tion; as one museum display proclaims, “The Bible’s true account of history gives us the key to interpret the fossils we find in the present.” For example, young earth creationists interpret Noah’s flood as reconciling many archaeo­ logical “mysteries." AiG’s Museum Guide: A Bible-Based Handbook to Natural History Museums (a 219-page book sold at the Dragon Hall Bookstore for $19.99) explains that the Ark held Noah’s immediate family as well as

two of every kind of air-breathing, land animal and bird (and seven of some). This boat was huge. It was approximately 450 feet (135 meters) long and 45 Icet (13.5 meters) tall. . . All Lite people and land animals outside the Ark died. The waters were so powerful that tons of rocks and dirt were moved around during the Flood. Plants, animals, and even humans became buried in the muddy sediments. The remains of some of these have been dug up today; they are called fossils, Not all fossils are from the Flood, but most of them are.36

The section of the “Museum Experience Walk” devoted to a Noah’s Ark reconstruction repeatedly reinforces this flood narrative.

Like fossils, dinosaurs have also been reclaimed by young earth creation­ ists as evidence that confirms the biblical account. The Museum Guide: A Bible-Based Handbook explains:

When talking about the dinosaurs, or any other extinct animal, we must keep some things in mind. First, we know that dinosaurs were real because the Bible says that land animals were created on Day 6, and since dinosaurs are land animals, they were included in this creation (sea and flying rep­ tiles such as pteranodons and plesiosaurs were created on Day 5). We also know that dinosaurs were real because their bones have been discovered and preserved for us to see. Second, we must remember that when God sent the Flood to punish mankind's wickedness, God preserved His creation by sending animals onto the Ark. The various kinds of dinosaurs would have

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also been on the Ark and preserved from the Flood. Dinosaurs could have Fit on the Ark. since they were, on average, about the size of a small pony. And God would have preserved the younger representatives of the different dinosaur kinds to reproduce after the Flood. . . . There are many things that could have contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs, including climate change, starvation, diseases, and hunting by humans and/or other animals (some of the same reasons animals today become extinct!).1'

Note the careful order of evidence at the beginning of this paragraph: cer­ tainty that dinosaurs were real rests primarily on the Bible and only sec­ ondarily on the fact that humans have discovered their bones. Similar argu­ ments about dinosaurs and lheir extinction appear throughout the Creation Museum, particularly in the displays around the Noahs Ark reconstruction and in the dinosaur fossil exhibit.38

Dinosaur models—most of lliem much larger than small ponies—figure prominently in the museum experience from the moment visitors arrive: dinosaur images appear on the museum’s entrance gates (see Figure 6), and a dinosaur sculpture outside the museum provides a perfect photo-op. Once inside, dinosaur sculptures and fossil reconstructions greet visitors in the lobby, providing more group photo opportunities, and a large animatronic display of dinosaurs and humans keeps visitors entertained as they wait in line to begin the "Museum Experience Walk” (see Figure 7). Dinosaurs also appear throughout the museum’s exhibits: in the Garden of Eden diorama as some of the creatures that Adam named; in displays about humankinds corruption following Adam’s sin; as passengers in the Noah's Ark models; and of course, in the dinosaur den and Dragon Theater located at the end of the “Museum Experience Walk.”30 Dinosaur images also appear on most of the museum’s promotional materials and merchandise, and are therefore central to the institution's public image.

Although they are not a fundamental pan of the Biblical account and only play a minor role within ihe young earth creationist narrative, these exotic animals are a recurring material presence within and around the mu­ seum, oftentimes appearing alongside humans. Dinosaurs not only help to set expectations lor the visit, but they also provide a familiar, memorable, and marketable through-line for the museum experience. Moreover, they furnish the spectacle necessary to keep children interested in a museum visit. As Ham asserts, “Evolutionary Darwinists need to understand we aic taking the dinosaurs back.”40

The Creation Museum as Engaged Orthodoxy 137

Figure 6. The Creation Museum entrance gates. July 2009. Photo by author.

The Creation Museum publicly co-opts the natural history museum genre, especially its most popular features—fossils and dinosaurs. For cre­ ationists who reject the evolutionary narrative of earth science, this appro­ priation empowers their beliefs while simultaneously neutralizing or cur­ tailing the traditional natural history museum’s authority. Elizabeth Crooke contends that independent museums oftentimes develop as part of a social movement’s attempt Lo challenge “the traditional idea of a museum, in the terms of whose story is told, how items are collected and the method of display. By doing so community groups are not only challenging the tradi­ tional hegemony of the museum, but are using it for their own purposes.”41 This is certainly one of AiG’s objectives. As the museum’s press representa­ tives explain, the Creation Museum “counters evolutionary natural history museums that turn minds against Scripture—and Jesus Christ, the Creator of the universe.”42 With the Creation Museum, AiG first appropriates the authority and trustworthiness of the museum genre and then recodes that genre for creationist-believers by offering them a rhythmic, lived experience that resonates with Christo-cenLric creationist beliefs.

] 38 Sensational Devotion

Figure 7. Lobby animatronic display featuring dinosaurs and humans. The Cre­ ation Museum. July 2009. PhoLo by author.

Making Contact with Creationist Certainty

Exhibits in the Creation Museum repeatedly declare that everyone has the same facts, but that people simply draw different conclusions from them. The “Museum Experience Walk” begins with displays in which key points of contention are described as merely a difference of “Starting Points”: when interpreting the fossil evidence, people choose either to start from “Human Reason” or to start from “God’s Word.” According to museum spokespeople, this exhibit is designed to demonstrate that neither side has the upper hand; as explained by Dr. Terry Mortenson, a lecturer and researcher for AiG who holds a doctorate in the history of geology from Coventry University in England, “The very first two rooms of our museum talk about this issue of starting points and assumptions. We will very strongly contest an evolution­ ist position that they are letting the facts speak for themselves.Howevei, rather than neutral displays of data, these exhibits instead lay a foundation for the museum’s larger claims by associating these different “starting points with contrasting identities, life experiences, and moral consequences.

The Creation Museum as Engaged Orthodoxy 139

The first few rooms on tire '‘Museum Experience Walk” depict “secular” scientists as only concerned with evidence in the present, while creationist scientists try diligently to discern what actually happened in the past. The museum presents creationists as insightful, inquisitive thinkers who actively seek knowledge. In doing so, the museum aligns creationists with positively coded characteristics and cultural values, as it simultaneously inscribes the evolutionist identity with certain derogatory traits that contemporary soci­ ety typically associate with creationists. Thus, the evolutionist is the person who cannot engage in a reasonable and thoughtful debate about the facts and instead blindly follows a “theory" as if it were unquestionable truth.

The format of this opening section seems to suggest that people simply have two possible interpretive frameworks from which to choose—creation science or evolution—and some of the early displays imply a sense of balance by claiming that everyone “interprets” evidence. Nevertheless, language in museum signage and literature situates one of these two options as inargu- ably superior. For example, the museum’s Souvenir Guidebook explains:

Our conclusions about the world are affected by the decision to trust ei­ ther the words of the eternal, perfect God or the words of temporal, fallible men. There is an element of faith at work in every interpretation of scientific evidence. . . . Scientists reach different views about the past, not because of what they see, but because of their different starting points, (my emphasis)44

The two frameworks clearly differ with respect to the stability and certainty of their starting points. Moreover, although both interpretative systems in­ volve “faith,” young earth creationists usually also attach the word science to their framework. Some of these language choices may be intended to suggest balance and, thus, to appeal to the non-creationist visitor, but they also undoubtedly privilege the biblical perspective and, therefore, do not contradict the creationist museumgoer’s beliefs. I would argue that a kind of bail and switch occurs in this early section of the “Museum Experience Walk." The exhibit initially implies that creationism is simply one of two possible iuterpreiive strategies; however, as the walk continues, creationism emerges as the "correct” and more rational approach to the evidence, with the creationist believer depicted as someone who has logically assessed the available options and thoughtfully chosen biblical “truth” because it makes more sense.

Emphasizing the “common sense” of creation science situates the mu-

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seum within a particular creationist tradition. For example. Heather Hen- dershot has examined the films released in the 1950s and 1960s by the Moody Institute of Science (MIS). The MIS was founded in 1945 during the nation’s Atomic Age when children were especially drawn to scientific in­ quiry. Consequently, the MIS’s evangelical strategy involved demoyistrating the “confluence between science and religion.”45 Hendershot argues that the Institute’s films promoted “the natural theology position that God’s glory is proved by the physical world, as well as the ‘logical,’ commonsense assump­ tion that evolution just doesn’t make any sense as a means of explaining the world.”40 Like the Creation Museum, these films emphasize “observable” science by highlighting experiments that use tools such as microscopes and telescopes, and in doing so, they “promote the idea that evolution cannot be proven because it cannot be seen.”47 However, while the films and videos that Hendershot examines reinforce these ideas through visual techniques, the museum space offers AiG opportunities to create resonant encounters that will promote those ideas synaesthetically.

For example, the museum uses different tactics to reinforce a distinction between the seemingly open-minded, inquisitive creationist and the rash, illogical evolutionist. Various graphic panels supply visitors with concise, straightforward answers to the questions that evolutionists typically ask when disputing creationism’s claims. In one case, a large panel Lhal explains Cain’s marriage to his sister begins, “Before jumping to conclusions,” and then lists six reasons why this marriage was acceptable in biblical times, among them:

1. All humans are related. So whenever someone gels married, they mar­ ry their relative.

2. One of the most honored men of the Bible, Abraham, was married to his half sister. It wasn’t until much later that God instructed the Isra­ elites not to marry close relatives—a principle we follow today.

4. The farther back in history one goes (back towards the Fall of Adam), the less of a problem mutations in the human population would be. At the time of Adam and Eve’s children, there would have been very few mutations in the human genome—thus close relatives could many, and provided it was one man for one woman (the biblical doctrine of marriage), there was nothing wrong with close relatives marrying 111 early biblical history.

The Creation Museum as Engaged Orthodoxy 141

In other cases, signs purport to demonstrate through logic how the fossil record supports the creationist account:

According to God's Word, thorns came after Adam's sin. about six thousand years ago, not millions of years ago. Since we have discovered thorns in the fossil record, along with dinosaurs and other plants and animals, they all must have lived at the same time as humans, after Adam’s sin.

The museum journey produces an affective intimate script that solves prob­ lems, in part, because displays like these supply evidence-based answers to relevant questions. For young earth creationists, scientific data holds value precisely because (and, in fact, only when) it corroborates scripture.48 Ac­ cordingly, the museum depicts creationists as more scrupulous because they use all of the available “evidence”—scientific data and scripture—unlike evolutionists, who only consider part of the evidence.4"

These divergent characterizations are depicted more comically in the film Men in White. In the film’s “Enlightenment High School" scene, easily flustered public-school teachers appear distressed by questions that chal­ lenge evolution and, in response, they can only spout non sequiturs like “1 just think Charles Darwin is wonderful” and “There is no God in the universe." Phrases such as “Don't. Question” are written on ihe classroom blackboard. When one student suggests that he might disagree with the teacher, she replies, somewhat hysterically, "Well then you’re in violation of the Constitution of the United States’ separation ol church and state!” The “Men in White" of the title are two “hip," contemporary angels, Gabriel and Michael (or Gabe and Mike), who narrate the film. In this particular scene, they infiltrate the classroom disguised as students and their repartee with the teachers reveals the shortcomings of evolutionary theory and— accordingly—of non-Bible-based public education.

Gabe and Mike are smug, and I found them quite annoying. But I sus­ pect their sunglasses, comic banter, use of slang, and ability to stand up to (secular) authority figures may appeal to a young generation of museum- goer. Alternatively the negative depictions of public school teachers and college professors—Lheir geeky outfits, shrill voices, and anxious, uncer­ tain gestures—likely trace a dissonant pattern within most spectators’ em­ bodied schemata, a pattern conceptually Linked to believing in evolutionary theory. These exaggerated stereotypes therefore serve as powerful affective mimetic elements designed to direct spectators toward certain beliefs and

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associations. As Jason Byassee explains, in Men in White “the battle is pre­ sented as a case of free inquiry against tyrannical opponents,”50 a contest of values that is both culturally relevant and resonant. In this film, as in the museum generally, reason, logic, and the freedom to question are all creationism’s allies. Creationists appear evenhanded, rather than fanatical. They are able to discuss the evidence rationally before successfully discred­ iting evolutionary theory by presenting a more concise, straightforward creationist alternative.

However, AiG is not interested in simply arguing that it is more reason­ able or logical to believe the creationist account. Instead, the museum ul­ timately claims that creationism provides believers with a more comforting and meaningful life. Consequently, the exhibits are designed to produce an intimate script that aligns the creationist narrative with feelings of reassur­ ance and certainty. This goal is similar to what I identified with respect to Holy Land Experience and the “Great Passion Play,” and, like those venues, the Creation Museum also employs performative rhythms to achieve it.

For instance, shortly after the “Starting Points” section, museumgoers enter a room containing six panels that recount episodes in history when groups or individuals challenged God’s word. Entitled Attempts to Question, Attempts to Destroy, Attempts to Discredit, Attempts to Criticize, Attempts to Poison, and Attempts to Replace, these panels describe instances when scrip­ tural claims that scientists once rejected were later corroborated by subse­ quent scientific discoveries: “The Bible implies that most fossils were buried quickly as a result of the worldwide Flood. Nineteenth-century paleontolo­ gists argued that fossils were buried slowly. Today, paleontology confirms that fossils were buried rapidly.” These panels situate science as the Bible’s ally, an even closer ally than the traditional institutional church. A seventh panel, entitled The Latest Attack: Question Biblical Time, takes direct aim at modern churches that do not retain a Bible-based message:31

The church believed God’s Word. Based on the Bible, [Bishop] Ussher calcu­ lated creation at 4004 B.C. The church questioned it. “Is 6,000 years enough time?” Humanity abandoned it. “Millions of years ago ...” The philosophers and scientists of the Enlightenment suggested that the universe was not cre­ ated in six days about six thousand years ago. Christian leaders, not wanting to appear foolish and unscientific, tried to reinterpret the Bible to add mil­ lions of years into history, (original emphasis)

The Creation Museum as Engaged Orthodoxy 143

According to this exhibit, the Bible provides people with a reliable and ac­ curate account of creation, whereas modern institutions that do not uphold God’s word only offer shifting theories that are subject to human specula­ tion and error.

Significantly, ihe Creation Museum proposes that the dependable cer­ tainty creationism offers is not limited to knowledge about the past but also impacts a person’s entire philosophy of life and sense of well-being. AiG’s Museum Guide: A Bible-Based Handbook asserts that naturalist scientists must use principles of causality and analogy to reconstruct the past even though “the best method of reconstruction is to rely on the account of an accurate eyewitness." While “naturalists have no such eyewitness to rely on,” creationists have the Bible. Biblical scripture,

provides a wrilLen record of an eyewitness to (who was also intimately in­ volved in) history—the Creator God. This eyewitness cannot lie, so His account is completely trustworthy. We can use this written record as our foundation for understanding the world around us. This will help us to un­ derstand why the world is the way it is today and to make sense of where we came from and why we’re here.12

Large panels installed near the end of the “Starting Points” exhibit endorse this same idea by outlining the larger consequences that are at stake when choosing one’s "foundation for understanding the world.” On one panel the words “Evolution - 14 billion years ago. Human Reason" are accompanied by a long, squiggly line, while the phrases “Creation - 6000 years ago. God’s Word” appear with a straight, solid line (see Figure 8). These graphics pro­ pose two very different experiences—evolution offers wandering ambiguity, while creationism provides a straightforward, confident journey. (Fvolu tion’s squiggly line may also evoke the deceptive snake in Eden.)11

On the opposite wall, the question “Do different starting points matter in our personal lives?” accompanies photos of people in despair. These im­ ages are labeled with questions such as: “Why am 1 here?” “Am 1 alone?” “Why do 1 suffer?” “Is there any hope?” and “Why do we have to die?" A large graphic nearby proclaims, “God’s Word Offers Hope.” This room lakes what visitors might have initially understood as a difference in interpreting scientific evidence and joins it to the museum’s central premise—starling from God’s word results in a stable, meaningful, and hopeful life, whereas

144 Sensational Devotion

Different starting points

fV0-«ny..r..9o ' - 6000year»«go

HUMAN REASON GOD'S WORD

Different views

Figure 8. Different Starting Points sign. The Creation Museum. July 2009. Photo by author.

beginning from human reason’s claim that we are “only the latest ripple in the endless stream of evolution”54 eventually leads to (and is, in fact, the cause of) despair, confusion, and suffering.55

The museum does not convey this message through language alone. El­ ements like the squiggly- and straight-line graphics render and reinforce this disparity visually—and, thus, also rhythmically. Using the work of Daniel Stern, Anna Gibbs describes how evidence shows that certain two- dimensional diagrams will reliably elicit “a restricted number of categori­ cal effects (‘happy, sad, angry’).”56 This research indicates that certain two- dimensional visuals can evoke not only “the kinematics of gesture” but, in some cases, emotion as well; Gibbs explains, “the same falling line that signals joy departing or deflating will usually be read as sadness.’’57 Similar to the relationship between musical cues and emotional production that 1 discussed in Chapter Three, certain simple diagrams, such as the line draw­ ings in the Creation Museum’s Human Reason/God’s Word display, can func­ tion as affective forces “to incite our own bodies into immediate mimetic response, and, in the same moment, by the same movement, to conscript a - fects into signification.”58 Consequently this visual diagram might encout

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age visitors to physically—and perhaps also emotionally—experience the different consequences that result from accepting an evolutionist “theory” over a creationist “certainty.”

Although using empirical data is essential to its mission, this example demonstrates that the Creation Museum articulates and reinforces its larger message by embedding that data within a sensual encounter. Crooke calls museums “contact zones” and claims that when those who have a stake in what is displayed come together in this space “the museum or object as ‘contact zone’ is animated.” Furthermore, she argues that at the core of a museum’s significance is the “energy emitted” by the “push and pull” among heritage, interpretation, and display.59 I interpret this “push and pull” as the visitor’s interactive engagement within and with the museum’s material, rhythmic features and, therefore, as constituting an energetic encounter, one that ultimately produces a meaningful affective intimate script.

The Creation Museum encourages visitors to understand the differences between an evolutionist and a creationist identity, and the contrasting life ex­ periences these identities offer, by means of their bodies. Because museums, like performances, provide visitors with live sensual encounters, I propose that, like spectators at a play, many visitors will arrive at these spaces in bod­ ies open to the venue’s rhythmic possibilities. This may hold especially true for the Creation Museum whose slogan—“Prepare to Believe”—implies as much. Therefore, borrowing the familiar, trustworthy museum motif may prompt many visitors—both believers and skeptics—to enter the space with the open preparedness necessary to generate this embodied understanding. As I have demonstrated, such borrowing is typical of evangelical dramaturgy

However, some creationists may not initially feel comfortable entering the Creation Museum (perhaps even just subconsciously) precisely because it looks and feels like a typical natural history museum. Accordingly the prominent animatronic display of dinosaurs alongside humans that greets people in the Creation Museum lobby, as seen in Figure 7, may put those visitors at ease. Moreover, while the inside of the venue looks and feels like a traditional natural history museum, the Creation Museum’s exterior design—as other scholars have noted—is reminiscent of the large-scale, modem, “secular” look of a contemporary megachurch.60 Compare the exterior of the Creation Museum in Figure 9 to Figures 10 and 11, both photographs of different megachurches that I will discuss in Chapter Six. This architectural choice might reassure some spectators, thereby prompt­ ing openness to the exhibits and presentations inside. Furthermore, the

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Figure 9. Exterior of the Creation Museum. July 2009. Photo by author.

megachurch motif—like the use of microphones and Praise Songs before “Behold the Lamb” at Holy Land Experience—may encourage certain guests to engage the museum visit as a form of worship. In the case of the Creation Museum, evangelical dramaturgy’s appropriation of a popular form (mu­ seum and/or megachurch) is quite complicated and proves effective, in part, because this borrowing can be refracted through other evangelical associa­ tions and experiences.

Comfortable Creationist Blends

Conceptual blending theory can help us to examine further how bodily in­ teractions with the Creation Museum’s material space engender meaning* I maintain that, like a performance, museums prompt visitors to Live m blends and to derive meaning from their experiences inside those blends. Ham would likely agree that living in the blend is fundamental to how his museum conveys meaning. As he claims, “Parents say even little kids get the

The Creation Museum as Engaged Orthodoxy 147

I

Figure 10. Exterior of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. June 2011. Photo by author.

message because they experience it" (my emphasis).61 I interpret the Cre­ ation Museum’s exhibit spaces as purposefully designed to compel visitors to “live in” specific blends and, thus, to derive meaning from within those blends.

For example, by using the traditional natural history museum walk­ through structure, the Creation Museum not only presents the creationist account as a progressive narraLive, but it also encourages visitors to “live in” a Bible/science blend consonant with young earth creationism.62 Tony Ben­ nett notes that as evolutionary thought took hold in the nineteenth century, natural history museums increasingly embodied progressive ideologies. The museum space therefore provided the “context for a performance that was simultaneously bodily and mental”; when visitors followed prescribed routes, the museum’s evolutionary narratives “were realized spatially.” Ben­ nett claims it was critical that the museum’s evolutionary message be “real­ ized or recapitulated in and through the physical activity of the visitor.”63 The museum thus functioned as a performance space whose meaning was generated and reinforced through visitor interactions with it.

The Creation Museum employs a similar performative tactic. The “Mu­ seum Experience Walk” blends the typical natural history museum motif,

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Figure 11. Exterior of McLean Bible Church (Tysons Campus), Virginia. June 2011. Photo by author.

including dioramas, dinosaurs, excavation displays, and quotations from scientists, with the creation account found in the hook of Genesis. The traditional material rhythms of the natural history museum verify the au­ thority of the biblical account—or, more accurately, the biblical account validates the museum’s authoritative claims. The planetarium and the bo­ tanical garden—both spaces culturally legitimated as educational venues— function similarly. As Tracy Davis asserts, physical encounters with displays make “visitors confront the museums' ideologies spatially" while also en­ couraging ‘Vi conscious performance by the visitor of the meaning of the place" (original emphasis),M This is certainly the case at the Creation Museum, where ambulatory visitors perform the progressive structure of the “Experi­ ence Walk” as part of “living in” the Bible/science blend. The venue’s power and value derive, in great part, from how it effectively “cements concept to experience,” 65 thus fomenting young earth creat ionist ideology visceral!)'-

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The progressive walk configuration works particularly well as a cre­ ationist tactic because it also draws attention to the problems inherent in trying to put evolution on display, problems seemingly absent from the mu­ seum's Bible/science blend. As Bennett explains, curators of natural history museums have always grappled with the fact that “the processes of evolution could not themselves be seen—only their outcomes” (original emphasis). Evolution can only be made visible through the “particular narrative or­ dering” of things, and, even still, it cannot “be made evident at all where sequences were interrupted and discontinuous.”66 The Creation Museum exploits this fact by offering visitors a comforting alternative script; as the Souvenir Guidebook explains, “The Creation Museum has designed many of its exhibits in a particular order to emphasize the Bible as the correct start­ ing point.”67 For many Bible-believing creationists, that simple choice of starting point results in coherent resolution. Therefore, while visitors live in the Bible/scieuce blend they experience a whole, unbroken, and progressive creationist narrative that resolves any lingering questions about the past. In other words, as one museum video contends, what is a mystery to scientists “makes perfect sense in a biblical worldview.”

The Bible/science blend stands in stark contrast to the experiential blends that traditional science museums typically offer. The very nature of scien­ tific inquiry means that new discoveries usually raise as many questions as they answer. When these questions challenge fundamental concepts—such as notions of consciousness or the self—they very often leave people feel­ ing even more ignorant or uncertain.08 This seems to be the case with earth science research. As Giovanni Frazzetto explains, while the Judeo-Christian tradition gives humanity “primacy over the rest of nature. . . . Darwinian evolutionary theory places man in the long chain of lile, without granting him any privileges over other living species.”69 Consequently, as Umberto Galimberti concludes, for some people the espousal of creationism is not about defending “human dignity in the name of his divine origin” but in­ stead about ensuring humanity’s God-given “dominion” over earth.70

Studies suggest that traditional museum exhibits on evolution do, in­ deed, challenge visitors’ notions of human authority and dominion. For in­ stance, entrance and exit surveys from an exhibit on evolution at Chicago’s Field Museum indicate that, “unprompted, patrons exiting the Field’s evolu­ tion exhibit reported a strong sense of their own ‘fragility’ as a species, and many visitors reported feeling very ‘small’ in comparison with the vast scales of geological time.”71 Evolutionary theory positions nature as indifferent

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to humankind, a perspective that effectively diminishes humanity’s author­ ity and privilege.72 Since the natural history museum experience reinforces this worldview, it is understandable that many visitors might experience the blends it generates as somewhat discomforting.

Young earth creationism rejects the idea that humanity is insignificant and powerless, finding this view not only “very depressing” but even “cruel and wasteful.”73 As an alternative, young earth creationism foregrounds hu­ mankind’s importance by making the world, in Stephen Asma’s words, “a much smaller place”:74 a 6,000-year-old world created in six days by a God who made mankind in his image and then gave humans preeminence over all other living things. Accordingly, the Creation Museum emphasizes hu­ mankind’s special relationship with God, as well as humanity’s supremacy over all of creation. The brief film shown in the museum’s Six Days The­ ater reminds viewers that God specifically gave humans “dominion” over creation and instructed them to “subdue it.” Similarly, visitors to the plan­ etarium watch a largely traditional show about the vastness of space and the cosmos. Yet, at the end, when the audience might typically leave a plan­ etarium show feeling very small in relation to the universe’s unimaginable dimensions, the film’s narrator explains how God made the special choice to create humankind in his own image to live on Earth. A related idea is ex­ pressed more colloquially by Gabe and Mike in Men in White: “Hey, folks— life isn’t meaningless.”

Young earth creationism provides believers with a divinely ordained sense of purpose, and the Creation Museum guest experience reinforces this conceit. Specific rhythmic devices shape the visitor’s physical encounter with the museum space in order to prompt guests to live in a reassuring Bible/science blend. However, not every part of the museum functions in this way. Certain exhibits are designed to generate a very different blend, one that not only replicates evolution’s wandering uncertainty but also re­ lates that uncertainty to negative moral consequences.

Re-experiencing the Fall of Man

After the exhibit about attacks on God’s Word, visitors following the “Mu­ seum Experience Walk” enter “Graffiti Alley.” As shown in Figure 12, this dimly lit brick alley is covered in a collage of newspaper clippings about is­ sues like stem cell research or the Terri Schiavo case, which in 2005 sparked

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intense public and legal debates over issues of medical proxy, euthanasia, and end-of-life decision-making. This alley leads museumgoers into the “Culture in Crisis" room. The display on one side of this room shows the model of a church whose wall has been partially demolished by a wrecking ball labeled “Millions of Years.” On the opposite wall video monitors are installed to look like the windows of a suburban house. Watching these screens, the museumgoer becomes a voyeur who is privy to each family member’s private troubles. One monitor shows a video of two teenage boys in a bedroom. They smoke marijuana as one of them peruses pornography on the Internet. Another monitor shows a teenage girl talking to her friend on the phone about how she is contemplating having an abortion. On a third screen, visitors see the disengaged parents—in the foreground the mother is drinking wine and gossiping with a friend, while in the background the father sits in the living room watching television. Panels around the room suggest that neglecting the Bible results in these cultural “crises.” One sign proclaims, “Scripture abandoned in the culture leads to relative morality, hopelessness and meaninglessness.”

“Graffiti Alley” and the “Culture in Crisis” room both utilize various synaesthetic elements in order to construct an evolution/social disinte­ gration blend. Cognitive responses, while biological, are also culturally constructed. As Bruce McConachie explains, “the mind/brain is neither ‘hard-wired’ for certain cultural responses nor is it a ‘blank slate’ or pas­ sive recorder”; instead, “historical cultures narrow and shape nearly all of the aspects of cognition and emotion." Consequently, “attention may be a species-level attribute of human consciousness, but culture helps people to learn what to pay attention to.”75 In “Graffiti Alley” and the “Culture in Crisis” room, culturally coded aesthetic cues create an atmosphere that pours into and shapes the visitor’s experience.76 For example, these rooms are significantly darker and more menacing than the preceding exhibits (see Figure 13). The graffiti-covered brick alley, chaotic soundscape, and dim, red-hued lighting are all meant to make visitors, especially children, feel apprehensive, anxious, or even frightened. Moreover, similar synaesthetic elements reappear later in the “Cave of Sorrows” and “Corruption Valley” exhibits. Photographs and dioramas in the “Cave of Sorrows” depict some of the consequences of humankind’s Fall: starvation, murder, pain, genocide. “Corruption Valley,” which outlines specific changes wrought by Adam’s sin, contains a large, threatening, carnivorous animatronic dinosaur.77 The sensual reiteration links the “evils” of contemporary culture to Adam’s origi-

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Figure 12. Graffiti Alley newspaper collage. The Creation Museum. July 2009. Photo by author.

nal sin, implying that both result from neglecting God’s Word. This echoing embeds within the visitor’s body a visceral association between evolutionary theory (identified throughout the museum as the prime example of rejecting God’s Word) and life’s sufferings.78 As I have already noted, Erika Fischer- Lichte argues that the atmosphere of a space surrounds and penetrates the spectator’s body, thereby causing the entering subject to experience “the space and its things as emphatically present.”79 This kind of presencing supports religiously real re-experience. In this case, the room’s atmosphere prompts visitors to re-experience the fall of man but specifically from within an evolution/social disintegration blend.

As with the museum’s focus on observable science, this association be­ tween evolutionary theory and misery also has roots in an earlier generation of creationist films and videos. Heather Hendershot explains how, according to the 1995 creationist film When Two Worldviews Collide, “Evolutionary evangelists . . . advocate premarital sex, physician-assisted suicide, divorce, homosexuality, and abortion.”80 Hendershot suggests that this shift toward

The Creation Museum as Engaged Orthodoxy 153

Figure 13. GraffiLi Alley leading into the Culture in Crisis Room. The Creation Museum. July 2009. Photo by author.

hot-button topics, which represents a form of engaged orthodoxy, is a recent development within creationist media:

Contemporary creationist videos, in sum, seem to mirror a key change in evangelical culture since the seventies, and since the demise of MIS, the move toward increasing political engagement. Creationist media now use militaristic rhetoric, repeatedly emphasizing that creationists and evolution­ ists are engaged in a “battle for the mind.”"1

The Creation Museum operates within this tradition; however, as a physi­ cal space it provides AiG with a variety of experientially oriented tactics for promoting that message. By encouraging visitors to live in two oppos­ ing sensual blends—Bible/science and evolution/social disintegration—the

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Ovation Museum experience produces a powerful affective intimate script. This script affirms not only that accepting I he Bible's narrative and its salva­ tion message alleviates the distress and Suffering pi modern life, but also that accepting evolution constitutes (and is essentially inseparable from) rejecting Christianity. As Byassee concludes,

The message could not be clearer: if you accept anything less than the young-earth creationist view, sooner or later your church will die and you will no doubt become an atheist. On the other hand, if you accept the bibli­ cal worldview, things might improve. Insistence on biblical science is just a first step toward renewing the church generally.8''

From AiG’s point of view, choosing between evolution and creationism has wide-reaching consequences.

Like nineteenth-century natural history museums that tried to control the chaos of nature through Enlightenment principles of observation and logic, the Creation Museum attempts to control the chaos and perceived moral disintegration of twenty-first-ceniury life by means of God’s Word. The museum is particularly effective at accomplishing this goal because it uses mise en scene, what Martin Seel defines as “the staging of presence.'' Seel describes artistic mise en scene as a "sensual" process that is “begun or performed intentionally" and presented for an audience.83 Mise cn scene is therefore directly linked to the material, rhythmic elements of a perfor­ mance; as Fischer-Lichte explains with respect to theater, “By determining performative strategies for generating materiality, the process of staging cre­ ates a specific situation into which actors and spectators enter.”841 contend that the same is true at the Creation Museum.

Ultimately, the Creation Museum "stages” creationist theory, but, im­ portantly, without seeming to do so; as Fischer-Lichte notes, “mise en seine unfolds its effects specifically because il is not perceived as staged. The impression of authenticity results from the very background of the careful and thorough staged work."85 Here, again, we find evangelical dramaturgy challenging any clear separation between theatricality and authenticity. In this case, careful staging may encourage people to live in blends that “feel" natural and genuine, and thus to perceive the conceptual meaning they con­ struct from those blends as incontrovertible and absolute. As Asrna notes, “choosing a biblical story of origins brings with it comforting cultural bag- gage.”86 Such comfort is not only mental or metaphorical. Instead, I would

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argue that for many visitors the Creation Museum provides actual bodi­ ly comfort and a physical reprieve from what they perceive as destructive forces in society. That is one reason the intimate script it generates is so valuable. In addition, a sense of wonder typically accompanies a museum visit; as Lynn Dierking and John Falk’s study of the museum experience in­ dicates, “for most visitors feelings of awe exist before the visit, are enhanced during the visit, and persist after the visit.”87 Such feelings can intensify the visitor’s affective intimate script and, thus, the emotional meaning it ulti­ mately engenders.

The language used by some reviewers may even validate—if inadvertently—the Creation Museum’s ability to achieve its experiential ob­ jectives. Writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Asma admits that “something slowly happens to your criteria of‘reasonableness’ the more you become immersed in this creationist worldview.”88 Even more poignantly, in his New York Times review, Edward Rothstein asserts,

Whether you are willing to grant the premises of Lhis museum almost be­ comes irrelevant as you are drawn into its mixture of spectacle and narra­ tive. . . . For the believer, it seems, this museum provides a kind of relief: Finally the world is being shown as it really is, without the distortions of secularism and natural selection.

And Rothstein also concludes his piece with an image of bodily understand­ ing, proposing that even the skeptic “leaves feeling a bit like Adam emerging from Eden, all the world before him, freshly amazed at its strangeness and extravagant peculiarities.”89 Rothstein hints at the idea that the Creation Museum experience does change (if only temporarily) how visitors subse­ quently perceive and engage the world, and thus, how they understand it. As with the other genres I have analyzed, the Creation Museum cultivates this kind of embodied knowledge by manipulating the live, rhythmic en­ counter between user and medium in order to generate a religiously real re-experience.

Bodying Forth a Creationist Identity

In June 2009, scientists attending the North American Paleontological Con­ vention had the option to take a day-trip to the Creation Museum as part

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of their conference events. One professor on the excursion conceded, “1 hate that it exists, but given that it exists, you can have a good time here. They put on a very good show if you can handle the suspension of disbe­ lief.”90 However, as McConachie explains, conceptual blending emphasizes the agency of theatrical spectatorship and thereby challenges the notion that theatergoers or, as I would argue, museum visitors, ever willingly suspend disbelief. Conceptual blending suggests that, rather than ignoring or elimi­ nating inputs, spectators instead engage in “imaginative addition.”91 This notion of imaginative addition in fact correlates to how many evangelicals engage biblical scripture. Crapanzano explains that evangelicals often ap­ pear “to be carried away by their enthusiasm, their performance, the power of the Word" to the point where others “might want to liken their condition at such times to Coleridge’s notion of ‘the willing suspension of disbelief.’” However, he argues that believers “would object to the negative phrasing; they mighl speak of the willing intensification of belief that constitutes reli­ gious faith.”92 In a similar sense, visitors to the Creation Museum are invited to imaginatively add themselves into the material world they see and into the progressive Bible-based narrative that they physically travel through, live in, and, ultimately, perform, as a way to intensify their beliefs.

One reason we visit museums is to have exactly this kind of immediate, intensified experience. Tracy Davis claims that “the spiritual or scientific takes a physical form, and that is the essence and purpose of a museum.”93 That is certainly the case with the Creation Museum, whose purpose is to give both the scientific and spiritual aspects of young earth creationism a palpable, tactile material form. But, importantly, creationist visitors to the museum do not expect to see the Garden of Eden or other episodes from the Genesis creation story represented realistically. Instead, as with Holy Land Experience or the Living Bible Tour, creationist-believers arrive anticipat­ ing a re-representation of the biblical narrative that will give them access to the truth of “God’s Word” and thereby put them in direct touch with the divinely inspired plan for humankind. Moving through the space generates a re-experience of a different kind than what I identified with respect to Pas­ sion plays, but one with a similar religiously real component. Returning to Timothy Beal’s language, the Crealion Museum re-experience gives visitors a sense of “ultimate reality” and allows them to feel that they have “become a part of it.”94

The knowledge that emerges from such an encounter is remarkably pow­

erful precisely because it works on and through the visitor’s body, a fact we cannot underestimate. Jandos Rothstein maintains that children will leave the Creation Museum wanting more concrete answers, which they will find later in secular.science books and classes.95 Instead, 1 would argue that while visiting tire museum children live in a materially realized creationist world, one that employs exciting scientific evidence and spectacular physical ef­ fects (like rumbling seats and water splashing in their faces during a film segment about the biblical Flood) to confirm what family members, church leaders, and the Bible may have taught them. This museum re-experience provides extremely concrete answers and serves to embed creationist be­ lief in the body. Naomi Rokotnitz contends that some performances require spectators to take leaps of faith. Rather than blind faith, this kind of “belief” constitutes “an informed species of decision-making which takes account of—and trusts—embodied knowledge.”96 Like a performance, the Creation Museum shapes belief by first giving the biblical creation narrative physi­ cal actuality—a sphere of presence—and then offering visitors the vivid, kinetic, gestalt re-experience of living in it97 Bodily knowledge assumes the status of truth, a truth that subsequent encounters with textbooks and sci­ ence classes won’t easily nullify.

Moreover, the museum uses devices that may also connect the creationist identity it constructs to a particular national identity. For example, choosing a starting point underscores the notion of individual choice, a concept that is fundamental to the value-epistemology of modern American culture that Christian Smith describes.98 In addition, as with the “Great Passion Play,” the museum’s location in the American heartland (and within one day’s drive of much of the country) also aligns it with certain idealized notions of America. Finally, the very idea of humankind as expressly chosen by God parallels the view of America as a New Jerusalem, an idea prevalent among Christians, and particularly evangelicals, since the eighteenth century. Dis­ cussing the early twentieth-century debates about Darwinian evolution, and specifically the reaction of Christian fundamentalists like William Jennings Bryan, Hasia Diner notes:

A core religious belief was that human beings were the crown of creation. And in very American terms, the American was also the crown of creation. But now, reading these accounts of Darwin, one couldn’t say that any longer. Darwinism undermined the notion of what it means to be an American."

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Creationism not only restores humankind to its “rightful” place of pride in creation, but, for some Americans, it might also reaffirm American ex- ceptionalism and the privileged role of the United States as a New Eden. I would suggest that, in the end, the museum permits visitors to re-experience a nostalgic past in which Protestant, Bible-believing Americans were irre­ futably considered the rightful authorities over their nation and its natural resources.100

For young earth creationists, this museum endorses a historical narra­ tive that is often marginalized. In this respect, the Creation Museum’s aims are akin to those of many living history museums: to give voice and concrete form to the other side of the story; to make people face conflicts in history and understand their consequences; and to help people learn from the les­ sons of history so that they will act responsibly in the present.101 Therefore, like many living history museums, a crucial part of the Creation Museum’s mission is to inspire change in visitors that will impact their actions after they leave. In other words, it aims to encourage engaged orthodoxy.

The Creation Museum accomplishes this task not only by constructing a clearly defined and reassuring creationist identity for visitors to emulate but also by preparing visitors to body forth this identity once they leave the venue.102 Scott Magelssen proposes that interactive, role-playing activities in living history museums offer visitors opportunities to rehearse alternative actions that they might then use in the real world.103 The Creation Museum does not include many hands-on exhibits, but its marketing does imply that visitors will have an intimate, interactive experience: “The area within the museum has been divided into unusually configured spaces that allow for personal interaction with each of the 160 exhibits.”104 Moreover, the muse­ um offers guests other specific ways to “rehearse” responses to evolutionary theory that they can apply later.

First, the museum gives visitors a model creationist with whom they can identify and subsequently emulate. A thoughtful, grandfatherly man narrates nearly all of the short films and videos scattered throughout the museum. His calm, reasonable voice, compassionate demeanor, and Santa Claus-like appearance (complete with a twinkle in his eye) help gain the spectator’s trust and confidence. Visitors first encounter this narrator in a video as part of the “Starting Points” exhibit. He introduces himself as a pa­ leontologist who begins his work from the premise of God’s Word. Despite this fact, he still maintains a friendship with Kim, a fellow paleontologist who begins from human reason and therefore believes in evolution. The ere-

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ationist paleontologist returns in subsequent films and videos. He teaches us that dragon legends from the Middle Ages serve as evidence that dinosaurs lived alongside humans. He also narrates the final film in the “Museum Ex­ perience Walk" entitled The Last Adam. This film is about Christ's crucifix­ ion, and it helps illustrate the paleontologist-narrator’s personal journey of faith.

Like signs throughout the museum, this recurring character provides visitors with considered arguments that they could use in future conver­ sations when questioned about their creationist beliefs. But, more impor­ tant, this figure embodies a composed, informed, and self-assured creation­ ist presence; there is no conflict between his scientific profession and his faith. His appearance and demeanor are also culturally coded, inviting museumgoers—who, in my experience, were predominantly white—to identify with him and find reassurance in his personal history and testi­ mony.10,5 Like the accents in the “Great Passion Play,” this creationist figure’s calm tone and confident gestures may trigger a comfortable and comforting resonance within visitors each time they encounter him. Furthermore, his peaceful verbal and physical rhythms are juxtaposed against the nervous, erratic gestures and expressions of the evolutionist characters, such as the flustered teachers in the Men in White film. Those characters will also reso­ nate with spectators as familiar, but not in a comforting or reassuring way.

Mirror neuron research suggests that spectators will simulate the rhythms and gestures of these characters. Evan Thompson explains how the mirror neuron system is one of the different “coupling mechanisms linking self and other at sensorimotor and affective levels” that help to establish empathy.106 Empathy is not an emotion, but a precondition that leads to oLher emotional engagements, among them sympathy and antipathy. As Thompson explains, lor phenomenologists “empathy is a unique form of intentionality in which we are directed toward the other’s experience,”107 and, consequently, it has a moral dimension. Although empathy is inarguably subjective, individual­ ized, and enculturated,108 dramaturgical devices can coax spectators toward certain empathetic relationships with characters. By doing so, these devices not only encourage spectators to develop particular feelings for the char­ acters, but they may also impact the spectator’s moral experience of those characters. Since these feelings and experiences are traced into the specta­ tor’s embodied schema, they also supply a foundation for subsequent ac­ tion and understanding after the performative encounter. Cognitive science therefore suggests that visitors will simulate the embodied actions of these

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creationist and evolutionist characters—presented throughout the museum as stark opposites—and that this motor resonance will then influence, in some respect, how the visitor understands these differing identities. I sus­ pect this impact might be particularly acute with younger visitors, who may be more attuned to the characters’ physical and vocal rhythms than they are to the specific rhetoric or arguments the characters employ.

During my time in the Creation Museum, I overheard many conversa­ tions that indicated, at least to me, that most visitors agreed with the cre­ ationist account as it was presented throughout the exhibits. Differences certainly existed, such as those between three people walking to the picnic area who were debating the timing of the Rapture. But in all of the conversa­ tions that I heard, it seemed that the fundamental principles of young earth creationism were not under dispute. As I heard one museumgoer remark, “When you see all of this, it just makes sense.”

For these visitors, the museum encounter must bolster their faith by offering them facts and arguments that endorse their worldview and that they can draw upon once they return home. Those future experiences are not separate from, but rather an important part of, the Creation Museum encounter. Lynn Dierking and John Falk explain,

Subsequent experiences, sometimes reinforcing and others not, dramatically contribute to what someone eventually learns from the museum. It is only as events unfold for the individual after the museum visit that experiences that occurred inside the institution become relevant and useful.109

This is another reason the narrator figure is an essential component—he al­ lows visitors to “rehearse” vicariously for future conversations with people who do not agree with the creationist account, even furnishing them with scripted sound bites they might utilize. In this way, the Creation Museum helps to cultivate engaged orthodoxy,

The bookstore also facilitates engaged orthodoxy by selling items that commodify creationist belief. These include videos, books, T-shirts, hats, stuffed dinosaurs, buttons, magnets, bumper stickers, jewelry, and post­ cards. David Morgan analyzes a number of different functions that popular religious objects fulfill for Christians: educating children in the faith, pro­ viding daily sacred encounters, maintaining traditions across generations, commemorating important events, protecting those who carry them, and

The Creation Museum as Engaged Orthodoxy 161

witnessing faith.'10 Most of these functions pertain to the items available in the Dragon Hall Bookstore. But as Alice Rayner argues, an object’s material presence can also give “sense to history.”111 I propose that many of the ob­ jects for sale at the Creation Museum are designed to “give sense” to sacred, biblical history. When a believer uses one of these objects he or she effec­ tively “touches time in the register of the senses, time that is not separate from the object (as in the effects of time) but incorporated as the object in its present” (original emphasis).112 Purchased in a creationist world, a world housed in a building that may even look like the visitor’s home church, the object’s user might understand it as imbued with the power and authority of the biblical narrative. And if worn or carried during the actual museum visit, the experience of walking through a creationist-framed world might become incorporated as part of the souvenir’s present. The objects sold in the bookstore thereby become material extensions of faith, not only giving sense to history but also giving sense to belief. While the kinetic experiences during a Creation Museum visit enable belief to assume the status of truth, material objects offer visitors another way Lo carry forth, even body forth, that truth into the world.

Finally, material objects can also play a significant role in mobilizing affect. In her discussion of the souvenirs and T-shirts sold at Teen Mania Ministries’ “Acquire the Fire” performance events, Jennifer Williams pro­ poses that “materiality creates the possibility of affect’s longevity by affirm­ ing the authenticity of the experience after the performance is over, pre­ serving the memory in something material, and creating enduring social networks around those objects.”11 * She suggests that in certain evangelical performative contexts, visible and tangible objects help affect to engender and spread ideology, thus rendering ideology “contagious.”114 This link be­ tween materiality and affect, which has surfaced throughout these chapters, is especially pertinent to my analysis of megachurches. Williams argues, “It is uncertainty that fuels affect as a motivation and passionate desire,” and, consequently, spectacular evangelical performance events, like “Acquire the Fire,” allow participants “to purge both affect and ideological uncertain­ ty.”114 1 recognize a similar function with respect to megachurches. As I will demonstrate in the next chapter, these large-scale, technologically sophis­ ticated churches use a variety of spectacular tactics in order to generate af­ fective intimate scripts that will direct visitors toward emotional production that can resolve ideological uncertainties.