Posted on 06/26/2005 12:08:53 PM PDT by summer
Finding Faith Along America's Highways
All Things Considered, June 20, 2005 · A few years ago, Case Western Reserve University religion professor Timothy Beal piled his family into a motor home and hit the highway on a tour of religious attractions in the American South. Beal documents his journey in a new book, Roadside Religion... Read an excerpt from the book:
... How did we get there?
Although we'd been on the road for less than two weeks at that point, our voyage into the strange and sometimes wonderful religious worlds of roadside America had really begun several months earlier, on another road trip. We were driving from DC to Cleveland through the Appalachian Highlands of northwestern Maryland on Interstate 68. As we crested a rolling hill just outside the quaint old town of Frostburg, we saw what initially looked like a steel girder framework for a four-floor parking garage standing alone in a grassy field about fifty yards from the highway. In front of it was a large blue sign:
NOAH'S ARK BEING REBUILT HERE!
A multilevel parking garage in such a place as this would have been unusual enough. But Noah's Ark? We whizzed past the Ark-in-progress that day, but I knew I'd be back to learn more about this project and its nowaday Noah.
I started keeping a list of roadside religious attractions throughout the country. Soon that list had become an itinerary for a new research project, a roadside approach to discovering religion in America. Six months later, in the summer of 2002, I loaded my family into a rented motor home and hit the rural highways of the Bible Belt on an initial voyage that included visits to places like Golgotha Fun Park, the World's Largest Ten Commandments, Paradise Gardens, Ave Maria Grotto, Holy Land USA and, yes, Cross Garden. Over the next year, I made pilgrimages to many other roadside religious attractions throughout the United States, from the World's Largest Rosary Collection in Skamania County, Washington, to Precious Moments Inspiration Park in Carthage, Missouri, to The Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Florida. I took notes, took pictures, took video, talked with the creators, talked with visitors, talked with Clover and the kids. In the course of these travels in the novel, often strange, sometimes disturbing worlds of roadside religion, I not only discovered new dimensions of the American religious landscape, but I also discovered new religious dimensions of my family and myself. Indeed, what began as a research agenda, albeit a novel one, has become a much more personal, dare I say religious project, as much about my own complex, often ambivalent, relationship to the life of faith as it is about the places and people visited.
...That's what this book is about. Each chapter focuses on one particular attraction, telling the story of my visit there in words and pictures, reflecting on the meaning of the place as an expression of religious imagination and experience. In each case, I want to discover not only what it is, but who is behind it and why they did it. I want to discover what the story is. Although there's much humor and novelty to enjoy in the stories I tell about these places and the people who create them, I take care to avoid the temptation to make fun or condescend. I want to take these places seriously as unique expressions of religious imagination and unique testimonials to the varieties of religious experience in America.
Granted, this is not the usual approach to studying religion. The usual approach involves delving into a religious tradition's normative scriptures and doctrines, or focusing on established religious institutions and ritual practices. That's not what I'm doing here. On the contrary, I'm focusing on places that most people -- religious people and religion scholars alike -- would consider aberrant forms of religious expression. Although many of these places draw inspiration from the Bible, for example, their uses of it are far from normative or illustrative of the ways biblical interpretation functions within any religious mainstream. Few would consider writing the Ten Commandments in five-foot-tall concrete letters on the side of a mountain, or using miniature golf to tell the story of creation, or fabricating Noah's Ark from steel girders, to be exemplary biblical interpretation. These places are not likely to appear as illustrations in the next edition of Huston Smith's bestselling textbook, The World's Religions. And yet, beyond the sheer novelty of such excursions beyond the mainstreams of religious life, I find that these places reveal much about the American religious landscape. Indeed, I believe that religion is often most fascinating, and most revealing, where it's least expected....
FYI.
I should have posted this in the Religious forum, as I now see you and others do!
Good to see your screen name.
Isn't there aJesusland theme park? Or am I hitting the sauce a bit heavy tonight? Right now am thinking of Gina Loolgorbrigdiga as Sheeba in "Solomon and Sheba." Bremeber that flick? Yah. Too mucoh rum tohnight.
I know there's a Holy Land Theme Park in Orlando. As for the sauce, maybe you should let up there! :)
LOL...
Thanks for your kind words, conservatism_IS_compassion. I know you and I don't always agree. :)
Well . . . you have got me convinced that the world would continue to rotate if Jeb Bush was elected president - or, possibly as a steppingstone to that, if he were nominated to SCOTUS. I figure with his prolife attitude he couldn't turn that nomination down - but the Democrats would want to filibuster him for that same reason. And that, if they did, Jeb might get the fire in the belly to run for POTUS.McCain might not like the idea of Jeb's getting that fire, and McCain is prolife - so McCain wouldn't consider Jeb's nomination an "extrordinary circumstance."
LOL...I never knew was interested in being on the Supreme Court! And I have no idea what his political future holds for him. But, I will always think he'd make a great president, should he ever decide to run. I really believe he would win -- and in doing so, drive the Dem Party leaders absolutely beserk. But, he's young enough to wait until 2012, if that's what he wants to do.
LOL...I never knew Gov Bush was interested in being on the Supreme Court! And I have no idea what his political future holds for him. But, I will always think he'd make a great president, should he ever decide to run. I really believe he would win -- and in doing so, drive the Dem Party leaders absolutely beserk. But, he's young enough to wait until 2012, if that's what he wants to do.
I did. Right after I made the post I set the rum glass down on the table next to me except I was so far gone that I missed the table and the glass fell to the floor. Called it a night after that.
Ditto to what conservatism_IS_compassion said in #4. : )
Thanks very much, skr. Good to hear from you, :)
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