Gods and Rollercoasters: Religion in Theme Parks Worldwide 9781350046276, 9781350046306, 9781350046283

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Gods and Rollercoasters

Also available from Bloomsbury UFOs, Conspiracy Theories and the New Age, David G. Robertson Religion and Space, Lily Kong and Orlando Woods Religious Objects in Museums, Crispin Paine Museums of World Religions, Charles Orzech Christian Tourist Attractions, Mythmaking, and Identity Formation, edited by Erin Roberts and Jennifer Eyl

Gods and Rollercoasters Religion in Theme Parks Worldwide Crispin Paine

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Paperback edition published 2020 Copyright © Crispin Paine, 2019 Crispin Paine has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. xiii-xiv constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image © David Forman/Getty All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Paine, Crispin, author. Title: Gods and rollercoasters: religion in theme parks worldwide / Crispin Paine. Description: New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018056234 | ISBN 9781350046276 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350046283 (epdf) | ISBN 9781350046290 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Amusement parks—Religious aspects. Classification: LCC GV1851 .P35 2019 | DDC 791.06/8—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056234 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-4627-6 PB: 978-1-3501-7666-9 ePDF: 978-1-3500-4628-3 eBook: 978-1-3500-4629-0 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

for Zac, Kai and Torrin

Contents Figures Preface Acknowledgements 1 Introduction 2 Seven Religion Parks 3 Nostalgia, Religion and Politics 4 The Motive for Religion in Theme Parks 5 Religion and Escape to the Exotic 6 Theme Parks as Sacred Places 7 Authenticity, Heritage and Religion 8 Some Theme Park Themes 9 Religion and the Imagineers’ Pallet 10 The Religion Park Business Conclusion: The Visitors Notes Bibliography Index

viii ix xiii 1 17 41 55 75 91 109 119 135 157

177 185 200 217

Figures Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3

Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6

Figure 7 Figure 8 Figure 9 Figure 10 Figure 11 Figure 12 Figure 13 Figure 14 Figure 15

Adam and Eve at the Creation Museum, Kentucky, USA Akshardham Gujarat, looking from the temple, Gandhinagar, India Facing the ‘hells’ tunnel at Haw Par Villa, Singapore, is this group. In the centre Dizang (Ksitigarbha), a Bodhisattva who has vowed to save beings from hell, sits on Yue Jing, a cross between tiger and leopard. On his right is the site’s owner, the Earth God Haw Par Villa, Singapore Ark Encounter, Kentucky, USA President Putin and Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill, opening a November 2015 exhibition, part of the Russia My History programme of exhibitions and history parks China Hui Culture Park in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China Little Red Riding Hood at Efteling, Netherlands The Hùng Kings temple at Suối Tiên (Fairy Stream) Theme Park, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Giant Buddha at Wat Muang, Bangkok, Thailand The model of Jerusalem at Holy Land Experience, Orlando, Florida, USA The entrance to Bellair’s Creation at the 1904 World’s Fair, St Louis, USA Kings City, Eilat, Israel, in 2010 Christ of the Ozarks at the Great Passion Play Theme Park, Eureka Springs, Arkansas, USA Jesus with visitors in front of the Great Temple, Holy Land Experience, Orlando, Florida, USA

13 23

28 32 39

68 69 85 96 98 145 146 158 163 179

Preface Until my wife told me it was just pretentious, I was planning to title this Preface ‘Apologia pro Libro Suo’, after Cardinal Newman’s famous defence. I still feel that this small book needs an ‘Apologia’ rather than a mere Preface. It has a number of problems. First, it seems to be the first book to address the subject. There is a large and fast-growing literature on theme parks, their nature, origins and role in contemporary society, as well as on their technical and business aspects; as one theme park researcher put it: ‘Theme park research remains, as of yet, almost as dizzyingly heterogeneous as the parks themselves’ (Freitag 2018). There is also of course a gigantic literature on religion, and on its new role in a globalizing and postmodern society – and a much smaller literature on how people today do religion, especially outside traditional places of worship. But on religion in theme parks there is but a handful of books on Bible-based attractions in the Americas, on Buddhist attractions in Asia, and a further handful of books, papers and theses discussing individual parks on both continents. There seems to be nothing so far which tries to examine the phenomenon on a comparative basis worldwide; indeed, this book’s first task is to persuade the reader that there is a phenomenon to examine. So, this book can only be an introduction to the field, which hopefully may prompt others to give it much more profound attention. Secondly, the author is seriously under-qualified to take on the task. I spent my career first as a working curator in local history museums in England, and later as a manager and adviser to small museums. To take on what should really be a big scholarly task could be seen as optimistic, to put it mildly.1 But having helped found the journal Material Religion in 2005 and having published or helped to publish three books on religion in museums, it seems natural to get interested in how religion happens in other leisure venues. Thirdly, defining a ‘religious theme park’ is challenging, if not impossible. They merge easily into pilgrimage sites and temples, open-air museums and heritage sites, festivals and camp meetings, dramas, and the kind of religious ‘city’ found especially in Nigeria.2 This book suggests that religion in theme parks is a worldwide phenomenon, but one could argue that in America theme

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parks are adopting aspects of religion, while in Asia temples are adopting aspects of theme parks. Though I claim this is the first study of religion in theme parks worldwide, there are very valuable studies of a number of aspects of the subject. The literature on theme parks as such is of course substantial, from works that look at their history and nature, to introductions to their techniques, to theme parks as businesses.3 Noteworthy among the first – their history and nature – is Scott Lukas’s A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces, and more philosophically Miodrag Mitrašinović’s Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space, while Judith Adams’s The American Amusement Park Industry traced theme parks’ descent from World’s Fairs. Among the second – their techniques – is David Younger’s Theme Park Design, and among the last – the theme-park business – Pieter Cornelis’s Attraction Accountability. The literature on Disney is enormous (one website lists 389 separate books on Disney), particularly on the company’s theme parks, though there seems to be only one full-length study of religion and Disney: Mark Pinsky’s The Gospel According to Disney. Michael Stausberg’s Religion and Tourism offers a splendid introduction to the context in which our theme sits,4 Annabel Wharton’s Selling Jerusalem shows the deep roots of Christian theme parks, while Jill Stevenson’s Sensational Devotion links religion parks to play and performance. There are very readable reviews of religious attractions in Asia (Justin McDaniel’s Architects of Buddhist Leisure) and in the United States (Timothy Beal’s Roadside Religion and Aaron Ketchell’s Holy Hills of the Ozarks). Two full-length studies of individual sites – Susan and William Trollinger’s Righting America at the Creation Museum and James Bielo’s Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park5 – point up the value of analyses of religion parks and of their political and cultural role. Almost a religion park is Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, the subject of Candida Moss and Joel Baden’s Bible Nation. These books are supported by a few theses, notably Sara Callahan’s ‘Where Christ Dies Daily: Performances of Faith at Orlando’s Holy Land Experience’ and Terry Webb’s ‘Mormonism and Tourist Art in Hawaii’. A very different kind of study of a very different kind of visitor attraction is Sara Patterson’s lovely essay Middle of Nowhere on a highly personal religious structure built by an outsider artist in the Californian desert. In addition, of course, there are a goodly number of shorter descriptions of individual parks, from Daniel Radosh’s description of Heritage USA in Rapture Ready to Kavita Singh’s study of Akshardham New Delhi, to Judith Schlehe’s study of Bukit Kasih. Much more common than religion parks as such are culture parks in which

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religion appears; Joy Hendry gives a generous amount of attention to religion in her stimulating account of culture parks in Japan, The Orient Strikes Back. We start (Chapter 2) by looking at seven religion parks: Holy Land Experience in Orlando (Evangelical Christian), Haw Par Villa in Singapore (Daoist/ Buddhist), the two Akshardhams in New Delhi and Gandhinagar (Hindu), Suối Tiên Theme Park in Saigon (Buddhist), and two Creationist parks in the United States, the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. In Chapter 3 I argue that religious theme parks are the product of: huge social and economic changes in the world over the past two generations, including the vast new middle class with disposable leisure time; the interaction of religion with modern technology; the growth of prosperous sects with strong middleclass support; urbanization and globalization leading to nostalgia for ‘traditional values’; and the growth of tourism. But why are they founded in the first place? The overt aims of religious theme parks include spreading the Word, associating faith with modernity and reaching leisured audiences. Chapters 4 and 5 suggest that their unavowed aims can include conservative politics in US Christian theme parks, Hindutva ideology in Hindu theme parks and, in many countries, the promotion of patriotism in the cause of national unity. Behind their creation can also lie the influence of their promoters’ personal faith, and the hugely important crossover with temples and pilgrimage sites. Above all though, theme parks offer escape. In culture parks escape is to the exotic other: the exotic past or the exotic foreign, occasionally to the exotic future. Amusement parks offer escape into pure fantasy and fun. But religion appears in parks of all kinds, offering its own form of escape. Chapter 6 looks at the notion of theme parks as ‘sacred spaces’, an idea that elides with the more secular notion of ‘special places’ in the writings of a number of commentators on theme parks, and Chapter 7 examines how the ambiguity of ‘authenticity’ in both religion and heritage impacts on theme parks. Chapter 8 outlines a very few of the themes found in religion parks, and often in culture parks too. These include, along with innumerable ‘Special Beings’, the Holy Land, Heaven and Hell, and Noah and Solomon among Bible heroes. Much rarer are Islam (Iran, Lebanon and Dubai), and the multifaith theme (Russia and Thailand). Judaism is sadly now represented only through Christian parks. The designers of theme parks (‘imagineers’ Disney called them) have a vast range of techniques at their disposal. Some of these are quite new, but many date back centuries, sometimes millennia. Chapter 9 describes the long history

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that many of the techniques in use in theme parks today – from gardens to dioramas – have in carrying a religious message. Finally, we must acknowledge that the great majority of theme parks are there to make money and are firmly embedded in a late-capitalist world. Theme parks cost a lot to set up and a lot to run; where does the money come from? In Chapter 10 we examine the business side of the business as it effects religion, including the character of their founders. In Chapter 11, though, we recognize that theme parks exist only because they attract visitors. Yet we know sadly little about these visitors: Who they are? What they want? Or what they take away from our parks. The book’s conclusion must above all be a call for more research into visitors.

Acknowledgements Most of this book is based on work done in university libraries in London, and online. For all the former and much of the latter I owe an enormous debt to UCL’s Institute of Archaeology. I was however able to undertake some limited fieldwork in India, Singapore, Vietnam and the United States. In India I am extremely grateful to the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) who made my 2015 visit possible, and to Ajit and Ruchira Ghose and Anuradha Rao for generous hospitality. For their warm welcome and help I thank Nishith Acharya and Jagrut Patel at Akshardham Gujarat, Naveena Neerada Dasa at ISKCON Bangalore, and Bajinder Singh and Amarajit Singh at Virasat-e-Khalsa, Anandpur Sahib. For efficient organization of the trip I thank Neelam Rai Singh of Beckon Tours. In Singapore I am indebted to Waiying Sum and Charmaine Choo at the Singapore Tourism Board, and to Jeya Ayadurai, Cherylyn Tok and Eisen Teo of Journeys Pte at Haw Par Villa. Also to Yunci Cai, Karen Ai Chin, Clement Ong and Jonathan Rigg. At Ho Chi Minh City, I am very grateful to Truong Thi Thu Hang, and to Lê Thị Ngọc Phúc who generously stepped in to show me Suối Tiên Theme Park. My tour of Bible-based attractions in the United States I owe to the support of the excellent Palestine Exploration Fund, and its organization to Meon Valley Travel. Among the many people who made me feel welcome and offered all sorts of hospitality and help – often exceptionally generous – were James Bielo and Sara Williams, Ed Gyllenhaal and his colleagues at Glencairn Museum, Jennifer Kingsley of Johns Hopkins University, Kevin Day at Branson, the park staff at Eureka Springs, Tony Zeiss, David Trobisch, Mike Holmes, Seth Pollinger and Kalani Lestmann at Museum of the Bible, Jim Morrison at Paradise, and Patrick Donmeyer at Kutztown. Sadly, my planned visit to Holy Land Experience was aborted by Hurricane Irma, so I am especially grateful to Céline Molter for sharing her experiences there a few months earlier. For encouragement and much help of various kinds with this book (though too often I failed to take their advice) I owe enormous gratitude to Chris Baker, James Bielo, Marion Bowman, Yunci Cai, Truong Thi Thu Hang, Justin McDaniel, David Morgan, Céline Molter, Charles Orzech, Peter Paine, Sophie

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Paine and the publisher’s anonymous reviewers, as well as to others mentioned in the notes. I thank the interdisciplinary group on immersive spaces at the Johannes Gutenberg University at Mainz for their generous invitation and helpful discussion. At Bloomsbury Academic I thank Lucy Carroll, Lalle Pursglove, Amy Jordan and Sweda R. Finally, I thank my wife Ani for her neverfailing support, active help and extraordinary patience.

1

Introduction

Theme parks are a huge worldwide industry; the top ten parks alone attract over 400 million visitors a year, and Disney’s parks earn sixteen billion dollars. Today religion in theme parks mostly sits at the ‘cultural’ end of a spectrum that runs from purely amusement parks to cultural and educational parks. This introduction sets the scene by briefly outlining the story of theme parks, and religion’s relationship with popular culture and modernity.

Introduction To most people the term ‘theme park’ brings thoughts of waterslides, rollercoasters and happily screaming children; the idea of a religious theme park can prompt both hilarity and puzzlement. But the term ‘theme park’ in fact describes themed attractions that range from amusement parks bordering on funfairs at one end of the spectrum, to culture parks shading into open-air museums and science parks at the other end. I shall argue in this book that though religion appears in all sorts of different ways in all sorts of different parks, the reasons for its appearance, and many of their themes and roles, are shared by parks throughout the world. The background includes the growth of a more leisured middle class, the growth of religious practice as a response to feelings of insecurity, the movement of that practice beyond the walls of traditional places of worship and the use of religious theme parks to promote tourism, national unity and their founders’ faith. In this introductory chapter I shall take a preliminary and all-too-brief look at the world in which modern theme parks have grown up, and at the ways religion has grown up with them: the age-old association between religion, leisure and fun; the boom in leisure attractions brought about by prosperity (for some) and a global economy; the (admittedly disputed) explosion of religion in much of

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the world, and how theme parks offer (or in the case of Disney don’t offer) a new public an opportunity to do religion in a new way. There are probably dozens of religious theme parks in the world. Some are set up by particular religious groups to promote their faith. Some are attractions aimed to introduce a local or a distant culture, which include religion as an important part of that culture. Others double as temples. A very few are ‘multifaith’ – aimed at promoting public understanding of other people’s religion, and of religion as a phenomenon. Moreover, religion creeps into parks that are more purely ‘amusement parks’. Surprise at the idea of religion appearing in theme parks is a very Western response, coming from the association of religion, in the Western mind, with the heart and the head, and scarcely at all with the body and with things. In reality there can be no such thing as immaterial religion. A few years ago I published an examination of religion in museums, looking in particular at what happens to religious objects when they find themselves in a museum (Paine 2013), and more recently I helped to edit a collection of essays on the topic (Buggeln, Plate and Paine 2017). In this book I want to examine what happens to religion when it finds itself in a popular leisure context like a theme park, and what happens to the theme park. For any type of magic to be effective there needs to be three things: an efficient magician, a believing patient and a stage on which the drama between magician and patient can be performed. So suggested Claude Lévi-Strauss.1 In theme parks the magician is the theme park designer, the patient the visitor and the stage the theme park itself. Through their magic, theme parks offer escape. In the past they have offered escape into a never-was past, sometimes into a wish-it-could-be future, often into a world of fairy tales, often into a world of as-imagined foreign countries. As Universal Studios’ marketing department put it: ‘We all wonder what it would be like to fly, to have power, to journey to another world. We wish, hope, dream … then we come to realize wonder can be real after all.’ Religion too can offer wishes, hopes and dreams – escape from the present, painful, mundane world. It is scarcely surprising that religion can be found in alliance with theme parks.

Not defining ‘theme park’ and not defining ‘religion’ Theme parks are serious. Scott Lukas, an anthropologist and leading specialist in theme parks and themed spaces more widely, confirms this: Theme parks have wrongly been seen by many as superficial forms of culture – as places where people go to do things that don’t matter much in the grand

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scheme of things and thus which amount to inconsequential spaces. In fact theme parks represent extraordinary spatial and social forms, they offer some of the most basic needs, reflect deep and powerful emotions and cognitive modes, and present some of the most telling and controversial representations of the world. (Lukas 2008, 7)

The literature is full of attempts to define ‘theme park’, and even to distinguish between theme parks, ‘themed parks’ and other kinds of visitor attraction. In Japan what in the UK we might call open-air museums are very often tēma pāku – theme park – while at the other end of the spectrum an amusement park is merely a funfair with such elaborate rides that it cannot tour. One can perhaps identify six kinds of theme park into which religion is welcomed, or into which it can creep: ●

●

●

●

●

●

religion parks themselves are deliberately set up to fulfil a ‘religious’ role, to inspire and educate the faithful, and to spread the Word among others; mythology parks have as their theme ancient myths, told more or less accurately or imaginatively. Here religion and mythology merge and re-emerge constantly; history parks are a variety of cultural park, built on local (usually the nation’s) history, which everywhere must involve religion. History parks can be scholarly and educational, or purely exercises in nostalgia; foreign culture parks celebrate the culture of others, and offer their visitors escape into the exotic ‘abroad’. Almost always religion is one of the principal markers of those cultures; fantasy parks create an imaginary world for visitors to escape into; fantasy plays a very large role in Disney’s parks. Religion appears rather seldom, but it certainly does appear; amusement parks surprisingly often include something ‘religious’. Often these are places of worship, there perhaps to offer relief to excited visitors.

Later I shall boil these six down to three: religion parks, culture parks and amusement parks. But to define a ‘religious theme park’ or ‘religion park’ becomes even more difficult; when does a pilgrimage centre with a range of entertainments for pilgrims become a theme park? Dan Hayden, former Executive Director of Holy Land Experience (HLE), insisted that ‘we are not a theme park’, and that the park should rather be called a ‘themed ministry’, ‘biblical attraction’ or ‘living biblical attraction’ (Radosh 2010, 28).2 Sara Callahan (2010, 53), in the best account of a

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visit to a theme park that I’ve read, describes how one of the presenters at HLE began his spiel: ‘Okay, well, I’m going to tell you something you probably didn‘t know’, Mabry [a park lecturer] leans toward us as if to share a secret. ‘And that is’, dramatic pause, that in Orlando there are a lot of amusement parks’. We laugh at his feigned seriousness. Mabry holds up his hand, cuing us to wait a minute. There’s more. He raises his eyebrows, looking truly conspiratorial. ‘What is an amusement park?’ The crowd quiets. He gleams at us with skepticism. He knows he’s got us. Mabry, now fully embodying his professor character, begins his lesson. ‘If we have to look at the word “muse”, it’s actually a Greek word. The Greek word “muse” means to think, to reflect, to meditate, okay?’ … ‘So “muse” means to think.’ Mabry is on a roll now. Excitement saturates each word and quickens his pace. ‘Well, when you put the letter “a” before it, it negates the word, so that the word “amusement” means non-thinking, non-thinking, okay?’ The crowd collectively ‘Oh’s’. ‘Now, let me say this, The Holy Land Experience is not an amusement park, a non-thinking park. It’s a “musement” park where you are required to think, okay? So, I want you to think.’ Mabry pauses and points to us. ‘I want you to think.’ (Italics in original)

If the definition of ‘theme park’ is slippery and contentious, that’s nothing to the definition of ‘religion’. What should we include? ‘Religion’ is of course a Western invention to describe a range of human activities and understandings, and it becomes an increasingly contentious term when we apply it in other parts of the world. Efteling theme park in the Netherlands is themed on fairy tales and fantasy, in which the Fairy Tale Forest tells such stories as Rumpelstiltskin, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood. Few people would think of these as in any sense ‘religious’; they are simply enjoyable folk tales, largely aimed at children, some of which also teach moral lessons. Yet these are perhaps the European equivalent of the Chinese tales of ghosts, demons, gods and dragons which are also entertaining and also teach morality, and appear in parks often seen – by Western observers at least – as ‘religious’ (Barker 2011). So desperate have some students of religion become over the impossibility of defining their subject, that they are recommending that ‘scholars of religion and

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nonreligion should … all but abandon the terms “religion” and “nonreligion”, and with them the clichéd definitional handwringing that typically comes with attempts at defining these terms’ (Jong 2015; and see de Vries 2008).3 In this book I shall avoid the handwringing by the simple expedient of not attempting to define ‘religion’ at all; I shall use the term in the various ways that seem most useful at the time.4 What I can’t do, though, is ignore what religion is doing in the world, and above all how it is interacting with modernity. That interaction, I shall be arguing, is what lies behind the whole religion-in-theme-parks phenomenon. I am writing this in England where, as in most of Europe, ‘modernity’ is still widely assumed to be secular5 – perhaps that is why religion parks are so scarce here. In the rest of the world there is no such assumption; indeed, modernity is closely and in many complicated ways bound up with religion (Davie 2013). This book looks at just one of those ways.

Religion, popular culture and fun David Chidester (2005, 1) devotes his ‘Authentic Fakes’ to addressing the question ‘How does the serious work of religion, which engages the transcendent, the sacred, and the ultimate meaning of human life in the face of death, relate to the comparatively frivolous play of popular culture?’ The present book looks at just one small corner of this big question. In most cultures religion is close to leisure. Pilgrimage centres have always offered their visitors a range of attractions and entertainments, some clearly ‘religious’, other much less obviously so. The same is true of the local temple in many countries. In Protestant Christianity, too, the ‘camp meeting’ tradition has been strong from at least the middle of the nineteenth century, and the seaside preacher worked the same stretch of beach as the Punch-and-Judy man (Messenger 1999). This was always the way. A fifteenth-century sequel to The Canterbury Tales, ‘The Tale of Beryn’, describes the pilgrims arriving at Canterbury and having a jolly time: Every man in his wise made hertly chere, Talyng his felowe of sportes and of chere, And of other myrthes that fyllen by the wey, As custom is of pilgryms – and hath been many a day.

After visiting the shrine the pilgrims get changed so they can go out and enjoy the sights:

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Gods and Rollercoasters The Knyght arose therwithal and cast on a fressher gown, And his sone another, to walk in the town. And so did al the remnaunt that were of that aray That had hir chaunges with hem; they made hem fressh and gay, Sorted hem togider righte as hir lustes lay.

The Knight and the Squire inspect the city walls; the Monk, Parson, and Friar meet a friend for a drink; the Prioress and Wife of Bath go to drink wine in the gardens; the Pardoner spends his time attempting to seduce the barmaid and gets badly beaten for his trouble. The next day at dawn they all set off for home, singing merrily (albeit some rather hung-over) ‘ever synging to make al thing good’.6 One aspect of all this is the relationship of religion to ‘fun’. This has attracted some scholarly interest of late, while ‘playfulness’ is indeed sometimes seen as a characteristic of postmodernism. Most attention has been on computer gaming (Heidbrink and Knoll 2014)7 but there has also been discussion of dolls, board games and other old-fashioned toys, as well as the related area of sport. BadoFralick and Norris, in their splendidly titled Toying with God, see religious toys and games as examples of contemporary lived religion, and suggest that they reflect a response to the ‘deregulated market’ that is religion in the United States (2010, 103) as well as to a wider cultural preoccupation with ‘fun’. ‘Fun and play have become cultural imperatives; religious practices follow suit. … The study of religious toys is the study of embodied, lived religion’ (184–5). It’s just the same with theme parks. As Justin McDaniel (2017, 16) put it, speaking of attractions in Asia: ‘These are not places of didactic sermons, forced spirituality, or ethical directives. They are fun.’

Religion and modernism/postmodernism Over the past two generations or so, the enormous increase in the world’s middle class has coincided with the waning of the power of the word and the rise of the image and the simulacrum. ‘Images and the desire for multisensory experience have found their way from Western mass culture into the heart of Protestant worship’ (Ron 2010, 120). One result is a big increase in the theming of the Bible. In other religions parallel developments are leading to the same result: the temple is extending what it offers, cleaning itself up and ensuring its message suits a new congregation of better-educated and better-dressed people.

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Eric Mazur and Kate McCarthy (2011, 9) point out how in America the ‘public monopoly once enjoyed by a segment of Protestant Christianity is now a veritable smörgåsbord of religious groups, each relatively free to “advertise” to anyone willing to listen’. Much more than that, though, people can now choose elements of meaning-making from all sorts of parts of life that once were not seen as religious at all. Taking examples offered by contributors to their edited volume God in the Details, they point (12) to myth and symbol as a lens for looking at the commercial use of the Buddha image and the end-time visions of Hollywood films; to ritual in sport and in festivals; to spirituality and morality in television cop dramas and social media; to hip-hop culture and the Disney empire as new alternative churches. And what happens in America affects – though not always directly – the rest of the world. And much of the rest of the world is very ready to adopt the approach. Japanese religion, for example, ‘is less a matter of belief than it is of activity, ritual and custom,’ and ‘the promise of this-worldly benefits is an intrinsic element within Japanese religion in general’ (Reader and Tanabe 1998, quoted in Kolata 2015). It is very much a ‘religion of practice’ rather than of belief (Ezzy 2016). The same is true of Chinese religion, but it is perhaps very largely true of most of the world’s religions, if for once one abandons the credal perspective of the West and simply looks at how people actually behave. If that is right, then religious practice is a part of popular culture, and it is quite natural that it should nowadays be done in theme parks as well as in more traditional venues. That there is a difference between traditional practice in – say – Japan and – say – Western Europe, though, is shown by the different effects of secularization. In Japan, where (as we shall see in Chapter 6) despite 80 per cent of Japanese people claiming no religious belief, occasional attendance at temples is common; in England where the equivalent figure is around 50 per cent, even occasional attendance at church is vanishingly low. The two experiences are very different. One of the most helpful writers on religion in the modern world is the sociologist of religion Grace Davie. While welcoming the increasing attention her fellow-sociologists are paying to religion, she criticizes many for approaching religion ‘as a way of coping with the vicissitudes of late or postmodern life’, rather than as a way of being modern (Davie 2013, 103). The former approach is above all concerned with fundamentalism, which is one response of people who feel threatened by the expanding global economy and who see the social, political and ideological worlds they inhabit as under threat from alien and hard-to-understand forces. Their response is to reaffirm the essential truths of

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their faith, whether that faith is Protestant Christianity, Sunni Islam, Vaishnavite Hinduism or whatever it may be. But in reality this ‘reassertion’ of tradition beliefs and values, far from simply reinforcing the old faith, creates a new one. Fundamentalisms grow out of traditional culture – one that is being challenged or disturbed by economic and cultural change – but create a quite new culture, a modern one. Most people respond to technological and social change not by falling back unthinkingly on traditional beliefs and practices, but by negotiating their own understandings, adapting their practices and making their own accommodations between tradition and change (McGuire 2008). Whatever their accommodations, people everywhere are accepting the modern world of technology and education, and seek to combine these goods with a selection of the traditions from which they grew – some may indeed see modern technology as God-given. One-third of the world’s population now uses social media. Young people especially want to share the material benefits of the modern world, but we all also need to know that we – our heritage, language and culture – matter; we need to feel rooted. We have been here before. Milette Shamir, a lecturer in English literature at Tel Aviv University, points out that the American obsession with the Holy Land of the later nineteenth century8 ‘served as a tool for “cultural transition” – a resource for negotiating, assimilating, and ultimately legitimizing modernity in the United States’ (2012, 94). She uses the full-size replica of the Old City of Jerusalem, displayed at the St Louis World’s Fair in 1904, as a way of examining the convergence of religion and modernity in America after the Civil War, arguing that ‘the appearance of this gigantic “holy” site in the middle of an event meant to celebrate secular modernity evinces the inherent (though complex) role that religious symbolism and religious sentimentality played within the structuring narratives of modernization’. In the prime spot in the centre of the fair, ‘Jerusalem’ lay between the park area devoted to progressive, white, civilization and the area representing the unconquered, barbarous, other. It lay too on the border between the more serious and more playful parts of the park. ‘Jerusalem’, Shamir argues, anchored both morally and spiritually the twin messages of the first wave of World’s Fairs: the triumph of the modern capitalist state, and the rightness of imperial glory. ‘Jerusalem’ was described by the organisers as the ‘heart’ of the fair. I would argue that this was doing just what Disney’s Main Street was doing in the 1950s: reassuring a populace excited but also alarmed at the speed of progress that traditional values were still there, still providing the bedrock of society.

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In 1904 it was mid-Westerners who needed reassurance that their booming economy would not leave them rootless and adrift; today it is perhaps particularly Asians. If this is not the only way in which religion relates to modernity, it is an important one, and key to the ‘religion in theme parks’ phenomenon.

A booming industry The figures are extraordinary. In 2016 the top ten theme park groups drew 438 million visitors, a 4.3per cent increase on the previous year. Disney remains the overwhelming leader in global theme park attendance, drawing 140 million visitors in 2016, to Universal’s 40 million (Rubin 2017). In terms of revenue, too, Disney Parks and Resorts remained by far the largest amusement and theme park company, with revenues exceeding sixteen billion dollars in 2015. Disney generated almost four times that of its closest competitor, OCT Parks China, with Universal Studios third. The fourth largest company was Merlin Entertainments Group with over 60 million visitors to its attractions worldwide.9  Industry figures show more than four hundred amusement parks and attractions in the United States and some three hundred in Europe. In the United States the industry directly employs more than 1.3 million people and indirectly generates another million jobs. Walt Disney World Resort in Florida is twice the size of Manhattan and employs 30,000 people. Twenty-five per cent of Americans surveyed visited an amusement park within the last twelve months, with 43 per cent of Americans indicating they plan to visit an amusement park within the next twelve months.10 Asia is coming up fast. Tokyo Disneyland, Universal Studios Japan and Tokyo Disney Sea were the most-visited theme parks in Asia in 2015. In mainland China, attendance figures were highest at Chimelong Ocean Kingdom and Hangzhou Songcheng Park; they saw 36 per cent and 25.5 per cent on-year growth in visitor numbers respectively. Theme park sales in China are predicted to reach twelve billion dollars by 2020, an increase of 367 per cent on 2010, and exceeding both the United States and Japan; more than 330 million Chinese people will visit a theme park in 2020.11 We shall see that the enormous explosion of theme parks is the result of the world’s booming middle class. China’s urban population has quadrupled in the past thirty-five years and is expected to top a billion people by 2050. Not all these people will have a healthy disposable income of course but enough will, the US-based consultancy Aecom believes, for China to surpass the United States as

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the biggest theme park market in the world by 2020, drawing 221 million people by that time.12 It is the result, too, of a change in the way capitalism works; no longer are consumers expected only to stay at home and buy things, nowadays they go to places and buy experiences. As architect Miodrag Mitrašinović (2006, 35) put it: ‘Instead of the circulation of commodities to locations of consumption (places where people lived), post-industrial capitalism has since 1960s involved the circulation of people to specific locations that are consumed as commodities.’

Religion parks We have, though, been buying religious experiences for a long time. As we shall see in Chapter 9, World’s Fairs were an important predecessor of theme parks (see Adams 1991) not least in their presentation of religion. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904, also known as the St Louis World’s Fair, had a Creation exhibit portraying the first six days in the Book of Genesis. Of the three kinds of theme park in which religion appears, the first is the religion parks themselves, of which there may perhaps be one or two dozen in the world as a whole. By ‘religion park’ I understand a theme park promoted specifically to address religion, sometimes to promote a particular faith, sometimes to offer a space in which to practice religion. Chapter 2 describes seven such parks: three Christian, two Hindu, one Buddhist and one Buddhist/ Daoist. There is nothing dramatically new about such parks; pilgrimage centres of all faiths have long added (officially or unofficially) ‘extras’ for visitors, and the distinction between temple and theme park is often hard to draw. Theme parks echo many of the practices of pilgrimage centres throughout the ages. In the late fourth century Cyril, bishop of Jerusalem, developed an elaborate programme of ritual activities for pilgrims, which took them from holy site to holy site throughout the city and its environs, so that ‘the increasing number of holy places was incorporated into a unique set of mobile liturgical celebrations and processions became a distinct feature of the urban landscape’ (Drijvers 2004, 177). The pilgrims’ every waking hour was filled with religious activities (Yarnold 2000). That might be compared with the programme of events today at HLE in Orlando. Most modern religion parks, though, do not expect visitors to follow slavishly the programme offered to them, but allow them to make their own decisions about what to do when. In that respect they are not only more like culture parks and amusement parks but are indeed more akin to Eastern pilgrimage centres.

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Even Protestant Christian theme parks have a long history. Though the term was then unknown, an early site with many of the characteristics of a religion park was founded in 1873 by John Heyl Vincent, a Methodist pastor, and Lewis Miller, a wealthy inventor and industrialist. Both enthusiasts for the Sunday School movement, they wanted to promote decorous and disciplined Biblecentred out-of-doors Christian education, distinct from the often-raucous camp meetings then hugely popular in post-Civil War America (Herlbut 1921, 11). Others were already doing similar things; Ocean Grove, New Jersey, was founded a few years earlier as another Methodist centre, with a strong emphasis on bodily and spiritual health (Messenger 1999). Vincent and Miller chose an existing Methodist camp meeting site on Chautauqua Lake in western New York state and developed there a facility for training courses, principally for Sunday School teachers. This was the start of a hugely successful self-help movement, which eventually became a major provider of adult education across America that included a strong element of entertainment. The mother site on Chautauqua Lake still flourishes, but its theme park aspect is now sadly reduced. As Burke Long (2003, 7) puts it: ‘Today, the 750-acre enclave strikes the visitor as a meticulously curated college campus, summer resort, religious encampment, arts colony, American village square – and none of these wholly.’ In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries though, there was a range of educational attractions aimed at the Christian visitor. They included Palestine Park, a model of Jerusalem, the Oriental House, the Biblical Museum, costumed ‘Orientals’, a six-metre-high model of the Pyramid of Giza, and a model of Moses’ tabernacle. ‘Palestine Park’ was a large lakeside area landscaped to represent the geography of the Holy Land. It functioned as a walk-through model, a focus for Sunday School lessons, and for ‘Oriental’ performances and ritual pilgrimages (Long 2003, 28). (Not that all visitors were equally impressed; Rudyard Kipling saw ‘artificial hillocks surrounding a mud puddle and a wormy streak of slime connecting to another mud puddle’, rather than the landscape of Palestine.) The Oriental House was an 186-square-metre two-storey replica of a Middle Eastern courtyard house. It was long presided over by August Van Lennep, a Turkish-born seller of Holy Land stereographs, who always wore ‘oriental’ costume and gave peripatetic lectures on Palestine Park. He also gave the Call to Prayer from the house roof every morning and afternoon (Long 2003, 25). Visitors to the park, indeed, would often come across what Burke Long, perhaps unkindly, calls ‘Orientalising crossdressers’ (27). The most famous of these ‘Palestinians’ wandering the grounds and putting on Bible-story and other performances was Lydia Mamreoff von

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Finkelstein Mountford, a Russian/Austrian/British woman born in Jerusalem and married to an Anglo-Indian. She offered lectures and performances at a variety of Christian attractions and gatherings (Long 2003, 22; Callahan 2010, 71). Religion parks come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Besides those described in Chapter 2, I shall be looking at a variety of them in this book, large and small, from all sorts of faith traditions and from many parts of the world. Most are promoted by people anxious to present their faith, though sometimes the motive seems largely financial (Chapter 4), and occasionally people can use the term ‘theme park’ for a group of attractions with religious overtones; the Macau cultural heritage scholar Cora Un In Wong (2017) has shown how one tourism site in Hong Kong – comprising a big Buddha statue in a monastery’s grounds, a cable car, some tourist shops and a Buddhist museum – is regarded by public and tourism authorities alike as a ‘Buddhist theme park’. She sees it as an ‘accidental theme-park’, since all are run separately by different operators, and the main theme is really the Tourist Board’s eagerness ‘to add some oriental mystique to what was otherwise essentially a Western city in Asia’ (Wong 2017). A theme park is above all immersive – that is the point of the theming. But attempts to immerse people in the work one is presenting – in a theme – is very ancient; it is what a great deal of religious ritual has always tried to do, and the approach has long been adopted by artists and writers. This was essentially St Ignatius Loyola’s technique of imaginative prayer and meditation, in which in imagination one enters a Gospel scene to experience the narrative from within (Jessen 2012, 43). As Scott Lukas puts it: ‘Total immersion occurs when a guest has completely left the outside world behind, has suspended disbelief and entered the new world.’ In Chapter 2 we shall visit the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, opened by the Creationist organization Answers in Genesis (AiG) in 2016. The Ark Encounter calls itself a theme park, while its twin sister, opened nine years earlier and an hour’s drive away, is the Creation Museum. Both, though, make great use of the immersive experience – which is unsurprising when one recalls that AiG’s leading designer was the Art Director of Universal’s 1990s Jaws and King Kong attractions. Scott Lukas was so impressed he concluded that this ‘is one of the most evocative examples of a themed/immersive space that I’ve ever visited’. He praised in particular the way the Creation Museum uses ‘symbolic attractions’ in preference to a lecturing approach, and gives the example of the ‘Culture in Crisis’ section, where the visitor enters a dark and squalid corridor like a city street: ‘One

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Figure 1 Adam and Eve at the Creation Museum, Kentucky, USA. (Photo: Crispin Paine.)

window flashes a neon XXX sign, two walls are covered in magazine covers that speak of sin, terrorism, violence, evolution and other topics, while a pole is covered in images of missing children’ (Lukas 2016b, 88). Theme parks are a product of a middle class with time and money to spare, and often with a nostalgia for an imagined simpler traditional society. Religion parks share this context, just as they share the immersive approach pioneered by Disney three generations ago.

Disney and his followers Theme parks will forever be associated with Disney, so we will divert for a moment to look at Disney and religion. Walt Disney may not deserve all the credit he receives for inventing them, but there can be few theme parks that owe no debt to Disney. Many, including parks in which religion plays a powerful role, were directly inspired by Disney parks. Indonesia’s Taman Mini was set up in 1970 after its founder’s visit to Disneyland; the founder of Akshardham Gujarat sent six swamis on a world tour in 1986; they visited Disneyland and Universal

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Studios (Srivastava 2009, 373); Madhu Pandit Dasa, Chairman of ISKCON Bangalore, visited Disneyworld in 1990.13 But if religion parks are so indebted to Disney, why is it that Disney’s is a kingdom of magic, rather than of religion? His daughter Diane Disney Miller told one minister that ‘there are no churches on Main Street because her father did not want to favour any particular denomination’ (Pinsky 2004, 2). If so, it was a hugely successful strategy, for not only did it enable him to sell his products in many different cultures worldwide, but it also ensured that they were in sympathy with an increasingly syncretic American public. And while Disney’s magic kingdom had no close association with the kingdom of heaven, it was still based securely on what Americans tend to call ‘Judeo-Christian values’. It remains remarkable that Disney’s romantic nostalgia for a lost small-town innocent America is not associated in any way with religion. The nearest any of Disney’s parks get to religion in any overt sense (‘implicit religion’ is another matter) is in such remote examples as Disneyland’s Enchanted Tiki Room, where visitors are invited to sing along with animatronic parrots. This, though, references Californian Tiki pop culture of the 1950s rather than anything genuinely Polynesian.14 Another example of Disney (the company, not the man) making use today of a ‘religious’ trope in theming an amusement is the Tower of Terror ride at DisneySea, Tokyo. Here the story is of a Central African tribal guardian figure – essentially an nkisi – stolen by a New York adventurer in the early twentieth century. Shiriki Utundu, the guardian figure, revenges himself not only on his abductor, but on modern visitors to the abductor’s home. It remains true that Disney’s parks, even today, admit very little ‘capital R’ religion. We shall, though, see later on (Chapter 5) that the distinction between magic, fantasy and religion is a very fluid one, and that to see much of Disney’s creation as a kind of religion can be helpful. It has, too, been argued (Arnal and McCutcheon 2012) that Disney’s separation of an ideal world from the real world is doing the same thing ideologically that religion does. Moreover, Disney’s influence on religion parks has been overwhelming. Jim Bakker, with his wife Tammy Faye, the creators of Heritage USA, which many people regard as the first modern religion park, was a huge fan of Disney’s parks, and was greatly influenced by them. He visited Walt Disney World regularly. His biographer (and nemesis, the Charlotte Observer reporter who exposed him) gives the examples of Disney’s Fort Wilderness campground, the Main Street shopping mall in the

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Magic Kingdom, and even Disney’s green wrought-iron fencing, all imitated at Heritage USA (Shepard 1989, 235). Tammy Faye Bakker remarked: I love Disneyland, and if I could, I’d have the whole world look like Disneyland. … I just couldn’t believe there was any place as wonderful as Disneyland: wonderful houses, architecture, and bright colours. It’s such a happy, sunshiny place. (Quoted in O’Guinn and Belk 1989, 232)

Culture and amusement parks If religion only made an appearance in parks deliberately intended to be ‘religious’, this whole subject would be of much less interest and significance. Religion, though, appears in all sorts of theme parks, in all sorts of guises. One type of park in which religion frequently plays a big role is the park themed on local culture – what we shall see has been called the ‘Self-staging’ culture park. As we shall see in Chapter 4, whether they are set up to promote tourism, to encourage nation-building and empathy between local ethnic groups or simply to make a profit, they very often recruit religion to the cause. Religion appears, too, in culture parks that ‘stage the other’, that is, invite visitors to experience foreign countries and foreign culture, often the more exotic the better. If only by including a temple or a church or two, religion helps to flesh out foreign cultures – and it’s often much more than that. In amusement parks, too, religion and amusement are often in alliance. In Asia amusement is added to temples and pilgrimage centres to entertain and attract devotees. In the United States, by contrast, churches and chapels are sometimes included in amusement parks, seemingly to offer visitors a moment of quiet reflection amid all the excitement. Very often, though, what appears to be a religious presence in amusement parks is in reality no more than a superficial attempt to give an exotic flavour to rides and attractions. Theme parks generally now are ‘heritage’. In Margate, a struggling seaside resort in southern England, the Dreamland theme park, which lasted from 1875 to 2005, was reopened in 2015; its famous (at least among theme park aficionados and local residents) 1920 wooden Scenic Railway has been restored, and the plan is to acquire more and more historic theme park rides. Abandoned theme parks not only have a cult following on the web but are also attracting the attention of academic archaeologists (Harrison and Schofield 2010). Perhaps the greatest tribute theme parks could receive,

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though, is to be mocked by the artist Banksy. His Dismaland Bemusement Park in the rather seedy resort of Weston-super-Mare in western England, was open for one month in 2015, and attracted 150,000 visitors – bringing, it was said, twenty million pounds to the local economy, and blanket publicity. Among the exhibits were a dilapidated fairy castle, a Cinderella dead in a coach-crash and a pond of migrant-filled boats. Banksy commented ‘I guess you’d say it’s a theme-park whose big theme is “theme parks should have bigger themes”.’15

Conclusion Whatever else it may be, religion is unarguably a big theme. We have tried to set the scene in this Introduction by looking at what we mean by ‘theme park’ and ‘religion’ (though we failed to answer the questions), at the relationship between religion, popular culture and fun, at the extraordinary scale of the modern attractions industry, at the family history of religion parks (with a genuflexion to Disney) and at how religion gets into the other kinds of theme park: culture parks and amusement parks. We shall revisit many of these themes in later chapters. We shall, too, examine the underlying assumption of this book: that there are sufficient similarities and parallels between religion parks deriving from the different faith traditions to warrant this book’s subtitle Religion in Theme Parks Worldwide. We shall see that in the East it is often entertainment that is added to traditional religious places, while in the West religion gets added to entertainment venues; each results in similarly distinctive parks. Moreover, they share an audience: middleclass families looking to do religion in a new way, against a background of globalization bringing money and leisure time, but also bringing insecurity. Perhaps these points will be illustrated more clearly in the next chapter, which describes five of the world’s most prominent religious theme parks, in America and India; they have attracted the most academic as well as the most popular attention. To these are added one in Singapore which had a rather different purpose, but has earned much public affection, and one in Vietnam that is often called religious.

2

Seven Religion Parks

By way of introduction, seven religion parks are described: Holy Land Experience in Orlando (Evangelical Christian), the two Akshardhams in New Delhi and Gandhinagar (Hindu), Haw Par Villa in Singapore (Daoist/ Buddhist), Suối Tiên in Saigon (Buddhist), and the two Creationist parks in Kentucky: the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter.

Holy Land Experience There are sixteen major theme parks in and around Orlando, Florida, but in only one could you until recently see the Crucifixion re-enacted every day at three o’clock.1 Holy Land Experience, founded in 2001, advertises itself as ‘a living, biblical museum and park that brings the world of the Bible to life!’ It attracts some quarter of a million people a year. From the carpark the visitor passes through a gate (loosely based on Suleiman the Magnificent’s gates to Jerusalem) and its attendant electronic ticket and security check, into the ‘Jerusalem Street Market’. This is a mixture of modern tourist shopping and historic recreation. Costumed pedestrians, shopkeepers and Roman soldiers mingle with visitors. Shopping includes the expected postcards and souvenirs, but also Arab dresses (made in Israel), Jewish religious items (made in China), books on Holy Land travel and biblical archaeology, and recorded lectures presenting the millenarian theology that underpins the site. The park’s focus is currently shifting from attractions to performances. The attractions were always a seemingly rather random assortment of Holy Places, some based on actual places in Israel/Palestine (like the Temple or the

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Centurion’s Tower), others on imaginary places where incidents mentioned in the Bible could have taken place (like the whipping post where Jesus was flogged, or the Garden of Eden), others again sat somewhere between the two (like the replica of the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem, which some Protestants favour over the Holy Sepulchre as the tomb of Jesus). Holy Places in the park have included one of the Qumran Caves, the Road to Emmaus, a 1:10 scale recreation of Noah’s Ark, the birthplace of Jesus and a replica of the remains of a first-century boat similar to that on which Jesus might have sailed. However, the designers’ description of the project makes clear that the scenes depicted were not random, but carefully selected to ‘represent key biblical ideas identified by the client’ (Stevenson 2015, 51). In addition to these Holy Places the park includes other attractions, not least the 2,000-seat ‘Church of All Nations’, which is really a multimedia performance theatre, ‘the world’s largest indoor model of Jerusalem’ and a model of Bethlehem, an adult-education centre, the Church of All Nations Bistro and the Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh Shop.2 At the little replica of the Wailing Wall you are encouraged to write your prayer requests and to insert them into cracks in the stones (they will be sent to the ‘real’ Western Wall in Jerusalem), and there is a cross on which to pin your prayers. The children’s area includes a climbing wall and a mini-golf course. Guests can putt a ball at Goliath’s head in the David versus Goliath hole. Other holes include Jonah and the Whale, where guests will enter into the belly of the whale to encounter a life-size animatronic Jonah, and a hole that will feature the walls of Jericho. The golf course ends with the Crucifixion of Jesus. The current re-focussing of the park has seen many of the attractions closed and sold off; the emphasis now is on offering visitors a tightly structured series of theatrical experiences. Along with the Jerusalem model, the principal attraction in HLE now is the Scriptorium, an exhibition of what is said to be the second largest private collection of historic bibles and manuscripts in the world. The collection was assembled by the investment banker Robert van Kampen, who was one of the richest men in the United States and a passionate Evangelical who wrote widely on fundamentalist Christian eschatology. It includes 1,000 cuneiform tablets, 5,000 papyrus fragments, key Coptic, Early Greek and Syriac manuscripts, a large collection of European medieval manuscripts, and over thirty Latin bibles printed before 1501. The foundation3 established by Van Kampen’s widow lent his 25,000-object collection to HLE in 2002. It is displayed in a very lively manner, with much use of laser lights, animatronic figures and sound effects. The tour takes almost an hour,

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through fourteen-themed rooms, each of which reconstructs a scene in the story of the Bible: the Library of Alexandria, a bindery in Constantinople, John Wycliffe’s study, William Tyndale’s workshop, John Bunyan’s prison cell, the Metropolitan Tabernacle in Victorian London and a prairie church in Puritan America. John Wycliffe, who first translated the Bible into English, is described thus: We meet the Wyclif robot in his candlelit study, where he is frantically putting the finishing touches on his translation of the New Testament. The animatronic reformer is in a hurry, he tells us, because translating the Bible into the vernacular is a crime punishable by death, and his persecutors are closing in. On cue, the wailing of an angry and quickly approaching mob are piped over the loudspeakers. Wyclif spends the few moments left of his freedom showing his visitors copies of his finished product and his source text—a Latin manuscript bible—which are encased in lit display cases that line the perimeter of the room. As the din of angry voices grows louder, the Wyclif robot grows increasingly agitated. In an act of desperation, the robot asks the visitor for a dangerous favour. Specifically, he wants the visitor to serve as a mule and smuggle the illegal book out of the country. “My dangerous task is nearing an end,” Wyclif says ominously, holding out a bible in an outstretched hand. The clamour of the angry mob in the background leaves no doubt as to what kind of end Wyclif predicts for himself. “Take heed these bibles so that the people of England may read the Bible in their own tongue”. The robot then gestures the visitor toward a secret passageway that conveniently opens up behind a corner fireplace. As the door closes behind the visitor, the voices of Wyclif ’s captors echo down the corridor. ‘You there! Halt! … What do you have? … He’s a lollard! Seize him!’ (Mathews 2015, 96)

However, if it relied only on static exhibits, for most visitors HLE would be merely yet another worthy but dull Bible-based attraction. What draws the substantial crowds is its daily programme of plays and re-enactments, and the interaction of costumed interpreters with visitors. Even while visitors are still in the Street Market, from time to time a man wanders into the area, blowing a shofar and announcing that the Wilderness Tabernacle performance is about to begin. This is a twenty-minute presentation in which the High Priest ‘takes you on a journey through Israel’s ancient priesthood, culminating with the glory of God revealed above the Ark of the Covenant’. During the course of the day a changing programme of live shows is offered. ‘The Fullness of Time Has Come’, for example, presented the angels preparing for the first Christmas, ‘The Four Women Who Loved Jesus’ ‘is each woman’s testimony, poured out like fine

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perfume at the feet of Jesus … an expression of that love as you’ve never before seen!’ while ‘Forgiven’ offers a selection of Bible stories: King David faces one of his defining moments as he turns from God’s will to the arms of Bathsheba. Experience the powerful story of Hosea, the prophet chosen by God to pour out love on an unloving woman. Finally, hear the Apostle Paul tell his own story as he shares the secret of his ‘thorn in the flesh’. Presented with all the passion, excitement, and energy you have come to expect from The Holy Land Experience, ‘Forgiven’ is sure to move you as you come face to face with God’s mercy and grace.4

The big attraction, though, used to be the dramatization of the Passion and Resurrection of Christ, which took place every evening on the park’s central plaza, in front of the 5:8 scale facade of Herod’s Temple, and on Golgotha, an artificial hill (‘built of stones from Israel’) behind. In an engaging account of the park, Sara Callahan describes the dramatization of the Crucifixion as it was in 2008: I wait in my carefully selected position, toes touching the red lines. … I can feel the electricity of the crowd, so many bodies jockeying for space, shifting and adjusting. The afternoon sun beats down, encouraging droplets of sweat to collect on my brow. The heat is intensified by the hundreds of bodies pressing so close together. We are an expectant, discomfited mob. … We knew he would come, carrying the cross along this clandestine path. We can’t get close enough. I see the guards, Roman Centurions in armor and red capes bearing swords and yelling at us to ‘make way!’ And then he is there, his tattered white robe dusting the cement beneath his feet. The wooden cross is heavy; his shoulders hunch under the weight. I see the crown of thorns. I see the blood that spills from wounds inflicted by the flagellation. … He stumbles close and falls before me. … Jesus lay on the path, his fake blood seeping into the cement, and I watch as the Roman guard, whose face and arms are stained with that same blood, wrenches the crown of thorns from Jesus’ head, tugging and pulling hair. The crown twists, and I am aware that physical discomfort and pain must be commonplace to the actors who play Jesus. His falls are real; the pushing is real; the yanking is actually happening. (Callahan 2010)

The drama takes place not in a theatre, but in the central spaces of the park. Sara Callahan focuses on the reaction of visitors – on her own, her husband’s, her mentor’s and that of ‘the mob’, the ‘silent witnesses’, who are also active participants in this hybrid of theatre and ritual.

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The HLE wants visitors to leave the park and change their lives – to live a more Christian life like Jesus, or to redouble their attempts to witness to others. Thus, the issue at hand is not the crucifixion of Jesus, which is inevitable, but the need for witnessing in contemporary society. (Callahan 2010)

Though the ‘The Passion of the Christ’ was in the park’s great days the bestknown live show, the most extraordinary (and perhaps the most shocking to Christians of a ‘higher’ church tradition) was ‘Holy Communion with Jesus’ – now replaced by a mere diorama (Molter 2017). Eight times a day visitors were invited in to sit at a Last Supper-style table, with a little piece of matzo and a tiny communion cup made of Israeli olive wood, and take communion under the instruction of an actor playing Jesus. Jill Stevenson approaches her analysis of this performance from the point of view of a scholar of theatre and of acting. She stresses the engagement of the actors – especially Jesus – with the audience, and the extraordinary effectiveness of the audience’s response. But ‘this complete engagement is not aimed at presenting a representation of the Last Supper event but is instead intended to foster a re-representational re-experience of the Last Supper through which spectators can receive the Holy Spirit and, thus, gain direct access to God’. As she describes the event: Soon, Jesus [the actor] was lifting the bread and wine, speaking the biblical words of institution, and the audience was suddenly, seamlessly in the past with Jesus and John at the original event. Visitors ate and drank in a physical present with Jesus as had the original disciples in the biblical past. Yet, most audience members already knew the words that Jesus first spoke in that biblical past, and many now recited them aloud with the actor. In these moments, firm distinctions of between past, present, and future disappeared. (2015, 63, 61)

This seems remarkably close to anamnesis, the Greek term used for what, in traditional Early Christian and Catholic understanding, the Eucharist is doing – the ‘act by which the person or event commemorated is actually made present, is brought into the realm of the here and now’ (Grisbrooke 1986, 18). An increasing emphasis of the park is on interaction between actors and visitors. Céline Molter reports (pers.com) that during her March 2017 visit the Jesus actor performed healing rituals on visitors and prayed with them, and she was repeatedly asked about her feelings about the shows and exhibits. This approach clearly works, for very many visitors do seem to interact with the exhibits on the park’s own terms; that is, they respond through prayer and empathy. The strength of the emotions the park prompts in very many visitors is obvious; Scott Lukas (2008, 151) points out how effectively the park contrasts

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the recreation of ancient Palestine with a modern computer-filled room where a voice (of God?) asks visitors to reflect on their own faith and practice. ‘The effect often leads guests to tears.’ HLE was founded by Marvin J. Rosenthal, a conservative Philadelphia Russian Jew who converted as a teenager to Christianity, and who has seen it as his calling to persuade Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah, and to help Christians to engage with Judaism as the basis of their own faith. He was ordained a Baptist minister in 1965. The very particular religious and political beliefs and agendas that inspired him, and which still resonate in the park today, are discussed in Chapter 4. Unlike some of the more homespun ‘Holy Land’ attractions to be found in the United States, as Timothy Beal (2005, 52) puts it, HLE is quite consciously imitative of Disney, not only in its emphasis on quality and scale but also in such details as the temple filling the central-feature role of Disney’s Cinderella’s Castle. Annabel Wharton of Duke University (2006, 196) points out that Marvin Rosenthal consciously appropriated Disney’s entertainment technologies, and quotes him as saying: We recognize that the media changes – from scrolls, to the Gutenberg press and printing, to television. We have a message from the Bible that is fixed. The truth doesn’t change. But we recognise that the medium changes. We are attempting to realise the medium that most effectively conveys the truth now.

Given the park’s efforts to conflate Christianity and Judaism, it is scarcely surprising that it has been attacked from both sides – especially in its early days. The park’s opening was marked by demonstrations and heavy criticism from Jewish groups of its seeming attempt to convert Jews. In its early years, though, the Jewish leaders were notably absent from the Passion scenes, an absence that was charged with being ‘a deliberate attempt to edit them out of the crucifixion story’ (Lukens-Bull and Fafard 2007, 10).5 That changed dramatically after the park’s 2005 change of ownership (see Chapter 4): Caiaphas the High Priest was given a major role, even kneeling down to taunt Jesus after his flogging by the Roman soldiers. Perhaps the most extraordinary and disturbing change, though, was the inclusion in the play of the ‘blood libel curse’; here put into the mouth of Caiaphas, this is the notorious verse from Mt. 27:25, used to justify anti-Semitism over the centuries: ‘His blood be upon us and upon our children’ (Stevenson 2015, 91).6 The total absence of Islam remains unchanged – but then the park could perhaps fairly argue that its remit is the Holy Land of the Bible, and that its ambition to bring to life 1,500 years there (from Moses to Jesus) is already quite enough.

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The Akshardhams On the flood-plain of the river Yamuna, opposite India’s capital New Delhi, and next to the blocks of flats built for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, are forty hectares owned by the BAPS branch of the Swaminarayan sect of Hinduism. The site comprises an enormous temple to Swaminarayan, surrounded by a great variety of exhibitions, attractions and facilities for visitors, all set in very beautiful and spotlessly maintained gardens. Opened in 2005, the site attracts over five million visitors a year. Akshardham translates as ‘the eternal abode of god’, and the complex is dominated by the temple in which is enthroned the 3.4-metre golden murti of Bhagwan Swaminarayan. Swaminarayan (1781–1830) was a Vaishnavite Hindu ascetic and reformer regarded as an incarnation of God, whose successors built a sect that today claims twenty million followers. His temple is a huge building of white marble and pink sandstone, covered with elaborate carvings of the highest quality. It includes over 20,000 sculpted figures, 234 ornately carved pillars, 9 ornate domes, and stands on a plinth carved with 148 half-life-size elephants. Around the temple itself stretch large lawns, and beyond those is an enclosing two-storey cloister or pradakshina for circumambulation, 1.5 kilometres around. Beyond that again lie the park’s other attractions, chief of which are the

Figure 2 Akshardham Gujarat, looking from the temple, Gandhinagar, India. (Photo: Crispin Paine.)

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exhibitions. While admission to the temple and parks is free, the exhibitions charge Rs 170 (perhaps a day’s wage for a worker in a textile factory, or one hour’s wage for a worker in a call-centre) and the water show Rs 80. The first exhibition, the Hall of Values, offers a series of scenes to present such values as vegetarianism, family harmony, humility, compassion, service to others, spiritual consciousness and so on, each illustrated through a scene from the life and teaching of Swaminarayan. Techniques are slick, varied and very effective: principally elaborate dioramas incorporating sound and lighting effects and animatronics. The scenes are cleverly planned to involve the visitors in a variety of modes: looking down from above, walking though, sitting alongside and so on. Visitors, for example, watch from above as Swaminarayan comes on his spiritual pilgrimage through India to the village of Loj, where he serves sadhus and pilgrims with food and water and teaches yoga. The exhibition concludes with displays showing the need for these same values today, and how BAPS tries to put them into practice through its social programmes. Sanskruti Vihar, the Cultural Boat Ride, takes visitors on a boat ride through a succession of engaging dioramas purporting to show the idyllic life of Vedic India, where all was harmony and happiness, and where, it seems, most scientific and technological discoveries (including space travel, democracy, embryology, plastic surgery and gravity) were made millennia before they were made in China or the West. The ride concludes with a paean to the future of humankind and of India – subtly elided with Swaminarayan Hinduism. ‘When Indian culture has a past so beautiful, Why can’t we create a future, more beautiful? Together, we can!’ (Swaminarayan Aksharpith 2007, 47). The third ‘exhibition’ hall is a big large-format cinema that shows ‘Mystic India’, the story of Swaminarayan’s spiritual journeying through late-eighteenthcentury India, from the icy Himalayas to the beaches of Kerala (see Chapter 9). The park attempts to enlist Indian nationalism through sculpture gardens of ‘India’s brave warriors and freedom fighters’, ‘child heroes of India’, ‘national figures’ and ‘great women’. It is noticeable that not one Muslim or Christian name appears in these lists – and few if any, I’m told, are lower caste. Kavita Singh, professor of Art History at Jawaharlal Nehru University (2010, 53), points out that the park inserts Gujarati kings into the line of ‘nationally important’ rulers; its ‘great women’ and ‘great children’ are models of selfless obedience; and its modern ‘freedom fighters’ include pre-modern rulers who resisted Muslim conquerors as well as revolutionaries who chose armed struggle against the British rather than Gandhi’s path of non-violence.

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Among other features of the park are a large Food Hall, a large shop, a mandap where visitors can perform abhishek – bathing – of an idol of the young Swaminarayan, and spiritual gardens. Akshardham New Delhi was not, however, BAPS’ first such park. Thirteen years earlier, in 1992, Akshardham Gujarat opened in Gandhinagar, the capital of the state of Gujarat, the Swaminarayan heartland.7 Though on a less ambitious scale than its later sister, Akshardham Gujarat follows the same formula: a big temple, surrounded by elegant lawns, and a variety of visitor attractions. There is a similar walk-through series of partly animatronic dioramas depicting the life of Swaminarayan: the earth rejoices at his descent from the heavens; in the Himalayas he meditates motionless on one leg for two months and ten days; in the Bengal jungle he meets a python; he is welcomed to the ashram; he preaches against animal sacrifice, female infanticide and superstition; he appoints five hundred disciples. Another walk-through series – taking the place of Delhi’s boat ride – recruits to the cause the classics of Indian scriptures: the Upanishads, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. Exhibition Hall 3 includes a Hall of Harmony celebrating the nine principal religions of the world (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam): ‘Truth is one, paths are many.’ There is also a Hall of Poets celebrating nine great composers of devotional songs, each a one-third size statue. Perhaps the most notable difference between the two parks is that the basement of the temple at Akshardham Gujarat houses a museum of objects associated with Swaminarayan himself. A panel reads: Here, the objects have been scientifically treated and authentically displayed to provide future generations with a historical and spiritual testimony to the Lord. These holy relics are priceless because of the immense spiritual power they carry within them lies the presence of Lord Swaminarayan that blesses one and all with good fortune and inner peace [sic].8

The 1992 installations were very advanced for their date and have been excellently maintained since. Even in 1992, though, the Akshardham approach had a considerable history. Swaminarayan Hinduism is noted for its mega-festivals that attract hundreds of thousands of devotees and the curious, and these have played a big role in the growth of the sect. Already in 1965 celebrations of the centenary of Shastri Maharaj, the founder of BAPS, were held in Baroda and included exhibitions and dioramas. One of the biggest of all was the 1981 celebration of the bicentenary of Swaminarayan’s birth at Ahmedabad; as Williams (2001, 178) describes it: ‘The Swaminarayan Nagars, or parks, were like American state

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fairs with tent cities, amusement rides, food and display stalls, exhibitions and entertainment. Nevertheless, the festival was primarily religious, and the basic purpose was to transmit the message of the religion.’ One exhibition was seen by 1.5 million people, paying one rupee each. The Akshardhams were thus based on very considerable experience and were even more sophisticated and permanent versions of these mega-festivals.9

Haw Par Villa (Tiger Balm Gardens), Singapore Haw Par Villa, also known as Tiger Balm Gardens, is a park in Singapore, famous for its extensive use of hundreds of painted cement figures and scenes drawn from Chinese traditions, mythologies, legends and folklore. Founded in 1937 by the Aw family, proprietors of the enormously successful Tiger Balm pain-relief ointment, many of the park’s original features survive, despite its vicissitudes over the years. ‘Firstly, we would like to clarify that Haw Par Villa is not a religious theme-park, but rather one of Chinese mythology’, says Waiying Sum of the Singapore Tourism Board. ‘The Sculpture Gardens within the park were commissioned by the Aw brothers to impart traditional Chinese values and to share Chinese traditions, mythologies, legends and folklore.’10 But these comprise such an important part of what is usually meant by ‘religion’ that it is perhaps fair to call this too a ‘religion park’. As remarkable as the park today is the story of its creation nearly eighty years ago. Aw Boon Haw (Gentle Tiger) and his brother Aw Boon Par (Gentle Leopard) were born in Rangoon, Burma (Yangon, Myanmar), the sons of a Hakka migrant from Fujian province, a traditional Chinese herbalist. After their father’s death in 1908, the brothers built up a regional pharmaceutical empire based on the astonishingly successful panacea they invented: ‘Tiger Balm’ ointment. In the mid-1920s Aw Boon Haw moved his base to Singapore (not least because the brothers had been accused of opium-trafficking and counterfeiting) and grew the empire to include newspapers (which duly promoted his products) and banking, with bases also in Hong Kong and China, where he belonged to the Green Gang secret society. Aw Boon Haw was thus the classic Chinese ragsto-riches entrepreneur, and he had the flamboyant personality to match. Never losing an opportunity to promote his business or himself, he drove a 1933 Humber customized as a tiger, with a tiger’s roar for a horn, and engaged in high-profile philanthropy, supporting hospitals, schools and sports facilities. His home in the European quarter of Singapore was modelled on Washington’s

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White House, with a tiger and a leopard dominating the portico, and it housed his priceless collection of jade (King 1992). Haw Par Villa translates as ‘Villa of the Tiger and Leopard’. It began as the gardens surrounding the palace Aw built for his Hong Kong-based and less assertive brother Par, on a geomantically auspicious site overlooking the sea on the west coast of Singapore; it thus itself reflected the Confucian ideal of brotherly ties. After the war, when the house was severely damaged and his brother had died, Aw turned the gardens into a free public park. In China the rich and powerful had for centuries created fantasy environments for their pleasure. Theme gardens with statues and pavilions evoking Chinese history and mythology are central to China’s cultural history. As the park’s historians Judith Brandel and Tina Turbeville put it: The Chinese are good at creating such respites. Centuries of invented gardens have provided escape from society held together by a rigid social order. The rich always had this escape. What makes the Tiger Balm Gardens different is that they were opened to everyone. It is a novel concept: providing areas of escape to the masses – for free. In the 1930s when these gardens were built, theme parks were non-existent. The unlimited resources that went into building these environments makes them singular in fantasy environments. Not until the mid1950s with the advent of Disneyland did anything match them. And Disneyland was far from free. Aw Boon Haw lived his life by his personal motto, ‘That which is derived from society should be returned to society’. The gardens were but one small piece of what he returned to society.11

Aw’s motives for creating and opening the park to the public certainly included self-aggrandizement, product-promotion, the honour of his brother and sheer fun. But equally it was intended to introduce visitors, who in the early days were largely uneducated workers from many different dialect-groups, to their shared inheritance of Chinese history, culture and religion. There were said originally to have been 1,000 statues and 150 giant tableaux. Moreover, the park was intended to teach morality: again and again it features lessons on the rewards of virtue and the punishment of vice. The huge 45 × 6 metre Virtues and Vices tableau offers lessons on the importance of community projects, charitable works, gratitude, hard work, friendship and fidelity, while condemning gambling, opium smoking, cabaret dancing, smuggling and stealing and indebtedness (Huang and Hong 2007, 50). The most popular and memorable part of the park, which still presents many stories from Chinese mythology, is the Ten Courts of Hell. This attraction comprises a large walk-through artificial cave, from which emerge twelve small

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Figure 3 Facing the ‘hells’ tunnel at Haw Par Villa, Singapore, is this group. In the centre Dizang (Ksitigarbha), a Bodhisattva who has vowed to save beings from hell, sits on Yue Jing, a cross between tiger and leopard. On his right is the site’s owner, the Earth God. (Photo: Crispin Paine.)

caves. Ten of these are the Ten Courts of Hell, each containing a diorama of the courtroom-cum-torture-chamber, and each dedicated to a particular class of crime. At the back of each the judge sits on his throne and in the front the torturers go about their business. First, though, there is triage: in the First Court King Quinguang separates the good from the bad. Those whose good deeds have outweighed their evil deeds are sent over the Golden Bridge to paradise. The evil-doers, however, are sent to the court appropriate for their sins. Thus, the Second Court of Hell, presided over by King Chujiang, deals with GBH and offenders are thrown into a volcano; it deals too with corruption and gambling, whose offenders are frozen into blocks of ice. The Third Court, under King Songdi, shows those convicted of ungratefulness or disrespect to elders having their hearts cut out. The Fourth Court, presided over by King Wuguan, deals with tax-dodging and business crimes. The punishment here is to be crushed in a huge mortar by a large stone pestle. Finally, in the Tenth Court, the sinners go to the Pavilion of Forgetfulness, where by drinking a cup of magic tea they forget all their punishment and all their past lives. In the very last scene they go through the Wheel of Reincarnation, to be reborn either as a person or as an animal.

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If the dioramas with their cement and paint figures were always crude and are now showing their age, they still remain horrific and powerful; their sheer nastiness transcends their crudity. The equivalent scenes from Haw Par Villa’s twin park in Hong Kong were rescued when the park closed in 1998 and were acquired by the drug rehabilitation centre on Shek Kwu Chau island (Huang and Hong 2007, 42). Among the sources from which the park’s scenes are taken are ‘Journey to the West’ (known in English as ‘Monkey’, the story of Tang Dynasty Buddhist monk Xuanzang’s journey to India), ‘Fengshen Bang’ (‘The Investiture of the Gods’, a sixteenth-century Chinese novel) and ‘The Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety’ (a classic fourteenth-century Confucian text). From this last comes the tableau of Lady Tang ignoring the hungry cries of her infant and breastfeeding her wizened, toothless mother-in-law and that of Wang Xiang lying on a frozen lake so that his body heat would melt the ice to let him catch two carp for his sick stepmother. Two other sources are ‘Legend of the White Snake’ (one of China’s great folktales), and ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ (a fourteenth-century novel about feudal lords in the third century ce). From this comes the popular Chinese story of the Peach Garden pact of brotherhood, where the three heroic warriors swore to remain loyal and true to one another. Possibly by the same author is another popular classic, ‘The Water Margin’, from which the park takes the tale of Wu Song avenging his brother, a loving husband though not a goodlooking one, who had been poisoned by his wife and her lover. Other aspects of Chinese culture appearing in the park are perhaps more recognizable to nonChinese people, because they are more obviously ‘religious’. There are some ten statues of the Buddha in the park, and Confucius, Guan Yin in her lotus pond, and the gods of Happiness, Prosperity and Long Life all appear. The park one visits today is by no means just what Aw Boon Haw created, despite being valued by many as a historic landmark surviving in the high-rise urbanism of Singapore; it has gone through many vicissitudes. It was badly damaged during the wartime Japanese occupation and restored after the war. After its creator’s death in 1954 his nephew, who took over the family business, added exhibits celebrating his travels, such as a flamenco dancer on his return from Spain, and kangaroos when he came home from Australia. In the 1970s the family business collapsed, and the park was taken over by the Singapore Tourism Board. After decades of carefully avoiding anything that could appear to favour one ethnic group over another, in the 1980s the Singapore authorities adopted an approach that valued ‘the creative communitarianism and morality of the East against the destructive individualism and decadence of the West’ (Huang

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and Hong 2006, 44). This meshed easily with a tourism marketing strategy that presented Singapore to foreign tourists as the exotic East; the country’s Chinese heritage was now favoured over its Indian, Malay or British heritage (Lim 2000/2001, 27). The atmosphere was right for Haw Par Villa to take its place in the forefront of Singapore’s tourism offer. The board’s first effort was to try to convert the increasingly-tatty site into a high-tech modern theme park, five times the size of Aw’s park, and based on a more sophisticated understanding of Chinese history and mythology. There was talk of rivalling Disney. Many of the original exhibits were demolished, and substantial redevelopment began. This venture opened in 1990 as ‘Dragon World’, but it rapidly proved to be a commercial failure (Lim 2000/20001; Teo 1996; Teo and Yeoh 1997). After a long local ‘save our park’ campaign, the board eventually decided to make the best of a bad job and to preserve and enhance what remained of the original park. The aim today is to celebrate overseas (as distinct from mainland) Chinese tradition. Aw Boon Haw, long seen as a vulgar go-getter, has been rehabilitated as a Chinese entrepreneurial hero, and his park as a heritage site.12 Today the park is once again a free-admission graphic and educational tour through the muddle of Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism that makes up the traditional fabric of Chinese life, legend, spirituality and morality – spelled out in painted plaster statues and dioramas. It attracts some 200,000 visitors a year: locals, tourists and school groups. But the park has not become a mere amusement park nor its statues merely curios. Some still have power; park guards are said to leave offerings, such as food and cigarettes, in front of certain statues to seek protection,13 and Lim Hiong Li (2000/2001, 69) described groups of Chinese from Indonesia and Taiwan coming specifically to worship the Laughing Buddha and Sakyamuni Buddha. Lim recalled that even in the park’s ‘Dragon World’ days before we start the Flume ride every morning, we would pray to the statues of the four Sea Dragon Kings, the Earth God, the Rain God and Zhong Kui (The Ghost Catcher), which were located in the ‘dungeon’ of the Flume ride. Those were very ‘sensitive’ statues. You had to pay respects to them so that unlucky things would not happen. (Lim 2000/2001, 71)

Today there is evidence of such worship of a number of the statues, and in a far corner of the park, one comes across a rather dusty-looking altar. This is for rites and offerings at the Hungry Ghost Festival, when spirits, released from hell, roam the human world and must be appeased. The altar was set up by the twelve employees who maintained the park during the difficult years after Dragon

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World failed. Lim Hiong Li (2000/2001, 74–88) describes their heroic efforts to maintain not just the fabric, but the spirit of the park, for example, by setting up a statue of Guan Yin outside the Ten Courts of Hell ‘to “protect” the area from “negative forces”’. Catherine Lim’s Singapore novel Following the Wrong God Home describes the aged Chinese servant Ah Heng Cheh at the gateway of the Ten Courts of Hell: Here the visitors converged, in the capacity of devotees, not sightseers, putting aside camera for devotional joss-stick. The joss-sticks were bigger and longer, the gold and silver paper flowers larger and brighter, the heaps of coins on the ground higher. Someone had draped a heavy garland of jasmine, dahlias and marigolds, threaded with tinsel, round the neck of the most ferocious god of all, whose eyes were two enormous white discs with burning black centres and whose fangs dripped blood. Garlands were for alien gods, not these, who preferred billowing joss-stick smoke and sumptuous food – the worshipper might have come after doing a similar obeisance at a Hindu shrine then perhaps proceeded to a Christian church with a third garland, playing safe in this multireligious society. (Lim 2001, 121)

But at the end of the story, when Ah Heng Cheh has died, the park is demolished. ‘There had even been the ceremony of propitiation in advance of destruction – a spray of joss-sticks and a chanting of prayers before the wrecking ball came in’ (Lim 2001, 355). Happily, the real Haw Par Villa seems set for a much brighter future. The Tourism Board is undertaking a major restoration programme, involving the repair and repainting of figures throughout the park, new paving, and multilingual interpretation panels everywhere. No longer will non-Chinese visitors have any excuse for seeing the park as merely ‘weird’, ‘wacky’ and ‘kitsch’ – as so many comments on the web have hitherto suggested. What is more, the board is building a number of tactfully designed new buildings. Mainly, these are the badly needed visitor facilities: restaurants, shops and so on. A large building, however, is to be the ‘Rise of Asia Museum,’ which will tell the story of the ‘Asian miracle’ through displays devoted to the stories of some of the principal Asian entrepreneurial families, like the Tatas or the Samsungs – or the Aws. This imaginative tribute to the park’s history is being set up and run by Journeys Pte, a local heritage management company who already run three of the city’s history museums. Before that, however, they plan another museum around the Courts of Hell, telling the story of hell in a variety of world cultures.

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Figure 4 Haw Par Villa, Singapore. (Photo: Crispin Paine.)

The ambition is by 2020 to get back to the million visitors a year the park saw in the 1980s. Though exact figures are not available, the present 200,000 visitors come from Singapore (perhaps 50 per cent), India (16 per cent), the People’s Republic of China (over 16 per cent), Malaysia, Australia and the United Kingdom. Besides local families, the park particularly attracts Bangladeshi construction workers and Filipina domestic workers; not only is admission free, but the park is seen as iconic of Singapore; it features regularly in Bollywood movies. A strong push, too, is beginning to grow the schools market, with an emphasis on the park as the ‘largest outdoor art gallery in Singapore’. The park is rediscovering its original purpose: to help Singaporeans rediscover their Chinese heritage, its mythology, spirituality and morality. But although (according to a 2014 Pew Research Center survey) Singapore is the world’s most religiously diverse nation, and only 18.4 per cent claim no religious affiliation,14 Singaporeans today are very different to their predecessors of the 1930s. How familiar are people today with Chinese mythology? What understanding do visitors have of the figures of Buddha, Quan Yin, Confucius or the gods they encounter in the park? Almost a generation ago Lim Hiong Li (2000/2001, 46) argued that ‘it exemplifies a polytheistic Chinese religious system whereby a belief in spirits and the possession of “essence” by living and non-living things is fundamental,’ but that such beliefs were increasingly seen as superstitious by a people educated into a secular, Western-oriented and scientific mind-set. As

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Haw Par Villa develops its renewed mission, we must hope for much research on visitors’ reception of its messages, and we can look forward to enhanced understanding of how modernity, belief, popular culture and leisure can meld together in the twenty-first century.

Suối Tiên (Fairy Stream) Theme Park Perhaps the most remarkable combination of amusement, culture, mythology and religion in any theme park is Suối Tiên (Fairy Stream) Theme Park, a fiftyfive hectare park some twenty kilometres up the twelve-lane highway from the motorbike maelstrom that is downtown Saigon, Vietnam. The park opened in 1995; in the many years since then Vietnam has seen annual growth of over 6 per cent and a booming service sector (Fforde 2016) – no wonder it is now surrounded by huge new developments, including a new urban railway and the campus of the National University, and claims five million visitors a year. When I visited on a Sunday the park was jam-packed with families. On the amusement side the park contains rollercoaster, big wheel and other rides, plus a crocodile lake, a (separate!) water park, 4-D Cinemax, paintballing, dolphin display, zip wire, climbing wall, and many other attractions.15 Among the historical and folklore attractions are a statue of thirteenth-century Vietnamese hero Trần Hưng Đạo who fought against the Mongols, a temple to the semi-mythical Hùng Kings of the three millennia bce, a four-hundred metre long dragon spouting water, a temple to Đinh Bộ Lĩnh, the first feudal emperor of Vietnam, and (inside a dragon on a tortoise island) a multimedia celebration of An Dương Vương, who united Vietnam in the third century ce. Most remarkable, though, are the many religious attractions; indeed, the park is billed as the world’s first Buddhist theme park. ‘Spiritual’ attractions include a live Bodhi tree, under which (and before a lotus pond), sits a very large Buddha. He is shaded by the nine-headed snake with the Mountains of Good and Evil behind. The park’s website suggests: ‘This is a sacred place to pray for good things so that visitors may burn incense to respectfully bring their wishes to the Shakyamuni Buddha for peace and happiness.’16 A major attraction is the huge statue of Avalokiteśvara, whose eleven-headed figure is surrounded by a halo of 1000 hands each bearing an eye. He is the Bodhisattva of compassion who sees all and helps all. In Vietnam he is often revered as the goddess of mercy, Quán Thế Âm Bồ Tát. Avalokiteśvara vowed never to rest until he had freed all sentient beings from saṃsāra. Despite his efforts, he realized that many unhappy

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beings were still to be saved; the Buddha gave him eleven heads with which to hear the cries of the suffering. Avalokiteśvara then attempted to reach out to all those who need help, and the Buddha gives him a thousand arms with which to aid the suffering multitudes. There is also a twelve-metre-high painted granite Bodhisattva standing on a globe, and in ‘Unicorn Square’ a statue of Maitreya Buddha on a golden boat. The park includes some impressive new temples. Two of them are dedicated to national heroes: Đinh Tiên Hoàng and Trần Hưng Đạo. A third, Long Hoa Thiên Bảo, is a large and lavishly ornate Buddhist temple entered through a golden dragon’s mouth, much frequented by visitors who prostrate before the Buddha image and offer incense. There is also a temple to Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. Her image is carved from a huge single trunk of ebony. Though often called a Buddhist theme park, the park’s theme could perhaps better be described as Vietnamese popular culture, of which Buddhism is a crucial and major part. But popular culture has expanded. Across the lake from Avalokiteśvara, one of the latest attractions at Suối Tiên is the Harry Potter Adventure. Housed in a Disney-style castle, sadly it amounts inside to no more than a rather pathetic ghost-walk. There are similarities between the motives of the founders of Suối Tiên and Haw Par Villa. Suối Tiên, too, was founded by an entrepreneur with a vision to help people ‘drink water, remember the source’, valuing and celebrating the history and cultural traditions of Vietnam. For Đinh Văn Vui, though, his park was no hobby, but his principal business, which he built up from a quite modest farm. Lê Đàm Ngọc Tú of Nong Lam University (2008) has analysed the philosophy of the park, and how it is expressed and promoted through a variety of symbols. The fundamental aim of the park is to reinforce traditional Vietnamese values and traditions, and these are represented through a variety of symbols; Lê identifies: ●

●

Vietnamese history and tradition, expressed in the Temple of Hùng King and the Hùng King stage, commemorating the Hùng kings who – traditionally at least – ruled from 2879 bce until 248 bce. The salt-water bathing lake is dominated by the huge faces of the emperor Lạc Long Quân and his wife Âu Cơ. Religion and folk beliefs. Buddhism is represented by the Long Hoa Thiên Bảo pagoda, the Temple of Guan Yin, figures of Shakyamuni Buddha and the Maitreya Buddha, and the representations of Heaven and Hell. Other sites incorporate folk beliefs.

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●

●

●

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Symbolic animals. The park’s four principal sections are dedicated to the four noble animals – the Dragon, Unicorn, Tortoise and Phoenix – which bring prosperity, happiness and good luck, and figures of auspicious animals are found throughout. Eastern philosophy. The concept of Yin-Yang is symbolized in the design of a number of the park’s areas. Southern culture. The distinctive culture of south Vietnam, popularly seen as laid-back, warm and welcoming, is represented in imagery of fruits, colourful festivals and decoration, and the mixture of many different cultural themes in this park. Spaces for community activities like the Hùng Kings’ Death Anniversary and the Southern Fruit Festival.17

Community activities are key to the park’s purpose. Among the many events held in the park during the year is the Vu Lan festival, widely celebrated in Vietnam. The seventh lunar month is the spirit month, when at the full moon wandering souls return to their former homes. The legend is that once when meditating, one of Buddha’s disciples, Mục Kiền Liên, saw that his mother was suffering tortures in hell. On the Buddha’s advice, on the seventh full moon of the year he gathered monks and devotees to pray with him for his mother’s relief. Hence, this festival is to express gratitude and appreciation towards one’s parents (especially mothers) and also to help ancestors’ lost souls find their way back to earth. Big crowds, including up to seven hundred local monks and nuns, attend the annual festival at the park’s Long Hoa Thiên Bảo temple, which lasts for seven days. A major aim of Vietnamese religion, as of Chinese, is the telling of fortunes according to an extraordinarily complicated and extraordinarily ancient system based on the twelve zodiacs and their animal signs. ‘Zodiac Palace’ builds on this concern, while park visitors also tie their wishes, written on silk cloths, to the ancient Wish Tree.18 Thus the ‘spiritual’ attractions in the park aim to meet the three great aims of Vietnamese religion: the remembering and honouring of ancestors, the placating of the spirits and the constant search for good fortune in this life and a better life to come. Though most of these attractions present as Buddhist, their evident concern with national heroes surely reflects the Confucian tradition of loyalty to the state in the interest of order and stability, while others lie more in the Daoist tradition of the search for harmony in nature as in the soul. Vietnamese people melded these three faiths into their own many centuries ago.

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Gods and Rollercoasters In Vietnamese popular religion, hero kings or freedom fighters, Taoist saints or Buddhas and their helpers, all on the same altar, all have the same power to protect and help, they are all due the same respect. (Unger and Unger 1997, 14)

Or as Vietnam’s London embassy’s website so bluntly puts it: ‘Vietnamese Buddhism stays on earth rather than ascends up to heaven, attaches to exorcism and prayers for wealth, happiness and longevity rather than heads toward nirvana.’

The Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter The Creation Museum, a few miles outside Cincinnati, attracts over half a million visitors a year. It was opened in 2007 as a major theme park/museum, with the aim of persuading visitors of the truth of fundamentalist Christianity, and that the earth was created about 6,000 years ago. Its parent body, Answers in Genesis (AiG), is run by an Australian ex-teacher, Ken Ham (see Chapter 10).19 The entrance hall greets the visitor with many references to a theme that runs through the museum: dinosaurs. These displays, added in 2013, illustrate legends of dragons which might perhaps have been dinosaurs. Presumably this is both because children love dinosaurs, and to address head-on the issue of whether dinosaurs were created along with the rest of the earth about 4000 bce. The first major display the visitor meets is a diorama of two archaeologists excavating dinosaur bones, one believes in Creationism, one accepts evolution; ‘Same facts, but different views. Different conclusions, because different starting points: the Bible, and human reason.’ Throughout the museum, the arguments are effective and well presented, if not necessarily always convincing. The story the museum tells is essentially a simple one. After the Creation, the human story is one of repeated disobedience to God, God’s warning, humankind’s continued disobedience and God’s dire punishment. The museum illustrates the three great biblical instances of this: the Fall, the Flood and the Tower of Babel. We are then shown how modern civilization is once again turning away from God and His Word, and how dire punishment is once again threatened us. But there is a way out: Salvation through Christ. All are presented in the most sophisticated way, with high-quality animatronics and scene-setting. The most memorable visual highlights, though, are certainly the Creation Walk, with its elaborate dioramas of the Garden of Eden with the famous figures of Adam and Eve, Adam delving after the fall, Cain and Abel, a carnivorous dinosaur, Methuselah, and Noah building the Ark. These major

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displays are supported by many others showing how ‘the facts’ can be interpreted in a Creationist sense; for example, showing how Lucy can be seen simply as a species of ape. There is a heavy emphasis on how modern science supports the literalist understanding of the Bible. An oddity of the museum’s treatment of science, to which the study by Bill and Susan Trollinger of the University of Dayton (2016, 107) draws attention, is its acceptance of modern cosmology and of the earth as an orb. Despite claiming that the Book of Genesis is to be taken literally, AiG does not apparently believe that ‘God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so’ (Gen. 1: 7). AiG are not Flat-Earthers. The Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter both put a huge emphasis on science, with innumerable displays purporting to give scientific explanations of the Creation and of the Flood. Like their parent organization AiG, though, both make a distinction between ‘historical’ and ‘observational’ science. The former, they argue is about what happened in the past, and since we cannot directly observe the past we must needs apply a set of beliefs and assumptions. The latter is about what we can study today and is the real science. As the Trollingers put it (2016, 67–73): In short, when scientific methods are applied to evidence in the present, and conclusions are drawn about that evidence that pertain to the present, then one is doing observational science. When inferences are made about the past by way of evidence that exists in the present, then historical science is underway. Moreover, historical science, unlike observational science, always involves the application of a set of beliefs and assumptions about the past.

The final section of the Creation Walk, the core of the Museum, is the ‘Christ, Cross and Consummation’ section: ‘One day, at the consummation, the Creator will remake His creation. He will cast out death and the disobedient, and dwell eternally with those who trust in Him. What a wonderful future God has planned for those who love Him!’ (Ham 2008, 71). Beyond that lie the huge book and souvenir shop, an exhibition by the Museum of the Bible, a café, Buddy Davis’s Dino Den (dinosaur skeletons) and Dr Crawley’s Insectorium (a museum of insects). There’s also a planetarium, one Special Effects Theatre and two other theatres. Outside lie some splendid gardens, a petting zoo and a zipline. Forty miles away at Williamstown, Kentucky, is the Ark Encounter, the second of AiG’s attractions. Opened in July 2016 on a 324-hectare site, it received 1.2 million visitors in its opening year. Though there are plans for a pre-Flood walled city, first-century village, Tower of Babel and a journey illustrating the parting

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of the Red Sea, the main attraction at present is the wooden replica of Noah’s Ark, 155 metres long and 15.5 metres high. It really is astonishing. On arrival, a shuttle bus takes visitors the kilometre from the 4,000-space carpark to the ark. The dramatic wood-clad exterior is matched inside by Piranesi-like views up through the three decks, the timberwork created by Amish craftsmen (Answers in Genesis 2016). The ark contains 132 bays, each about 5.5 metres high, arranged in three decks. Visitors enter on the lowest deck and move between decks on ramps constructed through the centre of the ark. Bays on the first deck contain models of animals that AiG believes were on the ark; the models are meant to represent ‘kinds’ of animals – including dinosaurs – which AiG maintains gave rise to modern animals through a process of ‘rapid speciation’ after the flood. The second deck contains more animal models, along with dioramas of Noah’s workshop and a blacksmith. The third deck contains displays presenting AiG’s theories about what may have happened inside and outside the ark during the flood. The opening of the attraction drew considerable criticism, amid claims that it was an attack on science education and that it dangerously argued that ‘climate change is not a serious problem, that humans are not causing it, that some deity will see to it that everything is ok’. AiG’s founder Ken Ham (once a schoolteacher in Australia) claimed the ark would ‘stand as proof that the stories of the Bible are true. … People are going to come from all over the world.’20 The displays mix up conventional displays on aspects of the flood (and some more widely presenting Creationist theory) and reconstructions of animal cages and the living quarters of Noah’s family with some limited animatronics. These latter are strikingly impressive and persuasive. The conventional displays are more ordinary, but include some original ones, for example of children’s ‘Noah’s Ark’ books, attacked as reducing the story to a fairy tale (though visiting families seem to enjoy the display without noticing the criticism!). And there is a very funny – flippant and jokey – video story of Noah being interviewed by a cynical reporter from the ‘Pangea Independent Tabloid’; inevitably, another video shows her in the twenty-first century being converted by a Ken Ham figure. Also interesting are the exhibitions seeking to show how the Ark could have accommodated all ‘kinds’ (something between genus and species?) of animals, and how it could all have worked. It is of course disappointing that the ark contains no live animals; instead there are models, including the inevitable animatronic dinosaurs. The making of the park was the fortunate subject of a five-year study by anthropologist James Bielo, working with the key group of designers, and he

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Figure 5 Ark Encounter, Kentucky, USA. (Photo: Crispin Paine.)

reports on it in a recent fascinating study. I can’t help reluctantly disagreeing with one of his conclusions. He sees the contrasting ‘reconstructions’ and didactic displays as two experiential frames: the creationist biblical past and the creationist present (2018b). As visitors alternate between these frames, a walking poetics of faith is required to reconcile them – to make it a coherent experience. However, for me (I visited with James and his wife Sara in 2017) the immersive experience was spoilt, indeed destroyed, by suddenly coming from ‘the Ark as it was’ to science-museum-style displays of showcases, text panels and videos.21 Had the Ark been set out entirely as it was imagined to be, it would for me have been much more powerful and convincing. *

*

*

The seven religion parks may seem at first sight to be very different. HLE, the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter share a Christian missionary purpose, while the Hindu Akshardhams are dominated by their temples, and the Suối Tiên Theme Park and Haw Par Villa are themed on popular tradition. Do they really share enough to warrant the term ‘religion park’? The following chapter will argue that they do, sharing the effects of a growing and changing world economy and a growing and changing religious world.

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Nostalgia, Religion and Politics

Religious theme parks are the product of huge social and economic changes in the world over the past two generations, including the vast new middle class with disposable leisure time; the interaction of religion with modern technology; the growth of prosperous sects with strong middle-class support; urbanization and globalization leading to nostalgia for ‘traditional values’; and the growth of tourism. With few exceptions, theme parks use religion to support a right-wing political agenda.

The rise of the middle class A necessary condition for the rise of theme parks must surely be the worldwide rise of the middle class. To visit theme parks you need leisure time and money. The Brookings Institution estimates that there are 1.8 billion people today who can be defined as middle class, which will grow to 3.2 billion by 2020. Asia is almost entirely responsible for this growth; its middle class is forecast to triple to 1.7 billion by 2020. The middle class in Latin America will grow from 181 million to 313 million by 2030, led by Brazil. And in Africa and the Middle East, it is projected to more than double, from 137 million to 341 million. By 2030 three quarters of Chinese people are expected to count as middle class. The UN and OECD suggest that you are middle class if you earn or spend $10 to $100 per day – enough to buy things like fridges or to think about buying a car. The growth is being driven by industrialization; as in the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany in the nineteenth century, farmers are becoming factory workers or other city-dwellers.1 Today this new middle class is very much about education, but above all it is about consumption, which determines lifestyle, identity and status; this is as true of Southeast Asia as it is of Europe (King 2002). Disney recognized this huge demographic change when

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in the early 1950s he resolved to abandon the raucous scruffiness of Coney Island and other amusement parks, aimed at young working-class couples, and instead focus on the middle-class family, offering them tidy well-maintained parks with friendly welcoming staff, well organized to cater for respectable people and their children. All successful parks since have at least tried to follow Disney’s example. In the 1970s median household income in the United States ended its dramatic increase and began to decline; moreover, it began to be more and more unequal. The political reaction was a swing to the right, a tendency supported by a perception that America was losing its way, and that the debacle of Vietnam was a symptom of the growing moral decline of American society. The 1960s generation had been replaced. A notable component of this change of national mood was the growth of the ‘Religious Right’, concerned firstly with social issues like abortion, gay rights, pornography, the ban on prayer in public schools and the teaching of evolution. They were also sometimes associated with opposition to Civil Rights. A number of organizations emerged to focus on the cause, whose Evangelical Protestant base, largely in the South, increasingly transferred its traditional Democratic allegiance to the Republican Party. The founder of the ‘Moral Majority’, Jerry Falwell, said of President Carter ‘Americans have literally stood by and watched as godless, spineless leaders have brought our nation floundering to the brink of death.’

The ‘prosperity gospel’ and Heritage USA The 1980s was the decade of ‘greed is good’, when capitalism seemed to be sweeping all before it, and Ronald Reagan led a newly confident America once more asserting itself around the world. It was the decade of a new prosperity for many, individualism, drugs, glam rock and designer fashion. It was, too, (and not only in America), the decade of the flamboyant televangelists whose huge media empires financed their lavish lifestyles. Pentecostalism has always emphasized external signs of grace – the ‘signs and wonders’ that accompany evangelism. So, it became easy in the 1980s for prosperity to be seen as the just reward, indeed the evidence, of spiritual growth and truth. This was the ‘prosperity gospel’, the belief that financial success and good health were public demonstrations of Christians’ spiritual progress, and that virtue brings not just its own reward, but very tangible rewards in this life as well as in the next.

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This belief was encapsulated in the first modern religion park, Heritage USA, opened in 1978 by Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. This was never just a theme park – indeed it began as essentially a retreat centre for Evangelical Christians, and as a corporate headquarters for the PTL (Praise the Lord) fundamentalist ministry the Bakkers had created. Gradually, it created new facilities and attractions, and in taking on the characteristics of a theme park it became increasingly a place where Evangelical Christians felt comfortable and at home. The Bakkers had already had a supremely successful career as missionary media stars, working with other televangelists, when they went independent with PTL in the mid1970s. At their most successful their programme aired on a hundred television stations across America, attracted twelve million viewers, and drew in donations of a million dollars a week. Jim Bakker is quoted as saying ‘I believe that if Jesus were alive today, he would be on TV.’ Tammy Faye Bakker later recalled that the impetus behind Heritage USA was that they wanted a place where followers could catch the vision of PTL. Most preachers undoubtedly would have built a church. That the Bakkers built a Christian wonderland testified to the joyful and enterprising spirit of the movement. (Bowler 2013, 100)

By 1986 Heritage USA’s facilities included the 501-room Heritage Grand Hotel, a shopping mall called ‘Main Street USA’, the Heritage Village Church, a 400pitch campsite, the Jerusalem Amphitheater, conference facilities, a skating rink, prayer and counselling services, cable TV network production studios, Bible and evangelism school, centre for the homeless, visitor retreat housing, staff and volunteer housing, timeshares, Heritage Island water park and recreational facilities and Billy Graham’s childhood home, moved from Charlotte (Kennedy 1989, 206).2 By the mid-1980s Heritage USA was attracting six million visitors a year, employed around 2,500 people and was the third most-visited theme park in America, after Disneyland and Disneyworld. The Bakkers were in the 1970s and 1980s perhaps the most successful of American televangelists, handling enormous sums of money. In 1983 they opened their own PTL television studio at Heritage USA and received a personal note from President Reagan, who praised their efforts to help ‘many Americans endure and triumph’ – which sounds very much like an endorsement of the ‘prosperity gospel’ (Bowler 2013, 100). In 1987 Jim Bakker was accused of rape and following year was convicted of fraud and imprisoned. In part his conviction resulted from his money-raising efforts to finance the Heritage Grand Hotel. An April 1987 New Yorker article said of the Bakkers: ‘They epitomized the excesses

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of the 1980s; the greed, the love of glitz, and the shamelessness; which in their case was so pure as to almost amount to a kind of innocence.’3 The empire collapsed not so much because of the changing zeitgeist, but because Jim Bakker, a brilliant evangelist and media person, was an incompetent businessman and manager. He was PTL and Heritage USA; no-one else could have coped with the range of responsibilities he took on. As he put it later, ‘I became obsessed with building Heritage USA. What had begun as a vision to build a modern, comfortable retreat center became an ever-increasing monster, something like the old science-fiction movie The Blob’ (Bakker 1996, 466).4 Just as the ‘prosperity gospel’ lay behind Heritage USA, and arguably later religion parks in the United States, so a similar theology lay behind the Akshardham parks in India. Swaminarayan set out his precepts in the Shikshapatri; the copy he gave to the British governor is now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Verse 205 promises ‘Our followers, both men and women who act according to these directions, shall certainly obtain the four great objects of human desire – the disciplined life (dharma), material gain (artha), pleasure (kama) and salvation (moksha)’ (quoted in Williams 2001, 162). The pursuit of material gain is appropriate for the householder, as distinct from the ascetic, though all business affairs must be undertaken in a sober and responsible manner. Accounts must be kept daily, and account books blessed in the temple at the beginning of each year; expenses must not exceed income, and some of the profits must be kept for emergencies; all transactions must have written contracts; employees must be paid properly and treated fairly; every worker must fulfil his tasks with careful deliberation. Swaminarayan’s teaching has been compared to puritan Christianity in its beneficial business effects, and indeed the sect has produced many successful business people and itself become very wealthy. ‘Thus, in a religion that praises the world-renouncing ascetic, the acquisition of wealth and the prudent use of capital are justified and viewed as directly willed by god. Success is viewed as the result of his grace’ (Williams 2001, 164).

The rise and new roles of religion Micklethwait and Wooldridge (2009) point to the idea that far from being pushed aside by modernity, religion is thriving as a solution to many of society’s problems. In a world of ever greater competition, displacement and opportunity, faith has become a useful … attribute for prosperous people.

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But religion also fulfils a role lower down in society, providing support for those who have lost out in global capitalism or feel bewildered by it. Faith acts as a storm shelter. (Micklethwait and Wooldridge 2009)

Religion crucially offers social capital, and a lifeline to grab on to where social support is weak (2009, 150). Religion is a response to the ‘turmoil of modernity’, with its weakening of community ties and traditional values, and poor support offered by social safety mechanisms. Thus, it is in Europe, with its comparatively stable society and (still just surviving) tradition of the welfare state, that secularization is proceeding apace. Whereas it is in the United States, as well as most of the rest of the world, that religion is booming;5 and it is outside Europe that religion parks are mainly found. Philip Larkin called religion ‘that vast moth-eaten musical brocade’. How wrong he was. One scholarly discussion that must form a background to a study of religion in theme parks, and of religion parks in particular, is around the commodification of religion. One has only to remember how in Ephesus in 54 ce a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen; Whom he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth.’ (Acts 19, 24–5)

and went on to lead a riot against St Paul, to realize that there is nothing new about making money out of religious practice. Anthropologist Pattana Kitiarsa of the National University Singapore (2008, 1) is surely right when he argues that ‘commodifying the sacred’ doesn’t lead to a decline in religiosity, but simply ‘characterizes the variable ways that relationships between religion and the market are configured’. The market creates new opportunities for doing religion and creates new enchantments in the landscape. One type of opportunity and enchantment is the theme park. There has been much scholarly discussion of the way the elements of Disney theme parks translate into wider contemporary society. The sociologist Alan Bryman (2004; 2010) has suggested that quite as illuminating as McDonaldization (Ritzer 2012) is the idea of Disneyization – the repackaging of places and events in a new more acceptable and commercially profitable form, often by imposing an attractive theme. There has been a lot of attention paid to consumption as experience, and the retail world has made much of the discovery that shoppers enjoy the experience more, and spend more, if it is made into a distinctive ‘experience’ (Gilmore and Pine 1998). But every museum curator and heritage

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manager has known for generations that all aspects of a visit build into the total experience, which is what the visitor is buying. In East Asia another, perhaps more profound, analysis comes into play. Marc Askew of Melbourne University has criticized the common view that the proliferation of monumental and spectacular sites – super-temples, huge Buddha figures, Buddhist/Daoist theme parks – are simply unadulterated profitseeking and spectacle-driven consumerism. He argues that there is in East Asia a parallel economy: the economy of merit. A deep and persisting belief in merit-accumulation and the efficacy of merit transference, together with the complementary dispositions to materialize merit and venerate sacred objects, is central to popular and scripturally-supported Buddhist belief systems, and this has been so from the earliest times. Indeed the popularisation of Buddhism beyond a restricted circle of ascetic monks would have been impossible without them. (2008, 91)

Askew sees the recent flowering of gigantic monuments and other sacred sites as an extension of an ancient practice, rather than as something quite new. The endowment of a great figure of Buddha or Guan Yin, or simply of a bench at its foot for pilgrims to rest on, brings merit to the donor. This merit economy operates in parallel with the money-economy, and very often overlaps and interacts with it, but remains distinct. Merit is a kind of spiritual cash,6 a medium of exchange with which the devotee purchases a better life both in this life and the next. Chris Baker of Bangkok (pers.com.) shows how this can work: On the No. 72 bus I take regularly, there is always a poster pasted on the window advertising a Sunday pilgrimage bus-tour, usually taking in one major wat and others in the same area in the Bangkok vicinity, with a discount for anyone taking all four tours offered that month. Going on more far-flung bus-tours to the country’s most famous temples is also popular, particularly after retirement, rather like the western predilection for ocean cruises. And the ultimate is to go to the Buddhist sites in India. Behind this pilgrimage tourism is the idea that you collect a little bit of extra merit from visiting each place of high holiness. The recent craze for the construction of massive Buddha and monk statues is clearly an attempt to gain a share of this market: high holiness usually comes from age and tradition, but size can be contrived quickly.

A somewhat similar parallel economy was behind the building of the great pilgrimage churches of medieval Europe. The relic trade involved the (technically forbidden) buying and selling of relics, their role as gifts and diplomatic pawns,

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their widespread theft and the justification of that theft, their worship and the universal negotiating of deals with them: you cure my disease or give me a baby, and I will present you with a ring for your shrine, or whatever. Like the meriteconomy of East Asia, the medieval European relic-economy (of which only a pale reflection survives in modern Catholic and Orthodox pilgrimage practice) was distinct from the money-economy and the labour-service economy, but regularly interacted with them.

Leisure, tourism and religion We (many of us) have not only got more money, but have also got more leisure time. In 2006 The Economist reported (2 February 2006) that between 1965 and 2003 working-age Americans gained from four to eight hours a week more leisure time. The ‘leisure revolution’ is extremely uneven in its impact (and it’s certainly not clear that more leisure actually brings more happiness), yet it remains true that there are more people in the world with time to spare to go out. The explosion of tourism in the last three generations is one of the most astonishing aspects of the modern world. International tourist arrivals have increased from 25 million globally in 1950 to 278 million in 1980, 674 million in 2000, and 1186 million in 2015 (UNWTO 2016). Despite the terrible news from so many parts of the world,7 the trend continued in 2016, with destinations around the world welcoming 956 million international tourists between January and September 2016, according to the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer. This is thirty-four million more than in the same period of 2015, a 4 per cent increase. Asia and the Pacific led the growth with international tourist arrivals up 34 per cent in South Korea, 36 per cent in Vietnam, 24 per cent in Japan and 15 per cent in Sri Lanka. How does this relate to religion? At least some of those tourists are visiting for ‘religious’ reasons. The number of people who go on pilgrimage is almost impossible to count, but in 2014 the Alliance of Religions and Conservation8 suggested 215 million a year worldwide, giving as examples: 30 million plus to Sabarimala, India (Ayyappa, Hindu), 30 million to Amritsar, India (Sikh), 15 million to Karbala, Iraq (Shia Muslim), 14 million to Ise, Japan (Shinto), 10 million to Naputuo Temple, Xiamen, China (Buddhist), 6 million to the Wailing Wall, Israel/Palestine (Jewish), 4 million to Lourdes, France (Catholic Christian), and 3 million to the Hajj (Muslim), including 1.8 million from overseas. Pilgrimage is in no way declining in the face of modernism; on the

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contrary it is expanding, changing and flourishing. Pilgrimage continues more and more to be, just like theme park visits or the use of social media, another way for people to do religion. Michael Stausberg in his 2011 study Religion and Tourism discusses the distinction between the two. He concludes that there is a distinction, but one that is often very blurred in practice; pilgrims very often behave part of the time like tourists (and probably always did), while tourists can adopt the attitudes and even sometimes the practices of pilgrims (53–71). The promotion by tourism authorities of religious sites as tourist attractions is so ubiquitous that we often scarcely notice it. He offers a splendid array of examples. He shows, too, how the administrators of religious sites can be complicit in tourism promotion; for example, the Taiwanese temple administrators who add dancing, plays and acrobatics to their temple performances, to compete for the pilgrim dollar with the other 11,274 registered Taiwanese temples (75–104). In China the civil authorities were creating brand-new Buddhist holy places for the same purpose; the standard format is apparently a massive bronze or copper image of the Buddha, approached through a funnel of tourist facilities, with a small temple attached. Everywhere administrators of religious sites hope that tourists, who may come out of curiosity, a wish to see all the sights or an interest in art and heritage, will find themselves meditating, praying, lighting candles or incense or using instruments of divination (88).9

Media and religion Religion parks may be seen as one medium in the service of modern religion, alongside television, the internet, social media,10 video and mega-churches. Christiane Brosius of Heidelberg University (2012) has made a convincing case that BAPS, the Swaminarayan movement, has used modern media with extraordinary effect to build from its base in Gujarat an international organization that has created a new kind of ‘modern’ national and religious consciousness, first among diaspora Indians, and increasingly among middle-class Indians at home. This draws on Indian heritage and culture, as other right-wing Hindu movements do, but also on ‘televangelism or the idea of the American Dream’ (445). Together they create an identity and a ritual that perfectly suits modern urban professionals. The two Akshardhams, plus the temples and cultural sites outside India, are central to this strategy, and play a major role in how the Swaminarayan movement positions itself as a guardian of Indianness.

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Parks can serve to support a wider, more diffuse, approach to religion and politics. American Protestantism has for two centuries sought to create an image and understanding of the Holy Land that would simultaneously serve its Biblebased religion and its American consciousness. The aim throughout has been as far as possible to render the present inhabitants of Israel/Palestine invisible, and to replace them with the imagined simple peasants of ‘biblical times’; similarly, to efface the present-day Palestine/Israel landscape and to imagine the landscape of the Old or the New Testaments. The principal means of achieving this illusion was through the pictures used to illustrate bibles. At first engravings, later carefully posed photographs, have long inculcated an image of robed figures with camels, shepherds with their sheep on the Judean hillsides or a stable. Many other media, though, have been used to reinforce this stereotype, from reproductions of paintings to movies. Not the least of these media have been theme parks and other Bible-based visitor attractions. A theme park at Nazareth, in Israel, illustrates this clearly. Nazareth Village was founded in 2000 by a local Protestant Arab, Dr Nakhle Beshara, with a $30 million budget (Shoval 2000, 258) to bring ‘to life a farm and Galilean village, recreating Nazareth as it was 2,000 years ago. It is a window into the life of Jesus, the city’s most famous citizen.’11 The park’s 70,000 visitors a year (in 2008 65 percent of them were Americans (Feldman and Ron 2009, 211)) meet villagers dressed in first-century costumes engaging in daily life activities in homes, in the olive press, and on the farm. One walks past cultivated terraces, an ancient winepress, a watchtower, stone quarries, grape vines, old olive trees, then enters a replica of a first-century synagogue. The parables and teachings of Jesus spring to life as one hears the stories in an authentically recreated setting with donkeys and sheep meandering by or stopping to pose for petting and photos.12

For Feldman and Ron the scene suggests appealing industry and evokes a nostalgic kinship with these agrarian people living close to the soil. … There is no sign of dirt, thirst, illhealth or tattered clothing; nothing of hardscrabble poverty. Like the heritage villages it is modeled on, the orderly and sparsely populated spaces of Nazareth Village paint a relatively suburban picture, with lives centered on home interiors and nuclear families. This picture is at odds with the communal and extremely crowded outdoor life, attested to in the Jewish sources of the period and the remains of the densely built villages like Capernaum and Chorazin.

It is even more at odds with modern Nazareth. Nazareth today is a metropolitan area of over 200,000 people, 40 per cent of them Jewish Israelis and 60 per cent Arabs – the latter include a substantial Arab Christian minority. Tourism  –

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especially Christian tourists to the childhood home of Jesus – dominates the economy, though there is also a significant high-tech industry. The three communities live in considerable tension. Nazareth Village ignores all of this. It offers instead the calm and peaceful village tourists had been hoping for. Its purpose of is to give tourists, particularly American tourists, a sanitized visit that will confirm their ‘Holy Land’ stereotype.

Religion and the escape into nostalgia Asking why people were so preoccupied with the past, the late Colin Sorensen of the Museum of London pointed to an analogy with reminiscence therapy for people suffering dementia. Our concern with the past is not an interest in history, in the sense of the process of cause and effect, but ‘an urgent wish to achieve an immediate confrontation with a moment in time, a re-entry into a vanished circumstance’ (1989, 61). Perhaps, something bigger lies behind simple nostalgia. Danièle Hervieu-Léger (2000) suggests that within religious belief today lies a commitment to a continuity of belief and believers which transcends history, and which makes recalling the past itself a religious act. Museums and heritage sites are thus temples to a modern religion; can theme parks be too? Disneyland was planned to be ‘a soothing reminiscence of an all-American small town, home to parent-teacher associations, Boy Scout troupes, Rotary clubs, and science fairs’ (Olsberg 1998, 9). Yet as we have seen, overtly at least religion played little role in the mix. It is Disney’s successors and imitators who have created a close link between nostalgia for an imagined innocent past, religion and conservative politics. One of the American parks that most clearly demonstrates the close relationship between nostalgia and religion is Dollywood, a park themed on the life of the famous country music singer Dolly Parton, established in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, in 1986. Scott Lukas identifies six American archetypes that he finds reflected in Dollywood’s press information: family, memory, God, the soul, the heart and the rustic. In the park shops he notes ‘baseball souvenirs, bald eagle items, pastoral Smoky Mountain artwork, old signs, handmade accent pieces, patriotic CDs and Christian books’ (Lukas 2008, 93). The attractions in the park include numerous old buildings and country-craft demonstrations, as well as rides and waterpark, while events include country, bluegrass, Christian and gospel music performances. In other

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words, Dollywood offers nostalgia – understood as an undemanding melange of patriotism, ruralism and old-fashioned Protestant Christianity.13 For twenty-five years, as you drove into South Tyneside in northeast England, you would pass signs announcing, ‘You are entering Catherine Cookson Country.’ Cookson was a hugely popular writer of novels set in the deprived urban society of the region in her childhood. This association of novels, nostalgia and place has an even stronger American equivalent in the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri. The heavily wooded area traditionally supported lead mining, dairy farming and logging, and early on gained a reputation as old-fashioned, not to say hick. By the early twentieth century it was already attracting holidaymakers for its hunting and fishing, distinctive folkways, peace and quiet, and perceived old-world values. The fortunes of the region were then transformed by the novelist Harold Bell Wright, whose novel The Shepherd of the Hills, published in 1907, was one of America’s best-selling books ever. This was a time, like our own, of very rapid urbanization and immigration, when nostalgia for a simpler imagined past was taking strong hold. Inevitably the book’s effect was to create a substantial tourist industry. Besides being a prolific writer, Wright was a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and his achievement was to associate the region’s traditional culture with a deep spirituality, seen in virtuous contrast to the ratrace of modern society; the ‘rush and roar’ of the world beyond those hills contrasted with the simple and good life of the people of the Ozarks. This indeed was the central theme of The Shepherd of the Hills. As Aaron Ketchell of the University of Kansas puts it: ‘The author’s embrace of the inherent sanctity of the Ozarks, the necessity of manifesting belief in lived existence, and the conviction that popular culture can be a powerful evangelistic force are outlooks that have permeated local tourism and continue to provide it with a sense of religiously motivated vitality’ (2007b, x).14 The Romantics had long taught that romantic hills could bring spiritual healing, and in the 1900s ‘spiritual’, for most people, was not distinguished from ‘religious’. As an author for the Midwest Motorist put it, ‘By the time of World War I, even the natives began to believe that the ground might really be sacred, not to mention profitable.’15 Branson, the central town of the industry, today has a permanent population of 10,500, but in 2014 attracted eight million visitors. Modern Branson is a tourist trap, basically a five-mile strip of show venues and visitor attractions, with the old town a mere couple of gift- and antique-shop streets beside Lake Taneycomo. The tourists it attracts are principally families in the summer and

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pensioners in spring and autumn. At the time of my visit in 2017 it was very much the latter (and the only person of colour I saw in three days was the drummer in a show.) Very many of the attractions on offer to tourists infuse their popular culture with religion. This is certainly true of what is perhaps the region’s principal attraction. Around two million visitors a year go to Silver Dollar City, a theme park a few miles out of town with a reputation for Christianity and respectability. On a hilly and wooded site, the park has a number of rides (including a train), but at the time of my visit it was promoting a National Crafts and Cowboy Festival, with 125 craftspeople demonstrating – all of high quality. The park is themed around the 1880s, but there is no attempt at historical reconstruction; even the ‘farm’ is just a petting zoo – a few sad ducks and a goat or two. It is, though, a delightful relaxed place to wander around. This park opened in 1960, essentially as a way of entertaining queues for the astonishing Marvel Cave, now a minor attraction within the park. A reconstruction was built of an 1880s Ozark township, with such staged entertainments as a bank raid. The park today attracts some two million visitors a year with its winning combination of thrill rides, rural craft demonstrations, hillbilly music and good food: Visitors join the activities of a 1800s homestead at the McHaffie Cabin. Kids are deputized by the town marshal. Gospel singing beckons from the door of the 155-year-old Wilderness Church. One can smell the aromas of succotash cooking on an outdoor skillet and feel the waxy bars of freshly made cakes of lye soap. The ringing of the blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil invites visitors to watch his work at an open-air forge. The craftsmen show their techniques, share the history and answer questions, such as why hewing the logs for a cabin make it strong enough to stand for centuries. The Culinary & Craft School offers guests behind-the-scenes experiences with classes on legendary Silver Dollar City home-style cooking.16

Although the park includes thrill rides – at the time of writing ‘the world’s fastest, tallest, and steepest spinning coaster’ has just been completed – its underlying theme continues to be nostalgia for a lost innocent America, just as the first Disney park was. Nostalgia here, too, is associated with patriotism and with the nuclear family, but in addition there is religion, with regular Christian events like the ‘Church of Christ Weekend’ and various gospel music events.17 But Silver Dollar City is not overtly a Christian park, though the Ozark Hills maintain their reputation for peacefulness, spirituality and old-fashioned ways, and the park

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is owned by the Herschend family, now very wealthy, devout and conservative Christians, who ensure that it maintains its Christian ethos.18 As in so many of these attractions, the merging of fundamentalist Christianity, nostalgia for a lost innocence and American patriotism is to a foreigner fascinating. When I was there ‘Faith’s Journey’, a local Gospel Trio (http://www.faithsjourneytrio.com) were singing ‘here in America in God we trust’ to the arriving crowds. The park’s chaplain, Rev. Kevin Day, kindly gave time to talk to me, pointing out that most visitors are aware of the park’s Christian ethos, which indeed is for many a major reason for their visit (the park’s shop sells a big range of Christian T-shirts). The little 80-seat Wilderness Church holds five services a day (and a prayer meeting for park staff on Wednesdays) and seldom attracts fewer than 100 worshippers; although Reverend Day wears an eighteenth-century minister’s gown on Sundays, he insists that services are most definitely not performances.19 Perhaps not all religion parks ally nostalgia with their religion; indeed, nostalgia may mean quite different things in different societies. Thomas Picketty in his famous Capital in the Twenty-First Century points out the different nostalgias felt by the middle classes of Europe and the United States; both hark back to times of greater social equality, but for the former it lay in the post-war period, while for the latter it lay in the early nineteenth century (2014, 350). In other societies nostalgia may be even more different, and we need to be careful how we apply the ‘escape into nostalgia’ argument in theme parks, as elsewhere. Sanjay Srivastava argues that Akshardham New Delhi eschews nostalgia entirely; rather Akshardham’s appeal lies in that it is able to present its tableau of consumption (of objects and spaces) as contiguous with the world outside. Its self-representation in terms of technological mastery, efficiency, punctuality, educational achievement, and the broad context of contemporary consumerism links it with the world of tollways, highways, shopping malls, city ‘beautification’ and slumclearance drives, and the creation of spaces of middle-class identity. (2009, 378)

The middle class that Akshardham attracts feels no nostalgia for the twentieth century but welcomes the world of modernity and globalization, and is happy to replace the poor, both socially and physically. But they also lay claim to Indianness, morality and religiosity (2009, 381). ‘Nostalgia’ can play a variety of different roles, just as religion can. The merging of nostalgia, religion and nationalism can, though, be a powerful political tool, as for example in such US Christian parks as the Great Passion Play Theme Park. Jill Stevenson (2015, 122) notes that park and play ‘encourage

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visitors to live in a blend that will allow them to re-experience an idealized, nostalgic, Christian America’, and quotes one visitor in 2005: ‘When [Jesus] ascends to heaven, it gives you the same feeling you get when the American flag comes down the street.’ *

*

*

A wealthier world is creating a middle class with new ideas and new aspirations, creating new economic relationships, new ways of doing religion and new ways of doing leisure. We have seen this new world reflected in theme parks through the ‘prosperity gospel’, the commodification of religion and its new roles, new media, the rise of religious tourism and links between religion, nostalgia and politics. Does all this happen in all parts of the world? It seems unlikely: the melange of patriotism, nostalgia and Protestant Christianity, for example, seems to be an American phenomenon. On the other hand, we shall see in the next chapter that the motives of the founders of religion parks are strikingly similar even in very different religious and cultural contexts.

4

The Motive for Religion in Theme Parks

The aims of religious theme parks include making money, spreading the Word, promoting tourism and building nationhood. Religion is, too, often recruited into theme parks to support the promotion of a political agenda.

To spread the Word Why does religion appear in theme parks? This chapter will attempt to identify some of the motives: they are often confused and mixed. The primary motive for including religion in theme parks must surely be religious – to spread the Word. But even this motive is complicated.1 While some parks want to missionize and secure sympathy for, if not conversion to, the faith, for most the aim is rather to confirm the faith of those who are already believers. Visitors use religion parks to reinforce their faith and to consolidate it within their family or group. Thus, a TripAdvisor comment in 2010 on Silver Dollar City: ‘I’ll admit that prices are pretty steep, but my family and I love SDC. It has a great christian atmosphere and people aren’t afraid to declare their faith.’ Such consolidation of faith is a common way in which faith groups use religion parks, just as they do pilgrimage centres and temples – with the advantage that theme parks offer fun and an association with modernity, as well as religious merit, reinforcement of faith and group-bonding. Holy Land Experience’s website quotes one happy customer who perfectly sums it up: ‘It’s wonderful to know there is someplace like Holy Land Experience that is glorifying our God in a way that brings families together for fun and education.’ Religion parks like this are offering Protestants an opportunity to make a pilgrimage. Descriptions of religious theme parks frequently comment on the church-groups visiting by bus, and (while they may define the benefits they are seeking rather differently) there can

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be little difference in practice between a busload of Protestants going on a visit to HLE and a busload of Sikhs visiting the Golden Temple in Amritsar (Paine 2003, 143). We have seen that Evangelical pilgrims to Israel are said to prefer to visit the theme park Nazareth Village rather than the church. The church doesn’t meet their Bible-based (and Bible-illustration-based) expectations, while the theme park is designed to do exactly that. Pilgrims to the Holy Land usually only see the dead stones of ancient ruins. And yet, the geographical and cultural nuances of Jesus’ teaching are often crucial for understanding his full meaning. At Nazareth Village, visitors can experience how a first-century audience heard and was impacted by Jesus’ words. Gifted and knowledgeable guides take visitors through a living representation of the parables. Visitors step into life as it was in the time of Jesus and learn from his parables in the context in which they were created.2

Religion parks, as we have seen already, vary in the intensity of their commitment and in how hard they feel it appropriate to push their faith. The Museum of the Bible in Washington DC is a museum very much at the theme park end of the spectrum. In 2011 its mission statement was ‘to bring to life the living Word of God, to tell its compelling story of preservation, and to inspire confidence in the absolute authority and reliability of the Bible’. By 2017 its mission statement had become ‘to invite all people to engage with the Bible’, and the emphasis was on the Bible as a book, trying to engage with its history, its stories and its impact. When I visited shortly before its opening in 2017 I was assured that it doesn’t promote any one religion or doctrine, but that every faith community is given its own voice; as then CEO Tony Zeiss put it, they “’hope for harmony, like a choir’. Many small religious communities – many communities of every sort – feel an incentive to present themselves through some sort of museum or other visitor attraction; some are aimed more at outsiders, others more at members of the community. Of those aimed at outsiders, even quite modest initiatives can begin to feel like theme parks. Lancaster County in Pennsylvania attracted eight million visitors in 2013, many drawn by the presence there of the Amish community, whose premodern life-style ruled by their religious faith and dominated by their religious practice fascinates many mainstream Americans. To cater for this interest a number of visitor attractions have opened, most offering minibus tours of the Amish districts, as well as visits to a traditional farmhouse and

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farm, one-room schoolhouse, craft workshops, buggy rides and the opportunity to interact with Amish people. The Amish Experience at Plain and Fancy Farm also offers an AV experience: Witness young Jacob’s struggle in choosing the Amish church, or leaving behind family and community for the allure of the modern world. Experience the horrendous religious persecution of their forefathers and take part in the perilous voyage to America, all magically heightened by wind, rain, smoke, fire and other Disney-like effects that thrill the senses.3

As we have seen, richer faith communities promote their wares through very many more, and more elaborate, ‘Disney-like effects’ than those of the modest Amish. Their motives, though, are much the same.

To make money Theme parks are normally there to make money; even religion parks are sometimes set up purely or largely for reasons of profit. It is surely no coincidence that Shūkyō Lando (Religion Land, also known as Housyuyama Daikannon temple) is close to the ancient and still popular Sakakibara Spa near Tsu in Japan; Maria Rodriguez del Alisal (2007, 77) reports that many visitors are elderly people on their way back from a stay at the spa. Visitors are welcomed by a group of the famous Japanese waving cats, who bring good luck in commerce. The principal attractions of the small park, though, are a fountain dedicated to Kannon (the Japanese name for Guan Yin) with waters said to promote longevity, a mini-version of the eighty-eight Holy Places of the Shikoku henro pilgrimage, with soil from each site beneath glass covers, and a museum of reproductions of sculptures in the Louvre. The motive for including a ‘spiritual’ element in a park can be largely commercial. The Chinese-themed Ling Bao hotel at Phantasialand at Brühl, Germany, ‘has been completely built according to the principles of Feng Shui and is therefore the ideal spot to relax and recharge your batteries’.4 Sometimes even whole ‘religion parks’ can be merely extra attractions set up to grab the passing pilgrim dollar. Aparecida do Norte, near San Paulo in Brazil, is one of the biggest pilgrimage centres in South America; Our Lady of Aparecida, Brazil’s patron saint, attracts twelve million pilgrims a year to her enormous basilica.5 The church authorities welcomed the setting up of a

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commercial amusement park in 1998, backed by the Park Inn group of Italy and the Banco do Brasil pension fund. The basilica administrator is quoted as saying ‘The Church is not part of it whatsoever. But we consider it one more cultural and entertainment option for pilgrims.’6 On the strength of this, apparently, Magic Park Aparecida was described as a ‘religious theme park’, though the only religious element is a nativity scene with eighty-four life-sized animatronic figures. Nor, at least in its early days, did the park attract many pilgrims; visitors were principally schoolchildren and locals.7 A little-recognized motive for presenting religion in theme parks is dissected by David Crockett and Lenita Davis in a paper in Consumption Markets and Culture (2016). They argue that commercial companies, and ‘the market’ collectively, use religion parks to promote myths that effectively launder their commercial imperatives. Using the example of HLE, they see religion parks as overcoming the innate hostility of the religious Right to consumer culture by using three of its ideological themes as commercial ‘myths’. ‘Commercial myths at the park help evangelical Christians manage extant ideological tensions between their consumer selves and their religious selves’ (2016, 211). The three myths are redemption through violence and forgiveness, authentic connection to the sacred, and American exceptionalism (2016, 207). The first – redemption through violence – appears most dramatically in the Passion performance, where Jesus redeems the audience through the grotesque violence perpetrated on his body. The second – connection to the sacred – appears in the park’s claim to be holy ground, in such re-enactments as the regularly scheduled baptisms, and in the insisted-on links with the Holy Land. The third myth – American exceptionalism – refers to the belief that the United States is unique among nations, not least as ‘the exemplar of inerrant and unchanging Christian principles’. Crocket and Davis point particularly to a hyper-patriotic live musical show entitled ‘Celebrate America’, held daily and centred on a smalltown Fourth of July parade. Just as Disney’s parks celebrate and promote the ideology of consumerism, so HLE, they argue, promotes an anti-consumerist ideology. Whatever we may feel about Crocket and Davis’s analysis of these particular myths in this particular park, their argument is that religion parks are offering an ideology that is distinct from that offered by most theme parks, but is not in fact different in kind. It is still ‘commercial mythmaking’, the making of myths that negotiate between market and religious logics. Here the visitor is invited to escape, neither into the exotic past nor into the exotic Other, nor even into an exotic future, but rather into myth.

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Promoting tourism A frequent motive for the establishment of theme parks is the promotion of tourism, and religion is sometimes invoked to help. Throughout the world, when government or its agencies aren’t the ones actually establishing theme parks, they very frequently smooth their path through tax-breaks, helpful planning permissions or making land available. HLE and the Akshardhams are just two religion parks that benefitted from local government support. Though he didn’t set up a theme park exactly, the tourism promotion of the mayor of Hat Yai, near the Malaysian border in southern Thailand, is classic. Aware that Malaysian and Singapore Chinese had developed a considerable devotion to the Hindu god Brahma, he managed to acquire a copy of the famous image of Brahma at the Erawan shrine in Bangkok. This he installed in a municipal park on an auspicious hilltop near his town, with a statue of Guan Yin nearby to appeal to Thai tourists. The success of the strategy is reportedly shown by the large number of cement benches presented by individuals and companies seeking merit and good publicity (Askew 2008, 113). Pilgrimage, for most, is never a purely spiritual activity, pilgrims very often enjoy the break as much as they would a holiday; Chaucer’s pilgrims certainly did.8 Marc Askew (94) suggests that in East Asia this comes much more naturally; young men from Malaysia and Singapore on trips to southern Thailand happily combine shopping, eating and visiting prostitutes with seeking merit by venerating sacred sites. Another place they go is the shrine complex of Wat Khao Roop Chang close to the Malaysian border. Once a distant cave/mountain sanctuary inhabited by a Buddhist monk famous for his visions and his extreme asceticism, it has become a shrine/theme park with images of Chinese Mahayana deities, a Brahma image, Thai-style Buddha images and an immense replica of the great temple at Bodh Gaya. Askew suggests: One might view the Khao Roop Chang site as a ‘one-stop’ pilgrimage destination, containing evocative Buddhist images from everywhere, or as an ever-growing storehouse of religious objects, real or facsimile, the accumulation and production of which gains its supporters ever-growing merit. (109)

Promoting tourism can join with other motives. Folk Villages, of which Stausberg (2011, 146–52) gives a fine account, stretch ‘from museum-like settings (something like open-air museums) or theme-park-like displays with no actual inhabitants to villages where people are actually living in a zoo-like manner’. They often ‘make it a point to display practices and performances and works of art that we would classify as religious’. We shall discuss in Chapter 7 (and fail

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to answer) the key question: How authentic are the rituals in folk villages and culture parks?

Unavowed aims Beneath the more obvious motives for religion in theme parks, there often lie unrecognized aims and effects. Many religious theme parks promote a particular ideology and political stance, often unavowed – for example, neo-con politics and support for Israel in US Christian theme parks, Hindutva ideology in Hindu theme parks or nationalism in Chinese mythological parks. There has been a good deal of analysis of the political and social role of theme parks generally. Thus Mitrašinović (2006, 22) argues that ‘the theme park is presented as a collective fantasy of escape and entertainment, whereas at the same time it is being employed as an ideal vehicle of social control due to its ability to spatialize social relations and instrumentalize space through the arrangement of seemingly benevolent technical procedures’. Even where perhaps ‘social control’ is too strong a phrase, many culture parks, in depicting the past or the foreign, create a particular understanding by consciously or unconsciously cleaning them up and making them easily consumable by visitors. Often one can visit ‘foreign countries’ without actually having to meet any foreigners, and ‘can appropriate cultures and history without being faced with political, social, or ecological problems. Indeed, encounters and mutual understanding of culturally diverse peoples, life-worlds, and mental concepts are excluded to guarantee pleasure’ (Schlehe and Uike-Bormann 2010, 81). It is not always merely pleasure that is guaranteed in this way, but a particular understanding of the past or the foreign. Even the best open-air museums are sometimes mocked for the cleanliness of their streets and the good health of their demonstrators; Colonial Williamsburg only introduced their major programme foregrounding slavery in 1999. Of course, political rows over theme parks are not rare. A sister park of Shenzhen’s Splendid China opened in Orlando in 1993 but attracted strong opposition from Buddhist monks and political activists who argued that its depiction of the Potala Palace and ethnic minorities legitimated China’s occupation of Tibet (Lukas 2007, 273). The park closed in 2003. Much of that opposition, though, was political – nationalist or anticommunist. A more overtly religious rumpus (and that was mostly homophobia) was the campaign in the later 1990s to boycott Disney, a campaign known as

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‘Send a Message to Mickey’. The complaint was that since Walt Disney’s death in 1966, and particularly since Michael Eisner became the company’s CEO and chairman in 1984, the Disney Corporation had abandoned its traditional family values and allowed its products to become increasingly sexually explicit, and increasingly gay-friendly. The Southern Baptist Convention was joined in the campaign by some thirty-five other US conservative-religious organizations, including Catholic, Jewish and Muslim bodies. The campaign was fronted by Richard Land, named a few years later by Time magazine as one of the ‘25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America’; his booklet advocating boycott suggested: It’s regrettable that ‘wholesomeness’ is not a word that describes The Disney Company in the 1990s. It is no longer a friend of Judeo-Christian values or of children. It is now a captive of anti-Christian philosophies and homosexual activism, and it has become the most aggressive media conglomerate working to normalize deviant sexual behaviour. (Land and York 1998, 9)

Though the booklet is primarily concerned with Disney films, in a reference to Gay Days at Disney parks, he adds: Unsuspecting parents who have travelled hundreds of miles either to Walt Disney World in Florida or to Disneyland in California have been shocked to see tens of thousands of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transvestites flaunting their sexual orientation in front of straight parents and their children. (Land and York 1998, 15)

The campaign fitted neatly into the belief common among American Evangelicals and fundamentalists generally that America was founded as a Christian nation, which is what made it prosperous and free, but that today its Christian values are under assault (Smith 1998, 136). The boycott seems to have had little effect though, and quietly faded away (Pinsky 2004, 259).9 The impact of evangelical Protestant belief on theme parks is even more striking at HLE. While its evangelical Protestant message is obvious to every visitor, indeed proudly promoted, Timothy Beal draws attention to the particular version of this faith that escapes many visitors, but which was key to the original founding of the park. ‘Beneath the explicit aim of giving guests a glimpse of life during biblical times is a far more zealous ideological interest in promoting a very specific biblical theology of the end times, one in which knowledge of Israelite ritual practices, especially those associated with the Jerusalem Temple, is foundational’ (Beal 2005, 63). There is in American Evangelical Protestantism an intense controversy over how exactly the world is going to end. The park’s founder, the Rev. Marvin Rosenthal, was a believer in ‘prewrath’, the idea that

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‘the Rapture’, in which believing Christians will be taken up bodily into heaven, will happen during the ‘tribulation’ inflicted by the Antichrist, but before the ‘divine wrath’ or Last Judgement. In the final days, Jerusalem will be restored to the Jews, the Temple will be rebuilt and its ancient sacrifices revived. So, Christians need to understand about these Jewish practices ‘because they will be restored and will play a part in the end times, the fulfillment of God’s salvation history’ (67). Timothy Beal points out, however, that few even among evangelical Christians take much interest in all this speculation, and that even in the park’s early years it passed most visitors to HLE by. Anyway, Marvin Rosenthal was forced out by the board of directors in 2005, and two years later the park was acquired by Paul and Jan Crouch’s Trinity Broadcasting Network, a major if controversial Christian cable network in the United States (Flora 2007).10 Yet much of the park’s founding ideology does survive. Most striking perhaps is the enormous emphasis on Judaism, which for many visitors subtly elides with support for the modern-day state of Israel, and even for the policies of its current regime. Despite the park’s title, neither Palestine nor Islam appear anywhere, unless one counts the Ottoman street architecture; even park attendants who claim to be Arab Christians greet visitors with a Hebrew ‘shalom’.11 Marvin Rosenthal was quite explicit about his violent hostility to Islam (and to the Arab world), and one of the aims of the original HLE, it has been suggested, was to encourage American opposition to any moves towards peace in the Middle East (LukensBull and Fafard, 2007). HLE is not the only Christian theme park in the United States that deliberately encourages popular support for Israel; ironically, given its virulent anti-Jewish origins (Chapter 10) the Great Passion Play Theme Park received in November 2015 the gift of a bomb shelter from Israel, through the good offices of ‘Earl Cox, a dear friend and colleague of mine, who serves as Benjamin Netanyahu’s ambassador to the evangelical Christian world’. The park’s CEO Randall Christy continued ‘We are excited to display these shelters for the public to see how southern Israeli families cope with the daily bombings in towns north of Gaza City. It’s hard to imagine how they must suffer each day in fear of being hit and in fear for their children’ (Cook 2015). Today, Evangelical museums and attractions seem to have entirely moved on from the anti-Semitism of a couple of generations ago. Indeed, the Creation Museum does its best to associate antiSemitism with the enemy, evolution (Trollinger and Trollinger 2016, 47), while the Israeli ambassador spoke at the opening of Washington’s Bible Museum. Today, Evangelical visitor-attractions in the United States tend to link their faith

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with support for Zionism, and often even for support for the current regime in Israel.12 It is difficult for a proselytizing organization, whatever its basic theology and politics, to distance itself from militant co-religionists; not all even try. We have seen (Chapter 2) how the Akshardham religion parks subtly elide Swaminarayan Hinduism with a Brahmin and Hindutva world view. This can be as crude as the message offered by Akshardham New Delhi’s sculpture groups of great Indians and boat ride, which both equate ‘Indian’ with Hindu – and upper-caste Hindu at that – referring to Muslims and Christians alike as foreign invaders. As far back as the opening of Akshardham Gujarat, the group of celebrities13 invited to praise the new park included a number of leading Hindu nationalists – even though the State which had given the land was Congress-controlled.14 Happily, the darker, violent, side of religion seldom appears in theme parks. When it occasionally does it is deeply bound up with politics and nationalism; Lebanon’s Mleeta (Chapter 6) is an excellent if singular example. Istanbul’s Vialand theme park has an impressive and dramatic dark boat ride – ‘Fatih’s Dream’ – in which an animatronic Sultan Fatih directs the 1456 breaking of the walls of Constantinople. Here, though, it’s the national story that is to the fore, just as it is in another Istanbul theme park, Miniatürk, where the Panoramic Victory Museum comprises diorama models of the War of Independence, and Atatürk gets a massive billing. It is, though, scarcely surprising that parks with aggressively religious or political messages prompt reaction; happily, there are few violent attacks on theme parks, though we have seen the Pakistani terrorist atrocity in Akshardham Gujarat in 2002. That was a terrorist outrage in the context of the Indo-Pak struggle over Kashmir, though it was also said to be in revenge for the earlier anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat,15 and the target was a high-profile Hindu site. Credo Mutwa is a Zulu sangoma (traditional healer), artist, playwright, storyteller, fantasist and (he says) eater of extra-terrestrials, whose claimed predictions of the coming of AIDS, 9/11 and other events attracted the support of New Age groups in the United States and elsewhere. In 1974 he created Kwakhaya Lendaba (the Place of Stories), the Credo Mutwa Cultural Village, in a public park in Soweto, South Africa. The village contained a variety of sculptures weaving together historical figures and mythological beings, in among dwellings from a variety of African building styles. The aim of the village was to promote ‘return’ to traditional African values, which in turn led Credo Mutwa to be perceived as a supporter of separate racial development, or apartheid. During the Black Consciousness uprising of 1976 the village was burned down (Chidester 2005, 180).

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In China the intermittent struggle between Christians, Maoists, the wider public and the State occasionally breaks out in theme parks. At the beginning of 2017 the China Christian Daily announced the opening of the Xingsha Ecological Park in Changsha. This small park is dominated by a church whose roof sweeps up eighty metres as a ‘lighthouse’, with a viewing platform at the top.16 The news infuriated local Maoists, for Changsha was where Mao went to school and opened his first bookshop. ‘The whole church thing is as inconceivable as a visitor from outer space and is largely a cultural invasion’, said Guo Songmin, a prominent neo-Maoist scholar and commentator, demanding that the authorities replace the church’s cross with a red star.17 Just over a year earlier there opened in Wuhan a Communist Party theme park, built to celebrate the anniversary of the Red Army’s takeover of China. The park is reported to offer statues of thirty-five ‘model communists’, including Red Army veteran Liu Huaqing, an early party leader called Cai Hesen, and Li Siguang, a geologist and senior party member who studied at Birmingham University. ‘Using lively, populist art, the park shows the roles models and history of the party, exerting a subtle influence on the public and providing them with a “red benefit”’, promises a local government website quoted by the Guardian Online.18 The Guardian, however, also reports strong criticism on social media: ‘These kind of brainwashing projects are a complete waste of taxpayers’ money’; ‘They don’t believe in it themselves and yet they want the public to believe it.’ Sometimes the political message is a wide one. Europa-Park in southwest Germany was set up in 1975 by a company that manufactured trucks and funfair rides, but it offered ‘a fun opportunity to get to know the different countries of Europe’, and was intentionally founded close to the town that twenty-five years earlier had voted 95.6 per cent in favour of a united Europe.19 Sometimes the unavowed motives of parks are more local. Many temple parks in China, Taiwan and South East Asia unabashedly promote the interests of the monks. The story of Mulian often appears in such sculpture parks and hells, as it does in temple carvings, wall paintings, scrolls hung at festivals, popular religious book illustrations and, above all, in plays. This is a third-century story, imported from India, which helped reassure the Chinese that Buddhism would not undermine filial piety. It appears repeatedly in Chinese popular culture, notably as an opera performed at funerals and in the Ghost Month. Mulian, a virtuous monk, asks the Buddha to help him rescue his mother, who has been condemned to the lowest and most painful purgatory in karmic retribution for her sins. The

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Buddha explains that Mulian can do nothing alone but should offer food and gifts to monks and monasteries on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month.20 Even where the ideological motive of the park is overt, not all its political implications are always immediately apparent. To recognize the Hindutva message of the Akshardhams calls for close attention to the messages of the boat ride (Chapter 2) or the choice of Great Indians celebrated in the sculpture garden. The Creation Museum makes quite clear its condemnation of a modern American society characterized by gun-crime, abortion, euthanasia, atheism and belief in evolution. One doesn’t immediately notice, perhaps, the absence of the condemnation of poverty, intolerance and inequality, which one might possibly expect in a museum set up by followers of Jesus (Trollinger and Trollinger 2016, 158).21

Religion, patriotism and national unity A major motive for religion appearing in theme parks is as part of a campaign to promote multiculturalism, and through multiculturalism, social cohesion and national unity. We have seen (Chapter 1) how cultural parks often focus on the ‘Self ’, that is, they are themed on their own country or land, sometimes as it is, and sometimes as it is imagined once to have been. Governments in many countries promote such parks as a way of celebrating their cultural diversity, and thereby promoting multiculturalism and national unity. One might imagine that parks being so often in the business of selling nostalgia might mean that they are poor media for the promotion of multiculturalism, for the past is usually imagined as a culturally and ethnically cohesive and unitary society. On the contrary, a very common type of cultural park is one that celebrates the variety of cultures that are found in one polity. This is in essence a response to the potential for conflict in states with substantial ethnic minorities, especially those ex-colonial states that include a variety of different cultures, language groups and religions. Religion in theme parks can thus be a means of celebrating religious as well as wider cultural diversity, and of promoting social cohesion. A magnificent example of the ‘staging Self ’ cultural theme park that involves religion is the 145-hectare Taman Mini or TMII park in Indonesia, founded in 1970 by Siti Hartinah (1923–1996), wife of the dictator Suharto who had seized power two years earlier. The park’s aim was to promote national unity, but to celebrate the country’s ethnic and cultural diversity; it was to do so by reinforcing the authority of the ‘New Order’ established after the army had consolidated its

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power by massacring over half a million communists and others. Siti Hartinah was ‘inspired’ to build the park after a visit to Disneyland, and John Pemberton of Columbia University (1994, 241) suggests that her account in Indonesian ‘appeals to a sense of divine inspiration and blessed mission’. Despite the sensitivities, TMII happily includes religion as a key part of culture; at the park’s opening ceremony the Minister for Religious Affairs prayed ‘Dear God, our Lord, with the intention to build up our people’s and nation’s love for the Fatherland did we build this Beautiful Indonesia-in-Miniature Park’ (Pemberton 1994, 244). Sites around the central lake are devoted to Indonesia’s (now) thirtythree provinces, and, since 2000, also the Indonesian Chinese. Each offers replicas of traditional houses, displays of folk costume and culture, a pavilion for performance of dance, concerts and ceremonies, and often also a café for regional food and a souvenir shop for local crafts. The park also houses fourteen museums and many rides, gardens, pavilions, restaurants and other attractions. Notably, TMII has a mosque, a Buddhist temple, a Hindu temple, a Confucian temple (added in 2009), and Catholic and Protestant churches. In addition, it includes ‘Sasana Adirasa Pangeran Samber Nyawa’, an interfaith building in the Javanese style and named after a Javanese prince, which references Indonesian tradition and mysticism, and offers place for all sorts of religious events, most notably purification ceremonies. The replacement of Suharto’s nationalist ideology with a new ‘democratic’ one has resulted, in TMII, both in intense competition between the country’s regions – each attempting to promote itself through more houses and more impressive cultural displays – and in pressure on the regional governments to recognize minority cultures. The result is expansion of the park – which claims four million visitors a year – and much greater diversity (Schlehe and Uike-Bormann 2010, 78). Things are different in Malaysia. The Malaysian Taman Mini Malaysia park is much less ambitious than its Indonesian counterpart, and much less accommodating of religion. It comprises just thirteen reconstructed historic timber houses, each representative of a different part of the country, at some indeterminate period in the fairly recent past. The park was opened in 1986 by the prime minister. In Malaysia religion is a sensitive topic; Islam has revived strongly over the past generation, and the government has promoted it as strongly as it has promoted Malay rights and culture. Yet still only 61 per cent of the population professes Islam, and Malays (who are all legally defined as Muslims) comprise only half the population. It is perhaps unsurprising that religion is given so little prominence in this park – little more than the occasional Qur’an or piece of Islamic calligraphy in the houses. Other religions make no appearance.

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As Gerhard Hoffstaedter put it, ‘For the nation as a whole, the contradiction of presenting an ethnically diverse and vibrant society, whilst representing a homogeneous and Malay-centric self-image remains a dilemma’ (Hoffstaedter 2008, 148, 156). Céline Molter (2017) suggests that Tierra Santa faced up quite differently to a somewhat similar dilemma. Argentina in the 1990s had seen violent interreligious struggles; the park, she argues, aims to incorporate all the country’s religious minorities into Catholicism. Cultural theme parks ‘staging Self ’ are of course a gift to governments – they are easily used to promote policy. At the time of writing, a theme park is planned in the Crimea, still only recently annexed by Russia. According to Svetlana Josephovna Verba, Minister of Economic Development of the Republic of Crimea, ‘The idea of the park is based on getting acquainted with the history of the peninsula of Crimea, as an integral part of Russia.’ Though at present no religious aspect is promised, given the effectiveness with which the Russian government has enlisted the alliance of the Orthodox Church, it seems quite likely. The park promises ‘five periods of Crimean history, its present and prospects for its future development’.22 Russia has already offered perhaps the most remarkable example of theme parks set up by church and State to promote patriotism: the Russia My History parks. A partnership between the Patriarchal Council for Culture and the Foundation for Humanitarian Projects, with support from President Putin and funding from energy giant Gazprom, these are a chain of new multimedia exhibitions and theme parks in cities right across Russia. Their three themes are three periods of Russian history: Russia’s founding Rurik dynasty, the Romanov dynasty and the Soviet period. Throughout, they stress the need for unity and strong central government. Opening the Moscow park in 2015, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill is quoted as saying: ‘The national idea is deeply entrenched in a country’s history, understanding what heroes of the past believed in, what they were fighting for and why they sacrificed their lives’, he added. He said the historical goals and values of our ancestors shaped the national idea and no colorful images of the present could substitute the deep meaning people would be happy to die for. ‘A nation’s immortality lies in the continuity of generations’, Patriarch Kirill said, calling for ‘living, working, loving and defending what is dear to you’. He said he hoped the new exhibition would help Russians ‘embrace the ideals of older generations, the ideals that have survived to this day’.23

China has fifty-six ‘nationalities’, minzu. Anthropologist Charlene Makley (2010, 131) argues that designating Tibetans as one of these ethnic minorities

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Figure 6 President Putin and Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill, opening a November 2015 exhibition, part of the Russia My History programme of exhibitions and history parks. (Photo: Office of President of Russia, en.kremlin.ru. Labelled for reuse.)

served to liberate them from the control of the Buddhist hierarchy that had for centuries challenged and offered an alternative polity to the Chinese state, and gave them a new secular identity. So, when each of the fifty-six nationalities was allocated its space in the new Beijing Minzu Park in 1996, and was afforded its selected cultural icons, a language, a religion, and a festival (Makley 2010, 136), the aim was to create a new sense of identity, a new relationship between each citizen, his/her ‘nationality’ and the Chinese state. The Tibetans involved had to renegotiate their understanding of their beliefs and their traditions; this was a place not for pilgrimage and veneration, but for ‘tourist looking’. When her (genuine) monk guide showed Charlene Makley, in a replica monastery, a group of protective deity figures that neither of them would have been allowed to see in their native monastery, they both felt acute embarrassment. This new pattern of relationships was just one token in the government campaign, having just replaced communism with capitalism, to attract foreign capital investment. Most of the money for building the park came from two businessmen from Hong Kong and Taiwan, the rest from various government agencies. For communities where ethnicity, identity and religion play a complex dance, as in Tibet, cultural theme parks offer both opportunities and challenges.24 Another minority nationality is the ten million traditionally Muslim Hui, largely based in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in China’s northwest, some

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Figure 7 China Hui Culture Park in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China. (Photo: Sophie Paine.)

thousand kilometres west of Beijing. For the past ten years (though it’s still unfinished) they too have had their own theme park, the China Hui Culture Park in Yinchuan. This sixty-seven-hectare park is the centrepiece of a huge effort to turn Yinchuan into a tourist destination for wealthy Arabs, and to extend Chinese soft power into the Middle East. Islam is playing a key role in these campaigns, and investment in Yinchuan is clearly intended to present a picture of China’s care for its Muslim minorities; the town’s sixteenth-century Najiahu Mosque, turned into a ball-bearing factory in the Cultural Revolution, has been restored. The centrepieces of the Hui Culture Park itself are a large Hui history museum and a planned elaborate laser/water show performance. The Mogulstyle ‘Golden Palace’, though it looks like a mosque, is apparently not used as one (Haddad-Fonda 2016). Down on the Burmese border an almost opposite phenomenon is taking place: revived and distorted past practices are being presented in theme parks as ‘religious’, when originally they were no such thing. The Wa people, who straddle the China/Burma frontier, have long had a reputation as ferocious headhunters. Before the Chinese occupation in the 1950s they did indeed take heads, as part of inter-group warfare, in order both to humiliate enemies and to terrorize potential aggressors into their surprisingly prosperous territory. Severed heads were first kept in njouh, baskets on poles planted by the village drum-shrine; after a year the now-dry heads were removed to a nog, posts planted at the approach

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to the village. But in recent years local administrators and entrepreneurs have developed small theme-parks-cum-performance-fields which, besides staging the familiar ‘traditional’ dances, present replica njouh and a nog, imagined (as they were by outsiders in colonial days) as fertility sacrifices to the Wa gods. Finnish anthropologist Magnus Fiskesjö sees these parks as ‘brazenly inaccurate reconfiguration(s) of Wa traditional practices’ (2015, 397). Parks aimed at promoting national unity sometimes deny religious as well as ethnic diversity, but more often celebrate that diversity while denying any conflict. Thus, Mini Israel offers a sanitized Israel from which anything awkward is expunged: ‘We wanted to give expression to the diverse population of our country, from every community and faith, together with the buildings that serve them.’ … And while churches, synagogues and mosques are all represented, completely absent from the heritage discourse is evidence of erasure, dispossession, debate, and occupation, either in the past or the present. (Kersel and Rowan 2012, 207)

On the other hand, when Kersel and Rowan visited the park a few years ago, miniature Muslims at prayer in the model of the Haram as-Sherif had to be protected from stone-throwing visitors with a Perspex cover. Yet Mini Israel does not – as twenty years ago it might have done – emphasize the historical narrative advocated by Zionism and reinforced by nationalistic archaeology. Indeed, Israel’s biblical past scarcely appears (210; see also Feige 2017).25 Another way religious theme parks can link with multicultural parks is exemplified by the Polynesian Cultural Centre in Hawai’i. This was set up in 1962 by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons), on seventeen hectares of land they had owned since 1865 in a rural part of Hawai’i, near the Brigham Young University.26 The theme park had already reached one million visitors a year by 1968; much enlarged, it is today one of Hawai’i’s principal tourist attractions. As a character in David Lodge’s novel Paradise News put it: ‘It’s like a sort of Disneyland, I think. Well not Disneyland, exactly.’ In fact, the theme park’s aim is not directly to promote the Mormon faith – though indirectly it is certainly a missionary tool – but to preserve, value and interpret traditional Polynesian cultures.27 There are areas of the park devoted to Samoa, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Hawai’i, Fiji, the Marquesas, Tahiti, Tonga and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). There is a strong emphasis here on involving visitors in doing things, from Tongan drumming to Hawai’ian hula, with a daily programme of performances, from canoe processions to traditional feasts, and with a much-praised evening performance advertised as ‘Think Broadway – then

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add flaming knives’. Few of these events, though, are available with the cheapest admission ticket – which in 2015 cost $50 (the local minimum wage was $8.50 an hour). The version of ‘traditional’ Polynesian life presented is of course a very cleaned-up version, with no references to pre-Christian cannibalism, human sacrifice, infanticide or widow-strangling. Still, as Andrew Ross says: It would be easy to go on cataloguing all of the representational shortcomings and discrepancies of the park and bewailing the idealised version of traditional Polynesian culture swallowed by a million visitors a year. Critics of Disney theme parks have made a fine, if tedious, art of this kind of exposé. (1994, 52)

What is perhaps surprising in this park is the absence of overt Mormon missionizing. Although some thirty Mormon missionaries do a wide variety of jobs in the park (and 70 per cent of the 1,300 employees are students at the Mormon Brigham Young University-Hawaii), the only overt references to religion offered to visitors is a reconstruction of an 1851 missionary compound, with Mission Home, School House and Chapel; even here the emphasis is on the sale of local crafts, quilts and ukuleles. There is, though, a strong link (including a tram from the park centre) with both the Brigham Young University and the Laie Hawai’i Temple and Temple Visitors Center. The temple itself does not admit non-Mormons, but the Visitor Center attracts 100,000 visitors a year to ‘learn more about Jesus Christ and the purpose of temples’ and there admission is free.28 However, if the missionizing is not overt, religion is certainly very much there. Terry Webb, himself a Mormon, takes a much more positive view of the religious character of the park itself. While agreeing with Andrew Ross that the park is a heavily bowdlerized presentation of Polynesian cultures that often amounts almost to caricature, he argues that the park has a quasi-sacred content, and performs a function that is in many ways equivalent to that of the ceremonies within a Mormon temple itself. If the Polynesia presented in the park is very ordinary and every day, the religious character of the park can raise the commonplace to the sublime. Moreover it ‘engages the ancestralism of the Mormon temple and the plot of the Book of Mormon as a sacred text’ (Webb 1990, 84).

Staff and volunteer motives Terry Webb raises another aspect we should consider before leaving the question of the motives behind theme parks: What prompts their staff ? We have seen (Chapter 2) how religion parks like the Akshardhams rely largely

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on volunteers, particularly for their senior staff, and how they are motivated by their commitment to the Swaminarayan faith, and their loyalty to Pramukh Swami Maharaj. In HLE staff are paid, but many are inspired quite as much by their Christian faith as by the belief that they are called to urge that faith on others. James Bielo, in his ethnographic study of the imagineers responsible for the Ark Encounter notes that ‘I was frequently asked whether or not the artists themselves are creationists. Yes, they are … all Answers in Genesis employees and volunteers are required to affirm a “statement of faith,” which combines biblical fundamentalism, Religious Right culture wars, and young earth (2018b).’ At the Polynesian Cultural Center Webb emphasizes the impact of the religious character that underlies the park on its staff. The staff, or at least the Mormons among them, are in turn transformed; they understand that they are presenting not just the ‘uncomplicated, timeless rendition of Polynesia the tourists delight in’, but the story of their ancestors as described in the Book of Mormon (Webb 2001, 137). ‘In some ways, honoring the ancestors by recreating their customs and traditions at the Center is even more satisfying than performing temple ceremonies for them because the results of one’s efforts are more tangible.’ As one performer put it: ‘I could really feel the spirit of God with us today. … I felt as we were performing that I was actually back in the days of the ancient Maori.’ For its Mormon employees, the Center is a sacred space and time experience that returns them to a time of origins described in the Book of Mormon and the temple. The center also provides a similar type of setting for the tourists, who have a ‘sacred’ or at least a mythical rite of their own to perform as they, too, seek to be refreshed by glimpsing man’s time of origins. (Webb 1990, 236–7)

Just as Ross shows how their Mormon faith enabled park staff to rise above their national rivalries, Webb shows how it enables them to rise above the hostility and patronage of many park visitors and exploitation by the park’s management. Webb’s respondents still saw the park as ‘an extraordinary space with religious significance’ (2001, 140). In Chapter 6 we shall see how frequently theme parks are indeed seen as sacred spaces. Before that, though, we shall examine how religion links into the fundamental offer of every theme park: escape. *

*

*

The motives of theme park founders are varied. Most parks, of course, are first and foremost commercial enterprises, and it is partly because religion parks are

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set up primarily for ideological reasons that they are so interesting. But there is no hard and sharp distinction: we have seen in this chapter that park founders’ motives – overt or unavowed – may range from the promotion of their ideology or cause to the promotion of tourism, the promotion of nationalism and to the manipulation of the market. It is perhaps for their staff that there is a rather sharper choice of motives: devotion to the cause or just a job. The motive for setting up a theme park, though, is not the same as what they offer. In the next chapter we shall look at the main thing theme parks offer their visitors: escape to the exotic, and we shall examine how religion fits into this.

5

Religion and Escape to the Exotic

All theme parks offer escape. In cultural parks escape is to the exotic other: the exotic past or the exotic foreign, occasionally to the exotic future. Amusement parks offer escape into pure fantasy and fun. But religion appears in parks of all kinds, offering its own form of escape.

Religion in culture parks All theme parks offer visitors the opportunity to escape into another world. In the West it is principally into a sort of past that theme park visitors are invited to escape. We have seen how Disney created his magical realm between fantasy and nostalgia – a nostalgia both for an imagined simpler and worthier small-town America and for a perfect childhood of happiness and dreams. His imitators and followers largely followed his formula, sometimes veering towards fantasy, sometimes emphasizing the educational, and always drawing on the many sources of theme parks, from the funfair to the temple. One commentator, discussing American amusement parks in 1904, had remarked: ‘It is foolish to make people serious or to point a moral’ (quoted in Harris 1997, 22). Yet World’s Fairs had long combined serious purpose – even high culture – and fun, and as we have seen Disney and his successors worldwide increasingly sought to appeal to a burgeoning middle class still wanting fun, but no longer afraid of a degree of seriousness. While the great majority of the world’s theme parks are strictly – or fairly strictly – for amusement, a significant number are founded to educate, usually in as enjoyable a way as possible. The influence of World’s Fairs on Disney was direct and obvious. Not only had his father worked on the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, but Walt Disney himself had visited the 1933–34 Century of Progress Exposition

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in Chicago and the 1939–40 Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco when he opened Disneyland at Anaheim. Joseph Fowler, the head of construction for Disneyland, said ‘Every summer Walt would send me to Europe for ideas. Often he would come along. We’d go to World’s Fairs, Oktoberfests, gardens, amusements parks.’1 At the end of the 1930s, as war loomed, five of the world’s leading nations used ‘world’s fairs’ to boost their political ideologies, and the response that as nations they were making to modernity. Paris (1937), Düsseldorf (1937) and New York (1939) presented the world with the achievements and ambitions of liberal democracy and Nazism, while the never-realized fairs proposed for Tokyo (1940) and Rome (1942) planned to celebrate their countries’ fascist ideologies.2 None of these were religious in any major sense, but they were certainly ideological, and focused on the future in a quite new way (Kargon et al. 2015). So by no means are all theme parks major on rollercoasters and waterslides – many, particularly in Asia, focus on cultures. While in an amusement park one moves for a short time out of one’s daily life into an entirely fantasy world, in culture parks one again escapes into another world, but a world of nostalgia or of the exotic (Hoffstaedter 2008). Culture parks divide between those that present the local culture – very often a romantic and nostalgic version of local culture – and those that present foreign cultures – very often a sanitized and prettified version of foreign cultures. Schlehe and Uike-Bormann (2010) call this staging the Self and staging the Other. Culture parks seem particularly common in countries that are rapidly industrializing, and that is perhaps not surprising where people are disorientated by rapid urbanization and the loss of their traditions in the face of global commercial popular culture. A hundred and twenty-five years ago Artur Hazelius founded the world’s first open-air museum, Skansen in Stockholm, for precisely this reason. Hazelius noticed how Swedish folk culture, from vernacular architecture through embroidery, wood-carving and painting, to song, dance and storytelling, was eroding under the influence of industrialization, migration, agricultural change and other processes of modernity. Skansen was the inspiration for innumerable open-air folk museums throughout Europe and North America; the Polish word for an open-air museum is skansen. Today it is Asia that is fast industrializing, and one response is in many places a ‘Self-staging’ culture park – that is, a theme park that presents ‘traditional’ local culture to local people and to tourists. These parks range between the most frivolous, where ‘traditional’ culture is little more than a superficial decor on what is essentially an amusement park or big funfair (this is the Disney tradition)

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to educational parks that are quite as serious as Skansen in their determination to research, preserve and interpret the local place. A somewhat different incentive lies behind the culture parks that focus on staging the Other. They too are ubiquitous in Asia but are also found in many other parts of the world. These parks, too, range from the comparatively frivolous to the deeply serious. At this more educational end of the spectrum lie not only open-air museums, but zoos and botanical gardens. Into all these culture parks, no matter whether they stage the Self or stage the Other, no matter how serious or otherwise their educational ambitions, religion finds its way. That is often because religion offers a dramatic and colourful gateway into culture, and in every society religion is a fundamental part of traditional culture, and often a powerful feature of modern culture too. Culture parks have been criticized from many directions. Words associated with them include ‘heritage’, ‘tradition’, ‘culture’, ‘community’ and ‘authenticity’. None of these words have much meaning, certainly not in this context. They are too often found to refer to an unchanging but vague time in the past, usually one when people were poor but happy, and society rigid but culturally rich. Even the most scholarly culture parks and open-air museums struggle with these issues. The less conscientious – or perhaps just less well-endowed – concentrate on offering the public what they believe visitors want. There is a basic formula for presenting a community’s history in these parks: at least one ‘traditional’ house (rural, middle class, rebuilt or replicated); a ‘traditional’ dance performance (loosely based on one understanding of a local dance); ‘traditional’ costume (as elaborate and pretty as possible); and ‘traditional’ crafts (whatever will sell well and has at least some historic justification). Religion, sometimes as re-enactment of rituals, can appear as a fifth element, a fifth cliché. At PheZulu Safari Village, near Durban in South Africa, these elements allow visitors to savour: the taste and feel the rhythm of Africa. Visitors are taken into traditional beehive shaped thatched huts, where the various artifacts, beliefs and rituals are explained, giving foreigners an insight into the fascinating Zulu culture. The Zulu dancing show is impressive with the dancers in their traditional garb, showing off their skills with grace, agility and humour – a truly unforgettable experience! PheZulu also offers a Crocodile and Snake Park where knowledgeable guides will take our guests on a tour. PheZulu boasts one of the best Curio shops in Kwa-Zulu Natal as well as a Swazi Candle shop with beautifully sculptured hand made candles. The Boma Restaurant serves meals ranging from Traditional Zulu meals or Crocodile steaks to toasted sandwiches and burgers.3

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At PheZulu, as at other South African parks, visitors are introduced to a sangoma, a traditional diviner and healer, but the encounter is usually brief, and no more than a quick fortune-telling by the throwing of bones. Sabine Marschall (2003, 113) says that this is ‘catering for those Westerners who are fascinated by “witch doctors” and “black magic” in the “dark continent”’. Her phrasing is dismissive, but what is wrong with an interest in the ways other societies are organized, or in the ways other people express their spirituality? These too are aspects of ‘traditional culture’, ready to be bought by strangers as stereotyped commodities alongside the house, the dance, the costume and the craft – but possibly also able to spark a more profound and critical interest or empathy. Marschall might have preferred the way it is done (or was in 1991) at Shakaland. There too visitors are introduced to a (pretend) sangoma, but only after they have learned quite a lot about appropriate polite behaviour in a Zulu homestead, plus at least a few words of isiZulu. There the sangoma explains (in isiZulu, his words translated) the significance of various tools of his trade. Impepho (a burning herb) is passed around for the visitors to inhale, and as is common before a consultation, he rehearses the various steps in a diagnosis and discusses some of the possible remedies for common complaints (Hamilton 1998, 197). Beijing Ethnic Park 12,000 kilometres away is similarly trying to present to tourists at least some aspects of the culture of ‘national minorities’ and is similarly obliged to do so in a way that is entertaining and at least not violently violating of those visitors’ preconceptions and stereotypes. Another 6,000 kilometres further on, at the Sami capital of Karasjok, in the very north of Norway, Sápmi Park offers a multimedia show – Stálubákti (Mountain of the Spirits) – in which a noaidi, a shaman, tells a story of the Sami pre-Christian beliefs about the creation, life and death and how it is all connected. On the edges, too, of the theme park spectrum religion can appear as an aspect of culture. Some at least of the Native American casinos in the United States have additional attractions that present the tribe’s traditions, and some of these include their spiritual aspects.

Escape into the past Religion very often comes into theme parks on the coat-tails of culture; religion is most commonly found in culture parks, where it is presented as just one part of the park’s theme. Culture parks are true theme parks, their themes offering a temporary holiday from the present in the (cleaned-up and safe)

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exotic. Just as amusement parks offers an escape into fantasy, so culture parks offer escape to the exotic, often the exotic past, sometimes the exotic foreign Other, occasionally the exotic future. Culture parks do, though, sit at the more serious end of the theme park spectrum, at their most educational and worthy becoming indistinguishable from open-air museums. In Japan, where the love of exhibitions runs back at least until the mid-nineteenth century, tēma pāku, culture parks scarcely distinguished from open-air museums, are quite as popular and as common as yūenchi, amusement parks (Hendry 2000, 44). Period theme parks include those featuring the Edo (1603–1867), Meiji (1868– 1912), Taisho (1912–1926) and Showa (1926–1989) eras. Edo Wonderland includes a Jigoku temple, treated as a hell-house; Meiji-mura open-air museum (Chapter 7) includes three churches and a cathedral; Nihon Taisho Mura has a temple. The founders of Thailand’s Ancient City (Muang Boran, or Ancient Siam), Lek and Braphai Wiriyaphan,4 give on the park’s website a classic explanation of the purpose behind self-Staging cultural parks that focus on local culture: Thai culture, together with ancient Thai lives, flourished in the past. Should we be able to preserve it with wisdom and thorough understanding, our today and tomorrow would be embraced with enduringly precious meanings. The question is ‘How has such glorious culture been in decline?’ Is it because of our ignorance or is there any other reason of more significance behind this? After due consideration, it’s seen that the gloomily declined Thai culture is caused by the fact that no one has properly disseminated the pinnacle essence of Thai culture to the general public in a simple way so they can easily understand and adapt it to their contemporary conditions and lifestyle. Consequently, when most people are not given any chance to access and understand their own country’s cultural heritage, how can they appreciate and be proud of it? Being aware of this, we should set out now. Therefore, we, with a mission on Thai culture, should make every effort to advocate all activities in this field.

Ancient City must be one of the most ‘religious’ of culture parks. On a eighty hectare site an hour southeast of Bangkok are 116 extraordinarily high-quality replicas5 of Thailand’s ancient monuments, including reconstructions of longlost buildings like the great Khmer temple at Phimai, plus many statues of gods and heroes, gardens, shrines and so on, as well as employees playing the role of Thai peasants and traders. As anyone who knows Thailand’s famous monuments would expect, a very high proportion of all these attractions are ‘religious’. Besides, the Floating Market includes among its timber shops a mosque, a church,

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a Chinese shrine, as well as spirit shrines. The temples are fully equipped, though there are no monks to serve them, and it’s true the park’s emphasis is on historic architecture (Anon 2004). However, for some observers the park is quite clearly using religion to promote support for the existing regime. Lawrence Chua (2014) suggests that, particularly through its sculpture gardens, it ‘invokes hierarchical understandings of the social order that are represented in the cosmologies of classical literature like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Traiphum Phra Ruang. In this social order, the monarchy is of divine origin and sits at the top of the world of men.’ Indeed, he suggests that the founding of the park by a couple who made their fortunes on the back of a state-promoted boom was a deliberate part of the campaign to ensure that ‘older land-based allegiances to village and region were transformed into a nationalist culture that posited the king as its center, returning to older cosmologies’ (83).

Escape abroad Culture parks that offer visitors the opportunity to visit foreign countries in miniature – ‘Staging the Other’ parks – seem to be particularly popular in East Asia. In 2000 Joy Hendry published a long description and discussion of culture parks in Japan, arguing that while parks themed on the Japanese past may be exercises in nostalgia, those themed on foreign countries, the gaikoku mura or foreign country villages, are postmodern in the ways they create simulacra of the ‘best bits’ of foreign countries, merge education and entertainment, and in the face of globalization stress local distinctiveness – but are still a distinctly Japanese phenomenon (Hendry 2000, 8, 17). Moreover, gaikoku mura enable Japanese people to enjoy the exoticism of foreign travel without the trouble and expense – and have flourished since the economic crisis. When Hendry did her tour in the mid-1990s there were parks themed on Canada, England, the Netherlands, Turkey, Russia, Switzerland, Denmark, and Germany. Some at least of these culture parks include places of worship and of religious significance. Sometimes these are obviously there to add local colour. Sometimes they are there because they illustrate the style of the themed country. The Parque España includes a replica of the castle in which was born St Francis Xavier, the sixteenth-century Jesuit missionary who first brought Christianity to Japan. This park then also offered an IMAX film show of the annual Romería de El Rocío, a procession to the Virgin of El Rocío in Andalusia. Sometimes, they offer the possibility of renting a venue for weddings, as did

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the now-closed Germany-themed park Glücks Königreich, which included St Catherine’s, a replica of a church apparently visited by the Brothers Grimm as children. Reoma World has a number of foreign-themed areas, which offer a Greek church, a ‘seventh-century Middle-Eastern mosque’, a twelfth/ thirteenth-century Khmer temple and a first-century bce Nepalese temple; ‘at a series of shrines on the first floor of the Bhutanese building it is possible to light incense and make offerings to various gods’ (34). Hendry says (88) she never saw anyone praying in churches, temples or shrines in gaikoku mura; but sometimes a real effort is made to explain and help the visitor to understand the religion of the themed country. Thus, she describes how in the Nepalese temple in Little World: Museum of Mankind at Inuyama, ‘a good deal of information could be acquired while sitting in a meditative cross-legged fashion listening to a recording’ (158). This park is very much at the ‘open-air museum’ end of the culture park spectrum, with a serious educational remit; it was founded after the success of Expo 1970 at Osaka as part of a government campaign to create a Japan more open to and understanding of foreigners (Graburn 2008, 218). Its 120 hectares contains thirty-three buildings from twenty-two countries plus five large exhibition halls. One of these is the Hall of Values which presents world religions in conventional museum showcases. Outside, many of the ‘countries’ have religious buildings, often well fitted out; Germany has a fine baroque church, Taiwan a shrine and Indonesia a temple. These are impressive and intriguing buildings, but the fact is that ‘Staging the Other’ parks in Japan only occasionally put any emphasis on introducing and explaining the religious practices and beliefs of the foreign countries they feature. In Indonesia people seem to use culture parks much more readily for religious purposes; as we saw in Chapter 4, visitors go to Taman Mini for interreligious ceremonies or to visit mosques or churches (Schlehe and UikeBormann 2010, 81).

Escape into mythology From the founding of Haw Par Villa at least, parks have invited their visitors to escape their present mundane lives into a world of mythology. At the time of writing two mythology parks are planned for opposite ends of Europe. A proposed Danish park, themed on Norse mythology, is named after Yggdrasil, ‘the tree of life that binds the nine worlds of men, giants, dwarves, elves, dragons, and the omnipotent gods Odin, Loki and Thor’. The park promises ‘robotic

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versions of the famous Norse gods’. Outside Athens, Mythos Park will celebrate ancient Greek mythology. ‘Visitors will be able to clamber inside a Trojan Horse, be scared by animatronic, multi-headed hydrae, and watch fireworks explode around the throne of Zeus. There will be water rides taking families past the ships of Jason and the Argonauts, and chutes whisking visitors alongside the city of Atlantis, with Poseidon and his trident rising from the deep.’ Peter Jones of Newcastle University said: ‘This is the way the Greeks regarded myth, as great, entertaining stories, which are both deeply serious and enormous fun. They remain absolutely compelling.’6 Mythology easily merges into religion; the division between the two is never very clear. For one person a great entertaining story can be just that, while for another it is also deeply serious. Yet mythology parks often treat religious practice, as distinct from religious stories, quite cavalierly. The Ancient Greece area of Terra Mítica park, near Benidorm in Spain, offers a reproduction of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, which also includes a reconstruction of Phidias’s cult statue, but makes no effort to suggest how the statue was treated nor even attempt to evoke the atmosphere of an ancient temple; indeed, like the temple at Europa-Park it merely serves as the entrance to a ride. Since such sites play a big part in public understanding of the ancient world, we should perhaps be concerned about this (Carlà and Freitag 2015). Terra Mítica also offers the remarkable ‘El laberinto’, a dark ride based, on the one hand, on shoot-’em-up video games, and, on the other, on a variety of Greek myths. Visitors divide into groups of six (the companions of Theseus) and travel in vehicles through a disorienting maze. Each vehicle has six laser guns, which the riders must use to shoot down twelve monsters in twelve different scenes. These are Hydras, Centaurs, the Nemean Lion, a dragon, Cerberus, Harpies, a spider, bandits, a Sphinx, pterodactyls, Andromeda, and finally the Minotaur himself. These figures are (Carlà and Freitag report) more recognizable from movies like Clash of the Titans than from Greek myth. Indeed, the ride’s basis in Greek myth is almost weaker than Disney’s basis, through the Grimms’ fairy tales, in ancient German myth. Attractions like this show how loose the distinction is between mythological parks and fantasy parks. Some parks, like Haw Par Villa itself, have invoked mythology in part out of a real desire to help people understand an ancient culture, sugaring the educational pill with a healthy dose of fun. At the other extreme, some have merely applied a light veneer of mythology on what is essentially a commercially driven amusement. Such, for example is the Thor’s Hammer dark ride at the Tusenfryd Theme Park near Oslo, Norway. Set at the time of the Norse gods, riders are sent on a mission to recover Thor’s hammer

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from the evil shape-shifter god Loki. Traveling through a forest, river, cave, castle and the battle of Ragnarok, riders encounter Loki as a wolf, a sea serpent and a dragon.

Escape into fantasy At the start of this book I determined not to attempt to define ‘religion.’ I do, though, need to justify the inclusion of themes that some may find surprising or amusing. Westerners confronted with the stories of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson, seldom think of their characters as ‘religious,’ though when confronted with equivalent characters from Chinese folklore they may happily describe them as gods or immortals. If we are, as Robert Orsi urges us, to ‘let the gods out of their assigned place, and [to] approach them through a matrix of presence’ (2016, 251), we have to admit every other supernatural presence, from ghosts, angels, demons and fairies, to relics, holy water and everything with personhood or agency. This must include sacred trees and holy wells, and perhaps gnomes, Cinderella and Rumpelstiltskin too. They are all what Orsi so usefully and tellingly calls ‘special beings’. Take Father Christmas. He is devoutly and devotedly believed to be ‘real’ by many millions of (admittedly mostly very young) people, just as a Catholic saint or a Hindu god may be. What is more he receives a very great deal of ‘relationality’, mainly in the form of letters through the post or hung up above the fireplace, but sometimes including offerings of whisky and cake. Moreover, like many a saint, god, or other holy object, he can sometimes be seen processing through admiring, if not adoring, crowds.7 In Western society at least, Father Christmas is perhaps the most prominent and most followed of all ‘special beings’. LaplandUK, a temporary Christmas park at Ascot in southern England, uses the marketing tag ‘Believe in the Magic’.8 Its message to its child audience is not merely ‘come to our attraction and make your parents pay £55–£130 to get in’, but ‘be good’, defined in the promotional video as saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, tidying your room, and eating up your meals. In other words, the Father Christmas theme is being used for two purposes: to turn a profit and to help in the socialization of children. Most theme parks in the West make more or less a special effort to attract Christmas visitors, often including a Grotto, where children meet ‘Father Christmas’, are exhorted to be good, and are given a present. (Their carers are often allowed to take photos too – another sort of relationality.) Sweden has a theme park named Santaworld, and Finland has

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two theme parks, Santa Park and Santa Claus Village. The last, at Rovaniemi in Finland, is of course most active at Christmas, when it receives up to three quarters of a million letters from children from all over the world (Pretes 1995).9 Fairy tales and nursery rhymes of Little Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks, Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill and so on have a similar moralizing purpose. How far is that purpose reproduced in theme park attractions, or are the traditional characters simply decorative – jolly and familiar tales whose only purpose now is entertainment? Theme park designer David Younger (2016, 51) points out that ‘before the debut of the theme park in 1955, Kiddie Lands dotted America, with a vast majority using fairy tales as their theme, constructing vignettes from their stories and undersized playhouses for the children to explore’. The classic theme park presentation of European folktales is at Efteling in the Netherlands, a theme park established in 1952, and thus one of the oldest of them all. There the Fairytale Forest offers twenty-five scenes; ten are from Brothers Grimm fairy tales, three from the seventeenth-century French collector Charles Perrault, and five from Hans Christian Andersen. In some cases, the tale is told by a recorded voice; in others a storybook is available to read. Most of the stories describe virtue (or beauty!) rewarded and vice punished, but the theme park presentation seems generally to add little to the stories themselves: they are simply illustrations, at best mnemonics. Thus, Snow White lies asleep in a glass case inside a cave, with seven animatronic dwarves around her; Little Red Riding Hood knocks on Granny’s door, while the wolf can be seen in bed inside; Rapunzel appears at the top of a tall tower, while the witch climbs up and down her six-metre-long hair; and the Seven Little Goats play a board game as the wolf stands at the door.10 Theme parks have responded very differently to twentieth-century fantasy stories. These are often steeped in religious themes and understandings – mainly Christian. Though Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings have (at the time of writing) yet to see a theme park incarnation, and C. S. Lewis’s Narnia is only a very modest park in Florida, Harry Potter and Star Wars have been taken up in a very big way by both Universal Studios and Disney. Universal Studios have opened The Wizarding World of Harry Potter attractions at four of their parks: in Hollywood, Osaka (Japan) and two in Orlando. As Danish scholar Laura Feldt (2016, 567) says of the stories: Fantasy-fiction series such as these both reflect and inform religious interests and religious fascination in contemporary society, and provide a site for explorations of religious ideas, meanings and attitudes to the religious and religion. … [Moreover] religious expressions, practices ideas and stories are here not clearly differentiated from humour, entertainment or commerce.

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Figure 8 Little Red Riding Hood at Efteling, Netherlands. (Photo: Jeroen Kransen, Wikimedia Commons; licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.)

So perhaps we may include one of Europe’s best known and most popular theme parks (1.85m visitors in 2015), Parc Asterix outside Paris. This is based on the Asterix comic books by René Goscinny, in which one of the principal characters is Getafix, the Druid priest of the indomitable Gallic village. Though there is a lot of swearing ‘by Toutatis’ (a Celtic god), and the plots of many of the books depend on Getafix’s magic powers, the magic is very simple in both the books and in the theme park.11 Quite different are the Harry Potter books and parks, where the magic plays a central role in the alternative universe that J. K. Rowling created. Indeed, (as Laura Feldt puts it, 554), ‘an invisible power reigns and operates from behind the scenes’. The books tell the story of the adolescent life of Harry Potter, orphaned son of magical parents, with very remarkable magic powers. His life is partly at home with his Muggle (non-magical) step-parents in suburban Privet Drive, but mostly at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where he increasingly excels. Most of each book comprises an entertaining description of school life – classes, friendships, rivalries, sports – where much of the humour comes from the addition of everyday magic to old-fashioned English boarding-school stories; but each also includes a much darker side. In each book, as Harry grows older, he is forced again to use his magic powers to confront the forces of evil. In each

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book those forces are overcome, yet in each they are described in greater detail, and the denouement is a battle between Harry and Lord Voldemort, the genius fallen angel who (like Star Wars’ Darth Vader, or indeed Judas Iscariot) has gone over to evil.12 While Harry is supported by his friends Ron and Hermione and by his mentor, headmaster Albus Dumbledore, Lord Voldemort is supported by the Dementors, soulless wraiths with the power to draw intelligence and happiness from human minds.13 Magic in the Harry Potter stories is on many levels. Ordinary everyday magic can be learnt. It enables students to fly, the caretaker Hagrid to keep a tame dragon or the Whomping Willow tree to attack intruders. But deep magic depends on innate powers (Feldt 2016, 566). Central to the stories is the belief that love can overcome evil. Key to Harry’s development as a wizard is his learning how his Muggle-born mother Lily, at the moment of her death at Lord Voldemort’s hands, saved her baby son by the power of her love. Love, in other words, alone conquers evil. The stories are thus not merely morality tales but use the theme of magic to create a whole universe that partly mirrors and repeatedly interacts with the universe we know. The books create, in fact, a religion. But how far is this reflected in the series’ theme park incarnations? The major feature of the attractions (and one of the most technologically sophisticated of all recent theme park rides) is ‘Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey’.14 Various encounters in Hogwarts School’s ‘Defense Against the Dark Arts’ classroom precede the ride itself, which involves a series of adventures drawn from the books and films, introduced by the leading characters of the book. Your ‘enchanted bench’ takes you flying through the castle and out into the countryside, where you are chased by a dragon, almost eaten by giant spiders, almost whomped by the Whomping Willow, and find yourself in the middle of a Quidditch game. The denouement of the ride is an attack by the Dementors, when the Dark Mark of Lord Voldemort appears in the sky. One locks you in its kiss, at which point you ‘literally’ see your own soul being ripped from you as your own face materializes in the fog. Happily, Harry Potter appears and, driving away the Dementors with the curse ‘Expecto Patronum’, leads you back into the castle where the whole school welcomes you to safety. The ride, and the park itself, will undoubtedly recall and reinforce readers’ experience of the books, and perhaps to a lesser extent the films, but whether a visitor who has read or seen neither would gain from the theme parks any appreciation of the profoundly religious nature of the stories is, to be honest, not clear.

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The only fantasy media that have given rise to a movement that has formally described itself as a ‘religion’ are the Star Wars films.15 The Jedi Order, in the films, is an ancient monastic order dedicated to knowledge, charity and virtue; their training in meditation and martial arts recalls some Eastern religions (Cusack 2010, 121). It has inspired a contemporary movement, Jedism, based on this fictional religion; for some of its adherents it is a joke; for some a way of making a political point; for some a sincere commitment. In the UK’s 2011 census Jedism was revealed as the country’s eighth biggest religion. When Disney opens its two planned Star Wars attractions, in California’s Disneyland and in Florida’s Disney World, it will be fascinating to see what relationship develops between park and religion.

Religion and frivolity Religion is a part of life, in much of Asia and the United States, especially a normal part of everyday life. It is not surprising to find religion appearing in theme parks with any sort of ‘cultural’ pretension, but it is also found in parks which at first sight are simply commercial amusement parks. Thus every year, the first Friday and Saturday of September are reserved for Christian rock events in Orlando Theme Parks. Night of Joy at the Magic Kingdom and Rock The Universe at Universal Studios Florida both book the top contemporary acts in Christian music to the delight of thousands of believers who load up church busses all around the country and make the trek down to the theme park capital of the world just for these events.16

In the United States a surprising number of ordinary amusement parks profess a faith. According to Johnny Blevins, CEO of Splash Kingdom Family Waterpark in Texas, ‘Our goal is to glorify God while providing a fun, safe recreational area for families.’ Apart from a few signs around the park, though, this commitment isn’t exactly overt, though they are said to impose a fairly strict dress code.17 This is typical of most such parks, though a few, like Canada’s Wonderland at Vaughan, Ontario, offer a small multifaith space, clearly intended for Muslims. In other amusement parks the appearance of ‘religion’ is at once a great deal more superficial, and more dangerous. Too often religious symbols and ideas are used without thought, to add a hint of exoticism to the park’s theme. Merlin’s Chessington World of Adventures, an amusement park and zoo south of London, has a large and rather distorted Buddha statue in its ‘Mystic East’

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area (originally sponsored by Singapore Airlines), basically a big wheel and a waterslide called ‘Dragon River’. In the zoo is the ‘Temple Restaurant and Bar, a unique and interactive dining experience [sic] set in the heart of a mystical ancient temple, where a fountain that was once the life force of the jungle is protected by the wildlife that call it home’.18 This whole question is often the subject of online discussion by theme park aficionados. Thus, one blogger would like to see Chessington’s ‘Dragon River’ area ‘shift more towards the mystic dragon theme, rather than any new construction be a replica of the real world. In my opinion, theme parks are for escape, and exaggerate reality, not painstakingly replicate it!’ Another replies: ‘I would say it is more “influenced by” real-world cultures, with a definite theme park spin. The real world can be amazing, Chessington was a smaller-scale attempt at bringing some of that cultural heritage to Britain.’19 But how far can innocent enjoyment of the fantastical go before it becomes Orientalizing, and the sub-rosa mockery of other cultures? Robert Niles, in a 2017 blog discussed this question: ‘The people whose culture is being represented, or even alluded to, should feel that it reflects and engages them – not that it mocks them.’20 Few of the posted comments seemed to agree, but perhaps when it is the culture of religion that is exaggerated for fun, the potential offence might seem more obvious. As Scott Lukas (2008, 37) points out ‘Amusement parks … focus on exciting rides, amusing attractions and varied entertainment, but they do not pay significant attention to an overarching theme’, so perhaps we should not worry too much about the ‘religion’ theme in such parks.21 It can appear there for the silliest reasons. A century ago Dreamland in Coney Island offered the Temptations of St Anthony: After the snickering audience had been relieved of their dimes and gathered in a small room, a curtain was withdrawn to reveal a large oil painting. In it, on the right was the good saint praying hard, while behind him and beyond his vision, was a lady barely draped in garments. The ticket seller disappeared behind the painting and began lecturing about the history and times of the saint. When the audience became restless, the panel on which the siren was depicted was removed and replaced by another. The brunette in the second painting was just as scantily clad as the blond before her in the first painting, even for the permissive standards of a summer resort. However, it made no difference to St. Anthony for he was painted to look the other way. (Stanton 1998)

Europa-Park in southwest Germany has a wooden rollercoaster – Wodan – themed on Norse mythology, while Alton Towers in the English Midlands, has at

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the time of writing just announced Wicker Man – its centrepiece is a seventeenmetre figure that bursts into flame as the rollercoaster train runs through it. The reference is to the (alleged) use of a burning wicker ‘man’ in Celtic pagan human sacrifice or more probably to the 1973 cult horror movie.22 As examples of ‘religion in theme parks’ we probably don’t need to take theming like this too seriously. *

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All theme parks offer their visitors escape. In amusement parks this can be purely into entertainment, but in culture parks it is most often into the past, the foreign or into myth. Escape varies from serious and educational diversion to the most frivolous enjoyment. Fantasy, though, is by no means always mere frivolity, and as an important part of present-day popular culture, deserves our serious attention; it often links closely with religion. In the next chapter we shall look at more obviously serious religious understandings and uses of theme parks as sacred places.

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Theme Parks as Sacred Places

All theme parks are places ‘set apart’ and fulfil some of the role of the sacred place. Some become sacred, too, from pre-existing holy places and from ‘religious’ features in the park; sometimes temple and theme park merge. Theme parks are seen by some as sacred places, a view that comes from two quite different directions. Some commentators use the term as a synonym for ‘special place’, or ‘place set apart’, and we shall examine this first idea briefly in this chapter. We shall look, too, at the second idea that some parks become ‘sacred places’ because they are sanctified by the religious activities that take place within them or because they contain such sacred things as consecrated idols or holy wells.

The place set apart There has been a tendency over the past generation to apply the term ‘sacred place’ to a variety of modern public spaces – memorials, the sites of disasters and atrocities and other loci of memory, but also gardens, heritage sites, museums and even landscapes, shopping malls and theme parks. The term ‘sacred place’ has been used of any place seen as set apart from the mundane, and ‘sacred’ has often been elided with ‘special’ (Paine 2016). Dean MacCannell, in a study which has been described as ‘one of the founding texts of Tourism Studies’ (Stausberg 2011,75), speaks of the transformation of any place, event or object into a tourism sight as ‘sight sacralization’ (MacCannell 1999). The notion that a much-visited place becomes at some stage a ‘tourist sight’ is very common, and it is generally felt, I suggest, that it thereby takes on a different nature. Clearly there is a parallel with sacralization, but to use that term seems confusing rather

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than illuminating. Miodrag Mitrašinović (2006, 13) puts theme parks together with cruise ships, all-inclusive tourist resorts, extra-large shopping malls, festival marketplaces and airports as ‘total landscapes’, where public spaces are privately owned, and where the citizen is reduced to a consumer. All theme parks are places set apart, religion parks perhaps especially so. Tammy Faye Bakker’s ‘happy, sunshiny place’ is reflected in the neatly mown lawns and spotlessly clean surroundings that so readily identify the Akshardham parks as middle-class or élite spaces, so different to the traditionally chaotic and often dirty religious spaces of India. Two features announce to the park visitor that he or she is coming to a special and separate place. The first is the gateway, and the second the surrounding wall or berm. Every park has a gateway, and that gateway is often a real barrier as well as a symbolic one; almost every park also has a surrounding wall. To enter HLE one must pass through electronic security checks; to enter the Akshardham parks one must also surrender all bags and cameras. Partly all this is an entirely sensible precaution in an age of terrorism, and partly it is an additional way of ensuring that visitors realize that they have entered space set apart. The surrounding wall also serves as security, often ensures that visitors pay up, but also marks the park off from the surrounding countryside both visually (you can’t see out) and psychologically. Once inside you are in another world. Disneyland in 1955 was built surrounded by an earthen berm (Newcomb 2008), very similar to the vallum around early Celtic monasteries. Their purpose was the same: to control access,1 and to create a psychological barrier. In Japan the enclosure is an en, ‘with aspirations about the magic of the inside (en-nai) and published stipulations about visitors’ appropriate behaviour’ (Hendry 2007, 86). Anthropologist Alexander Moore (1980) argued that a theme park is a ‘bounded ritual space’, its form borrowed from pilgrimage centres. Eric Mazur and Tara Koda go as far as to argue (in the words of their editors) that, ‘in the creation of a sense of a sacred space and sense of sacred time in its parks, and through the inculcation of signs, symbols, and lessons in its various media enterprises, Disney provides for its fans (young and old alike) much that would ordinarily have been provided by religions, traditionally understood’ (Mazur and McCarthy 2011, 10). They see in Disney’s parks the sort of sacred space described by religion historian Mircea Eliade, ‘an oasis in the vastness of profane space’, but also a time when both the visitor and America were young and more perfect (Mazur and Koda 2011, 312). Discussion of whether or how Disney parks are or correspond to ‘sacred places’, and whether or how visits to them are ‘pilgrimages’ goes back a long way;

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Hendry (2000, 88, 93) summarizes it, and draws attention too to comparisons between Disney parks and festivals, both offering a release from everyday life; in 2007 she discussed the ‘pilgrimage centre’ character of Japanese culture parks in some detail. But (as Hendry too concludes) how useful this discussion is, is not too clear. It is true though, that while Disney may not actually be a religion in any very useful sense, certainly the corporation meets – above all in its parks – many of the human needs traditionally provided for by religions. Graham Harvey included in his reader Ritual and Religious Belief (2005, 9) a paper on theme parks and education, suggesting that Disneyland could illustrate Victor Turner’s liminality and communitas. Religion parks attract the ‘sacred place’ tag even more readily. Nine years after Heritage USA opened and three months after Jim Bakker left in disgrace, two sociologists from the University of Illinois and the University of Utah visited the park and carried out a substantial study, including twenty interviews with visitors. They wanted to understand how worship and shopping, seemingly so opposed, could be brought together for joint consumption. ‘Can sacredness reside in retail as well as religion? Can sacredness be purchased? By contextualizing these questions with a framework of social forces and class struggle, and the resulting codification, we may better understand how consumption fits not only within religious systems, but within the larger culture as well’ (O’Guinn & Belk 1989, 228). Their approach involved considering whether Heritage Village USA (as it was then called) could be considered a ‘sacred place’, and visits to it pilgrimages in the sense used in the classic studies of pilgrimage by Victor Turner. The very name invoked, they felt, the civic religion of patriotism ‘characteristic of the New Right’ and an unalienated sacred community, the village. Like a classic sacred place, the park was separated from the mundane outside world; the visitor must drive through several miles of hardwood forest flanked by mown grass, flowers and a split rail fence. The shopping mall (‘Main Street Heritage’) had an ‘other world’ quality created by artificial blue light; ‘the employees smile, and everyone seems unusually happy. Utopian in appearance and feel, this is a retail environment that befits a pilgrimage site’. The shared Christian values of the great majority of shoppers created a ‘communitas’, a shared feeling of community supported by the mall’s high standard of maintenance. This feeling was reinforced by religious services, spontaneous prayer and ceremonial events – just as in an ‘ordinary’ sacred place. The very centrality of the mall rather than the church within the park could also be seen to reflect the axis mundi that Eliade saw as uniting earth and heaven. Above all, though, Heritage Village USA was designed to create the

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impression of a pretty, clean and welcoming Victorian village, where shopping itself was a nostalgic and ‘sacred’ experience – in the sense of an experience set apart from the quotidian in a place set apart from the mundane. O’Guinn and Belk, though, pointed out three objections to this identification of Heritage Village USA with a ‘sacred place’. First, the classic studies of sacred place showed that traditionally the commercial facilities and markets were not in the sacred place itself, but outside. Secondly, pilgrims traditionally came fasting, in penance and in poverty; by contrast, Heritage Village USA offered as high a level of luxury as possible, deliberately setting out to rival the comfort of secular resorts and malls. Thirdly, the ‘communitas’ was severely damaged during O’Guinn and Belk’s visit by rival demonstrations by the Pentecostalist backers of Jim Bakker and the fundamentalist but non-Pentecostal backers of Jerry Falwell, who had taken over as head of PTL. O’Guinn and Belk offer answers to two of their three concerns. The second concern – luxury instead of the traditional asceticism – they explain by the adherence of many visitors they interviewed to the prosperity gospel: wealth, comfort and success were the reward of true faith. Heritage Village ‘offers its largely lower middle-class patrons … a sense of luxury. Like those who lease automobiles or buy into timeshare condominiums to enjoy “leveraged lifestyles” that exceed what they could otherwise afford.’ The apparent breakdown of communitas they explained as sibling rivalry, two groups vying for limited benefits: ‘Jim Bakker and Jerry Falwell each represented a competing father figure that their followers wished to enshrine so that his blessings would flow to them.’ They conclude that, as religions have survived down the ages thanks to their ability to adapt and to reconcile even seemingly irreconcilable belief structures, so today ‘profane, worldly consumption’ is sacralized and absorbed into religion. ‘Most significantly, at Heritage Village the consumption of religious and secular offerings has been forged into a single ethos in which both are sacred rites’ (O'Guinn and Belk 1989). Such a fusion of religious and secular, traditional and modern, is common; it is often manifested in theme parks. In Thailand it is the custom for houses and businesses to erect small shrines to the spirit of the place, to whom offerings of food, incense or flowers are regularly made. There is a large spirit house to the left of the main gate of Pansuk Great Western, a cowboy-themed amusement park in Nakhon Ratchasina. On the top is as an image of Brahma (Phra Prom), but the broad base carries embossed heads of Native Americans, complete with feather headdresses (Cohen 2008, 214).

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Theme park in sacred landscape Nazareth Village at Nazareth in Israel is one of a very few religion parks sited in a pre-existing sacred place. It has the great advantage (as Feldman and Ron point out, 2015, 165) of being on the spot. Being able to say ‘we know the young Jesus lived here – perhaps touched this very stone’ is a powerful message which powerfully reinforces visitors’ Christian faith. But, as every theme park does, it is offering a fantasy – the Nazareth it is offering is not only nothing like its modernday big neighbour, but also (so archaeologists assure us2) nothing like the Nazareth Jesus knew either. But visitors are not looking for authenticity, they are looking for a place that meets their dreams; in the same way the new Vrindavan park being developed by the Hare Krishna movement at his birthplace will offer a site that meets the dreams of devotees of Krishna. But even in the Christian tradition it’s not only Israel/Palestine that has been considered ‘holy land’. Many other places have been and are thought holy because of some perceived innate quality or because of what happened there. As we have seen, the Ozark Hills in the American states of Missouri and Arkansas are often referred to as ‘the holy hills’; they contain at least two theme parks with a strong religious element, as well as many other specifically Christian attractions. One theme park which includes a pre-existing sacred place is the 13th Century Theme Park, 100 kilometres outside Ulaanbaatar the capital of Mongolia, which celebrates the great Mongol leader Genghiz Khan. Scattered across a large area of mountainous desert are six groups of gers, traditional Mongolian tents. Each camp has a specialism: the Watchtower camp, the Herders’ camp, the Education camp, the King’s camp, the Craftsmen’s camp and the Shamans’ camp. Sheltered in a gully, the Shamans’ camp comprises six gers from different Mongolian clan traditions, in which some visitors leave offerings. At the centre of the camp is a lightning-struck tree (seen in Mongolian Shamanism as particularly sacred), honoured with blue scarves and protected by 365 outward-pointing sharpened stakes. This is periodically the focus of various shamanic rituals. If all this seems forced, it is worth recalling Michael Stausberg’s (2011, 163) reminder that ‘tourists do not meet an unbroken chain of tradition, but a religious culture that is concurrently being renegotiated and redefined … and that tourism may well be a factor in that process’. Another park that includes old sacred places is Suối Tiên Theme Park outside Saigon, Vietnam (see Chapter 2). A surprising number of this park’s religious attractions were already sacred places before the area was developed as a theme park. Local people had created a simple

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Figure 9 The Hùng Kings temple at Suối Tiên (Fairy Stream) Theme Park, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. (Photo: Crispin Paine.)

temple to the spirit of the soil when the area was still a neglected woodland; his role is to maintain the land, encourage good crops and protect local people from evil spirits. The park authorities have rebuilt his temple. The Fairy Well was a local freshwater spring, regarded as a holy well by local people; it has been channelled into a large jar shaped like that traditionally carried by Guan Yin, from which she pours blessing. The Fairy Well is still venerated within the park as a source of healing. At another basic local temple rebuilt by the park authorities, mysterious mounds have, over many years, spontaneously grown from the ground.

Temples and theme parks merge In the Hindu and Buddhist worlds people visit temples as much for social reasons as for spiritual. Temples have always felt a need to offer a variety of features to attract and entertain visitors, for all that their main motive may be to seek the support and help of the god or the Buddha. Twenty-five years ago,

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Nelson Graburn published a paper, ‘To Pray, Pay and Play’, showing how in Japan ‘pilgrimage-like’ behaviour and ‘tourist-like’ behaviour were equally part of leisure trips (Graburn 1983, 11). In modern-day Japan 80 per cent of people claim to have no religious belief, yet still the great temples are crowded. A study of eighty-six Kyoto University students in 2009 found that every one of them described themselves as ‘non-religious’, yet eighty-four of them visited temples and shrines on various occasions during the year, including celebrations and cherry-blossom viewings. They gave three main reasons for these visits: tradition, having fun with one’s friends and ‘it’s what Japanese people do’ (Kolata 2015). It’s been ‘what Japanese people do’ for a long time. One very popular form of temple/sacred space that merges into theme park is the giant Buddha. Giant Buddha images (daibatsu) had a surge in popularity in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly after the Second World War when reinforced concrete became easily available. One earlier example was the twenty-fourmetre Beppu Daibatsu, built in 1928 near Usuki by a rich businessman and as the focus of a large international exhibition; it lasted until 1965. Following the example of statues at Osaka, he incorporated in the concrete the hair and ashes of many thousands of dead people. Visitors followed a spiral staircase that wound up inside the statue to its head, visiting ‘an astonishing assemblage of popular Buddhist images, including the bodhisattva Jizō; Emma, the king of hell; a mini-pilgrimage around the thirty-three Saikoku Kannon and eightyeight Shikoku circuits, both on the second floor; and six gates on the third level with various buddhas and other deities beyond them’ (Graham 2007, 229). Some of these daibatsu are really theme parks in themselves, and stand in the Japanese tradition of misemono, delightful spectacles.3 The largest Buddha figure in Thailand is at Wat Muang in Ang Thong province. Ninety-five metres tall, it was created between 1991 and 2007 at a reputed cost of $3.3m by the abbot of the temple, Phra Arjarn Kasem. The Buddha figure was, though, by no means his only addition to his temple: besides a normal (for Thailand!) hell, there is a Thai heaven, a Chinese heaven, huge lotus-sculptures, a golden temple and a silver temple, a temple to Guan Yin, and figures representing a local battle between Thais and Burmese. In the base of the Buddha figure, a museum exhibits sacred objects, antiques, ‘figures of renowned monks from all over the country’ and the largest silver Buddha image in Thailand.4 In India the religious context is very different to Japan’s, but the effect is curiously the same. In the 2011 census the number of people declaring ‘no religion’ was 0.27 per cent (compared to 49 per cent in the UK and 80 per cent

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Figure 10 Giant Buddha at Wat Muang, Bangkok, Thailand. (Photo: Justin McDaniel.)

in Japan); temples in India have seen a massive increase in visitor numbers. They have also seen a massive increase in wealth, partly because more prosperous devotees give more to temples, and partly because of India’s property boom. Take, for example, the temple of Somnath, on the beach beside the Arabian Sea in Gujarat. It was built, after India annexed the area during Partition, on the site of an ancient ruined temple and a mosque. Today it is one of the country’s principal Saivite temples; Prime Minister (and leader of the Hindu-nationalist BJP political party) Narendra Modi is a trustee. Between 2004 and 2008 its visitors increased from 100,000 to 500,000, and its revenue from $307,000 to $1.5 million. In just six years its land assets grew from $72 million to $251 million. Besides gold-plating the temple interior and significantly improving its infrastructure, Somnath Temple is using its massive new wealth to expand its visitor attractions: a daily evening Sound and Light show, interpretation centre, water-show, and plans to create a ‘divine India, a recreation of miniatures of every spiritual place in the country’ as well as exhibition galleries, a play-park, sports zone and open-air theatre (Narain 2008; Parikh n.d). Most ambitious is the Golokdham Project, which will create a huge new pyramidal temple-cum-

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attraction for pilgrims to venerate the footprints of Siva, aided by a variety of hi-tech laser effects and animatronics, and including a shop, art gallery and AV auditorium.5 The aim is to improve the visitors’ experience, but also to encourage them to remain longer. Things are the same in many of the 30,000-plus monasteries in Thailand. ‘Buddhist monasteries are as much tourist sites to Thai Buddhists as they are to foreign non-Buddhists. While a Thai Buddhist will participate in some ritual activity at these monasteries on their tours, they are also tourists, enjoying group meals, listening to music, and joking around.’6 Take Wat Mahabut, a monastery in suburban Bangkok. It has eight major shrines, and ‘if you add the number of astrologers and fortune tellers’ tables, the number rises to three dozen places where a devotee can visit either for merit, consultation, protection, or the secrets to picking winning lottery numbers’ (McDaniel 2011, 251). They include shrines to the Buddha, of course, but also to Brahmanic gods, to ghosts, to dead monks, to Guan Yin, and to a mother and her unborn baby, who died while her husband was away at war and who now haunts the place. Many receive offerings from their devotees, who support hundreds of local people: ‘Food vendors, carnival ride operators, astrologers, the renters of sound equipment … local shopkeepers, souvenir makers, candle and incense companies and vendors, florists, motel owners, taxi drivers, dance and entertainment troupes and the like’ (McDaniel 2011, 263). There is thus no very great divide between the temple and the religion park; it depends what one wants to claim. As Christine Brosius put it (2012, 453): The cultural complexes reach beyond what can be experienced in temples: they are a site of national pride and glamour, a pilgrimage site for devotees, for national citizens and consumers as well as for international tourists. The borders between religious, cultural and national pilgrimage, between shopping mall or hotel lounge, theme park and temple are consciously and constantly blurred, challenging us to revise our concept of religious ‘authenticity’ and secular public spheres.

As temples and entertainment complexes – or religion parks – converge, though, compromises are necessary. For long the Akshardhams were not called temples because they didn’t offer the full range of traditional daily and seasonal rites; at some point this distinction was abandoned (Singh 2010, 57; Shantipriyadas 2000, 123). Originally Akshardham New Delhi was called a ‘cultural complex’ (Brosius 2012, 452), and when later the Guinness Book of Records claimed it as India’s largest temple, this was disputed by the Meenakshi temple in Madurai,

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which argued that since a temple is a place of worship, exhibitions and other facilities shouldn’t be counted.7 Swaminarayan sadhus say that Akshardham extended the concept of ‘darshan’ – the beneficial exchange of gaze between god-image and devotee – to pradarshan, the viewing of an improving exhibition (Williams 2001, 178). The exhibition takes on a significant role of the temple. In India at least, religious organizations are founding attractions that elide temple and religion park completely; it is hard to say now whether Akshardham is a theme park containing a big temple or a temple complex with theme park features. Sometimes it is popular demand that shifts the focus of a park, and the balance between religion and fun is never an easy one to get right. Lek Wiriyaphan, founder of Ancient City/Muang Boran (Chapter 5) and Erawan, also founded near Pattaya in Thailand the Sanctuary of Truth (Prasat Sacchatham), a vast temple built of very high-grade teak, and covered with statues. Ironically perhaps, since Lek made his fortune originally from a Mercedes-Benz dealership, the temple’s ambition is to persuade visitors to eschew materialistic values and to ‘ponder the great questions of heaven and earth and yet live for humanity, to study and teach the sublime knowledge of scholars of the past, and to create eternal Peace for all mankind’. Many natural areas have been degraded, and men have drifted away from their old values in such a way that morality and spiritual contentment have become irrelevant to many people. Their attempts to control nature have transformed many people into egotistical individuals who are out to destroy one another through incessant wars and economic plundering. Most are after only happiness in this life, and believing that there is no life after this. This sanctuary of truth was conceived out of the vision that human civilization has been achieved and nurtured by religious and philosophical truth. This sanctuary was created not from hubris but from goodness drawn from religion, philosophy and art.8

However, the site is on the outskirts of the great international tourist resort of Pattaya, and McDaniel (2017, 97) reports that it increasingly caters for materialistic visitors, who can go pony and elephant riding, shark and dolphin watching, shopping, paddle-boating, speed-boating and dune-buggy-riding. ‘Come and have fun with us’ invites the website. Even so it loses a lot of money, and the Wiriyaphan family subsidize it heavily to keep it open, McDaniel reports, for entirely selfless reasons: to attract people to reflect on the park’s values. Or as one TripAdvisor reviewer put it: ‘It is built by a family with the view of sharing their good fortune.’

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Worship in theme parks Europa-Park, in southern Germany just across the Rhine from France, is themed around eighteen European countries, plus a ‘miniworld’, Adventureland, Children’s World and Grimm’s Enchanted Forest. They all snuggle beneath eleven rollercoasters and a monorail. The park celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2015 and attracts some five million visitors a year. The park accommodates two chaplains: Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant, who work together in serving the park’s four churches.9 The chaplains are employed, though, not by the park, but by their respective church bodies: the Protestant Landeskirche, Karlsruhe, and the Catholic Erzbischöfliches Ordinariat, Freiburg. Pastor Andreas Wilhelm noted (pers. com.) that chaplains and park authorities were anxious to keep their respective fields of operation separate, and quoted one of the park directors as saying that the church should remain the church, and the park remain the park. When first employed ten years ago the chaplains were in the park only part-time, but now are there virtually full-time; they conduct an active ministry, holding weddings, christenings, and other services, and welcoming youth groups and church groups in French, Italian, German and English. They also from time to time organize pastoral events and activities, for example at Easter 2015 ‘we celebrate an afternoon prayertime and 3-400 guests will come. We asked a choir and also a ballet-group to show a little choreography, the joy of the ladies near the grave, to show the joy of Resurrection. Afterwards little coffee-time and invitation in the park.’10 Two of their churches date from before the theme park: a private chapel in the (genuinely!) fifteenth-century Balthazar castle (in whose grounds the Europa-Park was developed; it now houses one of the park’s restaurants), and the cemetery chapel of the former owners of the castle, the Böcklin zu Böcklinsau family. The park’s other two churches comprise a splendid replica of a Norwegian stave-church, and the Chapel of St James in the Santa Isabella Hotel. This 4-star hotel is themed as a Counter-Reformation Portuguese monastery: ‘The guests of Europa-Park can live like monks or nuns – whilst living it up in luxury!’11 Not only are the staff dressed as monks and the hotel lounge dominated by a wallpainting of St Teresa of Lisieux, but the St James chapel, designed by a German architectural and interior design firm, has genuine seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury furnishings; the baroque (probably Spanish) altar-piece is especially fine.12 The chapel was consecrated by both the Catholic and the Evangelical

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bishops in 2008, and contains the Reserved Sacrament. Yet the hotel’s website takes a distinctly secular attitude to it: The monastic jewel of the new hotel, the St. Jacobs Chapel, creates an exceptional and yet harmonious connection between a leisure park and ecclesiastic spirit. Located next to the lobby of the new themed hotel, the chapel invites the guests to leave their everyday life behind and enjoy the tranquility of the room. Sacral elements such as pictures of saints, reliefs and Portuguese tiles, so-called ‘azulejos’, give the room a quiet and relaxing ambience.

This seems to hint at one reason why churches and the like appear in secular theme parks: they add an extra appeal on the ‘spiritual’ side to the park visitors, and offer ‘tranquillity’ or rest after so much excitement and stimulation. But churches can appear in Europa-Park for more frivolous reasons, too; a traditional Greek church turns out to contain ‘the Curse of Cassandra’, a topsyturvy disorienting experience themed as ancient Greek. (Visitors queuing are regaled with the park’s version of the myth of Cassandra. Cassandra, princess of Troy, warns the Trojans against the Greeks but is not believed; dragged to Greece, she is killed and, while dying, curses with eternal restlessness all those responsible. To avoid this her soul is captured in an amphora, which remains closed for centuries. But when restoration work is done in a church on the island of Mykonos, the amphora is rediscovered and opened. The soul of Cassandra, finally freed, unleashes her curse, which she pours on visitors in the topsy-turvy attraction).13 Inside the convincing-looking ancient Greek temple next door is the start of the water rollercoaster ‘Poseidon’.14 What appear from a distance to be the onion-domes of a Russian church turn out to be simply capping a large gateway to the Russia area. Charmingly, the vault of the gateway is decorated with murals of the Mack family, the park’s owners, searching for a site for the park. Sometimes, though, ‘sacred places’ appear in theme parks as a result of negotiations – or struggles – between the park’s commercial or governmental promoters and the religious interests they want to recruit. Thus, the Beijing Ethnic Park’s Tibetan Kalacakra temple was constructed by monk artisans under the direction of a trulku from Lhasa and consecrated with full ritual by lamas and monks from the nearby state-sponsored Buddhist Studies Institute. Charlene Makley points out that this reflected highly complex power relations not merely between Tibetan Buddhist leaders and Chinese governmental and other stakeholders but also between various Tibetan Buddhist authorities. The

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lamas, monks, and young lay dancers in the Tibetan exhibit found themselves, she argued purveyors of a circumscribed, exotic ‘religion’ positioned as ultimately inconsequential both to the secular concerns of well-off urbanite consumers and to the political loyalties expected of Tibetans by the state – an absolute dichotomy between apolitical ‘religion’ as individual consumption and (legitimate) politics was eminently suited to the exigencies of the post-Mao Chinese state. (Makley 2010, 150).

In Iran things are, at least superficially, more straightforward, but there too clergy are involved in theme parks. To the west of Tehran, a huge new park development is under construction (though apparently stalled). Hezaro Yek Shahr (1001 Cities)15 includes a very large shopping mall, four hotels, an art auction house, offices, and a water park with twenty rides and attractions, designed to segregate men and women. The theme park itself, Shahre Gheseh, ‘inspired by the Persian story-telling tradition’, is designed by the Toronto-based company Forrec, one of the leading theme park designers. It builds on a mix of gardens, replica Persian buildings and rides, in a series of zones mostly based on Iranian history, though one includes the story of Noah. Beside Shahre Gheseh is the Islamic Studies Center, which includes a sizeable mosque – ‘a retreat for theologians and students, the Center aims to strengthen social relationships by providing a comfortable setting for religious conferences and cultural family gatherings’.16 A moving account of the work of clergy and councillors at Heritage USA was given in the Washington Post of 15 June 1986 (Rosenfield 1986). These were probably the first clergy to work in a theme park, and to read of their work makes a nice change from the endless discussion of financial scandal and incompetence, and helps one to begin to see the park in a much more sympathetic light, and to understand its draw. The description focusses on ‘The Upper Room’, a building claimed to replicate the ‘Upper Room’ in which Jesus and his disciples held their Last Supper: It is a little after 1 a.m. in the Upper Room, a purported replica (except for carpeting and air conditioning) of where the Last Supper was held. The Upper Room is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year at this Christian resort, with a staff pastor available around the clock for all types of spiritual needs. A woman enters one of the tiny ‘prayer closets’ that line one wall, alone with her God, a bench, a Bible, a box of tissues and an artificial flower. A man in a navy knit shirt comes in a short while later, hangs back shyly for a few minutes and

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then gestures for the pastor’s attention. Pastor Bill Ingram, so identified by the nameplate on his suit lapel, moves to join him and they sit in a corner in one of the rows of wooden benches that fill the room. ‘I’m having problems in my marriage’, the man says hesitantly. ‘We’ve come here to try to put things back together but I don’t know if it’ll work. My wife says if things don’t get better she’s going to get a divorce, and we’re leaving today.’ … Ingram gives him the name of a counselor on the staff and urges the man to call first thing in the morning. Then he prays with the man, holding his hand and asking God to help heal his marriage. The man in the knit shirt leaves, going out into the humid southern night. The woman comes out of the prayer closet. In the interim Ingram has taken a call from someone in a hospital, and the woman, who drove here from Indiana with her family, wonders if he will offer communion at 2 a.m. even though she is the only one here. She says she likes praying at this hour, when her kids are asleep and everything is quiet. This is a great place for a family vacation, she adds, because you can just pack the kids off in the morning and not worry about them.17

In the United States churches are common even in amusement parks: the Dolly Parton theme park in the Tennessee Smoky Mountains, Dollywood, has the Robert F. Thomas Chapel in the middle of the park, named after the doctor who delivered Dolly; it offers services on Sunday mornings. A number of parks with places of worship employ clergy to staff them, as Silver Dollar City employs Kevin Day as its chaplain. We need to remember that just because culture parks include places of worship and offer opportunities for religious activities doesn’t mean that visitors always respond; some theme parks are treated like pilgrimage-venues, but certainly not all. Joy Hendry (2007, 91–2) comments on the variety of churches and temples in culture parks in Japan: However, I saw no one praying at any of these edifices, and in a beautiful reconstruction of a golden shrine from Peru, in The Little World, many of the visitors just walked on through without a glance at the ornate altar and depiction of the dying Christ. A group of youth visiting the Thai temple when I was there even rejected it as Buddhist. … Despite all this apparently ‘sacred’ or ‘religious’ activity to back up the structural and metaphorical parallels [with pilgrimage] discussed above, there would seem to be a total lack of devotional or spiritual experience, to be taken home and shared with family and friends. In a society like Japan where elements of religion may be identified everywhere and nowhere, the existence of buildings is not enough. Anyway, the churches are for weddings, or to house the spare model racing cars, and without exception, the visitors I spoke to were there for fun.

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Sometimes places of worship in theme parks and other visitor attractions become distinctly muddled. On the highest point of the island of Shōdoshima on Japan’s Inland Sea, surrounded by olive groves, a hotelier in 1973 built a Greek temple. Inside is a Shinto shrine, and the whole was intended to be a symbol of peace. A festival with Greek themes is held annually, there is a thriving olive-oil industry, and the island is twinned with Milos (Hendry 2000, 46). There’s a mosque at the Tierra Santa Theme Park in Buenos Aires, though since it has plaster figures praying salat it appears more like a diorama than an active mosque. But the park’s director and co-founder, Maria Antonia Ferro, says ‘Muslims pray here at the mosque, and the “Western Wall” is an important place for Jews.’ For there is a synagogue too, as well as a replica of a section of the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. People place pieces of paper with their wishes in the wall’s cracks. Once a year, it is claimed, these are collected and sent to Jerusalem to the real Western Wall.18 There’s a mosque, too, in one of the strangest of all theme parks. This is Mleeta, founded in 2010 on a hilltop in southern Lebanon, to celebrate the resistance of Hezbollah, the Party of God, to the Israeli army between 1982 and 2006. With parking for 200 cars and twenty buses, the park is on the site of an important Hezbollah stronghold, and offers tours of original tunnels and gunemplacements, as well as reconstructions of wartime events and captured Israeli materiel. A major feature is an installation celebrating ‘the Zionist entity’s’ defeat. Despite its remote location and difficult access, the park saw 131,442 visitors in 2014;19 future plans envisage a five-star hotel, a campsite, swimming pools, sports clubs and eventually a cable car. Unsurprisingly, Islam – a very distinct understanding of Islam – is ubiquitous throughout the park. ‘My weapons and my soul are one’ reads one poster on a 1980s bunker wall. ‘Liberation Field’ in the park’s centre includes a mihrab in the surrounding wall, engraved with excerpts from the speeches of the secretary general of Hizbullah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, during the July 2006 war. At the very top of the site, with a view over southern Lebanon including several former Israeli army outposts, is a monument to ‘the martyrs’. An information panel reads ‘Martyrdom seekers. This unit takes direct orders from the supreme leadership of the resistance. It numbers hundreds of trained and equipped volunteers, ready to sacrifice their lives.’20 Just fifty miles away as the crow flies, across the border in Israel, the Nazareth Village park offers a space for religious tourists to pray in. ‘The walls there are bare, the space is of the right size for a bus group, the acoustics accommodate hymn-singing or speaking in tongues’ (Feldman and Ron 2015, 167). This cannot

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of course be a church, for the village purports to present Nazareth at the time of Christ. Instead, the space is called ‘the synagogue’. Finally, a very different kind of temple forms part of the Củ Chi Tunnel Complex near Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. This is a war memorial park developed on the remains of the astonishing tunnel complex developed by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. Tourists usually see just a few tunnels, but the Bến Dược Memorial Temple is an important part of the park. It contains a statue of Hồ Chí Minh, on its walls are engraved the names of nearly 50,000 fallen and beneath the temple itself paintings, statues and dioramas depict the wartime struggle. It was inaugurated in 1975 to ‘welcome many groups of people from inside and outside Vietnam to come to remember, burn incense and meditate’ (Wikipedia).

Weddings Whether or not that was why they were built, churches in theme parks are very often used primarily for weddings – it’s a valuable source of income. The ‘European’ gaikoku mura (foreign villages) in Japan often include churches, for Western-style white weddings are highly fashionable (Graburn 2008, 230). At the now-closed Glücks Königsreich German theme park near Hokkaido, you could get married in a replica of the childhood church of the Brothers Grimm. Russian Village at Niigata in Japan, also now closed, had a six-domed Orthodox church, a replica of the Cathedral of the Nativity in Suzdal, much used for weddings21 (Hendry 2000, 36). Kyoto’s old St Francis Xavier Catholic Cathedral (1890), now removed to the Meiji-mura Museum of Meiji-era buildings, is also available to rent for weddings. It is the same at all sorts of parks. At Gold Reef City Theme Park in Johannesburg: The beautiful Gold Reef City Chapel, dating back to 1879, offers a romantic Johannesburg wedding venue with a Victorian flavour. Originally built on the Langlaagte farm to serve the miners during the gold rush. Because of its unique beauty, it was dismantled and reassembled in Gold Reef City Theme Park and still contains the original stained glass windows, beams, pews, altar and organ. For a wedding venue with a difference our Gold Reef City Chapel is a unique option.22

Conveniently, it is beside the Theme Park Hotel, which ‘allows you to escape to an age of elegance and grandeur’ and is ‘reminiscent of an authentic turn-of-the

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century mining town’. A relocated 1866 little wooden church in a mining village sounds less elegant and grand, but you can get married in one at Shantytown Heritage Park in West Coast, New Zealand. Dr. Regeb’s Pharaonic Village in Cairo uses its (rather reduced) replica of the Temple at Karnak for ‘Pharaonic weddings’: For couples who are interested in a unique and a romantic wedding, come to the Pharaonic Village for a Pharaonic Wedding. This comes with all the Pharaonic costumes required for the bride, the groom & even their guests. The married couple will be able to enjoy a unique Pharaonic style ceremony, music, food & finally a Papyrus Wedding Certificate that will be given to them.23

Responding to the sacred So, to conclude this chapter we ask: Can theme parks be in any useful sense ‘sacred places?’ The answer has to be given by the visitors, by the people who use them. Scott Lukas suggests (2008, 222, 236) that – at least in some peoples’ minds – a theme park can indeed become a sacred site, evinced by the scattering of loved-ones’ ashes by their favourite rides, by the sighting of ‘real’ ghosts in theme parks and by the designation of major theme parks as protected no-fly zones after 9/11. Responses to HLE, posted on TripAdvisor, certainly seem to record many peoples’ reactions in that way: The Holy Land Experience was indeed a spiritual experience. … From the moment I arrived I felt the presence of God. … The place was breathtaking and you felt the Holy Spirit throughout each presentation and attraction. … The 2 day stay was packed with very spiritual events and surroundings. I also got baptized here.24

For others it is easier to relate to the much smaller, more personal and often idiosyncratic ‘roadside’ attraction of which we shall see more in Chapter 10, and which I want to sneak into the ‘theme park’ category. In her Middle of Nowhere study, Sara Patterson of Hanover College describes one remarkable Californian example, and the response of visitors to it. Salvation Mountain is a huge painted adobe structure in the remote Californian desert. Its creator, Leonard Knight, whom some called an outsider artist, some a prophet, some a latter-day desert father, and some simply a wacko, built it and lived a hermit life there to promote his understanding of God’s love as a challenge to all the values of industrial

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society. He saw the site as a sacred place, and very many of the pilgrims who made their way there saw – felt – it that way too: Knight’s mountain – away from all the standards and expectations of American culture – represents an idealized world where spirit rather than money rules experience. But what they [the pilgrims] describe again and again is a felt spirit, one that’s embodied, one that dwells in relationships and in place. Even more than seeing the sacred, touching the sacred forms the center of their narratives. As one woman wrote after her first visit to Salvation Mountain, ‘“God is love” is today’s mantra … and I felt it.’ (Patterson 2016, 135)

What matters, and what determines whether a place is sacred, is the response of its visitors. The same is true of the related issue we shall be considering in the next chapter: the question of authenticity.

7

Authenticity, Heritage and Religion

Authenticity is a key issue in heritage and in religion; it comes to the fore in theme parks.

Authenticity and heritage One of the principal ways cultural parks and open-air museums like to distinguish themselves from mere amusement parks is by claiming ‘authenticity’. Their themes are not mere decoration to attract and amuse their visitors but are central to their mission – what they are about. The landscaped settings at Hawai’i’s Polynesian Cultural Centre are ‘authentic reproductions’ of traditional Polynesian villages. South Africa’s Shakaland offers an ‘authentic re-creation’ of the Great Kraal of Shaka, King of the Zulus 1816–1828.1 Such claims are of course hostages to fortune, inviting critical scrutiny by those who believe themselves experts, but Disney at least claims to ‘target the five percent’: that is, commit to as great accuracy as possible, although scarcely 5 per cent of visitors will notice the difference (Younger 2016, 183).2 Authenticity, we are told, is in the business world the new quality (Gilmore and Pine 2007, xi). There has, too, been much scholarly discussion of what ‘authenticity’ might mean in the field of heritage. Hugely influential has been Walter Benjamin’s argument that the ability to use machinery to make multiple copies of an object or image, rather than rely on hand-crafted copies, reduces the value of the reproduction, and so enhances that of the original. Hendry (2000, 185) helpfully summarizes the argument of Jörg Gleiter (1998) that Japanese parks, at least, ‘have such a feeling for detail that they should instead be seen as “perfect unique copies”, as a new hand-crafted original might have been’. Hendry goes on to problematize the whole idea of authenticity, pointing out the different ways that different cultures use objects as symbols, especially

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in displays, but arguing for a distinction between a display that is a copy of a historical prototype – a ‘citation’ – and an arrangement of objects that are ‘primarily to be admired for their own authenticity and intrinsic qualities’. She further draws attention to the extensive Japanese use of mitate, a mundane object used to evoke images of mythology or classical reference – like a rock in a garden which stands for a mountain and for the seat of the gods. This, Hendry argues (190), leads to ‘a new way of thinking, both about theme parks and about museums’. She is, though, perhaps underestimating how common the use of models and replicas, designed to stand in for original things, places and concepts, is in museums and other forms of display in many other parts of the world. In 1885 a devout Burmese businessman, U Nar Auk (1832–1913), created a new temple complex near Mawlamyine (Moulmein), Myanmar. The Khawhanat Pagoda complex has replicas of famous temples from different parts of Myanmar – Mon, Karen, Shan, etc. – as well as new ones with elaborate paintings and carvings. One of the buildings has wood-carved bas-reliefs of famous Burmese stories. Another has paintings of jatakas, lives of the Buddha, where the artists have melded these stories with contemporary imagery, like a scene of the birth of the Buddha next to a colonial mansion, and another of a tea party.3 Authenticity becomes particularly contentious in the restoration/ conservation of historic buildings and objects. This is nothing new; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing at the time of the Emperor Augustus, saw the ambiguity inherent in restoration: [Romulus’s and Remus’s] life was that of herdsmen, and they lived by their own labor, generally upon the mountains in huts which they built, roofs and all, out of sticks and reeds. One of these, called the hut of Romulus, remained even to my day on the flank of the Palatine hill which faces towards the Circus, and it is preserved holy by those who have charge of these matters; they add nothing to it to render it more stately, but if any part of it is injured, either by storms or by the lapse of time, they repair the damage and restore the hut as nearly as possible to its former condition. (Dionysius of Helicarnassus 1968, 11 and see Beard 2015, 69.)

In my own village, an abandoned army railway line has become a ‘riverside walk’. Recently the surviving concrete buffers at the end of the line were demolished as dangerous; the conservation group replaced them with old steel buffers from elsewhere. This attracted a critical letter in the local paper as ‘not authentic’. At the other end of the scale lies the conflict between the Archaeological Survey

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of India and those restorers of temples who see worship as the priority and are happy to replace ancient work with new.4 At one scale or another such issues are found everywhere. But so sometimes is the opposite. Justin McDaniel (2017, 179), in particular, points out how very many modern Buddhist leisure attractions specifically reject authenticity: The architects who designed these sites … often emphasize display, performance, and juxtaposition and anachronistic mixing (not systematic reconstruction) of various Buddhist cultures, teachings, languages, objects, and symbols. This is important, because it provides us with a completely different image of contemporary Buddhism that emphasizes innovation and ecumenism instead of purity and authenticity.

It’s an attitude often found in theme parks. Scott Lukas (2017) describes a conversation between park staff over the fake glyphs and symbols on a Mayanthemed rollercoaster. ‘Why get so wrapped up in the sources of an attraction’s theme? They are – like all immersive spatial design – engineered to please visitors, not educate them.’ In fact, of course, immersive spatial design is often used to educate, but then we tend to use the term ‘open-air museum’ rather than ‘theme park,’ a distinction Lukas goes on discuss. He adds the valuable point, which underlies much discussion of historical authenticity, that what matters is how a replica building or a re-enactment is seen – does it feel real to the viewer? It may be valuable to look at this question of authenticity through the twin lenses of heritage and religion.

Rebuilt, replicated or recalled Just five years before King Harold died at the Battle of Hastings, and AngloSaxon England ended, his wife Edith had a dream. The Virgin Mary took her to Nazareth and showed her the house in which she had learnt of her pregnancy from the angel Gabriel: the House of the Annunciation. Mary asked Edith to build a replica of the house in her manor of Walsingham in Norfolk. In Nazareth in Israel is a huge 1960s Catholic Church, the Basilica of the Annunciation. Beneath it lies the Grotto of the Annunciation, believed by many to incorporate the remains of Mary’s original house. However, in 1291, another tradition says, angels carried the house to Croatia, and later on to Loreto in Italy, just before the final expulsion of the Crusaders from the Holy Land; encased in a magnificent

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Renaissance shrine, it is known today as the Holy House of Loreto. Finally, in 1931 the Church of England Vicar of Walsingham built a new Holy House in the village to recall Edith’s, destroyed by King Henry VIII in 1538. All four ‘Holy Houses’ became important centres of pilgrimage for Christians. These four houses exemplify the four different senses in which, in both heritage and religious discourse, an historic place or building can be understood. The house whose remains can be seen today in Nazareth is (perhaps) the original. The house in Loreto is a reconstruction. The house Edith built was intended as a replica, a copy. The house the vicar built is a re-presentation or recalling, intended to evoke in pilgrims the memory and devotion of its lost predecessor the other side of the village. The first category, the original, is where a building or landscape survives in place, little changed; though theme parks occasionally (as at Europa-Park) contain original buildings, we are not concerned here with ‘real’ heritage. The second category, the reconstruction, is where a building is brought from elsewhere and faithfully reconstructed – rebuilt – in an open-air museum. Openair museums are what in English we generally call those parks that bring original buildings from elsewhere, and rebuild them as carefully and conservatively as possible (Rentzhog 2007). When they are furnished, it is where possible with contents from the building on its original site, or at least from the right period and social context, or at worst as exactly replicated after as thorough research as possible. Open-air museums, inspired originally by Artur Hazelius’s Skansen, are found today throughout the world. They clearly share much with the more ‘cultural’ of theme parks, and are often not distinguished from them by visitors, however superior their curators might feel, and however much they may vaunt their scholarly research and educational mission. Very often open-air museums include places of worship. Thus Meiji-mura, a museum of sixty imported buildings from Japan’s Meiji period when the country was opening up to the West, includes three churches and St Xavier’s Cathedral, built in Kyoto in 1890. The Ethnography Museum of Transbaikalia near Ulan-Ude in eastern Siberia contains an Old Believers chapel and a Buryat Buddhist temple. The Heritage Park Historical Village in Calgary, Canada, contains ‘The Little Synagogue on the Prairie’, originally built in 1913 by Jewish pioneers at Sibbald, Alberta. The Korean Folk Village near Seoul has a Buddhist temple and a number of seonangdang, the village cairns venerated by travellers. St Fagans National History Museum near Cardiff, Wales, has an eighteenth-century Unitarian chapel, and a reconstructed medieval parish church fitted out inside with closely researched replicas (Harper 2017). In other words, open-air museums

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of buildings can nowadays be found throughout the world, and a great many of them contain rebuilt places of worship or other religious structures. The Swedish museum director Sten Rentzhog, in his splendid 2007 survey, points out that a stave church was included in the very first open-air museum at Bygdø in Oslo, and that churches (increasingly in use) are found in many East European openair museums. A survey of open-air museums in the UK in 1998 by Lloyd Langley (2000, 171) found thirteen churches and chapels, most of which were used for at least the occasional service. The main challenges for the museum were choice and interpretation; how to choose, among the variety of places of worship which once competed in an area, which to preserve, and how to explain both their underlying faith and their negativities: Are curators guilty of displaying religion as a harmonious part of community life? Was everybody godly? Did they all go to church regularly and believe in the existing social order? What about the place of bigotry, dissention, prejudice and intolerance in this story of community life? Challenging the visitor and opening a critical dialogue is indeed a vital function of our interpretation of religious life. (186)

More commonly referred to as ‘theme parks’ are those culture parks whose buildings are not originals brought to the site from elsewhere, but more or less close modern reproductions of historic buildings. These I suggest are replicas, a third category. Though they vary a lot in how important they regard researchbased accuracy, such parks aim not to preserve ‘museum objects’, but to show visitors how life was conducted in the past or is conducted today. In doing so such sites can (by their choice of what buildings, costumes, dances and performances to use to represent the theme) easily slip over the edge, and actually create new experiences, ‘constructed culture’, as Bruce Caron (2011) calls it: ‘The intentional traditions of ethnic cultural theme parks are – to their producers and consumers alike – traditional enough to offer an authentic experience. … Today, these parks are building cultural traditions the way Disney builds fantasies.’ In other words, replica parks merge very easily into my fourth category, the recalled or re-presented. Schlehe and Uike-Bormann (2010) accuse culture parks of setting out to depict not the reality of the cultures they present, but what people think is their reality. In other words, parks seek to engage visitors by reinforcing their stereotypes, and Schlehe and Uike-Bormann offer the example of Europa-Park, Europe’s biggest theme park, where England is depicted through the inevitable Tudor houses and scaled-down Globe Theatre. ‘In the development process the Visioneers draw on images, experiences and

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associations in the visitors’ minds that may evoke positive feelings and memories of previous holidays and which now may be used to generate consumption – the primary purpose of the park.’ Buildings in such parks may merely recall the original, evoking its atmosphere and feeling, rather than make any real attempt to replicate it; Michael Stausberg (2011, 116) calls it ‘staging of places’. These parks too are extremely common worldwide, and very frequently include religious buildings. It is recalled environments, rather than exactly replicated ones, that are today so fashionable as themed housing estates among the rising middle classes in Asia – most notably in China (Bosker 2013). Annabel Wharton (2006, 100) suggests that ‘the repeated insistence on the authenticity of representation increases the viewer’s sense of the experiential value of the surrogate’. Classicist Fillipo Carlà (2016, 23) points to ‘a new concept of “authenticity” … according to which what is “real” is not what really comes from the past, but what generates “real feelings” of identification with it’. In Parque España in Japan it is the atmosphere that is said to be authentic (Hendry 2000, 155). ‘Recalling’ may perhaps correspond with Gilmore and Pine’s ‘referential authenticity’ (‘drawing inspiration from human history, and tapping into our shared memories and longings’); but also with their ‘influential authenticity’ (‘that which exerts influence on other entities, calling human beings to a higher goal and providing a foretaste of a better way’) (Gilmore and Pine 2007, 50).

Authenticity and religion These categories too often merge and get confused, perhaps in theme parks especially. Leaving the field of culture and heritage and moving into that of religion one finds just as much ambiguity and confusion. It is striking how often debate over authenticity in heritage, especially over the extent that restoration of a historic monument is ‘permissible’, segues into discussion of authenticity, even agency, in religious objects and monuments. Denis Byrne’s 2014 discussion of ‘heritage conservation’ in Asia is in reality largely a discussion of how in Asian popular religion sacred buildings, especially Buddhist stupas, have power, and their restoration, improvement and enlargement bring merit to their donors. As he points out, this is hard to reconcile with the minimal-interference principles of the Western conservation tradition that derive from William Morris and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, and which are enshrined in the Venice Charter.

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Replication of course is as much an issue in religious images and objects as in heritage. A nice example of the ambiguity of sanctity in religious objects is in a small private museum described by Suryanandini Narain (2015, 250) in Lucknow, India. Sunil Gomber is a devotee of the god Hanuman, and the museum, arranged in Gomer’s own house, is his personal collection of images and objects relating to the god. Everything in the museum, Narain points out, is a ‘replica’, but ‘the Gomber family intends to see this museum grow, enshrining within it their personal aesthetic, concrete faith, charitable works, and the hope of accumulating religious merit’. As Sunil Gomber himself put it: ‘This museum was a product of my divine engagement with Hanuman. It was in consultation with Him that I made it, only He will advise me on its expansion.’ In the Roman Catholic tradition – at least in its modern version – authorized replicas of holy relics can have the power of the original. Pope John Paul II authorized the creation of 220 digital replicas of the original painting of Our Lady of Guadaloupe for worldwide distribution. ‘These Images have been declared as Authorised Relics that will extend the graces of evangelisation, conversion and truth to nations in which they are placed, offering the same graces as extended in 1531, equal in graces to that of the original first class Relic.’5 When a traditional religious ceremony is re-enacted in a heritage context, is that ceremony ‘real’? This is an issue that many concerned with the history of liturgy – and even of art and music – have struggled with; in theme parks it can become acute. We have seen (Chapter 2) the ambiguity inherent in HLE’s ‘Last Supper’ event, where the dividing line becomes distinctly moot between a re-enactment of a historical event and the sacrament of Holy Communion, itself traditionally seen as a re-enactment or ‘re-presentation.’ A similar uncertainty and ambiguity appears in the very different environment of Malaysian ‘Cultural Villages’; Monsopiad Cultural Village is suffused with spirits: ‘spirit jars’ in the museum, the rice-spirit in the rice granary, the spirit of the stone monolith, the spirits of 42 trophy heads in the House of Skulls. Notably a guide informed that during ritual performances for tourists, the participants did not ‘speak to the spirits’. (Dellios 2002, 7)

Of course, such ambiguity doesn’t only appear in theme parks – perhaps it appears throughout religion. Robert Orsi, in his History and Presence (2016, 52) describes how the water in the ‘replica’ of the Lourdes Grotto built in the Bronx, New York, is treated as having miraculous powers, although everyone knows it

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is piped from the city’s reservoir. In Indonesia’s TMII culture park (Chapter 4), by contrast, there seems to be no ambiguity. There traditional performances in popularized short versions are put on stage, but they are not necessarily superficial and shallow. In the Central Java and Yogyakarta areas of Taman Mini, for instance, ruwatan massal (purification) ceremonies may be attended: in the three-hour-shadow plays performed by famous and highly respected dalang (puppeteers/masters), many offerings are dedicated to the gods and spirits of Java. The people to be purified – all dressed in white clothes without any personal accessories – pray, receive blessings, and are ritually washed by their parents and the dalang. By taking part in the ceremony they feel strengthened against all evil. (Schlehe and Uike-Bormann 2010, 79)

When the religion is ‘dead’, though, the debate over authenticity reverts simply to heritage. Xcaret Park at Cancún in Mexico is themed on Mexican wildlife and culture, and among the events it offers visitors is the annual ‘Sacred Mayan Journey’. This event is said to date back to the Late Post Classic Period (900–1550 ce), when it became the practice for villagers to make an annual canoe trek from what is today called Xcaret to the island of Cozumel, to visit the oracle of the goddess Ixchel. The modern re-enactment, revived after some fifty years of neglect, involves over three hundred canoers setting off before dawn for Cozumel. The participants, local people who have trained for half the year for the event, presumably see themselves as historical re-enactors, linking to their history and heritage, but not actually intending ‘to worship the goddess Ixchel with offerings and in search of her divine message’.6 One of the most interesting recent developments is the use made of the set created for the 2015 film Muhammad: The Messenger of God by Iranian film director Majid Majidi. He built near Qom in Iran a very large set, reproducing as accurately as possible the city of Mecca as it was when Mohammed was a boy. The film completed, the set was not torn down, but was preserved as Prophet Muhammad Cinematic City. Remarkably, it is claimed that the replica Masjid al-Haram is being increasingly used by would-be hajjis, banned by the Iranian government from going to Saudi Arabia, to perform the ceremonies of the hajj, including the circumambulation of the Kaaba.7 Much academic discussion of ‘authenticity’ and the use of simulacra to revisit places of significance has focussed on Holy Land replicas. Religion parks seem to be fairly confused themselves about whether ‘authenticity’ in an archaeological sense matters when one is seeking to evoke a visitor response to an imagined or remembered place. So at HLE the ‘Christus Gardens Wax Museum’ full-scale

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crib (nativity) comes with a warning sign: ‘The figures are antiques, the costumes are art pieces. They do not portray authentic biblical attire. Please enjoy this rare and beautiful collection as art and museum pieces.’ Indeed, the park’s executive director makes no bones about its policy; speaking of the American – rather than Middle Eastern – good looks of the actor playing Christ, he remarked: It may not be accurate, but it’s what people expect, so it doesn’t distract them. … Because we’re living in a postmodern world where people are very sensory, they’re not so much interested in the cerebral aspect of things: they want to feel it. The Holy Land Experience is like a historical novel, where the novel is not authentic, but the history is. The simulation helps you realize that Jesus was a real person, he really did die. So that enhances the understanding and turns it from a theological understanding to an experiential one.

By contrast, the museum – the ‘Scriptorium’ – is authentic: ‘The rest of the park is virtual. When you walk into the building at the far end, it ceases being virtual and it’s real. Every manuscript you see is real’ (Radosh 2010, 31, 35). Moreover, Timothy Beal (2005, 60) points to the legitimizing function of the Scriptorium, which acts symbolically as the ‘biblical anchor’ of the park. ‘Even if you don’t visit it, just knowing it’s there gives a feeling of biblical depth to what otherwise could quickly begin to seem superficial. In this respect its subtitle, Center for Biblical Antiquity, is more revealing of its intended function, which is to center this fantastical place in biblical antiquity.’8 *

*

*

Issues surrounding authenticity in religion point up dramatically, and matter far more than, similar issues in the heritage and restoration fields. In both the distinctions between the original, the rebuilt, the replicated and the recalled are crucial, though the devout participant is likely to accept a replica or a re-enactment of a religious site or event more readily than a history buff will accept a replica heritage site. That is why the themes studied in the next chapter are largely acceptable in religion parks.

8

Some Theme Park Themes

Some themes regularly appear in religion parks, including the Holy Land, Heaven and Hell, and Bible heroes. Much rarer are Islam and the multifaith theme.

Religion park themes: Holy Land Certain religious themes seem to recur in all sorts of parks across the world, even across religions; we shall examine a few of these in this chapter. One of the most common themes in religion parks, and often in culture and even amusement parks, is the ‘Holy Land’. HLE (Chapter 2) is certainly the best known and probably the biggest Christian park based on the Holy Land. It is, though, very far from unique: replicas and re-imaginings of the Holy Land have been found throughout the Christian world for well over a thousand years (Wharton 2006; Griffith-Jones and Fernie 2018). Holy Land and Jerusalem sites in the nineteenth century not only saved American and other pilgrims the expense and trouble of journeying to the Middle East, it also allowed Protestants to develop a relationship with the Holy Places purged of their muddled corruption by other faiths and other Christian denominations. Protestants could discover Holy Places that were ‘genuine’, but very much more like the illustrations in their Bibles than the real ones. Today, most continue to be found in the United States: some modest back-garden sites, some multimillion-dollar visitor attractions. Typical of the little sites is the Garden of Hope, a two-acre rather scruffy garden on the edge of working-class Covington, across the river from downtown Cincinnati. In 1938 a Southern Baptist minister, Rev. Morris Coers, visited the Holy Land, and was so moved by the Garden Tomb that he

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determined to build a replica back home. His garden opened in 1958; it is now maintained by a local church and used for occasional services and weddings, as well as for informal visits. Besides the replica tomb, the garden has a ‘Carpenter’s Shop’, which contains chairs for meetings or services, a mural of a nineteenth-century-looking Palestinian carpenter, old carpentry tools given by Ben Gurion (Nasser visited too) and an Israeli flag. It contains, too, a small chapel used for weddings, with ‘a stone from the Horns of Hatton’1 on which the happy couple stand while exchanging vows. Oddly, this building is vaguely based on a 1620 Spanish Mission church. Other Garden attractions include stones from the River Jordan, from Solomon’s Temple and from the Good Samaritan Inn. The Garden offers a splendid view over downtown Cincinnati; beside the viewpoint sits a statue of Christ giving the Sermon on the Mount, and behind is (a notice informs us) a ‘30 foot cross put up by angels during the night’. At the opposite end of the scale is the $500 million Museum of the Bible in Washington, opened in November 2017, which, though a very big building rather than a park, includes most of the other features of a theme park as well as of a museum, and contains many displays that seek to re-materialize the Holy Land. There are six floors. The top two floors are devoted to restaurant, theatre, Biblical Garden, meeting rooms and so on, and the ground floor to reception and orientation, children’s gallery, shop and library. Between are three floors of displays. The lowest is the ‘Impact Floor’, focussed on ‘the impact of the Bible on Society, Government and Culture’, the middle floor is the ‘Narrative Floor’, focussed on stories from the Bible. The highest is the ‘History Floor’, devoted to the history of the Bible as a book, and the most object-rich of the galleries. The Holy Land appears in numerous places, most notably in the Hebrew Bible walk-through, and in a substantial reconstruction, ‘The World of Jesus of Nazareth’, with volunteer actors. Though it has prompted a number of concerns,2 the museum – if only thanks to its size – is going to be a game changer for religion museums. It aims to be the most technologically advanced museum in the world; the budget for technology alone is $42 million. Fifty miles south-west of Branson, on the other side of the Ozarks from Silver Dollar City, is a very different kind of park in a very different town. Eureka Springs is really a Victorian village, now rather arty, with, on the hill behind the town, a big and very distinctive Christian theme park. There Gerald K. Smith (see Chapter 10) created his Sacred Projects, beginning with Christ of the Ozarks, a twenty-metre hilltop statue of Christ, following it in 1968 with the annual Great

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Passion Play, modelled on the Oberammergau Passion Play. Smith’s plan was to create another major attraction: a full-size replica of the Old City of Jerusalem. He died when only the East Gate (of stone, and still impressive) had been built, and the project was abandoned.3 Instead, in the early 1990s, across the neighbouring hills were set up some twenty-five sites illustrating particular places/stories in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. These are used as foci for the New Holy Land Tour, which is in effect a two-hour mobile sermon. My tour was led by a Texan who, with her husband, spends the winter as a missionary in Mexico, and the summer acting in the Great Passion Play. Seven retired people and two newlyweds were taken round in a mini-bus; all the others appeared to be Evangelical Christians.4 The highlight of the tour was undoubtedly the impressive replica of the Tabernacle, which gets 16,000 visitors a year (the play gets 50,000) and where the tour-guide’s husband Rob suggested (with huge use of parallels, symbols and numerology) that ‘everything in the Tabernacle points to Jesus’.5 ‘The thousand year reign of Jesus is about to start any day now; we need to find Jesus before the curtain tears.’6 At each stopping-point the tour-guide delivers a little homily drawing a Christian message from the site. Other high points are the Upper Room and the Sea of Galilee (a very pretty lake), where on larger tours actors re-enact the Last Supper and Jesus walking on the water. James Bielo of Miami University, Ohio, has been developing a website (http:// www.materializingthebible.com) describing all the world’s four hundred plus Bible-based attractions. Bielo defines ‘materializing the Bible’ as ‘transforming the written words of scripture into physical, experiential, choreographed environments’. He has found that a productive challenge in the research process has been to discern which attractions fit this definition and which do not. For example, while some attractions might be ideologically inspired by biblical stories, they do not seek to actually re-create those stories. It is in acts of re-creation that claims to scriptural authenticity become elaborately engaged with various forms of artistic, architectural, and technological creativity (Bielo pers.com.). Though a lot less often than in Christianity, ‘Holy Lands’ appear in theme parks in other religions, too. Islam, for example, creates replica or symbolic Holy Lands. We noticed in Chapter 7 the Prophet Muhammad Cinematic City near Qom, which reproduces Mecca at the time of Mohammed. Large models of the Kaaba are used in Muslim schools and mosques to teach the rituals of the Hajj, while simple models of the Dome of the Rock were widespread in Iran during the Iraq war, and are still used in commemoration of the fallen of that war (Gruber 2014).

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Religion park themes: Heaven and hell Ghost Trains, with their luminous skeletons, damp ‘hands’, and puffs of cold air, are a much-loved feature of traditional European fun-fairs and the tackier amusement parks. Entrepreneurs have long realized the attraction that a frisson of fear can offer, and sometimes also the value of making that fear a spiritual one. In 1906 the Russian Marxist writer Maxim Gorky, on a fund-raising tour of America for the Bolsheviks, was taken to Coney Island. Predictably, he hated it, but he wrote a vivid description of hell as presented there:7 The amusement offered is educational. The people are shown hell with all the terrors and punishments that await those who have transgressed the sacred laws created for them. [But] Hell is constructed of papier maché and painted dark red. Everything in it is on fire – paper fire – and it is filled with the thick dirty odor of grease. … Hell is very badly done. (Gorky 1907, 359)

On a heap of cardboard stones sits Satan ‘clothed in red. Grimaces distort his lean brown face. He rubs his hands contentedly, as a man who is doing good business.’ Below him two little fiends drag sinners down into a pit in the middle of the cave, from which comes grey vapour and red paper tongues of fire. They include a girl admiring her new hat in a mirror, who screams in vain, another who has stolen some coins from a colleague, and a young man who has drunk a glass of whisky. The audience looks on these horrors in silence with serious faces. The hall is dark. Some sturdy fellow with curly hair holds forth in a lugubrious voice while he points to the stage. He says that if people do not want to be the victims of Satan with the red garments and crooked legs, they should not kiss girls to whom they are not married, because then the girls might become bad women. Women outcasts ought not to steal money from the pockets of their companions, and people should not drink whisky or beer or other liquors that arouse the passions: they should not visit saloons, but the churches, for churches are not only more beneficial to the soul, but they are also cheaper. At the conclusion of the terrible story a nauseatingly beautiful angel appears from a corner of the cavern. He hangs on a wire, and moves across the entire cave, holding a wooden trumpet, pasted over with gilt paper, between his teeth. On catching sight of him, Satan dives like a fish into the pit after the sinners. A crash is heard, the paper stones are hurled down, and the devils run off cheerfully to rest from their labor. The curtain drops. The public rises and leaves. Some venture to laugh. The majority, however, seem absorbed in reflection.

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There follow ‘The World Beyond the Grave’, where lost souls wander in subterranean dank and darkness, and ‘The Flood’. For all the spectacles in this city have one purpose: to show the people how they will be punished after death for their sins, to teach them to live upon earth humbly, and to obey the laws. Everywhere the one commandment is repeated: “Don’t”. For it helps to crush the spirits of the public – the working people. (Gorky 1907, 309)

In Buddhist Asian paintings, bas-reliefs and dioramas depicting the hell part of the Three Worlds cosmology are common in temples, and now commonly found in parks. In Taiwan the Nantian (Southern Paradise) Temple in Changhua and the Dai Tian (Five Regent Kings) Temple in Madou both feature ‘attractions’ that draw on a Taiwanese traditional literature that graphically describes the torments of hell, and that is now represented not only in theme parks but in religious ritual, horror-films, comic books and popular videogames. These are not the amusing ‘haunted houses’ recently introduced into Taiwan; Brian Brereton quotes an employee at the Changhua temple as saying ‘This is certainly not an amusement park. It is a religious holy site.’ Much like the scenes in Haw Par Villa (Chapter 2), but here with animatronics, a series of dioramas depict the grizzly tortures carried out on sinners by the imps of the eighteen courts of hell. In the past at least it has also been effective. Brereton found himself chaperoning groups of students: ‘Tightly clinging to my camera bag, a group of five or six male college students would whimper their way into the vivid visual representations of hell’ (Brereton 2006, 66).8 Though the punishments attract the most attention, really more important are the courts. Each is presided over by its king, identified by his tablet of office bearing the number of his hell, and accompanied by his attendants, the Ox-faced god and the Horse-faced god, who drag unwilling souls to judgement. One hundred kilometres south of Changhua is Madou, where heaven and hell are featured in two huge dragons built in 1979 beside the Dai Tien Temple, whose Dragon Spring still attracts many pilgrims.9 One dragon houses heaven, the other hell. For the latter one climbs up a steep staircase to enter the dragon’s mouth, and as one progresses slowly through the dark, down through its body, one is passing through the eighteen levels of hell, watching animatronic figures depicting the punishment of sin and hearing their screams. The journey begins with the ‘Mirror of Retribution’: This Mirror, in which the deceased is forced to watch all of their earthly sins, is portrayed at the theme park in Madou by actual photographs of a partially

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clothed couple, projected onto the Mirror from the ceiling. Courts two through nine feature socially disruptive sins punished according to the principle of cause and effect. Greedy officials who abuse their authority and make life uncomfortable for the general populace are continually beheaded; girls who read worthless books have their eyes gouged out; those who produce fake medicines and counterfeit alcohol are boiled in woks; those who fail to show proper respect to their parents or elders are ripped apart on Knife Mountain; and those who lie or curse heaven are cut apart with large saws. (Brereton 2006, 66)

Brereton quotes a brochure from Madou: A religious spirit is the stronghold of society’s stability and assists the government in safeguarding public order and security … [the displays] will be used to startle people to the realization that they cannot commit evil actions or bully and oppress the kind-hearted. … These scenes will cause those who witness them to abandon evil and pursue virtue.

Brereton argues that this emphasis on physical punishment is losing its power as government moves away from the harsh rule of traditional Chinese society and corporal punishment in schools is challenged.10 Increasingly even young students visit these hells for a laugh. The apportionment of appropriate punishments for particular sins dates back to the thirteenth century ce and is commonly depicted in temple paintings in Thailand. Over the past generation cement-modelled 3D versions have become widespread; they demonstrate the terrible tortures that particular sins will earn in the next world. Wang Saen Suk Hell Park, the garden of a monastery outside Bangkok, is described as including demons disemboweling the damned, arsonists transforming into snakes, and dogs eating a lost soul’s giant testicles. … Around the giant sinners stand a further 21 life-size sinners, whose heads have been turned into various animals according to their misdeeds. Thieves are transformed into monkeys; the dishonest into toads; the corrupt into pigs. Although often gruesome, Thailand’s hell gardens are popular weekend destinations for family days out. As well as an entertaining way of teaching strict morality, they also encourage donations as a form of merit-making to support the monks and the monasteries.11

A sign in the garden reads ‘If you meet the Devil in this life, don’t postpone merit-making which will help you to defeat him in the next life.’ One Japanese author (Yoichi 2010) describes sixteen such hells. They seem mostly to have been inspired by the hell set up by the charismatic abbot Luang Phor Khom

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at his monastery Wat Phai Rong Wua in Central Thailand in 1971. That has hundreds of crudely formed concrete statues of ‘hungry ghosts’, each personally tormented in an enormously imaginative variety of disgusting ways – and every one stark naked. In his study of the complex, Benedict Anderson attempted to analyse just what sins were particularly noted. He concluded that they are ‘rural and traditional – murder, lying, stealing, adultery, domestic violence, slander, disrespect for the elderly, small-scale cheating, favouritism, selfishness and so on’. There was a particular emphasis on crimes against the temple or its monks! (Anderson 2012, 28). It would be interesting to compare the sins picked out in different temples, in different countries and at different times. Hell can appear outside theme parks as well as within. The ‘Hell House’ (Pellegrini 2008, 351; Radosh 2010, 296; Fletcher 2007, 313; Stevenson 2016, 175) is an adaptation of the traditional haunted house, that emerged in Evangelical circles in the 1990s. Usually set up for a short time on church premises, the idea is to lead groups (often of teenagers) through a succession of rooms where brief, usually amateur, playlets depict a variety of sins, and which culminate in a depiction of hell, but with the possibility of rescue through the redemption offered by Christ through his crucifixion. They can be terrifying, deeply disturbing and shamelessly exploitative. Virtually every theme park, at least in the Anglophone world, must try to cash in on Halloween at the end of October. In my own grandson’s local theme park ‘A spine-chilling week filled with thrills, howls and half term family fun awaits the bravest of guests, with jumps, goosebumps and rides in the dark.’ One unlikely example appears in October in a village in southern England, with the dubious name Baron Samedi’s Haunt: What will you lose first. … Your soul or your sanity? Contains scenes of bloody horror and violence and implied threat by actors that may touch you. Also contains strobe lighting effects. May be unsuitable for younger children or those of a nervous disposition.12

Few of these parks seem likely to recognize ‘Halloween’ as the eve of All Hallows, or All Saints. In American – and now worldwide – popular culture, the link between the fun/scary world of Halloween and the Christian celebration of All Saints’ Day, the commemoration of the departed, is long lost. But where there are hells, there should surely be heavens. The Madou temple’s heaven offers similar animatronic scenes, but they are considerably less dramatic than its hell. It depicts the relaxing and luxurious life ready for those who have lived well. You can have tea with fairies or play chess with the gods. This

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heaven also tells the story of Niu Lang, a shepherd, and Zhi Nu, a daughter of the Goddess of Western Heaven. Zhi Nu, her mother, and six aunts travelled down to earth for a visit. While they were bathing in a river, Niu Lang stole their clothes and got to see Zhi Nu naked. They had to get married, but happily fell deeply in love. Even so, Zhi Nu was called back to heaven, though the Goddesses allowed her to return to visit Niu Lang on the seventh day of the seventh month of the Lunar Calendar, Chinese Valentine’s Day. In the gardens of the Brahma Kumari retreat centre in Bangalore, India, beside the Shiva Darshan Spiritual Museum, visitors are offered a separate hall devoted to ‘Paradise’. This comprises a series of walk-through dioramas, almostlife-size, devoted to the various virtues: respect, love, humility, truth, purity, peace, unity and so on. Very attractively presented and brilliantly coloured, the displays point to how much more difficult it is to present heaven than hell. Often it is only the helpful labels that make clear that – say – a group of ladies dancing signifies ‘unity’. A very different take on heaven is to be found at the Precious Moments Park and Chapel in Carthage, Missouri. This park was set up by the proprietor of Precious Moments, a company that markets greetings cards and figurines based on twee cartoon images of little children. Highly sentimental, they are very popular in the United States.13 The park is based on Evangelical Christianity, but it focuses very strongly on heaven as a happy place to which the dead are welcomed by angels, and is directed especially at the bereaved, and perhaps above all at parents who have lost children. Thus, the Precious Moments Chapel, the principal feature of the park, is dominated inside by a mural depicting dozens of cute little angels and cute little children, and at the base a little girl in a red dress approaching three angels bearing signs ‘Welcome to your heavenly home’, and about to step through a golden gate inscribed ‘No more tears’ (Beal 2005, 146). The implication is clearly that she, like all small children who die, ‘has gone to be an angel’. A theme park offering comfort to the bereaved is the subject of an episode in the Simpsons’ 2001 season, ‘I’m goin’ to Praiseland’. Ned Flanders, the minister who lives next door to the Simpsons, creates Praiseland, a Christian theme park, in honour and in memory of his late wife Maude. The people of Springfield hate it – until the statue of Maude at the park’s centre starts to offer visions. Each visitor has a vision of their very own heaven: Principal Skinner is in a perfect elementary school where no one is late, the teacher’s common-room is luxurious, and Bart Simpson isn’t there; Disco Stu dances with Frank Sinatra at a heavenly

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disco; and Comic Book Guy (dressed as Mr Spock) saves Captain Kirk from his malfunctioning chair aboard the Starship Enterprise, and is offered makeout sessions with Uhura from the original Star Trek series, Catwoman from the 1960s Batman TV show, and Agent 99 from Get Smart. Sadly though, these miracles prove to be not God’s will, but the effects of a gas leak from Homer’s hot-dog stall. Only once, perhaps, has a whole park itself become heaven. That is in Mitch Albom’s powerful and moving novel, or allegory, The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Eddie is the ageing and disappointed maintenance engineer of a seaside amusement park who dies saving a little girl from a collapsing ride, ‘Freddy’s Free Fall’. He finds himself in a transformed park; this is heaven, and he is meeting the first of five people who have (though he didn’t always know it) played a crucial role in his life. Each helps to explain to Eddie key parts of his life. And by understanding his own life Eddie not only finds peace at last but understands how each of us ‘affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one’ (Albom 2003, 196).14

Religion park themes: Noah and Solomon More common than heaven and hell in Christian parks are Bible stories; the most popular story by far is that of Noah and his Ark. Noah and his Ark are a gift to developers of attractions. There are zoos and animal parks all over the world named ‘Noah’s Ark’, but most Noah’s Arks in amusement parks are simply ‘fun houses’: the ark rocks about as visitors try to walk through moving floors, air blasts, ‘forced perspective’ passages and distorting mirrors. There’s still one at Blackpool Pleasure Beach (Easdown 2012, 47). A quite different approach, which takes seriously the covenant between God and humankind that is central to the ancient Bible story appears in just a few parks. The biggest by far is the Ark Encounter, described in Chapter 2. The story of Noah, of course, appears repeatedly not just in the older literature of the Abrahamic faiths but also in recent popular literature. Visitor-attractions and books come together in a three-volume imaginative ‘biography’ of Noah, being published by Tim Chaffey, the content director of the Ark Encounter, and K. Marie Adams.15 Theme park and book are closely integrated. Not only does the book-cover carry a puff by Ken Ham, but at the back the authors also offer brief

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descriptions of ten instances where incidents from the book are included in the Ark Encounter’s displays. For example, in chapter three: As Noah looks over the family farm, he recalls memories of daydreaming at the top of Sacrifice Hill as he watched boats travel the river. An illustration of young Noah watching a boat on the river while carving a small boat out of wood is shown in the Who Was Noah? exhibit on the second deck. This illustration also includes some earth shakers (sauropod dinosaurs) on the other side of the river. In Chapter 9, Noah told Aterre that he had occasionally seen earth shakers when he was younger. (Chaffey and Adams 2016, 293)

A rather less assertive, though equally Creationist, Noah’s Ark stands beside an enormous suspension bridge in Hong Kong. It was created in 2009 by three local Evangelical Christian billionaires (Tse 2016), and this too comprises a ‘life-size’ ark. It contains a hotel, a youth hostel, and a multimedia experience, including a 180-degree wide-screen theatre. An anonymous Wikipedia contributor describes it: The multimedia experience begins with an introduction to Judeo-Christian teaching from the time of Moses and features an imagined ‘reconstruction’ of the Holy of Holies complete with the Ark of the Covenant. There are guides who lead the audience through a series of theatres and galleries designed to convey messages about the challenges that the Earth and humanity are facing today. The suggested solution to said problems is an acceptance of the Christian God and Biblical teaching. The multimedia experience concludes with a history of the Bible with emphasis on the dissemination of the Bible in China. Elsewhere within the park visitors are likely to come across staff playing the role of the Holy Family being pursued by others dressed as Roman legionaries.

Another ark is ‘God’s Ark of Safety’, a 137-metres-long replica being built by a fundamentalist ministry at Frostburg, beside Interstate 68 in the hills of western Maryland, United States. The project began in 1974 and seems to have made sadly little progress since Timothy Beal (2005, 88–101) visited it in 2002.16 (In the context of discussion of religion parks as ‘sacred places’ (Chapter 6), it is noteworthy that the founder, Patrick Greene, then described the very site as having healing powers.) A floating Dutch equivalent, this one a real boat, should have been towed to the September 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, but was damaged in an accident in Oslo harbour. Another Old Testament hero was King Solomon, whose story became a water-ride. ‘King Solomon’s Waterfalls’ in the now-closed Kings City in the resort of Eilat in Israel, took visitors on a boat ride following the life story of

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King Solomon. Visitors sailed through seven caves, each marking a chapter in the life of King Solomon and completed the experience by gliding down the falls to the King Solomon lake next to his castle. King Solomon was the second son of King David. When God appeared to him in a dream, telling him he would grant him whatever he asked, Solomon asked for understanding and discernment. This request so pleased God that He granted it but gave Solomon great riches and power as well. King Solomon is remembered for his justice and for building the temple in Jerusalem. Thus, Solomon Law Park at Daejeon in Korea is a theme park operated by the Korean Department of Justice, which offers a chance to become more familiar with the legal system of Korea and overall global legal history with a wide variety of hands-on programs such as a legislation class, scientific investigation class, mock courtroom & trial, and simulated prisons. … Solomon Law Park is a venue that provides an easy and fun learning experience regarding the laws and legal system of the nation for youth and adult citizens.

The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God created an ‘exact replica’ (though actually very much bigger) of the Temple of Solomon at São Paulo, Brazil, in 2014. Inside is a replica of the Ark of the Covenant.

Multifaith There seems to be no single motive for the setting up of multifaith religion parks – of which there are very few – though an important one is clearly promotion of inter-religious harmony. Bukit Kasih (Love Hill) is a modest multifaith park in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. From the fifty-five metre Tolerance Monument at the entrance, you climb a long staircase up the hill, passing rock-cut faces of Toar and Lumimuut, ancestors of the local Minahasa people, and hot springs. At the top are a mosque, a Catholic Church, a Protestant church, a Buddhist monastery and a Hindu temple – though apparently none are actually used. The park was created in 2002 by the governor of this predominantly Christian province, but for many visitors the hot springs seem to be the principal attraction (Stausberg 2011, 121; Schlehe 2014). A project under consideration in the Moscow region of Russia is a ‘Park of people’s unity and harmony’. Promoted by the Inter-religious Council of Russia, it is planned to cover an area of over 244 hectares, and to include an Orthodox church, a synagogue, a mosque and a Buddhist temple, as well as an exhibition

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centre, a congress hall, a museum for world religions, a planetarium, hotels, restaurants and other complexes.17 Sometimes the motive for setting up a multifaith park seems eccentric to the point of irrationality. We shall see in Chapter 10 just how eccentric Suchart Kosolkitiwong were, who in 1997 founded the Guan Yin Inter-Religious Park at Phetchaburi, Thailand. The twenty-eight-hectare site is divided into a MahayanaDaoism area, Theravada Buddhism area, Monks area, Hinduism area and the Guan Yin statue area. The central feature is the world’s largest wooden image of 1,000armed Guan Yin, carved in camphor wood in Shanghai. There are also images of Siva, Brahma, Maitreya Buddha and other goddesses and spirits. One section of the park features statues of the Jade Emperor and other Daoist immortals, and painted images of the Yin-Yang. Thus, the park’s ‘inter-religious’ focus is distinctly on Asian religion. Though since Suchart’s death the park has become more normal, as we shall see in Chapter 10 it was founded as a bastion against communism, natural disasters, asteroids and Martians (McDaniel 2015, 10). One of the most enterprising, idiosyncratic and attractive multifaith parks was the much-lamented Fantastic Tropical Gardens on Jersey. This park was begun in 1932 by Horace Bexon, described by the local paper as an explorer, who had settled in Jersey.18 He opened the gardens to the public in 1956, and they rapidly became a major attraction for visitors, and were much loved by Islanders. The gardens were essentially a combination of a religious theme park and a garden of economic botany. They were divided into five areas: China, South America, India, Japan and Islam. Each was full of plants appropriate to those parts of the world, with a strong emphasis on the more exotic, the more dramatic, and especially those plants with practical uses or unusual stories. Thus, one plant in the Japan section was phormium, described in the guidebook as ‘grown throughout the whole of the Orient’, and the source of hair lacquer, mascara, lipstick and rope. The religion aspect of the park was even more personal. As you entered the Hindu section you encountered a gong whose gentle tapping sent ‘harmonious chords throbbing and blending across the garden’, and a lion figure: ‘As you pass this particular figure any evil within you will be frightened away and you are at peace and in a clean state of mind to enjoy your garden and its creation’ (Anon 1975, 48). The Hindu Garden contained shrines to Siva, Surya, Vishnu, Bhumi and Kubera, with many figures of gods and heroes. The South American section included figures of the Aztec god Huehueteotl, Mayan throne and Aztec Calendar Stone. The Islam section contained a mosque, and ‘the structures and other buildings contained within this layout are all strictly to the rules laid down by Mahomet, the chief prophet of the faith of Islam.’ The China section contained shrines to Creation, the Buddha

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and the Moon. The whole park was very much the creation of its proprietor, and since its closure in 1981 one can assess it only through the guidebook, which reveals his rather eccentric views, including a belief in radioactive hot-spots in the world’s oceans, and striking analogies between the world’s religions. To most visitors, though, the gardens were simply a peaceful place where one could at once enjoy the calm and beauty and fascination of the plants and learn something of other peoples’ beliefs. One visitor from the 1970s recalls: I used to go there, I must have been in my twenties, I remember the great gong, that on striking it everything that was not in harmony must part (that’s how I interpreted it) and I loved to strike it. The combination of the spiritual and the earthiness of the garden was deeply attractive to me, I was already interested in these two areas of life, and remain so to this day. It made me happy to walk its paths, to sip tea in the tea garden and to learn about the history of the garden and its buildings. It was a place of contemplation.19

While this park sadly died, other religion parks have successfully adapted to a changing religious environment. Museumpark Orientalis, just outside Nijmegen in the Netherlands, is a big religion park which changed from a Catholic pilgrimage centre to a Christian–Jewish–Muslim inter-religion park. Heilig Land Stichting was founded in 1911 by a Catholic priest, Arnold Suys, in alliance with the remarkable artist-cum-ethnographer Piet Gerrit and architect Jan Stuyt. Unusually for Dutch Catholics then, they saw familiarity with the Holy Land as crucial for Christians and planned a major pilgrimage centre with a Bible Museum on the side. The great basilica was never built, but the open-air museum with a whole series of venues scattered through a large wood became a very successful visitor attraction, drawing Catholics and Protestants alike in large numbers. The museum was severely damaged in the war, and the post-war collapse of religious identity in the Netherlands brought the museum to the brink of closure. Instead, the museum reinvented itself, with a new name and a new remit to present to visitors the three great monotheist religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The introductory exhibition imaginatively addresses the origins and commonalities of the three ‘Religions of the Book’. Then you go off on a trail that takes you through a Jordanian Jewish village (with synagogue), a Syrian farm, a caravanserai, an Arab village (with mosque), the birthplace of Christ, a Roman town and a Bedouin camp. Many of these are large and impressive, as well as carefully researched. Each has costumed volunteer interpreters who focus particularly on the many school parties, and there is a lively programme of activities to reflect the festivals of the three Abrahamic religions.20

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Justin McDaniel points out that many of the Buddhist attractions developed in recent years in Asia are ‘ecumenical’, in the sense of deliberately drawing on and incorporating the principal Buddhist traditions, and often also incorporating elements of Chinese tradition, notably the goddess/bodhisattva Guan Yin. He draws attention, too, to the Centro Ecuménico Khun Iam (Guan Yin Ecumenical Centre) in Macao. This perhaps barely qualifies as a theme park, for it consists mainly of a thirty-two-metre-high statue of Guan Yin on an artificial island off downtown Macao. But in the base of the statue are a contemplation room and a library which offers ‘a collection of educational materials focusing on different modes of “Thought” from both the Occident and the Orient, particularly that of the Buddha, Lao Tse and Confucius’.21 Moreover, Guan Yin is intended to relate both to the Virgin Mary and to Mazu, the Southern Chinese Goddess of the Sea (McDaniel 2017, 115).

Islam Compared to Christian, Buddhist/Dao and Hindu parks, Islamic parks are few. There are two or three in Iran, one in Lebanon, one in Sharjah, and one in China. A much-delayed sixty-five-hectare Holy Qur’an Park is still promised for Dubai. Besides an outdoor theatre, fountains, a lake, walking and biking tracks, and a children’s play area, this park will contain examples of all fifty-four plants mentioned in the Qur’an, displayed in a glass-walled building, alongside an artificial ‘cave’ using interactive technology to illustrate the miracles related in the Qur’an. What the ‘Umrah corner’ will be is not yet clear. When first announced the project attracted the ire of a Guardian correspondent. In 2013 the Sudanese-born writer Nasrine Malik denounced it: The whole project is characteristic of the emirate’s commodification of everything. It’s a project that appeases and attracts no one. If tourists are religious enough to want to come to Dubai and eschew its other attractions in order to execute a mock mini-pilgrimage in the ‘Umrah corner’, chances are they won’t be enamoured of its circus-like nature. (Malik 2013)

The experience of religious theme parks in other parts of the world suggests that Malik may be wrong. Muslims may perhaps react differently to devout Christians, Hindus or Buddhists, but Muslims have certainly taken to the use of modern media, recognizing how the internet and social media in particular can contribute to expressing and promoting their faith. Perhaps they may feel that a

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theme park can too. It is, though, true that museums of Islam, as distinct from Islamic Art museums, are few and far between – though there is one in Mecca and another in Jackson, Mississippi. One view is that this rather modest park is an effort to appease those Muslims who feel that Dubai is a Western secular sellout and no longer truly Islamic. One of the liveliest Muslim parks – though still quite modest – is perhaps Taman Tamadun Islam, (Islamic Civilization Garden) beside the river at Terengganu in northeast Malaysia. Besides a big steel and glass mosque, a convention centre, guest-houses, restaurants and shop, it offers river trips, a sound and light show, and scale models of twenty-two monuments from all over the Islamic world. In five of them there is more elaborate interpretation: videos, educational games, quizzes, treasure hunts and ‘displays of artefacts’.22 Just like some Christian religion parks, some Islamic religion parks push a very particular understanding of Islam. We have seen Mleeta (Chapter 6), the Hezbollah theme park in southern Lebanon. The Qur’an Park in Tabriz puts a heavy emphasis, despite its name, on Shia Islam, with prominent brick monuments to the Twelve Imams and to the Panj Tan (The Five), referring to Mohammed, Fatima, Ali, Hassan and Hussein.

Atheism One ‘religion’ that seems to have no real theme parks to its name is atheism. Unlike the world of museums, where there is an honourable if distinctly limited tradition of museums of atheism (Paine 2010; Polianski 2016), there seems to be no real equivalent in the world of theme parks. Beside the river in Wenzhou in China is a small children’s playpark, with a noticeboard by the entrance giving it the portentous title: Anti-cult Theme Park. All this amounts to, though, is a few tired notices and some rather crude hand-painted cartoons. This is all done by the Yongjia County Office on Prevention and Handling of Cult Issues and the Yongjia Anti-Cult Association, whose message is ‘Cults, drugs and terrorism are the three largest threats in the world today’ (Makinen 2014). The governmentsponsored anti-Cult movement in China, of course, is not anti-religious as such, let alone atheist, but seems to be largely directed at large millenarian sects like Falun Gong, especially ones with foreign links or which seem as if they might challenge the authority of the Communist Party. One cartoon at Wenzhou is labelled ‘Cult organizations have always borrowed the name of religion or martial arts, and always try to promote the theory of apocalypse, using the excuse that

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the world will end soon to create fear in society’, and another ‘Cults portray their leader as god and establish a large organization; they get their wealth illegally’. *

*

*

The themes we’ve looked at in this chapter are the commonest of the religious themes found in theme parks, but they are by no means the only ones – as we have seen in previous chapters. In the next we shall look at the huge range of techniques available to theme park designers, and in looking at how these have been used to promote, explain or illustrate religious stories we shall discover yet more relevant theme park themes.

9

Religion and the Imagineers’ Pallet

The designers of theme parks (‘imagineers’ Disney called them) have a vast range of techniques at their disposal. Some of these are quite new, but many date back centuries, sometimes millennia. This chapter describes the long history of carrying a religious message held by many of the techniques in use in theme parks today, from gardens to dioramas.

Parks and gardens Many of the attractions theme parks offer their visitors can be accommodated in a big building – or indeed in a big Buddha figure or even a big elephant. Still, a true theme park must surely normally be a park, and parks have a long history of ideological and religious theming, in many different cultures. One classic example of an eighteenth-century ‘theme park’ is Stowe Landscape Gardens in the English South Midlands. Viscount Cobham was an English nobleman, returned in 1713 from the French wars. He was an ardent Whig, a passionate supporter of the constitutional monarchy, and proud of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ that had overthrown the Stuart dynasty’s absolutist ambitions in the name of liberty and Protestantism. Over the next thirty years he created a park around his home that expressed in trees, grass, walks and buildings his political beliefs. A Gothic Temple recalled the spirit with which the Goths defended liberty against the Roman Empire; a Temple of British Worthies celebrated his political heroes, men of action and thinkers (including John Locke, whose Second Treatise on Government [1690] had provided the philosophic underpinning of the Glorious Revolution); a Temple of Ancient Virtue celebrated Ancient Greeks as defenders of liberty (like Lycergus who established in Sparta a balanced constitution of limited monarchy so much admired by eighteenth-century Whigs (Clarke 1997, 4)). By the time of his death Cobham had landscaped eighty-three

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hectares, and among his meadows, avenues and woods had built nearly forty temples, created eight lakes or ponds, and installed over fifty inscriptions, forty busts and nearly fifty statues (Bevington 1997, 61). These would all perhaps have been ‘only the rubbishy trappings of wealth’ to the Confucian literary gentleman Chia Cheng, a character in the classic eighteenth-century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber. There is an analogy between the ‘English garden’ and the strand of Chinese garden-making which emphasizes the ‘natural’. The debate between Chia Cheng and his son centres on what is meant by ‘natural’, ‘a fundamental philosophical dispute between on the one hand the Confucian ideal of simple rusticity, the Daoist ideal of natural spontaneity, the painter’s ideal of ‘vital spirit’; and on the other the several conventions for representing these ideals’ – which could scarcely avoid being ‘artificial’ (Jencks 2003, 194). This is close to the debate today over the artificiality of theme parks. The European aristocratic and gentleman’s park morphed early on into public parks, which were occasionally deliberately themed, but more often simply took on ideological associations from whoever paid for them (local landowner or socialist municipality?), or, like the famous London pleasure park founded in the 1660s, Vauxhall Gardens, who used them. Vauxhall Gardens gained a reputation as a centre for the opposition to King George II. A Japanese example is the Tetsugakudo Park outside Shinjuku, founded by philosopher Inoue Enryo (1858–1919) in 1906. Among the philosophers it celebrates are Shinto, Buddhist, Hindu and Confucian writers, but also Socrates and Kant. Much more to our purpose is the Bible Garden, a phenomenon studied by James Bielo (2018a). These are essentially gardens comprised of plants mentioned in the Bible, of which Bielo has identified over one hundred in twenty countries, ranging in size from 263 hectares to a modest flower-bed, and mostly associated with Christian or Jewish institutions. Perhaps surprisingly, though, the earliest Bible Garden he has discovered was begun as recently as 1940 in Carmel-by-theSea, California, by a United Methodist congregation. UNESCO is promoting Islamic equivalents in Sharjah, UAE, and at Doha, Qatar, (described as ‘a garden of reconciliation, meditation, and spiritual significance’1), and a third multifaith one in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Another park feature is a very great deal older. Multi-choice mazes and single-route labyrinths seem to have originated some four thousand years ago, perhaps in southern Europe. No doubt they were always intriguing challenges, as they still are, but they have also symbolized cities (notably Troy) and fortresses – and they have been used for specifically religious purposes, offered

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as an ‘extra’ to visitors to places of worship. Best known are the floor-labyrinths in Chartres and other medieval cathedrals, said to have been developed to replace the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but labyrinths are also found in Hindu and Buddhist contexts: for example, that composed of 500 linga at the Saivite temple of Paśupatinātha at Pasupati, Nepal (Saward 2003, 61). The past generation has seen a strong revival of labyrinths as machines for meditation in Christian contexts (Saward 2002). Often these are on the floors of churches, like that created in 2009 in the parish church at Boxgrove, near Chichester in southern England. Sometimes they are outdoor labyrinths, like that created in 2004 as part of a longer meditative walk through the woods near the Probstei Sankt Gerold, Vorarlberg, Austria. But the mazes and labyrinths in theme parks seem seldom to have much to do with religion, unless it is in a spirit of mockery. The maze at the Lost City in South Africa pretends to be an ancient site rediscovered, but despite its vaguely Mayan design it ignores the opportunity to pretend to any religious heritage (van Eeden 2016, 215). Labyrinthia, near Silkeborg in Denmark and Labyrinth Park near Heraklion in Crete contain both mazes (the Cretan one with a Minotaur at the centre) and labyrinths.2 Many amusement parks include a scary maze at Halloween; La Ronde park in Montreal, Canada, has a permanent one. A very different kind of attraction that shares many of the qualities of a modern theme park is the botanical garden. The Eden Project in southwest England is a huge botanical garden created in an abandoned China Clay quarry near the Cornish coast. The site is dominated by two enormous geodesic domes (biomes) dedicated respectively to the rain forest habitat, and the ‘Mediterranean’ habitat. Its purpose is ‘to recreate certain habitats to inform and entertain the public about human dependence on plants, and in so doing create a predisposition to effect or support positive changes in the way we live’ (Smit 2001, 124). Such an ambition is perhaps not far removed from those of religion parks. Indeed, Tim Smit, its founder, said: What had begun as a project to exhibit plants from around the world and show how we had domesticated them developed into a far deeper strategy to use plants as the common backcloth against which all human life is led. … To these social, cultural and economic perspectives would be added an exploration of perhaps the most vital aspect of all, the spiritual. Not in an overtly religious sense, but from the standpoint of examining how, in many cultures, the conceit has taken hold that we are apart from nature rather than a part of nature. … Eden would be dedicated to inspiring people to reflect on the vital role of plants and come to understand the need for a balance between, on the one hand, husbandry –

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growing them for our use – and on the other, stewardship – taking care of them on behalf of all living things. (Smit 2001, 162)

The project has an ambitious educational programme and programme of public events, workshops, concerts, presentations and art installations. The great public success of the Eden approach is reflected in the project’s national reputation, role as a flagship attraction in the region, and the fourteen million visitors since opening.

Statues Back in 1973, Umberto Eco (1998, 53) believed that ‘no preacher dares show us God in the form of a bearded dummy, or as a Disneyland robot’. He never went to HLE, or the Tierra Santa Theme Park. Most religion parks, and many other parks in which religion makes an appearance, include statues of holy men or gods. Often these are huge figures dominating the park, such as the multi-armed Avalokitesvara at Suối Tiên Theme Park or the nine-metre figures of Christ and the Buddha at the Guan Yin Inter-Religious Park in Thailand. At Tierra Santa in Buenos Aires a thirteen-metre statue of Jesus, his arms outstretched, rises from behind a rock every hour on the hour, to a burst of Handel’s Alleluia Chorus. Sometimes these figures are so enormous that they are the park, with a range of attractions inside them. Sometimes – as we have seen at Haw Par Villa – statues and statue-groups are the park’s raison d’être. At other times they are scattered through the park, or (as at Akshardham Gujarat or the Rosary and Litany Garden at Athirampuzha Church, Kottayam, Kerala) corralled into a sculpture garden. Often sculpture groups are three-dimensional versions of images already very familiar to visitors through reproductions of pictures. Umberto Eco (1998, 16) claimed to have visited seven waxwork versions of Leonardo’s Last Supper between San Francisco and Los Angeles, while scenes in Chinese hells (Chapter 8) reproduce Hell scrolls, familiar from funerals, during Ghost Month, and when making offerings to the dead. Statues in religion parks very readily take on power and agency. Holy figures in parks are often venerated by visitors, by prayer, touching, or the offering of incense, flowers and lights. We have seen (Chapter 2) figures in Haw Par Villa in Singapore attracting veneration; two two-metre-tall statues in the hell at Wat Phai Rong Wua in Thailand, at first intended to be suffering souls like their smaller companions, gradually attracted people seeking cures,

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who might ‘even seek to touch their genitals under their colourful robes’ (Anderson 2012, 67) – despite or because of their hideous green faces. For many people the modern way to express one’s veneration is by having one’s photo taken beside the statue or, increasingly, by taking a selfie. Intriguingly this form of veneration seems to be acceptable to many Protestants whose forbears might have feared idolatry. HLE used to offer a photo opportunity for visitors beside a life-size figure of Christ walking on water; the reflective ground surface made the visitor seem to be walking on water too. Occasionally visitors may interact with statues even more intimately. At the Miracle Park of St Anthony at Thambuchetty Palaya, a Catholic village on the outskirts of Bangalore, ‘lower class Dalit worshippers’ have been accused of breaking off the fingers of figures of St Anthony to take home as relics (Garimella 2003, 183). Sometimes the reason for the presence of ‘religious’ sculptures in an otherwise purely secular theme park is obscure. Erlebnispark Teichland, a very modest amusement park built on a reclaimed spoil-tip in Brandenburg, Germany, has a small circle of eight gods from Slavic mythology. Far more powerful than static statues are moving ones. We have seen how often animatronics are used in theme parks to tell stories about religion; such devices seem to have been used since antiquity. In the Smithsonian Museum is a mechanical model monk who walks, turns, moves his mouth as if praying, beats his breast, and raises his eyes to his cross which he lifts and kisses. It is said to have been made in the 1560s by the Italian clockmaker Gianello Torriano for King Philip II of Spain, as a thank-offering after the latter’s son recovered from near death.3 Full-size automatic moving figures were a popular attraction in the eighteenth century, sometimes on their own, sometimes as part of bigger assemblages. In the 1750s Jenny’s Whim, a London pub-cum-amusementgarden, used (probably quite simple) pop-up figures to startle lovers wandering the garden paths. It is Disney who is usually credited with developing and naming the technique, with the first modern animatronics his Enchanted Tiki Birds at Disneyland in 1963; however, Efteling apparently had an animatronic fairy tale village in 1952.4 The earliest modern use of animated figures to convey a religious message, though, is not clear – it may well in fact be at Akshardham Gujarat in 1993, or in one of the temporary exhibitions that preceded it. Perhaps the most effective and convincing presentation there has Lord Swaminarayan seated under a large tree for a spiritual discussion with his disciples and prominent villagers. At the Lord’s invitation, the former play instruments and sing, and

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one of the latter rises to ask a question. The technology is smooth enough not to distract attention from the scene’s message.5 Of course, just because a technique is dramatic and sophisticated doesn’t mean that it automatically helps convey a profound message. Contrast the use of animatronics in the two Akshardham parks with those in the street of temple/ museums in Haridwar, the pilgrimage centre of the Ganges. In the Akshardham parks the use of animatronics in the dioramas dramatically focuses visitors’ attention on the life and preaching of Guru Swaminarayan, and helps fix the events of his life and the principles of his message in their minds. In Haridwar, by contrast, the combination of religious education and fervour mixed with technology has created a by-product of kitsch modernism and spaces reminiscent of amusement parks. The temple/museum spaces are coveted, not for religious purposes, but for the consumption of entertainment, leisure and tourism. … The electrically animated figure of Lord Rama with his consort Sita sitting while Laxman is cutting off the nose of a demon fails to convey the ideas of dharma and righteousness that the episode was supposed to illustrate, but is deployed as an entertaining act. Likewise, the image of Lord Krishna and his lover Radha seated on a revolving throne does not attract visitors because of its display of divine love, but because it is entertainment: a spinning shiny, silver and glasscovered throne with devotees draped in multi-coloured saris, surrounded by mosaic glass pillars. (Puri 2015, 259)

Panoramas and dioramas One January evening in 1863 my great-grandfather took the newly opened London Underground Railway to visit the Colosseum in Regent’s Park. He was a 21-year-old carpenter, recently moved to London from the West Country – typical perhaps of the market for leisure attractions in the capital in the middle of Queen Victoria’s reign. The Colosseum was effectively an indoor theme park – a big dramatic building that contained a range of things to see, things to ride on, and things to watch. At its centre was a huge panorama painting of London completed in 1824 and covered by a very large dome, to which visitors ascended in a twelve-person lift (Paine 2014, 49). Dioramas, both look-in and walk-through, have been used in Catholic places of pilgrimage since at least the sixteenth century. This is still by far the most common technique in religious visitor attractions and can be found in most parts

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of the world, and in all the major faiths. A fine recent example is at the Sikh Virasat-e-Khalsa (the Khalsa Museum) at Anandpur Sahib in North West India. That ‘museum’ (Phase 1, at least, contains no original artefacts) sets out, in a series of large rooms or bays, dioramas displaying principal incidents from the lives of the Sikh Gurus, relieved by a number of audio-visuals, paintings and videos. In Christianity the use of the panorama and diorama has a long history. Perhaps the first use of life-size figures in groups to tell stories to promote faith was at Varallo in the foothills of the Alps in Northern Italy. In 1491 the Franciscan Order built on their centuries-long association with Palestine by opening a replica Holy Land outside the town. They created there a landscape reproducing as well as possible the landscape of Jerusalem, with replicas of the main Holy Places, and also peopled those places with life-size figures showing the principal scenes of the Passion of Christ. Not only had the Franciscans given the faithful the possibility of a pilgrimage considerably less challenging than one to the actual Middle East, they had provided a Holy Land cleansed of awkward Jews and Muslims (Wharton 2006, 126). The success of this venture led to the setting up over the next couple of centuries of some twelve more such religion parks (as we may surely call them), mostly devoted to displaying the life of Christ, and particularly his Passion. Wharton (2006, 142) points out that their emphasis evolved from the reproduction of the Holy Places to the offering of a succession of devotional images (the proper veneration of which earned indulgencies), very like Stations of the Cross. Still in the seventeenth century, and in Protestant countries, there were visitor attractions based on dioramas of biblical scenes. On 4 April 1672 the London scholar John Evelyn went to see where now the French Ambassador had caused to be represented our Blessed Saviour at the Paschal Supper with his Disciples, in figures and puppets made as large as life, of wax-work, curiously clad and sitting round a large table, the room nobly hung, and shining with innumerable lamps and candles: this was exposed to all the world; all the City came to see it.

At the end of August he went to see Paradise, a room in Hatton-Garden, furnished with a representation of all sorts of animals handsomely painted on boards, or cloth, and so cut out and made to stand, move, fly, crawl, roar, and make their several cries. (Evelyn 1907, 76, 92)

A century later such attractions were perhaps more intended to draw visitors, but religion was still the dominant theme. Patented in 1787, the painted 360 degrees

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panorama was rapidly adopted by Protestants to present the Holy Land; already at the beginning of the nineteenth century there were panoramas of Jerusalem in New York, London and Paris (Wharton 2006, 167) and in many countries they were soon touring the provinces. Richard Altick, in his fascinating book The Shows of London, points out the commercial success of ‘Holy Land’ panoramas in 1851 London, the Great Exhibition year ‘when three such exhibitions were available to the heavily Nonconformist throngs from the provinces’ (182); by the end of the century most claimed to represent Jerusalem at the time of Christ, and many represented the Crucifixion (Wharton 2006, 169).6 Three survive: one of 1892 at Einsiedeln, Switzerland, one of 1895 at St Anne de Beaupré, Quebec, and one of 1902–3 at Altötting, near Munich. Not all dioramas and lay-figures are professional and expensive. Bible Walk in Mansfield, Ohio, exhibits a series of dioramas of the life of Christ, of scenes from the Old Testament, of Christian martyrs, and of heroes of the Protestant Reformation. It was first opened in 1983 by the pastor of a newly-built church who, according to the Bible Walk website, got his inspiration from a secular waxworks museum which included a diorama of the Ascension of Christ. This is more of a waxwork museum than a theme park – indeed, that is how it advertises itself; it began with just twenty-two redundant figures from an openair Bible Walk in Pennsylvania, and now offers three hundred in seventy separate scenes. Many of the figures came from another closed wax museum – Elizabeth Taylor seems to appear in the diorama of the Judgement of Solomon. Bible Walk remains, though, above all a local initiative; people from the church create the backgrounds, make the props, sew the costumes, and provide the sound effects, while a hairdresser from nearby Columbus styles the figures’ hair.

Relics and museums We are seeing throughout this book the numerous occasions and places where theme parks overlap with places of worship on the one hand, and with museums on the other. Many histories of museums trace them back to the relic collections of great churches in the Middle Ages, and religious theme parks can include relic collections and museums of specifically religious items, just as places of worship can. The Scriptorium display of bibles at HLE is one example; the collection of relics of Guru Swaminarayan preserved at Akshardham Gujarat (both Chapter 2) is another. The distinction between collections that appeal to visitors seeking salvation from their magical contact, those that reach the visitor’s soul through his or her

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memory, and those designed to appeal to basic human curiosity, has always been muddled. Relics with specific religious significance were exhibited alongside natural curiosities and souvenirs. Take the 1346 inventory of relics at the Abbey of St Omer in France: A drop of the Virgin’s milk, a pot that figured in the miracle of Cana, a scrap of a martyr’s shroud, nails or a fragment of wood from the true cross, a cameo with a portrait of the Queen of Sheba, a crystal goblet from King Solomon’s temple, souvenirs brought back from distant lands by pilgrims and crusaders, ‘thunderstones’, griffins’ eggs, tortoise shells, unicorns’ horns, antediluvian giants’ bones and teeth. (quoted in Altick 1978, 6)

No wonder perhaps that the Protestant Reformers concentrated so much of their fire on relics. But if collections of relics before the Reformation could also include things that were more obviously curiosities, collections of curiosities after the Reformation could include relics. The collection formed by Canon John Bargrave of Canterbury, who in the 1640s made his living accompanying young noblemen on the Grand Tour, mostly comprises genuine and fake antiquities and other souvenirs of Italy. It includes, though, tiny circular wooden boxes and the original label: ‘For curiosity, because sold in the shops of Rome, so that for 2s. 6d. I had these 34 (pretended) reliques of saints’ bones’ (Sturdy and Henig, n.d. ). Yet well over a century after the English Reformation, in 1710, a Franco-Swiss calico printer called Claudius du Puy was (for a fee) exhibiting in his London rooms various idols, among them ‘a large wooden one with an ass’s head, the body as hollow as a baker’s oven’; ‘an elegant ship of Chariophyllis, put together, about an ell long’; various urns; magnets; a snake skin sixteen feet long; the head of Oliver Cromwell (M. du Puy was confident he could get sixty guineas for it); ancient musical instruments; a goblet ‘on which were engraved in relief, with the most uncommon elegance, various Bible stories, such as those of Esther, Susanna, etc.’ … twenty wax dolls, in nun’s habits, made by the sisters of Brabant … two mummies, a portrait of Christ made of feathers (another product of the Brabant nunnery), a model of Christ’s tomb. (Altick 1978, 16)

The balance has swung sharply from the holy to the curious, but there is no very clear distinction between the different ways people are drawn to interact with things. Long before museums claimed the moral high ground by offering scientific understanding, spiritual improvement through beauty, or understanding of our place in the world through history, they appealed to curiosity and hope. Theme parks lay claim to both traditions.

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Models Many religion and culture parks make use of architectural and landscape models of significant places – for example, the model of Jerusalem in 66CE at HLE. In Christianity such models have a long history. Models of the Holy Sepulchre, made of wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl, have been a standard Jerusalem souvenir since the end of the sixteenth century (Biddle 1999, 44). Among the many large-scale models exhibited in early Georgian London, Bible sites were particularly popular: for example, in 1729 the Temple of Solomon (four metres high and twenty-four metres round with 2,000 windows and 7,000 columns), in 1747 the Tabernacle of Moses, and in 1752 the Holy Sepulchre (Altick 1978, 115). In 1846–9 there was what Altick calls a rash of Holy Land models; visitors to some at least also got a sermon for their shilling. After showing in Dublin, London, Manchester and Liverpool, one of these models was taken to New York and Boston, the first in the United States (Rubin 2000, 61; Rubin 2006). The Amsterdam Bible Museum shows a model of the Tabernacle begun by the museum’s founder, the Rev. Leendert Schouten (1828–1905), when a theology student. The Jerusalem model at HLE shows the Tomb of Christ at the site ‘discovered’ by General Gordon in 1883, to provide a nice and tidy Protestant Holy Place, well away from the muddle and history of the Holy Sepulchre. Models are tools of religious politics. Altick (1978, 395) quotes The Times on a model of the Holy Inquisition prison at Coimbra, Portugal, made by an eyewitness of its destruction by the mob in 1820: Every Protestant should see this model; it will confirm him in his adherence to his mode of faith; and every Papist should also indulge in a look at it, as it will show him by what means his religious opinions and tenets have been supported for ages on the great continent of Southern Europe.

Models seem, historically at least, to have played a much smaller role in other religions. Small models of the Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya used to be carried home by pilgrims (Barnes and Branfoot 2006, 70), and models of stupas and Hindu shrines are found. In Islam the making of models of the Kaaba is controversial. The web is full of designs, and some communities – particularly in Shia Islam – use large models to teach children and potential hajjis the rituals of the Hajj. Some authorities, though, consider such models haram, even for teaching purposes;7 indeed, in 1995 Saudi authorities destroyed 17,000 imported construction toy models of the Masjid al-Haram.8 All the same, models of the

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Figure 11 The model of Jerusalem at Holy Land Experience, Orlando, Florida, USA. (Photo: James Bielo.)

Kaaba and of the whole Masjid al-Haram are common throughout both Sunni and Shia Islam, whether for teaching or as simple souvenirs and gifts for returning Hajjis.9 A one-third model of the Kaaba was planned for a new theme park in northern Iran; it apparently received the approval of Ayatollah Khamenei.10 The great majority of models of religious buildings, though, are there not for religious reasons, but as icons of the culture being celebrated.11 Legoland parks have models of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha or St Paul’s Cathedral not to celebrate Thai Buddhism or Anglican Christianity, but because they are instantly recognizable symbols of their countries.12 Sometimes this use of model buildings has or could have a political implication; Miniatürk in Istanbul counts as ‘Turk’ a variety of buildings once in the Ottoman Empire, including the Dome of the Rock.

Rides For the majority of theme park visitors, it is the rides that are the great attraction – the more thrilling the better. As peripatetic fairs settled down and became

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Figure 12 The entrance to Bellair’s Creation at the 1904 World’s Fair, St Louis, USA. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons.)

permanent amusement parks their simple rides – roundabouts, helter-skelters and swings – grew into outdoor rollercoasters on the one hand, and various types of indoor ride on the other. Indeed, for most people the image that comes to mind when ‘theme park’ is mentioned is the rollercoaster. First developed in the 1880s (Easdown 2012, 5), this is the aspect of theme parks that least lends itself to theming of any sort, let alone to a religious theme. Attempts, mind, have been made, if quite unconvincingly; the proposed Aztlán Theme Park near Palm Springs proposes waterslides from the top of an Aztec pyramid, while a park proposed near Mumbai offers a ride involving a gigantic six-armed animatronic Hindu god, standing astride a trio of curly-horned fire-breathing rams. Dark rides were popularized in 1926 by the Pretzel Amusement Company, where electric ride vehicles would travel a single rail through a variety of themed environments (Hillman 2013, 17). The commonest was the ghost train. We have seen a few examples of this technique adapted to ‘religious’ themes, but religion parks seem still to prefer boat rides. At the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair the Creation attraction took visitors on a boat trip along a 300-metre canal around the central dome. They first saw some of the wonderful works of God, including the Grand Canyon, Yosemite and Alaska, and then travelled backwards in time through 6,000 years of forests and volcanoes, to prehistoric times and primeval man, and the Creation itself. (It’s unclear whether the story that visitors got a glimpse of

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a naked Eve is a just a myth.) The full visit could take two hours. After the Fair closed, Creation was moved to the Dreamland park at Coney Island, New York; it was destroyed with the rest of the park in the great fire – started by another ‘religious’ water ride, Hell Gate – six years later.13

Play, performance and people When I visited Suối Tiên Theme Park we watched on the lakeside stage the legendary fight for the hand of the ancient Vietnamese king’s daughter. There can be few theme parks that don’t at some time or another stage live performances. Religion parks use them frequently; in some parks, indeed, the performance is the main event, and the park has a supporting role. That is certainly true of the Great Passion Play, which is supported by a Holy Land Tour, Bible Museum, Sacred Arts Museum and other attractions. I had to visit on a non-play day, but I was given (by an ex-policeman who plays a priest) a behind-the-scenes tour, and learned in detail how the 200-metre stage is used, what the 4,300seat auditorium looks like to the 150 actors, where the camels, donkeys, sheep and so on live when not performing, and exactly how, for example, the trapeze works that takes Christ into the treetops at his Ascension. The Great Passion Play was inspired by the Passion Play that the people of the Bavarian mountain village of Oberammergau have staged almost every ten years since 1634, in gratitude for being spared the plague (Stevenson 2011, 99).14 Their play has inspired innumerable imitators in both Catholic and Protestant contexts, not least ‘The Glory of Christmas’, an enormous pageant held between 1981 and 2008 at televangelist Robert Schuller’s California Crystal Cathedral, or the various pageants enacted in the United States by the Mormon Church (Wetmore 2017). In the United States in the past such performances could find themselves attacked, for example, for blasphemously allowing God to be represented by a mere mortal, or simply because theatre was wicked (Callahan 2010, 195). Jill Stevenson (2015, 71) describes how the Black Hills Passion Play, presented from 1939 until 2008 at Spearfish, South Dakota, countered this by stressing its devotional character. Yet, in reality, Western Christianity has always sought to tell Bible stories through plays. Such efforts have ranged from the simplest school nativity play to T. S. Eliot’s The Rock and Murder in the Cathedral, from seventeenth-century Mexico (Fuller 2015) to modern Finland (Haapalainen 2017). It is often argued that modern drama has its origins in liturgical performance in the European Middle Ages.

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A combination of play and park dates back at least to the earlier World’s Fairs, though they mostly emphasized the exotic and the Other. Culture parks look back to the themed spaces at international exhibitions, which always had a commercial motive, and often a political one as well. The 1895 Empire of India exhibition in London employed a thousand Indian performers and craftsmen, offering an imperial melodrama showcasing Indian history, and its reconstructed street scenes included a mosque and a temple from Varanasi – religion in use to promote trade and support the Empire (Qureshi 2011, 250). The 1889 Exposition Universale in Paris offered demonstrations by whirling dervishes alongside belly-dancers. Dance, of course, appears as part of religious practice in most cultural traditions – even if in some it is limited to particular groups within a religion – for example, Shakers in Christianity or Mevlevi Sufis in Islam. Everywhere such dances have been exposed to tourism, and the performers, local community, religious leaders, tourism business and tourists have had to negotiate an arrangement which may range from complete exclusion of the uninitiated to the complete removal of ‘religion’ from the dance, which becomes a mere folkloric performance (Stausberg 2011, 173–183). We have seen (Chapter 7) that even in theme parks, where one might perhaps expect a purely touristic performance, some ambiguity may remain. Though not all parks stage formal plays and presentations, most have people in character wandering about, whether they are dressed as Mickey Mouse, a Roman soldier, or old-fashioned local villagers. The last can be awkward. The Victorian ‘display’ of people in places of entertainment – whether ‘natives’ or people with physical deformities – has aroused much disgust over the past century, with attention focussed on the exploitation of the people exhibited, and the effect of the practice in reinforcing prejudice and racist and imperialist values. Such disgust has tended to conceal the complications and many of the implications of the story, which are only now being unpicked (Qureishi 2011). In the 1840s a group of Anishinabe Indians were performing in London. One morning a clergyman visited, and ‘in a tone and manner the most winning … [explained] the system of the Christian religion and the mode of redemption’. Their chief, Ahqueewezaints, smoked a pipe and listened intently before replying: We have heard the same words in our own country, where there have been many white people to speak them, and our ears have never been shut against them. We have tried to understand white man’s religion, but we cannot – it is medicine

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to us, and we think we have no need of it. Our religion is simple and the Great Spirit who gave it to us has taught us all how to understand it. We believe that the Great Spirit made our religion for us, and white Man’s religion for white men. (quoted in Qureishi 2011, 149)

Culture parks, like most open-air museums, normally employ people to demonstrate ‘traditional’ practices or just to interact with visitors. Sometimes these people dress ‘in character’ – that is, wear fancy dress – and act and talk in character too, sometimes they dress and act in character but talk as modern people, and sometimes they remain entirely modern, even if much of what they say is scripted. All three types of interpreter are used in religion parks or in culture parks to present religion. For many visitors watching shows or talking to people is the most effective and welcome method of interpretation, but there is one key question: Are the people they meet ‘real’? Are the people performing a tribal dance really from that tribe, or are they effectively actors? Did the little old lady spinning in her cottage learn the skill from her grandmother or from a course laid on by the park management? Here is another ‘authenticity’ question, and one that becomes acute when religion is in question. Visitors to a religion park might well expect everyone they meet on site to profess that faith, yet AiG, when they were recruiting for their new the Ark Encounter attraction, were bluntly told by State officials that any attempt to restrict employment to believers would lose them their tax-exempt status.15 So instead of ‘real’ Evangelical Christians, visitors might discover that they were talking to an actor. A much more sophisticated interaction between costumed interpreter and visitor, at Colonial Williamsburg, is described by Gretchen Buggeln (2010, 138). Interpreters there are clearly trusted to use their often-considerable personal knowledge and understanding of theology – but to stay in character. Thus, Buggeln describes ‘the Revd. James Waddell’, a Presbyterian minister of the eighteenth century, fielding awkward questions about the story of Noah and the perfection of God. Buggeln reports that the interpreter concerned is indeed a ‘pious Presbyterian, but he doesn’t have anything close to the education of an eighteenth-century minister’; interpreters are supported, though, by regular training. Most notable is that the museum’s initial fears that interpreters and visitors alike would find references to religion uncomfortable and even possibly offensive proved, once religious programming was introduced in the 1990s, quite mistaken. On the contrary, a large proportion of visitors seem to find the interpretation of religion offered by the museum deeply engaging.16

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Water shows Water shows, increasingly found in religion parks, have a long ancestry; musical fountains date from at least the 1820s. They were much used in nineteenthand early-twentieth-century international exhibitions, and the 1964 New York World’s Fair saw flame and fireworks added, as well as lights and music. In the 2000s the invention of image projection onto water screens made real theming possible, and increasingly elaborate shows began to be developed, particularly in Asia. Some of these included religious stories or figures, like the large Buddha figure incorporated into the light show at Lumbini Park, Hyderabad. In 2010 Disneyland opened ‘World of Color’, while Akshardham Gujarat opened ‘Sat Chit Anand’ water show. Using lasers, lights, water, fire, surroundsound, animation, video projection and live actors, this addresses the Hindu understanding of the soul through the story of Nachiketa, a nine-year-old boy who confronts Yama, the god of death. Sent to the land of death, Nachiketa demands that Yama reveal the truth about what happens after death and how to attain eternal happiness. Yama tests him and, convinced of his genuine spiritual quest, enlightens him with the knowledge of Atman and Paramatman – the source of immortality and eternal happiness. Yves Pépin, the leading designer of water shows (who among many other things was artistic director for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games), worked on both the Gujarat (2010) and New Delhi (2014) Akshardham water shows, with BAPS volunteer Vipul Vaghela as chief engineer. Both shows are based on stories from the Upanishads; whereas the Gandhinagar show focuses on what happens after death, the New Delhi show offers a more personal moral message. In his speech at the Gandhinagar opening ceremony M. Pépin explained ‘until now my projects were all about entertainment and thrill, but this one is different. There is a spiritual message.’17 Different, certainly, and far more sophisticated, but these were not the first water shows with a spiritual message. From 1987 to 2007, when it was proving too expensive, Precious Moments Park, Carthage, Missouri (described above, Chapter 8), balanced the attraction of its Chapel with a daily water show within the ‘Fountain of Angels’. This had the usual Precious Moments cute little angels, but the show itself was dramatic: huge jets of water and coloured lights synchronized with recorded hymns celebrating the glory and grandeur of God. The climax followed a short prayer: projected onto a water screen, from the Precious Moments Chapel the figure of Jesus, white, bearded and long-haired,

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walked slowly towards the audience to the singing of ‘To God be the Glory’.18 Naff perhaps, but reports say deeply impressive. The tradition continues: Krishna Lila Park in Bangalore, too, promises ‘an awe-inspiring orchestra of laser lights, fireworks, water screen projection and fountains as a grand finale – a festive celebration of Lord Sri Krishna and His glories’.

Cinema The use of film, both as stand-alone cinema shows and integrated with other techniques, is common but not perhaps ubiquitous in modern theme parks. Akshardham Gujarat and Akshardham New Delhi both offer the fortyfive-minute large-format film ‘Mystic India’. This tells the story of the child Swaminarayan, then known as Neelkanth, in his seven-year pilgrimage around India. Shot in 108 locations, and claiming a cast of 45,000 people, it tells how from 1792 to 1799, Neelkanth walked alone, barefoot and bare body, 8000 miles for 7 years through the length and breadth of India. Carrying no maps, no food and no clothing, how he crossed the roaring rivers, faced ferocious animals and survived the freezing winter of the Himalayas, is still a mystery. It is a story of struggle, of kindness and of courage even when face to face with a man-eating lion … the film explores unique elements of India, like: ● A nation of silent spirituality, making her a mystic land of meditation and contemplation, where quest continues to understand secrets of life beyond our material world, ● The real light and wisdom of India, seeking to know not how to conquer the world but how to live in peace, how to live together in harmony.19

‘Mystic India’ is available on YouTube. It comes across as an attempt to promote India as a tourist destination on the one hand, and to promote Swaminarayan as a spiritual leader on the other. It scarcely, in itself, promotes a spiritual message, despite the voiceover claim that the message of the film is Unity in Diversity, and that we are a single human family, capable of living together and loving one another. HLE’s ‘Temple of the Great King’, the central feature of the park, contains the Theatre of Life cinema, where the short film Seed of Promise is shown. The film opens in 70CE with Roman soldiers battering down the doors of the Temple;

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‘the priests hold unwaveringly to the belief that their sacrifices will save them from destruction’. These images are intercut with images of a stake being driven through the hand of Jesus. At the end of the film clouds of dry ice confirm that the audience is in heaven. Rowan reports (2004, 253) that ‘the effect on the audience was profound; many in the audience were tearful, many were praying’. The park’s 2,000-seat Church of All Nations auditorium is regularly used for Christian film shows, as well as for live taping of TBN’s flagship TV show, ‘Praise the Lord’. At Christmas 2017 the Ark Encounter offered a rather un-Christmassy ten-minute laser projection onto the side of the ark, showing the animals walking up the ramp and the floodwaters rising. Film is a medium imported full-fledged into the theme park experience. From Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings of 1927 to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ of 2004, and from Dadasaheb Phalke’s Gangavataran (Descent of the Ganges) of 1937 to Peter Brooks’ Mahabarata of 1989, cinema has been used by innumerable directors to promote, challenge, exploit and engage with religious understandings, stories and traditions (Plate 2008; Dwyer 2006). This may actually be one reason that cinema is not so universally used in religion parks as one might expect. Another must be its cost, but the strongest reason is surely that it doesn’t easily fit with the theme park experience. Visitors to religion parks, just as to other theme parks, expect to engage actively, and to do things they can’t do at home. The next few years seem likely to see much greater use of virtual reality in religion parks, as in theme parks generally, precisely because it makes demands on its audience in a way cinema can’t. The developer of a Viking theme park in Denmark, said: We think that the best way to capture the look and feel of the Vikings legends, myths, and sagas is to make it virtually real using CGI, 3D domes, VR, and AR. Since mythology is a magical and very fantasy-like world to many people, we will give the audience an immersive experience of this imaginative world of gods, dwarfs, dragons, elves, and giants. VR and AR saves us time because none of our employees have to dress up like dwarves, elves, or Vikings and we don’t have to run a live show, which likely wouldn’t be nearly as good as what could be done through this technology. Over the next two to three years we see a paradigm shift with VR technology where it will reach the economies of scale. (Anstey 2015)

David Chidester (2005, 5) suggests that virtual reality is a way of leaving the body and the place parallel with shamanism and ‘techniques of ecstasy’ generally.

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Haunted attractions Haunted Attractions or ‘Spook Shows’ had a long history before they appeared in theme parks. Best known in fairgrounds,20 they have also long appeared as independent attractions. Two such famous attractions in the 1890s were the Cabaret de l’Enfer and the Cabaret du Néant in Pigalle, Paris. In the latter, an English visitor recalled: Large, heavy, wooden coffins, resting on biers, were ranged about the room in an order suggesting the recent happening of a frightful catastrophe. The walls were decorated with skulls and bones, skeletons in grotesque attitudes, battle-pictures, and guillotines in action. Death, carnage, assassination were the dominant note, set in black hangings and illuminated with mottoes on death … Bishop said that he would be pleased with a lowly bock. Mr. Thompkins chose cherries a l’eaude-vie, and I, une menthe.21

The St Louis 1904 World’s Fair included ‘Hereafter’. This was a lot closer to modern Hells (see Chapter 8) than to Parisian drinking-dens, for visitors took a boat ride along the River of Death, through scenes of inferno as described by Dante, to the throne of Satan, surrounded by sulphurous smoke and the screams of the damned. At last, though, visitors would glide into a flower-filled glade and on to Paradise, where the Star of Bethlehem shone above silhouetted angels floating into the clouds (Willis 2014, 11).

Buildings, style and the phantasmagorical Finally, every park needs buildings, and the design of every building inevitably sends a message; choice of style and scale are key decisions for park imagineers. Theme parks have made use of every conceivable architectural style, from Disneyland’s fantasy architecture to culture parks’ recreation of historic or exotically foreign (or both) buildings. Erika Doss (1997, 180) points out how Disney’s Fantasyland reached out to post-war cultural obsessions with fantasy but created a park where suspension of disbelief merged with order. The message its architecture sent out ‘fused postwar enthusiasms for imagination, horror, hallucination, and magic with deep-felt desires for safety, security, restraint and direction’. More than that, though, Disney used his park buildings to reinforce the overall message: that happiness comes from immersion in a fantasy world that calls for complete

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surrender to the global corporation. Sharon Zukin (1991, 228) called it ‘the friendly face of power’. Culture parks scarcely need the subtle genius of Disney’s imagineers; their message is simpler and can use styles that range from the most accurate rebuilding or replica of historic buildings, to the evocation of Olde England by sticking on black-painted planks for half-timbering. British amusements parks between the wars adopted a modernist style (at first American moderne, later Continental modernism) that would appeal to their middle-class market which was seeking up-to-date, sophisticated, ‘rational recreation’ (Kane 2013) in place of working-class ‘pleasure’. Modernism has seldom been used in theme parks to promote religion, but an exception is the theme-park-like Miracle Park of St Anthony at Thambuchetty Palaya, a Catholic village on the outskirts of Bangalore. This is an attraction added in 2001 to the important local pilgrimage centre of St Anthony’s, and comprises a portico and fourteen concrete and tile pavilions around a large attractive garden, each displaying a diorama of one of St Anthony’s miracles. Josephine Kane (2013, 177) argues that the style adopted by the park’s local architect combined a kind of Indian vernacular with an international modernism that had ‘come to represent India’s spiritual and material independence from feudalism and colonialism as well as its development oriented, technologically bright future’. Ironically, the religion park in Corbusier’s new city of Ahmedabad, one of the two springs of Indian modernism (the other is Chandigarh), makes no concession to the style whatever. Akshardham Gujarat, like its successor Akshardham New Delhi, adopts an elaborate ‘traditional’ Hindu, North Indian, style whose pink sandstone exteriors, heavily encrusted with sculpture, entirely conceal its hi-tech modernity. Kavita Singh suggests that this sends a message that is quite as political as it is religious (2010, 55): By demonstrating an ancient modernity, by speaking of temple architecture as a technological feat, and by encasing narratives about ancient traditions in hypermodern techno-entertainment apparatus, a complex such as Akshardham suggests that a religiously guided state can be a move into the future, not the past.

The commonest ‘style’22 found in religion parks, as in fantasy parks, is what Thomas Patton called the ‘phantasmagorical’. He was talking about Buddhist attractions in Asia, but there is a tradition of tricks and special effects in Western art and entertainment too that dates back at least to the Renaissance. Norman

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Klein, in his stimulating if hard-to-read book The Vatican to Vegas, argues that Leonardo was one of the earliest conscious developers of scientific illusions for pageants and theatre, which over time developed into a ‘narrative, architectural grammar … for tricks indoors and outdoors, mechanised to move, or sculpted’ (2004, 6), a grammar that was much later to be rediscovered in cinema and theme park. A special effect fools the audience, and moreover fools us on behalf of those in power – it is political, and it works more effectively because we love to be fooled. Thus Klein (43) points to the church of San Ignazio in Rome, whose ceilings were painted by the Jesuit Fr. Andrea Pozzo in 1685–97. These, he reminds us, were glory years for the Jesuit order and the Counter-Reformation. The Turks had been driven back, the Habsburgs had reconquered southern Germany and Austria, in France the Protestants were suppressed, while Jesuits were hugely influential at royal courts from London to Beijing: We stand under the nave painted by Pozzo: the effect is dizzying. Missionaries let by Saint Ignatius Loyola are escaping the earth. Here is what we see: First, a visual compression – foreshortened height – then evaporation. Layers of stone bring forth an enclosure twenty stories high. It is difficult to remind yourself that these massive transepts are only painted ceiling. Beyond the imaginary stone, false clouds take the eye seemingly miles upward, toward a spin of angels, at last disappearing.

In Protestant Northern Europe the tradition of spectacular tricks and displays, already common in court masques, readily transferred to the theatre, but any ‘religious’ element was normally classical pagan, like the story of Cupid and Psyche. But had John Dryden’s musical adaptation of Milton’s Paradise Lost actually been staged, it would have been a magnificent forerunner to which modern religious theme parks might look proudly back. Sadly, in the 1670s the scenery it required, and special effects like ‘rebellious angels wheeling in the air, and seeming transfixed with thunderbolts’ over ‘a lake of brimstone or rolling fire’, were too expensive for Dryden’s company and too elaborate for their Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.23 The extraordinary effects of ‘machine theatre’ became hugely popular in late seventeenth-century London; such performances could show Venus ascending into the heavens and ‘being almost lost in the clouds’, whereupon ‘Cupid flies up and gets into her chariot, and brings her back’, followed by Jupiter appearing on a flying eagle. Even more famous were the six live dancing monkeys and four-metre fountain of The Fairy Queen in the 1691–92 season. This whole tradition transferred by easy stages into the early

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cinema (It was the American special effects supervisor John Fulton who in 1956 allowed Moses to part the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments24), and thence into theme parks. *

*

*

So many techniques to choose from! And all with a long – sometimes very long – history of serving the presentation of religion. Many of these techniques, though, are not cheap, and in the next chapter we shall look at the business aspects of theme parks, for even where the founder’s motive is a religious one and pockets are deep, a theme park needs to meet very substantial set-up costs and needs a sound business plan.

10

The Religion Park Business

In this chapter we return to religion parks themselves and take a first look at them as businesses. Who is promoting religion in theme parks? Where is the funding coming from, both to set them up and to maintain them? The old cliché ‘follow the money’ applies to theme parks as to so much, but this short study is not the place for an in-depth analysis of the business of theme parks. My aim in this chapter is just to draw attention to some of the issues as they particularly affect the role of religion in theme parks. An examination of the business of religion parks reveals both differences from and similarities to the commercial theme park industry. Their promoters are often remarkable individuals, their funding sources and charging policies distinctive, but like commercial parks they are very often supported by government, and rely on crossover with their controlling companies’ media, hotel and other more purely commercial businesses. The whole theme park business is notoriously volatile. China is said to have 2,500 theme parks, of which only one tenth make a profit.1 Religion parks, too, are vulnerable. Eilat’s Kings City closed in 2015 after just ten years, amid claims that its construction cost (said to be over $40m) was excessive, and that (more fundamentally) its ‘Solomon’ theme had little meaning to international tourists.2 At the time of writing there are even said to be danger signs for the best-known religion park of all, HLE. Since the deaths of Paul and Jan Crouch – Jan especially loved the park – revenue from their Trinity Broadcasting Network, which played a major role in supporting the park, has apparently collapsed from $40 million in 2010 to less than $3 million.

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Figure 13 Kings City, Eilat, Israel, in 2010. (Photo: Avishai Teicher, PikiWiki Israel, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic.)

The promoters Like perhaps all big projects, theme parks need big leaders; it’s interesting to compare those leaders. Thus, Walt Disney used his status as a hugely successful businessman and his charisma as an industry leader to bully and schmooze the politicians and courts of Orlando to give him virtually complete independence of local government (Fogleson 2001). By contrast Tim Smit sought first to inspire public officials and businesspeople with his vision, and then to work with them in partnership (Smit 2001). The motives of many promoters are perhaps similar to those of wealthy donors to universities or museums in the United States, motives usually said to be pure unalloyed generosity on the one hand, and the winning of recognition and social capital on the other. In Buddhist Asia, where wealthy businesspeople very often contribute to monasteries, donating new monastic buildings or attractions for visitors, a third motive is the winning of merit. It is perhaps impossible to avoid harking back to Walt Disney when thinking about the promoters of theme parks. Novelist and travel writer Douglas Kennedy contrasts Jim Bakker’s vision, in creating Heritage USA, with Walt Disney’s: For Heritage USA was the creation of a romantic. And though many outside observers had used the adjective ‘Disneyesque’ to describe the vision behind

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it, the interesting thing about the whole set-up was that it was a theme park that craved ecclesiastical respectability. On one level, it was a mass exercise in infantilism; a ‘return to childhood’ fantasy, tailor-made for a beleaguered silent majority wanting to temporarily escape into an uncomplicated Christian dreamland of goodie barns and inspirational water parks and Morris the Moose. At the same time, though, Bakker had also attempted to create his own godly kingdom, where prosperous Christians lived in cartoonish suburbs like Dogwood Hills, and impoverished on-the-street Christians were given shelter in a modern hostel with the frontierish name of Fort Hope, and where you could pray night or day in a facsimile version of the room where Jesus hosted the Last Supper, and there were satellite dishes big enough to beam broadcasts from this Christian community to anywhere on the planet within seconds. … Jim Bakker obviously wanted to be taken seriously as an international evangelist in the Billy Graham mould (hence the shrine to Graham himself on the grounds of Heritage USA), but he also wanted Christianity to be Fun; to be a replica of that idealised chocolate-box childhood no-one ever had. (Kennedy 1989, 207)

Perhaps Disney and Bakker were not so different in what drove them. Both wanted to help people access an ‘ideal chocolate-box childhood’ through the medium of Fun, and both wanted people to use that experience to achieve something greater: in Bakker’s case a personal relationship with Christ; in Disney’s the reassurance of innocence. Helping others to find a personal experience of Christ is the motive of many of the American religion park promoters. One of the most remarkable is Ken Ham, the founder – through AiG, largely his organization – of the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter. Ken Ham was born in 1951 in Cairns, Australia, where his father was a schoolteacher and a firm believer in the literal truth of the Bible. He gained a degree in applied science from the Queensland Institute of Technology, and a diploma in education from Queensland University. At the age of 24 he too began teaching and was appalled to realize that his students assumed that evolutionary science proved the Bible wrong. As he said, it ‘“put fire in my bones” to do something about the influence that evolutionary thinking was having on students and the public as a whole’.3 He began speaking at local churches and selling ‘creation science’ materials to schools, and helped found a Creationist organization that in 1997 became Answers in Genesis. It grew extraordinarily rapidly, both in Australia and especially in the United States, to which Ken Ham had moved in 1987. AIG now claims to be ‘the world’s largest apologetics organization’.

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Unlike many religion park founders, Ken Ham is not himself a rich man, but he is extraordinarily persuasive. He believes that the Bible is the Word of God, without error, and that when the Book of Genesis says that God created the world in six days, and that Noah’s flood covered the whole earth, it means just that, and it is true. The Creation took place some 6,000 years ago. So much is standard for Young-Earth Creationists. But Ham takes two further steps. First, he argues that science supports these beliefs, and he claims a real commitment to science as he defines it. More striking and perhaps concerning is Ken Ham’s evident conviction that he is on the right side in a cosmic struggle between God and Satan, good and evil, true believers who will be saved, and the rest of us who will go to hell. His writings and speeches show little concern with Jesus’s moral teachings or message of love, but rather a preoccupation with God’s judgement, in biblical times and today, on all who do not accept His Word as AIG understands it. His twin theme parks are, crucially, about obedience to the Word of God, and the consequences of disobedience. Rather more attractive-sounding promoters were perhaps Mary Herschend and her family, who from 1960 developed Silver Dollar City, a re-creation of an 1890s Ozark (Missouri) mountain village, at the entrance to an enormous cavern they ran as a tourist attraction. In the early years at least, it was very much a family enterprise, and if their commitment to family and Christian values chimed with the nostalgic theme of the park, it was clearly no less genuine for that (Payton 1999). The company’s mission statement, to ‘Create Memories Worth Repeating’, declares that their efforts should be performed ‘in a manner consistent with Christian values and ethics’. Yet (according to an interview with the local newspaper) Mary and her husband were not particularly religious. ‘They would drop Pete and me off at the Christian Science church on Sunday mornings and then pick us up when church was over. We learned a lot about Mary Baker Eddy but never heard too much about Jesus’, their son Jack recalled. It was their two daughters-in-law who brought active Christianity into the family.4 Pete Herschend and his wife Jo Dee were ‘baptized in the Holy Spirit’ at a renewal meeting in Springfield in 1969 and began to attend Shepherd of the Hills Episcopal Church in Branson. In the 1990s, though, they left the Episcopal Church because (according to their Rector) of its liberal attitudes and joined the far-right and mainstream Pentecostal Assemblies of God, based in nearby Springfield (Ketchell 2007a, 126). Brother Jack and his wife Sherry are no less committed Presbyterians.

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Pete was later to make the memorable comment ‘I would much rather see a sermon than hear one’, and quoted a friend as saying ‘Preach the Gospel always, using words only when necessary’ (Ketchell 2007a, 126). Sometimes people will never know why they feel good about this place. There are people who are Christians who spot it rather readily in the feeling of the park – you do not hear swearing, or the Lord’s name taken in vain. People who are not Christian say this place has a special feeling. People often write back and say this is where they met the Lord. (Ketchell 2007b, 56)

As their faith grew firmer Pete and Jack gave Silver Dollar City an increasingly explicit Christian message. This was, though, subtly done, helped perhaps by the popular association of Protestant Christianity with American nostalgia, and avoiding any threat to the park’s popularity and profitability. Herschend Family Entertainment Corporation’s board is heavily weighted with like-minded conservative Protestants: For instance, Sam Moore, head of Bible publisher Thomas Nelson, Inc, was an original board member. In the late 1980s, the company received frequent consultation from Harry Hargrave, the chief operations officer for PTL Network,5 who claimed that his first job priority was ‘to glorify God’. Upon his retirement in 1998 as president and chief executive officer of the corporation, Cary Summers claimed that the Lord led him to service in the park. Finally, in 2003 Joel Manby was named CEO. Among Manby’s many credentials was the founding of Family Wise, a nonprofit Christian ministry focused up [sic] offering tools to corporations, public schools, and churches that can facilitate the rediscovery of wholesome family time, trust in God, and behaviors guided by the Golden Rule. (Ketchell 2007a, 130)6

Not surprisingly, Silver Dollar City is notable for its emphasis on sobriety (no alcohol is allowed), clean living (comedians offer no risqué jokes) and gospel music alongside the hillbilly. It hosts an annual ‘Young Christians Weekend’, though Ketchell points out that the park itself mainly eschews direct proselytizing and avoids the conservative-religious campaigns in which the Herschends engage outside the park. If the Herschends moved steadily right in their politics, another religion-park founder certainly didn’t need to; there can’t be many people whose biography is subtitled ‘Minister of Hate’ (Jeansonne 1988). Gerald Smith (1898–1976) was the founder in the 1960s of The Great Passion Play Theme Park at Eureka Springs in Arkansas. He was ordained a minister in the Disciples of Christ, but rapidly

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became a paranoid and anti-intellectual demagogue in the American tradition most recently exemplified by Donald Trump. An extraordinarily powerful speaker, a dominant personality and a workaholic, he was Huey Long’s national organizer during the Depression, but was more concerned with white supremacy and anti-communism than with economic panaceas. His principal passion was an all-consuming hatred of Jews (he insisted that Jesus wasn’t a Jew, but that Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower were),7 which he expressed in a succession of political parties, and particularly in his magazine The Cross and the Flag, which had 25,000 subscribers. Denying the Holocaust, he campaigned after the war for the release of Nazi war-criminals. An aging right-wing radio evangelist who hated blacks and Jews, ‘he convinced himself that he had been chosen by God to save Christianity and America’ (Jeansonne 1988, 172). By the 1960s, though, he was a figure from the past, and he moved from California to the run-down little town of Eureka Springs in the Ozark mountains. There he created his Sacred Projects, beginning with Christ of the Ozarks, a twentymetre mountain-top statue of Christ, and following it with the annual Great Passion Play modelled on the Oberammergau Passion Play, a Bible Museum, and a Sacred Arts Center. He died before he saw the full development of his theme park ambitions (Chapter 8). Yet religion park promoters can be even more unpleasantly eccentric than that. Suchart Kosolkitiwong (1943–2005) was the founder of the Guan Yin Inter-Religious Park in southern Thailand; he had a remarkably varied career. The son of poor Chinese immigrants, as a young man he became the revered medium of the seventeenth-century monk and now national saint Luang Pu Thuat. A rabid anti-communist and supporter of the Thai military, in the 1950s and 1960s he was a Buddhist ‘emissary’ for the Thai government in its anti-communist campaigns in Northeast Thailand. From this experience he learned the value of religion in fighting communism and launched a campaign for world peace based on his Office of the World Peace Envoy and his first, unsuccessful, inter-religious park The Religious Land of Huppa Sawan. This was set up in 1970 under the direct instruction of the spirit world, whose representative to humanity Suchart was (Stengs 2009, 196; Jackson 1988, 145); it was not merely a theme park, but a headquarters for Suchart’s millenarian organization. Nine-metre figures of Jesus and the Buddha were erected on two hilltops, and the park contained somewhat smaller figures of Matreya Buddha, Guan Yin, Saturn riding a tiger, the Virgin Mary, and King Rama I. There was a vegetarian restaurant and a Peace Pagoda, where prayers for peace were said on the nineteenth day of each month.

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Figure 14 Christ of the Ozarks at the Great Passion Play Theme Park, Eureka Springs, Arkansas, USA. (Photo: Crispin Paine.)

Happily, Suchart’s chanting, meditating and praying, as well as his meetings with a number of world leaders successfully averted the predicted Third World War, but he became increasingly eccentric, predicting massive destruction for the planet in 1999, and then again in 2007, the threat now being from extraterrestrials rather than communists (McDaniel 2015, 10). His earlier success had been largely due to support from the viciously conservative Thai military junta; when in the 1980s they lost power to somewhat more moderate officers, and Suchart succeeded in alienating everyone in government, his organization collapsed and he was arrested and briefly jailed. In 1997, though, he founded a new park, the Guan Yin Inter-Religious Park (see Chapter 8). Like so many founders of religious theme parks, Suchart was appealing to traditional values in support not only of his religion, but of conservative politics. In his pronouncements as a spirit medium, Suchaat also spoke from the position of a poor alienated Chinese who was excluded from both the ethnic Thai establishment and wealthy Chinese business groups. … Suchaat sought to define and establish a place for himself within that society by claiming that he rescued and upheld the core Thai spiritual values. (Jackson 1988, 151)

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Endowing a Buddhist theme park is perhaps an extension of the practice in Thailand whereby a rich layman gains merit (and, no doubt, social capital too) by paying for the elaborate museum-shrine of a dead monk popularly considered a saint. Such shrine/museums are now common in Thailand, even though in 2003 one such museum/shrine was costing around $80 million (Gabaude 2003, 117). Often in the form of a chedi/stupa, they generally contain a very lifelike statue of the deceased monk, illustrations of his life, many (sometimes all) of his personal possessions and sometimes his ashes.8 Many promoters of theme-park-type attractions are heads of monasteries, ambitious to attract more visitor/pilgrims and to find new ways to spread the faith and new attractions to offer. Phra Khom was a rather sickly peasant boy with a penchant for learning, who in 1932 found himself back in his home village as abbot of the still-new Wat Phai Rong Wua monastery. There he discovered another penchant – for building – and the energy and drive to expand the monastery, which he did by making and selling millions of magical amulets. ‘The belief was that the amulets stopped bullets from leaving gun barrels’ (Anderson 2012, 43) – a valuable protection in lawless post-war rural Thailand. In 1957, now with strong support from government, royal court and the élite, he built the largest cast-bronze Buddha image in the world, the first of some thirty-eight projects completed before his death in 1990. Like so many cultural entrepreneurs, Phra Khom had his eccentricities. His hell figures (Chapter 9) were strange enough already, but their exaggerated genitalia were, it seems, entirely Phra Khom’s responsibility. Not every promoter of right-wing theme parks recruits religion to the cause. The second most-visited theme park in France is the astonishing Puy du Fou, with two million visitors. It was set up in 1989 by Philippe de Villiers, the leader of Mouvement Pour la France, a populist and anti-establishment local politician who ran the Vendée département for over twenty years, and has his own brand of Catholic, traditionalist, nationalist, anti-immigration, Eurosceptic and virulently anti-Islamic politics. Despite drawing on an extraordinary variety of scenes from French history for its extravagant and highly imaginative events and places, Puy du Fou mentions religion not at all, unless you count the Christians confronted by very real lions in the full-sized reconstructed Coliseum. Politically, the most interesting feature of the park is perhaps the night-time extravaganza based on the 1793 resistance of the Vendée to the French Revolution, but the park makes little of the strongly Catholic backbone of that counter-revolution.9 Another – and much earlier – promoter, whose theme park Haw Par Villa (Chapter 2) was secondary to his main interests in life, was Aw Boon Haw,

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‘the Tiger Balm King’. Aw was a ruthless and enterprising entrepreneur who became one of the leading players in the unregulated and ethics-free capitalism of South East and East Asia between the wars. If he had loyalties beyond his beloved brother, it was first to the Hakka minority and secondly to Chinese people generally. ‘A Chinese must always give his allegiance to his mother country no matter under whose rule he lives’, he told his son (King 1992, 330). However, his business came first and last, and if that required making up to Chinese nationalists, Japanese occupiers or Chinese communists, Aw had no hesitation (King 1992; Cochran 2006). His biographer, Sam King, concentrates on relationships within the family, and to a lesser extent on the growth of his business; he reveals almost nothing of Aw Boon Haw’s personal beliefs. You may expect to create a successful park if you are not just a charismatic leader, but also actually divine. Pramukh Swami Maharaj (1921–2016) was the spiritual leader of BAPS, the branch of the Swaminarayan Hindu sect that created the two great Akshardham parks in New Delhi and Gandhinagar (Chapter 2). Born in 1921 the son of a peasant farmer in a small village in Gujarat, as a teenager he was taken up by the then Swaminarayan leader. At seventeen he became a sadhu, and ‘within a short time his austerity, renunciation, tolerance, patience, purity and devotion to the guru blossomed and revealed his pure saintliness’ (Aksharvatsaldas 2002, xii). In 1950 he became president of the organization, and in 1971 he succeeded as its spiritual leader, the fifth successor to Swaminarayan and an incarnation of God. Besides his notable humility and spiritual strengths, Pramukh Swami Maharaj clearly had remarkable organizational skills. Under his leadership BAPS grew into a global Hindu organization with a million devotees, more than 900 sadhus, 3,300 temples and congregations, and a large variety of humanitarian and charitable activities. His thirty or so international spiritual tours, visiting fifty countries in five continents, made him an international religious leader, and for many the face of Hinduism. Much of the BAPS literature emphasizes Pramukh Swami’s attention to detail. One story goes that on a tour of inspection during the building of Akshardham Gujarat he observed a huge pond under construction. A saint [sadhu] serving in the cultural garden said, ‘We are going to put some ducks in the pond.’ Swamishri humorously asked, ‘Real ducks or toys!’ The reply was, ‘Real ducks.’ Then unfolded a series of questions from Swamishri, ‘From where will you bring the ducks? Before you bring the ducks have you thought of its food? And have you made arrangements for a suitable home for them to live in? Think of all the possible care and things they will require before bringing them otherwise the poor things will suffer!’ (Swaminarayan Bliss 1993, 7)

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For his followers, Pramukh Swami was divine; Swaminarayan devotees considered God (that is, Swaminarayan) to be manifest through Pramukh Swami Maharaj; thus his followers believed that by offering devotion to Pramukh Swami, they offered it to Swaminarayan himself.10 Pramukh Swami himself, though, said of Akshardham ‘This is God’s creation. It has been made possible due to God’s inspiration’ (Swaminarayan Aksharpith 2009, 34). If not always actually divine, promoters of the most successful religion parks all seem to have been powerful and often charismatic individuals. However, just because a park’s promoter is powerful doesn’t guarantee its success. The Burmese diplomat U Thant was secretary-general of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971. He was a devout Buddhist, and he used all the authority of his position to create at Lumbini in Nepal something very much like a theme park. Since 1896, when one of the Emperor Asoka’s famous pillars was found there, Lumbini has been accepted by most scholars as the site of the Buddha’s birth in 623 bce. The site had been largely forgotten for much of history, and it had never become a centre of Buddhist pilgrimage, no doubt because of the area’s remoteness, harsh climate and prevalent disease. U Thant and others were determined to change this, and he hired the Japanese modernist architect Kenzo Tange, a disciple of Le Corbusier and best known for his Hiroshima Memorial and the Master Plan for Abuja, the new capital of Nigeria. Tange designed a seven-hundred-hectare site, where up to fifty monasteries from the various Buddhist traditions should surround the Sacred Garden, in which the actual site of the Buddha’s birth is marked by Asoka’s pillar. There were to have been a museum, tourist shops, health centre, hotels, tourist office and so on, with a new airport, schools and housing nearby. Progress has been painfully slow. Planning started between 1969 and 1972, but by the intended completion date in 1985 less than 10 per cent was completed, and by 2001 only 20 per cent. Funds came slowly, largely from the UN, international Buddhist organizations and the governments of the wealthier Buddhist countries. The big problems seem to have been, firstly, that the project never won the backing of the – anyway impoverished, unstable and corrupt – Nepalese government, who failed to provide the infrastructure, and secondly and perhaps more importantly, the absence of the one single organization exercising tight control over the site that is one of the principal hallmarks of a successful theme park.11 In other words, Lumbini would have been a more successful pilgrimage centre had it been more of a theme park. Today there are some impressive Buddhist monasteries and meditation centres, many set in beautiful and well-maintained gardens, and visitors can still find a deeply spiritual atmosphere. The ravishing photographs in Anon 2013 show this clearly.

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McDaniel (2017, 66) describes the beauty of the site at dawn; however, ‘by 7.00 a.m., the piles of trash, the blaring horns, the makeshift illegal campfires next to Nepali tour buses, and the Indian and Nepali pop music blasting from car radios and low-quality speakers had ended that feeling of peace’. Another religion park quite clearly intended to promote the faith is the Krishna Lila Park at Bangalore, India, scheduled to open in 2020. This is the brainchild of ISKCON Bangalore’s chairman, Madhu Pandit Dasa. Trained as a civil engineer at IIT Mumbai, in 1990 he visited Disneyworld and realized that he could use these techniques to present Indian values and Krishna devotion.12 The elaborate attractions proposed perhaps reflect his engineering background as well as missionary spirit; they include a 137-metre tower with temples at top and bottom and an enormous ‘Science and Spirituality Exposition’ in between. Other attractions include an Animation Theatre, a Bhagavad Gita exhibition, ‘Govardhan Hill Experience’ where the mountain rises to let visitors in, a themed water fountain, a water-ride through the Adventures of Krishna, and 4D Theatre, as well as a Kids Zone, park, etc. The park is planned for 20,000 visitors a day. Inevitably in this book we have tended to concentrate on such larger and better-known parks – religion parks in particular. But there are many religion parks throughout the world that are created, often almost single-handedly, by private individuals who choose to focus their creativity in this way, and who use their creative abilities to express their personal religion. The great majority of their – usually quite small – attractions are unknown beyond their localities. We have seen in Chapter 6 Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain in California, and in Chapter 8 Horace Bexon’s Fantastic Tropical Gardens in Jersey. Just sometimes these private, often quite eccentric, and usually small-scale promoters have attracted the attention of writers and scholars. One writer who has taken a particular interest in what he calls ‘outsider religion’ parks is the American religious studies scholar Timothy Beal. Roadside Religion describes a campervan journey with his young family through the southern United States in 2002, visiting a variety of religion parks and similar sites. He discusses both large parks and small, but it is clearly the smaller one-man (it seems to be all men) initiatives that attract him most, and he discusses particularly the deep tensions between, on the one hand, the highly personal, even private experiences and meanings of their creators, and on the other hand, the desire to share those experiences in a very public way. … They are expressions of personality and, in some sense, untranslatable experience. On the other hand, they are highly social. They are gestures of invitation and forms of communication

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to others. Indeed, in some cases, such as Howard Finster’s Paradise Gardens, they beget new forms of religious community. (Beal 2005, 10)

Howard Finster (1916–2001) was certainly an outsider artist, and certainly an outsider Christian. Born in Alabama as one of thirteen children, he was said to have had his first vision at the age of three, when he saw his deceased sister walking down from the sky. At thirteen he was ‘born again’ at a Baptist revival, and at sixteen he started preaching. At forty-five he began work on what came to be called Paradise Garden, an extraordinary assemblage of recycled materials, broken glass, concrete, painted objects, rust and other discarded materials, all set in a swampy 1.6 hectares of woodland near Summerville, Georgia, and said to include 46,000 works of art. Howard put up numerous buildings on the site, including the Bible House, the Mirror House, the Hubcap Tower, the Bicycle Tower, the Machine Gun Nest, and the astonishingly large, five-story Folk Art Chapel. But he was sixty when one day I was workin’ on a patch job on a bicycle, and I was rubbin’ some white paint on that patch with this finger here, and I looked at the round tip o’ my finger, and there was a human face on it … then a warm feelin’ come over my body, and a voice spoke to me and said, ‘Paint sacred art.’13

Finster began painting thousands of sermon-laden artworks with subjects ranging from historical characters and popular culture icons like Elvis Presley to evangelistic fantasy landscapes and futuristic cities.14 In the 1980s Finster was taken up by the art establishment and began designing record-covers and exhibiting widely, but his Paradise Garden remained the focus of his life. Underlying it all was his missionary zeal and belief that the project was directly commissioned by God. Everywhere are painted boards with biblical texts. ‘I built this Garden to tell folks about Jesus and to warn them that He is coming back’, reads one. ‘I knew the World began with a beautiful Garden. I felt it should end with one.’15 On the other side of the world is another home-made spiritual garden, which has attracted the attention of Justin McDaniel. This is Sala Keaoku beside the Mekong River near Nong Khai, in Thailand. It was begun in 1978 by Bunleua Sulilat, a relatively poor man, quite untrained, who ‘had few resources besides time, mixed concrete, and found objects’. His vision was highly personal; McDaniel remarks that ‘it is the mind of Bunleua on display’. There is no attempt to present either local history or local culture in any systematic way, or to replicate Buddhist or local religious or Indic literature in sculpted form. Thirty-foot-tall statues of the Buddha stand next to fifty-foot-long statues

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of protective giant snakes, along with statues of foreign soldiers, mermaids, and Hindu gods like Śiva and Brahma. One of the larger statues, of a giant ogre, has a gaping mouth that one can climb into like a cave. (McDaniel 2017, 122)

There are striking parallels between the two promoters as well as between their parks. Both were modest people with few resources, but a genius for making the most of what they could gather. Both were ‘men of visions’ and believed themselves inspired: Bunleua believed himself half-man and half-snake, and that he was instructed by snake spirits. Both had powerful personalities, and inspired family and friends to help them create their parks and to continue them after their death. McDaniel describes a number of such more-modest religion parks in South-East Asia, set up by Buddhistminded artists, and artistically minded Buddhists. Other faith traditions, too, can show examples of such modest religion parks created by modest but determined local people. McDaniel describes many Buddhist parks in Asia promoted by enterprising abbots or senior monks, who develop attractions for their visitors in the grounds of their monasteries. Such attractions are found in many other parts of the world, and in many other faith traditions. One example is the Miracle Park of St Anthony near Bangalore (Chapter 8); another Indian church that has used its grounds to develop a sculpture garden is the pilgrimage church at Kodungallur in Kerala, where the apostle St Thomas is said to have built a church, and to have baptized local Brahmins. Among the statues in the church grounds, standing in the pond where it is believed to have happened, is a group representing this event. Other people dream of possible religion parks, even if they may not ever have the resources ever to realize them. Here is the vision of Andrea Webster, a Baptist nursery-school manager from Leeds: Several years ago God gave me a vision for a Biblical Theme Park. The words ‘theme park’ immediately conjure up thoughts of frightening rides and people think that isn’t really very Godly. However, it is not intended to be a series of big rides, but educational fun experiences based on Biblical stories. It will be Disney meets the Bible. The Bible is full of interesting people and stories. Today we have such amazing technology at our disposal and it is a shame not to use this to glorify God. We can use virtual reality to transport people back to Biblical times. Imagine sitting in a room as the plagues happen around you and then fleeing towards the red sea, with the Egyptians chasing you. Lots of fun, but when you come off you will know the story of the Israelites escape from Egypt. Maybe you could take a journey through creation and emerge into the Garden of Eden, or go out in a boat with Jesus and experience a storm on the Sea of

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Galilee. Maybe you could even walk on water! There is so much opportunity to present the Bible to people in an exciting and fun way. It’s a way to compete with television, play stations and x boxes. It’s not too late to capture people’s imaginations and encourage them to look at the Bible with fresh eyes. Families will spend a day out together and schools will love it.16

So far this vision has yet to be realized.

Raising the capital: Government investment It’s remarkable that cultural parks have flourished both in Western neo-liberal economies, and in those Asian countries whose leaders (like Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad) justifiably claimed that their economic success had been based not on individualism, capitalism and ‘democracy’, but on the ‘Asian values’ of social cohesion, thrift and foresight. Most cultural theme parks are probably registered as charities or not-forprofit organizations. In many countries that means that they are automatically exempt from at least some taxes and are eligible for grants from public bodies and from charitable foundations. The Eden Project cost £141 million; £37.5 million came from grants derived from the UK’s National Lottery profits, £50 million from the European Union and a UK government regional development fund, and £20 million from commercial loans. ‘The balance was made up of other loans and some funds generated by Eden itself and reinvested back into the Project’ (Elworthy 2014, 58). As we have seen, religion parks, like other visitor attractions, often get support from governments and local authorities, on the grounds that they are investing in tourism which will contribute to the economic development of the region. Thus, ISKCON’s Krishna Lila Park in Bangalore, India, was given eleven hectares and various tax concessions by the Government of Karnataka, and the Master Plan of Delhi was altered so that Akshardham could be built in the Yamuna flood-plain. In Telengana, near Hyderabad, the local tourism authority is promoting a 111-hectare Buddhist park, Buddhavanam, based on an early Buddhist archaeological site. Sometimes, however, the religious character of the park, or of its promoters, can lead to difficulties. The Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky, was to receive up to $18 million in tax rebates on the grounds that – like its nearby sister attraction the Creation Museum – it would contribute significantly to the local tourism product. That would have given some 25 per cent of the anticipated $73 million

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cost of the project. However, in autumn 2013 the company promoting the project began advertising for staff, and a condition of employment was that employees sign up to an elaborate set of fundamentalist Christian Creationist beliefs. The State of Kentucky withdrew the tax-break offer,17 just as Arkansas had forty-three years earlier from Gerald Smith’s Great Passion Play Theme Park. Ultimately though, the Ark Encounter sued the State of Kentucky and was awarded the tax rebate. HLE was even more fortunate. In 2006 the US Senate passed a bill, said to have been specifically tailored to that park, granting exemption from local property taxes to parks ‘used to exhibit, illustrate and interpret biblical manuscripts’ (Stausberg 2011, 117); the exemption is said to have saved the park $2.5 million over the next ten years.18 HLE’s ‘Scriptorium’ claims to be one of the finest collections of biblical manuscripts in the world. Elsewhere government investment in tourism specifically favours religion parks. Dr Ahmad Belhoul, CEO of strategy and tourism sector development at Dubai’s Department of Tourism and Commerce Marketing, talking about Dubai’s proposed Holy Qur’an Theme Park, announced that heritage and religious tourism would be the new focus to drive the city to 20 million international arrivals per year in seven years’ time: In the past, the core strength in tourism has been beach holidays, shopping and sightseeing. To hit the 20m tourist figure, we are looking at different targets where gaps remain. Segments such as sport and heritage and culture tourism is where our feasibility study has led us and these are markets we are willing to pump money into and develop further.19

In the 1980s, apparently, the authorities in Japan were worried by the alleged lack of skills of Japanese travellers in cross-cultural communication. Among the responses was the founding at Inuyama of Little World: Museum of Man (Cohen 2008, 183; Hendry 2000, 157). This is perhaps at the far ‘museum’ end of the theme park spectrum; it is indeed essentially an anthropology museum with a series of reconstructed or replicated buildings from around the world. Among places of worship the park includes a Buddhist temple from Nepal, a chapel with gold-plated altar from a Peruvian landlord’s house, a Bavarian church and a sanctuary from Okinawa. Often government investment must depend on local (and not necessarily ‘democratic’) politics. The Indonesian multifaith religion park Bukit Kasih was sited beside the village of Kanonong, which happens to be the home of the governor who undertook to create the complex (Stausberg 2011, 122, quoting

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Judith Schlele). In 1970 there was still much opposition to the transfer of the capital of the Indian State of Gujarat from Ahmedabad to the new Corbusierdesigned city of Gandhinagar. The chief minister invited the principal Swaminarayan leaders to visit and bless the new city, and urged them to found a temple there. Thus, the idea of Akshardham was planted (Swaminarayan Bliss, 17). Occasionally its religious aspects may directly help a cultural park get established; that seems to have been what the promoters of a ‘Chinese Cultural Theme Park’ in Australia hoped when they made a Development Application for a Buddhist temple.20

Raising the capital: Commercial development Where government is not picking up the whole bill, religion parks are usually funded by one or two generous and wealthy individuals, by commercial development or by wider fund-raising and voluntary effort, mainly within the sponsoring faith group. HLE is a rare example of the first, said to have initially been largely funded by Robert Van Kampen (1938–1999), investment banker and one of America’s richest men, who shared its promoter’s theological position and particularly his beliefs about the end of the world. Most common, though, is probably commercial development. A common business trajectory seems to be from media, through theme parks to hotels, or sometimes through hotels to theme parks to media. Leaving Disney aside, the Sagar group of companies based in Mumbai is a good example. Founded by the film director Dr Ramanand Sagar, best known as the man behind the 1986 television series Ramayana, (said to have been seen by 650 million people), Sagar Arts is moving into hotels, including one at the famous pilgrimage centre of Haridwar on the Ganges. In 2005 the company was promoting the ‘world’s biggest ever mythological theme park’ there, and claiming that ‘Hindu gods’ such as Ram, Hanuman and Krishna will be the central attractions for a ‘Disneyland on the Ganges’ in India.21 At present, though, the company appears to be concentrating on a new development on the outskirts of Mumbai: a new 110-room hotel beside ‘Sagar Theme Park based on the legendary and super hit software library of the Sagar Family like Ramayan, Shri Krishna and other historical and mythological stories from Indian history and culture’.22 ISKCON is also in this business. ISKCON Bangalore plans to fund its twenty-eight-acre Krishna Lila Park from residential and commercial

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development on seventeen hectares.23 According to The Times of India (9 January 2012): A 600-unit Gokulam Apartments has been built right next to the hill and sold off to citizens, while a second block of 1,400 apartments is being built by Mantri Group also adjacent to the hill. A massive block of 1,000 apartments already exists next to the hillock. Gokulam apartment resident K A Shenoy told TOI: ‘We purchased the flat not only because JP Nagar, Banashankari and Jayanagar are accessible, but because we will be right next to a world-class social theme park. The neighbourhood will be hi-tech and socially alive and engaging.’ Vaikunta Hill is expected to spur massive residential apartment projects and villas in the range of 3-10 km.

Krishna Bhumi is a big gated community of luxury residences being developed at Vrindavan, between Delhi and Agra in North India. The development’s fortyfive hectares will offer residents ‘a premium wellness center with ayurvedic spa, sports and recreation facilities, an elder care center with all medical facilities, conveniences, utilities and other lifestyle amenities.’24 Vrindavan was also the birthplace of Krishna and is therefore full of temples. The biggest temple of all is being built at the centre of the Krishna Bhumi development This super-temple, 213 metres high and covering two hectares, will itself contain a theme park devoted to Krishna; designed by ISKCON Bangalore, published plans suggest it will include many of the features proposed for the Krishna Lila Park.

Raising the capital: Fund-raising within the faith Some religion parks are set up and run not by conventional commercial companies or even not-for-profit ones, but by a group within the faith organizations behind them. Some parks are based on pure altruism by the individual owner; some on a collective that has to earn its income; some – at least partly – on merit-economy. BAPS makes much of the enormous amount of voluntary effort that went into setting up of both the Gujarat and the Delhi Akshardhams. Each attracted funds, time and skill from Swaminarayan devotees not only from India, but from Europe, America and East Africa as well. Akshardham Gujarat was originally intended to be just a temple. It was apparently Pramukh Swami Maharaj’s idea that it should become something rather more, and in 1986 he sent a group of six sadhus across the world to look at leisure technology in fifteen countries. His ambition was to blend modern technology with ancient ‘spiritual technology’; in

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other words, to use modern media to serve religion. In this both Akshardham Gujarat and Akshardham New Delhi succeed magnificently. As remarkable, though, is the way they were developed and are run. As we have seen in Chapter 2, BAPS (the branch of the Swaminarayan sect responsible) is a very wealthy organization; members are required to give 10 per cent of their income to religious and charitable trusts, much of which goes for the construction of temples and charitable activities associated with the sect. ‘Outsiders, and sometimes the relatives of members, remark that it can be very expensive to be an active member of the sect’ (Williams 2001, 164). Moreover, members are expected to give time; many devotees give a month every year to sect activities. It is this that makes the running of the complex to such a high standard possible, for many members are highly skilled professionals; it is also a source of great pride to the organization and contributes greatly to the consolidating of the sect. The quarrying and carving of the red sandstone from Rajasthan for the temple is a case in point. At one extreme volunteers in the quarrying and stone-carving region worked under ‘fear from hard core criminals … the heavy shadow of theft, the biting cold winters and scorching summers’, at the other Swaminarayan Bliss (16, 2–3, 1993) expressed gratitude to a local family for giving warehouses for storage and machinery for polishing stone. Eighteen electrician volunteers completed the electrical wiring of the entire park in six weeks after the contractor pulled out; volunteers supported the medical centre, staffed the general stores, cleaned and cooked, raised money, kept accounts, managed and coordinated, worked as engineers, gardeners and labourers. BAPS is understandably proud of the huge role voluntary work played in the construction of both Akshardhams, and of the support and generosity the projects received from business and industry. Many religion parks, of course, attract volunteers. In Aichi prefecture in Japan is Goshiki-en, a religion park dedicated to full-sized plaster tableaux of scenes from the life of Shinran (1173–1263), a Buddhist monk who founded what ultimately became the Jōdo Shinshū sect. These open-air tableaux are very like those more common in South East Asia, and need much regular repair and repainting, so every year or two up to 100 volunteers descend on the park to mend and paint.25 However, reliance on volunteers alone will normally only meet the bills of the smallest visitor attraction. The overwhelming proportion of theme parks charge for admission, even those not-for-profit religion parks seeking to generate most of their operating costs from tickets and the profits of shops, restaurants and

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hotels. Only a few, like one or two of the parks in Thailand described by Justin McDaniel (2017), are maintained by wealthy families and are free to visitors. Regardless of their mission and their tax status, the vast majority of religion parks of any size are firmly situated within global capitalism.26 *

*

*

We have seen both here and in previous chapters how much of the business of religion parks depends on the character and motives of their founders, supporters and volunteers. The purpose of it all is the visitors, and in our concluding chapter we shall examine what little we know about them.

Conclusion: The Visitors By way of conclusion, we examine the tiny amount of information available on visitors: the people for whom religion parks – and all other theme parks – exist. Only after much more research will we really be able to evaluate the role and the success of religion in theme parks. It would have been nice to conclude this book with an analysis of how visitors respond to religion in theme parks, and thus to evaluate how successful religion parks are, in terms of their stated aims as well as commercially. Sadly, the information to support this simply isn’t yet available. We know disappointingly little about visitors to religion parks. Even basic demographic data is missing. At HLE Stevenson (2015, 55) estimated that close to half its visitors were African Americans on the day she visited, with Caucasians next and Latinos/Latinas ‘a close third’. During my visits, visitors to Silver Dollar City were 100 per cent white, and at the Creation Museum overwhelmingly so, yet at the Ark Encounter they seemed much more mixed. (I met a large party from an Ethiopian Orthodox church in London, Ontario, many of the women in traditional Tigrean dress.) In 2010 the average visitor to the Creation Museum had a college or advanced degree, a household income of $67,500, and had travelled over 250 miles to get there (Trollinger and Trollinger 2016, 13). Statistics on visitors gathered for marketing purposes should in theory be available for many theme parks, though in practice such data may be ‘commercially confidential’. In principle though it should be comparatively straightforward to discover where people come from, when and with whom they visited, what they saw, what they spent, and so on. For amusement parks whose only ambition is to maximize visitor spend, these types of figures may be adequate. For many cultural parks, though, the aim is rather to educate, and for some religious parks at least, the aim may be to influence, if not actually to convert. Here much more qualitative information is needed. How successful are they? Do people buy the line they are being sold? Is it a social thing? Do visitors tend to hold similar political or religious points of view? Do they come to publicize or reaffirm their own beliefs? Perhaps they are spiritual safe havens that they come to in order to educate future generations in their own controversial beliefs? Above all, what are their beliefs, attitudes and understandings when they come, and how, if at

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all, have they changed when they leave, and a month later?1 We need answers to these and many more such questions. There are both practical and scholarly problems. Ketchell (2007b, xxxi) noted that parks can discourage outside researchers, and scholars still find that theme parks are private property. The museum world has seen a great deal of research into visitor behaviour, response and learning over the past generation, which will support an equivalent study in religion parks. However, John Falk, one of the leading figures in museum learning research, has pointed out that to be successful such research needs to be both in-depth and long-term, because in his studies ‘learning depended individually and collectively upon who the visitor was, what they knew, why they came, and what they actually saw and did’ (2004, S87). Some work has been done. One academic study analysed the response of visitors to the Wycliffe Discovery Center, a visitor attraction in Orlando established by Wycliffe Bible Translators Organisation USA, a missionary organization devoted to providing translations of the Bible worldwide. The organization’s website invites potential visitors to the Discovery Center to experience the amazing story of the Bible at the Wycliffe Discovery Center in Orlando, Florida. Encounter people, languages, and cultures you’ve never seen before. Use all of your senses as you learn about the art and science of Bible translation through award-winning multimedia and games. Discover how the Bible has been preserved throughout history – and how God is using it to bring hope and freedom to forgotten, marginalized people groups today.2

American, Israeli and Puerto Rican ‘Hospitality Management’ researchers invited a selection of visitors to rank a series of attributes in order of importance, and these rankings were attributed to four ‘quadrants’ thought likely to be useful to management: ‘Concentrate here’, ‘Keep up the good work’, ‘Low priority’ and ‘Possible overkill’. The study’s most interesting finding, perhaps, was that the physical layout of the attraction, which had received a great deal of management attention, and the price of admission, were regarded as low priority, while into the ‘Concentrate here’ quadrant fell ‘spiritual activities’, ‘inspirational experience’ and ‘something for everyone’. In other words, as the researchers put it, the study indicated ‘the need to strengthen the emotional aspects of visitor experience’: The revealed quest for a spiritual experience rather than the ordinary service attributes suggests there are limitations to the ‘secularization’ of religious-related sites, even the contrived ones. Religious sites, both sacred and contrived, should pay attention to service and facilities, but the spiritual experience is still the core business.’ (Rivera, Shani and Severt 2009, 238)

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Figure 15 Jesus with visitors in front of the Great Temple, Holy Land Experience, Orlando, Florida, USA. (Photo: Céline Molter.)

They went on to praise the practice of rival local attraction HLE of presenting a daily crucifixion. Mind, it is worth noting that 46 per cent of the interviewees were visiting Orlando ‘for religious activities’, even if 51 per cent ‘attended theme parks’, so they were an ideal audience. All observers confirm that the majority of HLE’s visitors are conservative Protestants, particularly Baptists and Assemblies of God members. But even if visitors are broadly in sympathy with the park’s theme, they may not readily accept the full package. As we have seen in Chapter 4, in his fascinating analysis of the ideology behind HLE, Timothy Beal argues that the reason the park devotes so much time and space to introducing Jewish religious ritual is to support its interpretation of the End Times. He points out, however, that concern with the minutiae of how the world will end, and in what order the Rapture, the Antichrist, Divine Judgement and the Second Coming will be seen, is of little interest to the majority, even conservative fundamentalist Evangelicals. In the case of this park, Beal argues, there is ‘a disconnect’ between the park’s aim and many of its visitors: Indeed, it appeared to me that although visitors were generally entertained and delighted by the various attractions and performances of the Holy Land Experience, most were baffled if not turned off by the prevalence of the apocalyptic theology of Zion’s Hope. (Beal 2005, 70)

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Back in 1987, the research carried out by sociologist Thomas O’Guinn and Russell Belk (Chapter 6, above) included twenty interviews with visitors to Heritage USA, aged from 15 to 90. Sadly, the 198 photographs, interview tapes and sixty pages of notes and transcripts seem to have been lost, and all we have is the very brief summary O’Guinn and Belk3 give in their 1989 paper. The park in general, and the shopping mall (the researchers’ main focus) in particular, appeared as a sacred refuge or retreat. As one young man put it: God listens to you wherever you are. It’s just that here more people want to talk to Him. In the real world they put you down. Here you are free. When you are here you can talk with Him and walk with Him. You feel a presence. You see two or three people on park benches praying for each other. If you were out in the real world praying on a park bench, they would think you were crazy. (O’Guinn and Belk 1989, 230)

Heritage USA offered a comfortable and welcoming retreat to conservative Evangelical Protestants who felt themselves to be a minority, oppressed by governments, social elites, the education system and the media. Another young man remarked: It’s an oasis. You can talk to people here about anything, but not in the ‘real’ world because you are a Christian. Everybody makes fun of them. Here it is like one big family. It’s like a whole different world with spiritual people.

The sort of contemptuous mocking he was describing is neatly summed up by the American humourist P. J. O’Rourke, describing Heritage USA around the same year. It’s fascinating to see how much of this contempt, usually claimed to be a response to right-wing paranoid politics, may thinly veil old-fashioned class hatred: I looked at the people crowding Heritage “Main Street” mall. They didn’t seem to be having much fun. Many of them were old, none looked very well-off. There was a dullness in their movements and expressions. Even the little kids looked somber and thick. ‘You know what we’ve got here?’ I said to Dorothy. ‘This is white trash behaving itself ’. (O’Rourke 1989)

Extraordinarily little research seems to have been done on the expectations and experience of visitors to theme parks, let alone to religion parks.4 The only such study I have found is that by Macau scholar Cora Un In Wong (2017), whom we met in Chapter 1 as the inventor of the phrase ‘accidental theme park’. In 2013 she examined 498 TripAdvisor reviews of Hong Kong’s ‘Big Buddha theme park’. Though the Big Buddha itself received praise, the Buddhist museum was

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universally regarded as boring, and the old Buddhist monastery was largely ignored; the highlight of the visit for most people were the ‘stunning, awesome’ cable car rides. Interestingly, ‘95% of the reviews do not describe the site as being Buddhist sacred ground’, seeing it as a theme park where they took pictures, ate and drank, saw the sights and shopped for souvenirs. Of the 498, only 23 reported even lighting incense. Cora Un In Wong also conducted structured interviews with sixteen foreign visitors to the site. The Western tourists were hoping to be exposed to Buddhist culture, but the Asian tourists, quite familiar with Buddhist culture already, were looking forward to the cable car rides. None reported any religious motivation. One factor in a visitor’s decision to visit must be cost, and it’s interesting to compare admission charges with local wages, Thus Ancient City/Muang Boran costs roughly the equivalent of an office clerk’s earnings in two hours, though the charge for foreigners is six times that. At HLE the $50 adult admission price works out at roughly three and half hours’ wages for a local construction worker. Similarly, Europa-Park costs €47, which could be three hours’ work for a local sales assistant, but Silver Dollar City costs $62: six hours’ work for a certified nursing assistant in Missouri. Suối Tiên appears very much cheaper, but at $5 it is actually very pricey in a country where a secretary might earn $2 a day. These kinds of charges are clearly aimed at higher earners – in other words, at the rising middle class. Only a few religion parks, like the Akshardhams, are actually free, but more modest parks can charge modest entry fees: $8 at the Wycliffe Discovery Centre, or $6 for a one-hour tour at the Bible Walk Wax Museum. While discussion of religion in theme parks focusses on the leisure time that the new middle classes can spare to visit such places, and the efforts the parks make to welcome them in comfort, we should remember the more ancient motive that lies behind many a visit. During the month-long opening festival of Akshardham Gujarat, people queued for up to fifteen hours in the freezing cold to get in, sleeping on the bare ground. An old man was patiently standing in a long queue. A volunteer told him, ‘Come later uncle. Akshardham is a permanent complex. There is no need for you to bear the pain and boredom of waiting in this huge crowd.’ The old man replied, ‘Son, what you say is true! Akshardham is permanent but I am not! There’s no telling when I’ll pass away!’ (Swaminarayan Bliss 1993, 5)

In the absence of reliable demographic data from Indian – or many other – parks, an observation offered by the Delhi sociologist Sanjay Srivastava (2009, 377; 2014, 205) of visitors to Akshardham New Delhi is valuable. He notes that

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the great majority are Indian and non-English speaking; very many come in extended family or other groups, often by bus or taxi; a high proportion are women, sometimes in all-women groups. They are clearly not what in India is generally meant by ‘middle-class’ – Westernized and wealthy – but from another ‘middle class’, employed rather than employers, that is comfortable both with its traditional culture and with modern global culture: A class that sees itself as ‘truly’ Indian because it is not defined by foreign modernity, but is, rather, able to define its own version; this middle class can take part in the processes of modernity, but also ‘pull back’ and return to tradition. (2014, 210)5

The ‘Amazing Thailand’ website charmingly says of the Guan Yin Inter-Religious Park: After worshipping, the tourists can stop by at the KruaRongboon to have lunch or they can have lunch at the VIP kitchen in front of the reception area. When lunch is finished, the tourists can buy the sacred object as a merit. The bill for lunch is up to how much the tourists want to make merit.6

In other of the various media that comprise popular culture, people can make bigger decisions than how much to spend on lunch; they can influence or change the media they are consuming itself. Social media are eminently open to alteration or challenge, and some scholars draw attention to how ‘the web is changing our sense of personal advocacy, about how people now understand that they can do things in the world together and in loose association, and in fact have an effect on their surroundings, in contrast to the previous sense that people were fighting against a world that would not move’ (Sánchez Laws 2015, 95). At the other extreme books are, as it were, given. Similarly, theme parks, though their managers may change them frequently in response to consumer feedback and demand, cannot be changed by the individual visitor. Perhaps the greater use of virtual reality will give theme park visitors the power to determine their own experiences. One of the publisher’s anonymous reviewers of this book asked the key question: ‘As religion is materialized in the genre of theme-park, is there any meaningful change in the possibilities for religious understanding and experience? That is, are these parks not just a form of expressive culture, but a generative material vehicle?’ This project has been too limited to offer anything like a full answer, but there are certainly pointers to the areas future studies could explore. First, we have seen that religion parks are collapsing the distinction,

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long rigid in most of Protestant Christianity, between places of worship and leisure venues. Protestants are rediscovering the joys of pilgrimage. Other traditions, where such joys have never been forgotten, are discovering new ways of experiencing them. Visit a temple in Singapore and one can watch local people offer incense and prayers to their favourite god, and then turn immediately to laugh and joke with their friends, play with their children, smoke a cigarette or play cards. The contrast with the ponderous solemnity of many churches is striking. But in theme parks like HLE there is just the same relaxed muddle of fun and devotion. Religious theme parks have brought fun into church, as well as church into fun. But they have done more. They have created environments welcoming to the new middle classes who, perhaps reluctant to abandon religion entirely as so many in Europe have, are now able to do their religion in places where they feel are safe, clean and ‘respectable’. Might religion parks offer the same opportunity to Europeans? Might culture parks even prove to be a cat’s paw for religion parks? Religion scholar Birgit Meyer, one of the editors of Material Religion, said: One of the reasons why religion remains a vital, appealing force lies exactly in its propensity to transform by incorporating new media and addressing and linking people in new ways. … Indeed the successful public presence of religion today depends on the ability of its proponents to locate it in the marketplace of culture, and embrace audio-visual mass media so as to assert their public presence … whilst still being able to feature as religion, and hence not reducible to the ordinary. (2009, 2, 18)

That seems a good thought on which to conclude.

Notes Preface 1 And even that project might be pushed to defend itself against a charge that it is the kind of popular culture study Catherine Albanese (2004) so wittily called ‘showand-tell scholarship … unearthing still one more custom, practice, belief, or piece of spiritual paraphernalia that no one yet among scholars had discovered’. 2 I am grateful to Theo Borgvin-Weiss for drawing my attention to these. 3 Analyses of the industry worldwide can be purchased online for sums up to $4,500. A useful introduction to the scholarly literature, though, is Carlà-Uhink et al. (2017, 11). See also Steinkrüger et al. (forthcoming). 4 He concludes (220) that ‘tourism is a major area and context for the unfolding of religion in the contemporary global world, so that tourism no longer appears as a marginal subject for those who study religion(s) – nor religion for those who study tourism’. 5 I am very grateful to James Bielo for allowing me sight of his text before publication.

Chapter 1 1 Quoted in Brereton (2006, 62). 2 With perhaps rather more justification, Tim Smit was ‘anxious to … not create a theme park atmosphere’ in the Eden Project, but to be and appear to be ‘a serious scientific resource, albeit in a way that is beguiling and amusing and memorable enough to make people reflect on the message’ (Smit 2001, 246, 211). 3 A brief helpful introduction is offered by Kenneth Pargament (1997, 21–33). 4 I’m reassured to see that Juergensmeyer, Griego and Soboslai (2015, 4) take the same view. 5 Though some argue that ‘spirituality’ is as strong as ever; only institutional ‘religion’ has collapsed. 6 I am grateful to John Jenkins for this reference. 7 Derrickson (2008) discusses the intriguing ambiguity of virtual sacred Islamic spaces. 8 See Vogel (1993), and for the wider context Morgan (2007). 9 https://www.statista.com/statistics/258810/theme-und-amusement-parkcompanies-ranked-by-revenue. (Accessed January 2018.)

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10 http://www.iaapa.org/resources/by-park-type/amusement-parks-and-attractions/ industry-statistics. (Accessed January 2018.) 11 https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/08/disney-theme-parks-are-booming-in-asia-butchinese-geopolitical-risks-loom.html. (Accessed January 2018.) 12 http://www.scmp.com/property/hong-kong-china/article/1952256/china-buildingtoo-many-theme-parks. (Accessed July 2016). 13 Of course, though, not all religion parks look back to Disney – some look equally or more to the open-air museum and ecomusée traditions for their founding inspiration. Thus, the founding director of Nazareth Village in Israel claimed inspiration from Colonial Williamsburg, Plimouth Plantation, and the Ecomusée d’Alsace in Ungersheim, France (Ron 2010, 122). 14 Mind, the tiki cocktail ‘temple’ has itself been analysed as a religious site (McRae and Reid 2015, 245), and some recent tiki cultures have been seen as ‘spiritual’ (Lukas 2016a, 64). 15 Dismaland is discussed by Freitag (2017), in the context of a new controversial and provocative genre of theme parks. But back in 1990 the automata-maker Paul Spooner and a group of colleagues created an equally mocking theme park ride for a big shopping centre in northern England; sadly, the contract was cancelled. It included Heaven and Hell: heaven comprised thirty-six heads all singing ‘My Way’. (http://www.kinetica-museum.org/exhibitions/past/caberet-mechanical-theatrethe-ride-of-life.html). (Accessed January 2016.)

Chapter 2 1 Following the 2016 death of owner Jan Crouch (Zadrozny 2016; Brinkman 2016) the park is being substantially remodelled; the famous daily crucifixion is now reduced to a part of a theatre play, ‘The Promise’. The old and the new versions can both be seen on YouTube. 2 Yorke Rowan (2004, 252) notes that visitors were ‘ushered along from one venue to the next in a carefully conceived plan that exposes them to the optimal amount of religious content and the greatest number of shopping opportunities’. 3 http://www.solagroup.org/vkc.html. (Accessed September 2016.) 4 http://www.holylandexperience.com/calendar/livesho ws2010.html (Accessed 6 October 2015). 5 Jill Stevenson (2015, 88) sees in this one of a number of conscious references to Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. 6 Jill Stevenson (2015, 263) notes that precisely the opposite happened in the Great Passion Play at Eureka Springs, where between 1968 and 2010, and especially after 2001, many of the more offensive anti-Jewish incidents and features were removed.

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7 I am most grateful to Nishith Acharya and Jagrut Patel, BAPS volunteers at Akshardham Gujarat, for their warm welcome and great help on my visit. 8 C. Travis Webb pointed out (pers.com) the analogy with stupas containing relics around such ancient temple complexes as Angkor Wat. 9 For the striking growth of religious-identity visitor attractions in India, see Mathur and Singh (2015). 10 Pers.com. I am grateful to Waiying Sum, formerly of Singapore Tourism Board, for information included in this section. 11 http://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Balm-Gardens-Billionaires-Environments/ dp/9626720522/ref=asapbc?ie=UTF8. (Accessed March 2015.) 12 Huang and Hong 2006, offer a fascinating analysis of this saga. See also Yeoh and Teo (1996). 13 http://www.goingplacessingapore.sg/more/Top5/2013/HawParVilla.aspx (Accessed July 2015.) 14 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. “Religion in Singapore”. https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Religion_in_Singapore. (Accessed June 2017.) 15 Justin McDaniel’s favourite was the Snow Castle; his visit with his young son was ‘the most enjoyable research trip of my career’ (McDaniel 2017, 30). Although I visited with a grown-up anthropologist rather than a ten-year-old boy, I’m sure I enjoyed Suối Tiên just as much. 16 Park website http://suoitien.com. (Accessed July 2015.) 17 Lê’s analysis is a lot more complex than this and deserves development. Unfortunately, poor English makes it difficult to access. 18 Other parks that have discovered fortune-telling as a way of involving visitors are Huis ten Bosch, the Dutch theme park at Kyushu in Japan (but that just involves computer interactives) and PheZulu (see Chapter 5). 19 This is not the only Creationist visitor attraction in the United States. One other is Mt Blanco Fossil Museum in Crosbyton, Texas. See Huskinson (2016). 20 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3683996/The-kids-brainwashed-BillNye-Science-Guy-slams-new-Noah-s-Ark-attraction-visit-Friday-protests-heldopening.html#ixzz4M26OVqpm. 21 Bielo himself discusses the possibility of such failure (2017). And see Chaffey, Belknap and McDorman (2017).

Chapter 3 1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22956470. (Accessed July 2015.) 2 Malise Ruthven (2012, 247) describes it shortly after the fall of the Bakkers. 3 Quoted in Wikipedia: Jim Bakker. (Accessed October 2015.)

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4 Today a penitent Jim Bakker denounces the prosperity gospel. (On the other hand, he supports Donald Trump.) The impact of all this tragic saga on two PTL partners is described in Baumann and Baumann (2008). 5 See Einstein (2007). 6 Gombrich’s phrase, quoted by Askew (2008, 93). 7 UNWTO (2011, 93), suggests that ‘in times of unrest, religious tourism and pilgrimage are the last forms of travel to see a decline in traveller numbers’. 8 http://arcworld.org/projects.asp?projectID=500. (Accessed December 2016). 9 A valuable overview of religious tourism in Asia and the Pacific is UNWTO (2011). Its individual country studies counter the temptation to generalize about whole continents, though few give much attention to theme parks. 10 Xinyuan Wang has shown how Chinese factory workers, newly moved from their country villages, upload images of deities to their social media sites because their images remain powerful (Wang 2016, 161). As she put it on the UCL Anthropology Department’s MOOC ‘Why We Post: The Anthropology of Social Media, in Rural China’: ‘Social media has become a temple where people can go and perform traditional rituals.’ And see Campbell (2005). 11 Site brochure, quoted by Feldman and Ron (2015, 164). 12 http://www.nazarethvillage.com/tours/parable-walk-tour. (Accessed June 2016.) 13 In 2016 Dolly Parton refused to endorse either presidential candidate but confirmed that ‘I pray every day that I can do something to uplift mankind, and help shine His light and glorify Him’ (The i, 12 August 2016, 35). 14 It was a convincing contrast to readers in the fast-industrializing America of the 1900s, yet oddly the novel’s plot line requires that the old-fashioned world it describes be a violent and vicious society – for all the near-perfect men and women who comprise its heroes and heroines. 15 Quoted in Ketchell (2007b, 32). 16 http://www.silverdollarcity.com/theme-park/Guest-Services/History. (Accessed July 2016.) 17 It is, though, notable that Silver Dollar City continues the non-denominational and almost anti-theological tradition of Harold Bell Wright who had no patience with theological debate and inter-church squabbles, but put all the emphasis on how faith in Christ is reflected in social action. His denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), were strong supporters of the ‘Social Gospel’. This tradition continues, though co-owner Peter Herschend actively supports the usual conservative causes. 18 The company’s former CEO, Cary Summers, is now president of Museum of the Bible in Washington and was one of the founders of ‘Nazareth Village’ in Israel (Summers 2017, 18). He is also said to be a board member of the Jerusalem Institute of Justice, an Israeli human rights organization, but has

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been attacked for supporting Israeli excavation in the West Bank. (https:// www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/hobby-lobby-funds-israeli-settlementarchaeology-170826181403031.html. Accessed March 2018.) 19 While this theme park church is thriving, the 1876 Church of Reflections at Knotts Berry Farm, Buena Park, California, is being moved out of the amusement park where it has been since 1955. (https://www.ocregister.com/2018/02/09/historicchurch-host-to-many-weddings-to-be-moved-from-knotts-berry-farm. Accessed May 2018.)

Chapter 4 1 Céline Molter (2017) suggests that unlike secular parks, religion parks ‘aim to represent a certain world view and teach visitors about it’. I would argue that all parks, like every other medium, have a world view which – consciously or unconsciously – they want to promote. 2 http://www.nazarethvillage.com/category/60/About. (Accessed March 2015.) And see Feldman and Ron (2015, 167). 3 http://amishexperience.com/the-story-of-jacobs-choice. (Accessed July 2015). 4 http://www.phantasialand.de/en/hotels/hotel-ling-bao. See also http://www. everyday-feng-shui.de/feng-shui-news/birgit-x-fischer-ueber-das-feng-shui-hotelling-bao. (Accessed February 2018.) 5 http://www.a12.com/santuario-nacional/institucional/detalhes/santuario-emnumeros. (Accessed July 2015.) 6 Olmos (2000). 7 Galindo and Tondato (2000). 8 In some circles this is seen as embarrassing. One Sikh chatroom protested volubly when I suggested (Paine 2003, 145) that some pilgrims’ motives can include, among many others, adventure or escape from problems at home. 9 Ironically, at the time of writing, there is much discussion of whether Disney will introduce its first gay princess in ‘Frozen 2’. 10 Jan Crouch (1938–2016), who with her husband Paul (1934–2013) had built up TBN as a prosperity-gospel mission, replaced the senior staff and remodeled much of the park. Callahan (2010, 15) interestingly shows how this was a theological takeover, as well as a personal, corporate and stylistic one. There followed a bitter family dispute, with accusations of lavish lifestyles, tax-avoidance and corruption, that recalled the fall of the Bakkers. 11 http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?ArticleId=410. (Accessed October 2015.)

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12 A helpful introduction to Christian Zionism is at https://censamm.org/resources/ profiles/christian-zionism. (Accessed January 2018). 13 Also included the British MP Keith Vaz. 14 That said, it is only fair to note Pramukh Swami’s admirably restrained reaction to the terrorist attack on Akshardham Gujarat in 2002 (Brahmaviharidas 2016, 350; Kim 2012, 420). 15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akshardham_Temple_attack. (Accessed January 2017.) 16 http://chinachristiandaily.com/2016-03-22/church/located-in-a-church-themedpark-to-be--largest-gospel-church-of-zhangjiajie-be-completed-soon_785.html. (Accessed February 2017). I am grateful to Liz Hingley for drawing my attention to this. 17 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/09/christianity-theme-park-in-maozedongs-home-province-sparks-outrage. (Accessed February 2017.) 18 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/01/communist-party-theme-parksparks-ridicule-among-chinese-internet-users. (Accessed February 2017.) 19 http://corporate.europapark.com/en/company/historie; https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Europa-Park. (Accessed July 2015.) 20 I am grateful to Ken Brashier of Reed College for introducing me to Mulian. 21 To be fair, the museum does unequivocally condemn racism, which it claims was much promoted by Darwin’s followers. 22 http://dapark.ru. (Accessed July 2015.) 23 ‘New Permanent Exhibit Dedicated to Romanov and Rurik Dynasties Opens in Moscow’, from the blog ‘Royal Russia News,’ 29 December 2015. Available at http:// www.angelfire.com/pa/ImperialRussian/blog/index.blog?entry_id=1473185. (Accessed November 2017.) I am grateful to Marianna Shakhnovich of St Petersburg State University for drawing my attention to these parks. 24 Slavoj Žužek (2001) was perhaps exaggerating when he said in 2001 that the Chinese were ‘rapidly transforming Lhasa into a Chinese version of the capitalist Wild West with karaoke bars intermingled with the Disney-like “Buddhist theme parks” for Western tourists’. 25 Patriotism takes on a quite distinct meaning in the case of Christian Zionists, who see themselves as an elite among Americans because of their self-identity with the People of Israel (Sturm 2015). 26 http://www.polynesia.com/purpose-and-history.html#.VNOJIsZSXJ4. (Accessed February 2015.) 27 It is also worth noting the 25.4 per cent profit margin the park generated in 2011 (Attractions Management 3 2017). 28 https://www.lds.org/locations/laie-hawaii-temple-visitors-center. (Accessed February 2015.)

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Chapter 5 1 http://www.expomuseum.com/disney/. (Accessed April 2016.) 2 Lawrence Chua (2014, 82) suggests that Ancient City draws on pre-war Fascist influence in Thailand. 3 http://www.phezulusafaripark.co.za/phezulu.htm. (Accessed December 2015.) 4 Otherwise Wiripun, Wirayaphant or Viriyahbhun. 5 But McDaniel (2017, 89) points out that Lek and Braphai Wiriyaphan were not at all concerned with accuracy, but enjoyed mixing up styles, periods and materials. So, Umberto Eco (1998, 22) points out, did William Randolph Hearst in his Californian castle. 6 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/by-zeus-meet-the-gods-in-a-themepark-1360370.html. (Accessed September 2016.) 7 Amy Whitehead has suggested (pers.com.) that perhaps the Father Christmas robes and cotton-wool beard so change the character of the man inside them that he becomes the deity, as would be the case (for example) with Hopi kachina dancers. She clearly hasn’t talked to many supermarket Santa Clauses. 8 http://www.laplanduk.co.uk/your-experience/your-experience. (Accessed November 2016.) LaplandUK describes itself as a ‘temporary immersive theatrical experience’, rather than a theme park. 9 Santa Claus Land at Santa Claus, Indiana, is sometimes claimed as the first theme park; it began in 1946. 10 It’s important, too, to remember how fairies, elves and gnomes – indeed all the 150 species of fairyland – were once important ‘special beings’, in Orsi’s phrase (Green 2016). 11 It will be interesting to see whether the new Heidi theme park at St Gallen, Switzerland, (Heidi Alperlebnis) has anything to say about Heidi’s conversion of her God-hating grandfather. 12 A consistent theme of the books is that racism is deeply evil. Lord Voldemort’s obsession with blood purity is fundamental to his hatred of half-Muggle Harry, and Hermione leads a campaign to improve attitudes towards, and treatment of, houseelves. 13 In Star Trek Vulcans are credited with immortal souls – the katra – which can be transferred from one individual to another (Cusack 2010, 118). 14 A detailed description and critique of the ride is available at http://www. insidethemagic.net/2010/06/spoiler-filled-review-harry-potter-and-the-forbiddenjourney-ride-at-universal-orlandos-wizarding-world. (Accessed November 2016.) 15 But there are many ‘alternative’ religions to be found on the web, some inspired by science fiction. See Chidester (2005, 204).

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16 http://themeparkuniversity.com/critical-studies/religion-place-theme-parks. (Accessed March 2015.) 17 http://themeparkuniversity.com/theme-parks-101/religion-place-theme-parks. (Accessed July 2015.) 18 http://www.chessington.com/explore/theme-park/chessington-theme-park-listing. aspx. (Accessed March 2015.) 19 http://www.towersstreet.com/talk/threads/chessington-world-of-adventuresresort.97/page-39. (Accessed March 2015.) 20 http://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/201705/5573. (Accessed May 2017) 21 One way ‘religion’ gets into amusement parks is simply through the terror some rides evoke. A Keralan schoolboy reports on his class’s visit to Veegaland Amusement Park in Kochi: ‘I saw so many of my friends praying to every gods in the space gun and so many of the other rides.’ (http://syuez.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/to-veegaland.html.) 22 Burning of wicker men takes place at Beltane at two reconstruction Iron Age villages in the UK: Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire, and Castell Henllys in Pembrokeshire.

Chapter 6 1 This is by no means purely symbolic, though. The high wall around Akshardham Gujarat was built after terrorists killed 33 visitors in 2002. 2 Feldman and Ron (2015, 164) suggest its ‘picture is at odds with the communal and extremely crowded life, attested to in the Jewish sources of the period’ (though five years earlier (2010, 125) Ron had said ‘scientists – archaeologists and others – have given the sites their seal of approval’). 3 In 2016 there was a proposal to erect an 85-metre statue of the saint Padre Pio, with a chapel and visitor centre below, in his home village in southern Italy. 4 Many photos and video are available on the Californian/Tibetan monk Tsem Rinpoche’s blog: http://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/bu ddhas-dharma/largest-buddha-in-thailand.html. See also McDaniel (2016, 107–13). 5 http://www.somnath.org/Gdham.aspx. (Accessed October 2015.) 6 A splendid example is the Erawan Museum at Samut Prakan south-east of Bangkok, just along the road from Ancient City, and created by the same man. An iron three-headed elephant (the elephant god Erawan is the mount of Vishnu) stands 43 metres high; in the basement is Lek Wiriyaphan’s collection of Thai ceramics; the podium is dedicated to the contribution of four religions to world peace: Theravada Buddhism, Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Christianity; Erawan’s body itself represents Mount Meru, and houses antique Buddha statues. Outside is a temple, but many visitors picnic in the surrounding gardens rather than make offerings in the temple (McDaniel 2015, 9; 2016, 92).

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7 Wikipedia: Akshardham (Delhi). (Accessed October 2015.) 8 http://www.sanctuaryoftruth.com/philosophy.php. (Accessed February 2017.) 9 At the temple in Suối Tiên theme park in Vietnam such ecumenical work is carried out by monks and nuns, whose chants from a variety of Buddhist traditions reflect the varied shrines in the temple (McDaniel 2015, 13). 10 I am grateful to Pastor Andreas Wilhelm for these details. 11 http://www.europapark.de/en/hotels/4-star-superior-hotel-santa-isabel. (Accessed March 2015.) 12 I am grateful to Martin Neumeier of Rudolf Neumeier GmbH for this. 13 I am very grateful to Filippo Carlà-Uhink for sharing with me his work on the Greek sections of Europa-Park. And see http://madhouse-guide.com/?id=2&sid=4 (Accessed October 2016.) 14 An unconvincing Greek temple serves the same function at Park Asterix and has a huge statue of Zeus nearby. 15 http://hezaroyekshahr.com. (Accessed May 2015). 16 http://www.hezaroyekshahr.com/en/other.htm. 17 After Heritage USA closed in 1989 the Upper Room became almost ruinous. It was restored and reopened in 2010. 18 http://thehollytree.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/what-would-jesus-think-of-himself. html. (Accessed July 2015.) 19 I am grateful to Haj Fouad of Mleeta for this information. 20 http://mleeta.com/eng/materials/landmark.html#2; https://www.vice.com/enuk/ video/hezbollahs-propaganda-war-part-1. (Accessed July 2015.) 21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvB0sYxou8 shows the park in its 2014 abandoned state, but with the church interior apparently still retaining its paintings and iconostasis. (Accessed March 2015.) 22 http://www.tuugo.co.za/SiteViewer/0260003505032?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww. goldreefcity.co.za%2Fhotel_theme_fac.php. (Accessed December 2016.) 23 http://pharaonicvillage.com/eventmanag.html. (Accessed May 2015.) 24 https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g34515-d318444-Reviews-Holy_ Land_Experience-Orlando_Florida.html. (Accessed June 2016.) Reviews included, too, much less enthusiastic responses and some were positively hostile. TripAdvisor can be a valuable indicator of visitors’ responses, but it can only offer anecdotal evidence; it can never be representative of all visitors.

Chapter 7 1 A fascinating account of this park as it was in 1991, and of the ways in which guests were induced to behave politely as guests in the ‘host’s home’, rather than as tourists, is found in Hamilton (1998).

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2 ‘Authenticity’ perhaps becomes even more problematic in George Saunders’ imaginary CivilWarLand, where some at least of the interpreters are actually ghosts. 3 I am grateful to Chris Baker for this. One might see this temple as a precursor of modern temple/theme parks. Like Lek Wiriyaphan’s at Muang Boran in Thailand a century later (Chapter 5), Nar Auk’s motives undoubtedly included anti-colonial nationalism as well as public service and merit-making (Kalyana 2013). 4 See for example Cort (2000, 114). 5 From a prayer card available in The Church of the Holy Child and St Joseph, Bedford. 6 http://www.xcaret.com/sacred-mayan-journey.php. (Accessed July 2016.) 7 I am grateful to Christiane Gruber for drawing my attention to this. 8 See also Mathews (2015, 91) and Callahan (2010, 113).

Chapter 8 1 Sic. The Battle of the Horns of Hattin took place on 4 July 1187, between the Crusader states and the Ayyubid sultan Salah ad-Din, Saladin. I owe my visit to the Garden of Hope to James Bielo. 2 I was generously given a preview of the museum three months before opening, plus interviews with the director and senior staff. The museum was founded by Steve Green, a phenomenally wealthy businessman. It attracted some very bad publicity before opening, because his company had been successfully prosecuted for illegally importing looted Iraqi antiquities, but shows strong signs of recovery since. 3 A ‘Jerusalem Marketplace’ is now complete. 4 Not all, however, seemed entirely familiar with their Bibles; an initial prayer, while parked under the East Gate, was followed by a discussion of whether Christ at the Second Coming would enter Jerusalem through the East Gate. One tourist remarked that ‘the Muslims’ had created a cemetery outside the gate in order to discourage Him. 5 See https://www.facebook.com/Punching-the-Sun-516435698380474/ 6 Brexit, he suggested, was a sign of the End of the World. I resisted the temptation to agree. 7 It is often assumed that this was Dreamland’s ‘Hell Gate’ (famous a few years later for catching fire and leading to the whole park’s destruction), but that was a waterride, while Gorky is clearly describing a ‘theatre’, and his article was illustrated by a picture of Luna Park. 8 Young people in Thailand seem made of sterner stuff. McDaniel claimed that some of his students at a hell park in 1995 ‘said the Thai equivalent of “Ew, that’s gross”, but most just joked around, pinched each other, participated in mild flirting, and generally were happy they were not in class memorizing multiplication tables or

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lists of historical facts’ (McDaniel 2017, 113). A previous generation was more susceptible: ‘As a child, I found Haw Par Villa an eerie place. Once I was so frightened after seeing the figurines of dismembered bodies because I had cheated in a spelling test the day before. I really thought I would be condemned to the hell! That really left a deep impression on me’ (Lim 2000/2001, 35). This video gives a good idea of the temple: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=pqIzwcEmBJo. (Accessed February 2015.) Orzech (1994) describes the evolution of Chinese hell narratives, and how they reflect the use of torture in both premodern and modern Chinese societies. http://io9.com/5915890/spend-a-lovely-day-with-the-kids-at-thailands-helltorture-theme-park. (Accessed November 2015.) http://www.baronsamedishaunt.epageuk.com. (Accessed April 2016.) Baron Samedi is the Loa of the dead and of resurrection in Haitian Vodou. To use his name for a jokey visitor attraction may be considered quite offensive. In April 2018 Universal Orlando had ‘Baron’ open a Voodoo Doughnut shop (http://www. themeparkinsider.com. Accessed May 2018.). http://www.preciousmoments.com. (Accessed June 2015.) Jennifer Rycenga (2011, 141) suggests that ‘a religious sheen enhances the magic and greases the wheels of commerce’. See also Ketchell (1999). Another fictional park appears in Dora Horn’s delightful short story, ‘Shtetl World’: Horn 2010. This describes a Polish shtetl reproduced in western Massachusetts, where the rebbe gives the same sermon three times a day, and the beadle raps on the windows to summon people to afternoon prayer. For a proposed real-life shtetl theme park, see Shandler (2008). Sadly, this project, planned for Rishon Le-Zion in Israel, is stalled; apparently there is still no Jewish theme park anywhere. I am grateful to Céline Molter for drawing my attention to this. http://www.godsark.org/the-ark-project. (Accessed February 2017.) The website includes a splendid video of Founding Pastor Richard Greene describing the project. http://tass.ru/ekonomika/902060. Jersey Evening Post, 11 August 1977, 16. I am grateful to Ani Colville for this memory. I am grateful to Jan van Laarhoven for his welcome and information on this park. See also Laarhoven (2014, 252) and www.museumparkorientalis.nl. The park does have some oddities, like discovering an Ancient Egyptian temple at the end of a Roman street, and the Omani fishing village, full of Omani tourism promotion, seems to owe more to funding opportunities than to any ‘Holy Land’ theme. http://www.macaumuseum.gov.mo/w3PORT/w3MMabout/KuniamC.aspx. (Accessed February 2017.) http://tti.com.my/page/welcome-taman-tamadun-islam. (Accessed March 2017.)

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Chapter 9 1 http://www.west8.nl/projects/gardens/the_quranic_botanic_gardens. (Accessed November 2016.) 2 And see Chapter 5 for ‘El labyrinto’ at Terra Mítica. 3 An alternative suggestion is that he represents the Franciscan missionary St Diego de Alcalá (King 2002). 4 https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/blog/animatronics-world-review#. (Accessed June 2016.) 5 Dioramas have a long tradition of museum use in India. Best known are those in the Indian Museum, Kolkata, devoted to the various tribal peoples of Bengal, which have been accused of presenting a patronizing, even racist, image (Momin and Pratap 1994, 293). 6 Then as now music was used to reinforce the visual impact of religious scenes. In London in 1851–2 two ‘Holy Land’ panoramas vied for public attention. One, at the St George’s Gallery, offered ‘Grand Sacred Vocal Music by the Great Masters’, while its rival at the Egyptian Hall offered Herr Krausz de Feher plus full choir singing ‘Hebrew melodies’ (Altick 1978, 209). 7 https://islamqa.info/en/192265. (Accessed June 2016.) 8 In 2006 Abdul Hamid of Sahiwal in Pakistan was sentenced to death for claiming to be a prophet and building a model of the Kaaba in his yard (Daily Times 8.3.07). 9 I am grateful to Christiane Gruber for a discussion of this. 10 http://www.payvand.com/news/05/aug/1222.html. 11 Though Bekonscot Model Village in Buckinghamshire, England, which opened in 1929, has long been associated with the Church Army, its message is nostalgic rather than religious. For miniature parks generally, see http://iamp0.tripod.com, the website of the International Association of Miniature Parks, and Osmanoğlu (2005). The Wikipedia entry for ‘Miniature Parks’ lists 115 such parks worldwide. Accessed May 2018. 12 Legoland Dubai’s 2016 ‘Indoor Miniland’ concentrates on models of Dubai buildings, but includes a huge Lego model of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. 13 Among the ‘attractions’ destroyed by the fire was Lilliputia, a ‘town’ inhabited exclusively by people of restricted growth, assembled by its entrepreneur from freak shows all over America. It had a church in its main street (Mitrašinović 2006, 145). 14 I was taken to see the Oberammergau Passion Play as a teenager – a key experience. 15 AiG won its court case; see Chapter 10. 16 Sten Rentzhog (2007, fig. 95) illustrates a ‘Baptist preacher’ in the 1895 market square of Jamtli Open-Air Museum in Sweden. Generally, Rentzhog pays little attention to religion, though he mentions the church services at Bokrijk in Belgium,

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and quotes its director as saying that if there is no understanding of the importance of the church, history and what one sees in the museum are incomprehensible (346). http://www.proaudio-central.com/articles/pro-audio-asia/Science-andspirituality#sthash.JsjQ3K5d.dpuf. (Accessed July 2015.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFn-LD018Wc. (Accessed June 2015.) See also Beal (2005, 145). http://www.akshardham.com/gujarat/exhibitions/multimedia.htm. (Accessed May 2016.) The oldest surviving such attraction is said to be the Haunted House at Hollycombe Steam in the Country, Liphook, which was built by Orton and Spooner in 1915. http://www.messynessychic.com/2012/06/15/paris-the-ghostly-nightclubs-of-thebelle-epoque. (Accessed September 2016). David Younger’s chapter ‘Traditionally Postmodern: The Changing Styles of Theme Park Design’ (2017) is less about architectural style than park concepts, for example whether an immersive experience is supported by a backstory. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Restoration Spectacular’. https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Restoration_spectacular. (Accessed 9 April 2016.) Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘John P. Fulton’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ John_P._Fulton. (Accessed April 2016.)

Chapter 10 1 http://knowledge.ckgsb.edu.cn/2015/08/04/management/the-thrills-and-spills-oftheme-parks-in-china. (Accessed August 2016.) 2 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4736190,00.html. (Accessed August 2016.) 3 Quoted in Trollinger and Trollinger (2016, 9) on whose summary these two paragraphs are based. 4 http://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2014/12/06/woman-behindsilver-dollar-city/20021773. (Accessed June 2015.) The family now owns businesses at twenty-six locations across America. Its portfolio – which includes theme parks, waterparks, aquaria, camping grounds, a showboat, and even the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team – turns over some $400 million (£305 million, €344 million) annually, with profits of around $150 million. 5 See Chapter 3. 6 It’s notable what a lot of crossover there has been between the promoters and senior management of Evangelical-run theme parks. Thus, Jack Herschend’s wife Sherry was much involved in setting up Nazareth Village, as was the first non-Herschend

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12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Notes CEO of Silver Dollar City, Cary Summers, who moved on to become president of the Washington Museum of the Bible, founded by multi-millionaire Steve Green. Herschend Family Entertainment also owns Dollywood jointly with Dolly Parton – and twenty-one other attractions, with an annual profit of $150 million. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/17112#sthash.NHKzmm8X.dpuf. (Accessed 22 June 2015) Chris Baker (pers.com) notes that the trend for luang pho (famous monk) statues is very new, and is still considered transgressive by some. They are, though, proliferating, the most popular subject being the sixteenth-century southern Thai monk Luang Pu Thuat; his huge modern statue near Hua Hin has become a major pilgrimage centre. Puy du Fou is one inspiration behind Eleven Arches, the attraction being developed at Bishop’s Auckland in Northern England by the Christian multi-millionaire Jonathan Ruffer. It will be interesting to watch it develop – as is apparently intended – beyond the current historical pageant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PramukhSwamiMaharaj. (Accessed June 2015). This analysis is largely based on McDaniel (2017, 54–81). His discussion is very well worth reading, and his argument that Lumbini has become primarily a culture park of great attraction to local non-Buddhist tourists is valuable. I am grateful to Naveena Neerada Dasa for telling me about this project. Quoted in ‘Howard Finster’, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_ Finster. (Accessed March 2017.) http://paradisegardenfoundation.org/history/the-man-of-vision. (Accessed March 2017.) Another American visionary, Eddie Owens Martin, had in the 1950s made up a new religion, Pasquoyan, and given it a seven-acre home in Georgia with 275 metres of painted cement fence, towering totems and ornate temples. And see Crown (2004). http://www.cangodreallyhelpyou.com/biblicalthemepark/indexhtml. (Accessed May 2015.) Fox News 10 December 2014. The offer appeared to conflict with the US constitutional separation of church and state. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/religion/os-holy-land-experience-taxbreaks-20160225-story.html. (Accessed August 2016.) http://en.islamtoday.net/artshow-234-4614.htm. (Accessed July 2015.) http://coastcommunitynews.com.au/2017/06/australia-china-theme-park-statusremains-unclear. (Accessed July 2017.) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/southasia/4494747.stm. (Accessed March 2015). http://www.sagarresort.com/aboutus.php. (Accessed March 2015).

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23 http://www.iskcontruth.com/2011/08/faqs-about-krishna-leela-theme-park.html. (Accessed November 2015). 24 http://krishnabhumi.in/about-project.php. (Accessed November 2015). 25 http://asanoshouun.com/event/goshikien.php. (Accessed February 2017.) 26 The exception, James Bielo (2018a) points out, is Bible Gardens. I am grateful to him for giving me sight of this paper before its publication.

Conclusion: The Visitors 1 2 3 4

I am grateful to Peter Paine for discussion of these issues. https://www.wycliffe.org/discoverycenter. (Accessed 16 June 2015). I thank them both for owning up! How many people who might visit a religion park are already converts? James Bielo (2018b) points out that at least 26 million committed Creationists could in theory visit the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter. 5 In any society, though, a commercial endeavour will define its own market. Robert Niles, the editor of Theme Park Insider, noted in 2015: ‘When Walt created Disneyland, this was a middle-class country. But Disney now … as far as pricing out the middle class, they think: What middle class? Disney’s made a strategic decision that they’re not going to discount to hold onto people at the middle part of the economy. They’re going to set their prices at the top 10 percent of family incomes and make their money where the money is’ (quoted in Anon 2015). 6 http://uk.tourismthailand.org/Attraction/Kuan-Yin-Inter-Religious-Park--5279. (Accessed August 2016.)

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Index Abbey of St. Omer (France) 143 Acharya, Nishith 187 n.7, 199 n.25 Adams, Judith x Adams, K. Marie 127 Aecom 9 Akshardham 44, 48, 59, 65, 71–2, 92, 99–100 Gujarat 13, 23–6, 63, 138, 139, 142, 150, 151, 154, 165, 172, 173, 174, 190 n.14, 192 n.1 New Delhi 25, 53, 63, 99, 150, 151, 154, 165, 170, 173, 174 Albanese, Catherine 185 n.1 Albom, Mitch 127 Alisal, Maria Rodriguez del 57 Alliance of Religions and Conservation 47 Altick, Richard 142, 143, 144 American Amusement Park Industry, The (Adams) x American Evangelical Protestantism 61 American exceptionalism myth 58 American Protestantism 49 Amish Experience at Plain and Fancy Farm 56–7 Amsterdam Bible Museum (the Netherlands) 144 amusement parks xi, 1–4, 9, 10, 30, 42, 58, 75–7, 79, 87–9, 94, 104, 109, 119, 122, 123, 127, 137, 139, 140, 146, 177, 192 n.21 British 154 culture and 15–16 see also individual entries Ancient City (Thailand) 79–80 Anderson, Benedict 125 An Dương Vương 33 animatronics, use of 14, 18, 19, 24, 25, 36, 38, 58, 63, 82, 84, 99, 123, 125, 139, 140, 146

Answers in Genesis (AiG) 12, 36, 37–8, 72, 149, 159, 196 n.15 anti-communism 60, 162, Anti-cult Theme Park (China) 133 Aparecida do Norte (Brazil) 57 Archaeological Survey of India 110–11 Architects of Buddhist Leisure (McDaniel) x Argentina 67, 105, 138 Ark Encounter (Bielo) x Ark Encounter (United States) 12, 37–9, 72, 127, 128, 152, 159, 170–1, 177, 199 n.4 Askew, Marc 46, 59 Asterix (Goscinny) 85 atheism, in religion parks 133–4 Attraction Accountability (Cornelis) x Australia 32, 159, 172 Austria 137 ‘Authentic Fakes’ (Chidester) 5 authenticity xi, 25, 49, 58, 95, 99, 106, 108, 121, 149, 194 n.2 heritage and 109–11 rebuilt, replicated and recalled and 111–14 religion and 114–17 Aw Boon Haw 26, 27, 29, 30, 164–5 Aw Boon Par 26, 27 Aztlán Theme Park (proposed) 146 Baden, Joel x Baker, Chris 46, 194 n.3, 198 n.8 Bakker, Jim 14, 43, 44, 93, 94, 158, 159, 188 n.4 Bakker, Tammy Faye 14, 15, 43, 92 Banco do Brasil pension fund 58 Banksy 16 Bargrave, Canon John 143 Baron Samedi’s Haunt (United Kingdom) 125 Basilica of the Annunciation (Israel) 111 Baumann, Christine 188 n.4

218 Baumann, Rick 188 n.4 Beal, Timothy x, 22, 61, 62, 117, 128, 167–8, 179 Beijing Ethnic Park 78, 102–3 Beijing Minzu Park 68 Bekonscot Model Village (United Kingdom) 196 n.11 Belhoul, Ahmad 171 Belk, Russell 94, 180 Belknap, Mike 187 n.21 Bến Dược Memorial Temple (Vietnam) 106 Benjamin, Walter 109 Beppu Daibatsu 97 Beshara, Nakhle 49 Bexon, Horace 130, 167 Bible Garden 136 Bible Nation (Baden) x Bible Walk (United States) 142 Bielo, James x, 38, 121, 136, 185 n.5, 187 n.21, 194 n.1, 199 nn.4, 27 Big Buddha theme park 12, 180–1 Black Hills Passion Play 147 Blevins, Johnny 87 Borgvin-Weiss, Theo 185 n.2 botanical garden 137 Brahma Kumari retreat centre (India) 126 Brandel, Judith 27 Branson town 51 Braphai Wiriyaphan 191 n.5 Brashier, Ken 190 n.20 Brazil 41 Brereton, Brian 123, 124 Brexit 194 n.6 Brooks, Peter 152 Brosius, Christiane 48, 99 Bryman, Alan 45 Buddhist Asian paintings 123 Buddhist leisure attractions rejecting authenticity 111 see also individual entries Buggeln, Gretchen 149 Bukit Kasih (Indonesia) 129, 171 Bunleua Sulilat 168 Burma 69–70 business and religion park 157–8 commercial development of 172–3 fund-raising within faith and 173–5

Index government investment in 170–2 promoters of 158–70 Byrne, Denis 114 Cabaret de l’Enfer (France) 153 Cabaret du Néant (France) 153 Cai Hesen 64 Callahan, Sara Dykins x, 3, 20–1, 189 n.10 Campbell, Heidi 188 n.10 Canada 87, 112, 142 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Picketty) 53 Carlà, Fillipo 114 Carlà-Uhink, Filippo 185 n.3, 193 n.13 Crown, Carol 198 n.15 Caron, Bruce 113 Centro Ecuménico Khun Iam (Guan Yin Ecumenical Centre) (China) 132 Chaffey, Tim 127, 187 n.21 Chessington World of Adventures (United Kingdom) 87–8 Chidester, David 5, 152, 191 n.15 Chimelong Ocean Kingdom 9 China 9–10, 26, 27, 32, 47, 48, 64, 67–9, 114, 132, 133, 157 China Christian Daily 64 China Hui Culture Park (Yinchuan) 69 Chinese Cultural Theme Park (Australia) 172 Christianity 141 see also individual entries Christian Zionism 190 nn.12, 25 Christ of the Ozarks (United States) 120, 162, 163 Christy, Randall 62 Chua, Lawrence 80, 191 n.2 cinema 151–2 CivilWarLand (Saunders) 194 n.2 Cobham, Viscount 135–6 Coers, Morris 119 Colonial Williamsburg 60, 149, 186 n.13 Colosseum (United Kingdom) 140 Colville, Ani 195 n.19 commercial myths 58 commodification, of religion 45, 54, 132 community/ community activities 27, 35, 45, 50, 56, 57, 68, 70, 77, 93–4, 113, 144, 148, 159, 168 Coney Island (United States) 122, 147

Index consumerism 46, 53, 58 consumption 10, 41, 45, 53, 93, 103, 114, 140 Consumption Markets and Culture (Crockett and Davis) 58 Cookson, Catherine 51 Cora Un In Wong 12, 180 Cornelis, Pieter x Cox, Earl 62 Creation Museum (United States) 12, 13, 36–7, 62, 65, 159, 170, 177, 199 n.4 Credo Mutwa Cultural Village 63 Crimea 67 Crockett, David 58 Cross and the Flag, The (magazine) 162 Crouch, Jan 62, 157, 186 n.1, 189 n.10 Crouch, Paul 62, 157, 189 n.10 Crucifixion, dramatization of 20 Củ Chi Tunnel Complex (Vietnam) 106 ‘Cultural Villages’ (Malaysia) 115 culture/cultural parks x–xi, 1, 3, 10, 16, 60, 65, 69, 70, 75, 79, 93, 104, 109, 113, 116, 144, 148–9, 153, 154, 170, 172, 177, 183, 198 n.11 fantasy parks and 83–7 frivolity and religion and 87–9 mythology parks and 81–3 period parks and 78–80 religion in 75–8 self-staging 15, 76, 79 ‘Staging the Other’ parks and 80–1 see also individual entries Cusack, Carole 191 n.13 Dai Tian (Five Regent Kings) Temple (Taiwan) 123–4 dark rides 146 Dasa, Madhu Pandit 14 Davie, Grace 7 Davis, Lenita 58 Day, Kevin 53, 104 DeMille, Cecil B. 152 Denmark 137, 152 Derrickson, Krystina 185 n.7 de Villiers, Philippe 164 Đinh Bộ Lĩnh 33 Đinh Tiên Hoàng 34 Đinh Văn Vui 34

219

Dionysius of Halicarnassus 110 dioramas 140–1, 142, 196 n.5 Dismaland Bemusement Park 16, 186 n.15 Disney, Walt 13–14, 41–2, 61, 75–6, 139, 158 Disney Corporation 61 Disneyland (United States) 50, 61, 87, 150 Disney Parks and Resorts 9 DisneySea 14 Disney World (United States) 87 Dr. Regeb’s Pharaonic Village 107 Dolly Parton theme park 104 Dollywood 50–1, 104, 198 n.6 Doss, Erika 153 Dreamland (Coney Island) 15, 88, 194 n.7 Dream of the Red Chamber (novel) 136 Dryden, John 155 Dubai 132, 171 du Puy, Claudius 143 East Asia, parallel economy in 46 Eco, Umberto 138, 191 n.5 Ecomusée d’Alsace (France) 186 n.13 Economist, The 47 Eddy, Mary Baker 160 Eden Project (United Kingdom) 137, 170, 185 n.2 Edo Wonderland (Japan) 79 Efteling (the Netherlands) 84, 85, 139 Eisner, Michael 61 Eleven Arches (United States) 198 n.9 Eliade, Mircea 92, 93 Eliot, T. S. 147 Enchanted Tiki Room (Disneyland) 14, 139 England see United Kingdom Erawan Museum (Thailand) 192 n.6 Erlebnispark Teichland (Germany) 139 Ethnography Museum of Transbaikalia (Siberia) 112 Eucharist 21 Europa-Park (Germany) 64, 82, 88, 101–2, 112 Evelyn, John 141 Falk, John 178 Falwell, Jerry 42, 94 Family Wise 161

220

Index

Fantastic Tropical Gardens (Jersey) 130–1, 167 fantasy parks 3, 82, 83–7, 154 Father Christmas 83 Feldman, Jackie 49, 192 n.2 Feldt, Laura 84, 85 felt spirit 107, 108 Ferro, Maria Antonia 105 Finland 84 Finster, Howard 168 Fiskesjö, Magnus 70 Five People You Meet in Heaven, The (Albom) 127 Folk Villages 59 Following the Wrong God Home (Lim) 31 Forrec 103 Fouad, Haj 193 n.19 Fowler, Joseph 76 France 47, 85, 143 Freitag, Florian 186 n.15 Fulton, John 156 fun xi, 1, 3, 6, 16, 27, 55, 64, 75–6, 82, 87, 88, 97, 100, 104, 122, 125, 127, 129, 159, 169–70, 180, 183 fundamentalism 7–8, 18, 36, 43, 53, 61, 72, 94, 128, 171, 179 fund-raising, within faith 173–5 gaikoku mura (foreign country villages) 80, 81, 106 Gangavataran (film) 152 Garden of Hope (United States) 119 gardens and parks, and theme park designers 135–8 Germany 41, 57, 64, 81, 82, 88, 101–2, 139, 142 Gerrit, Piet 131 ghost trains 122, 146 giant Buddha (Thailand) 97, 98 Gibson, Mel 152, 186 n.5 Gleiter, Jörg 109 globalization ix, xi, 16, 53, 80 Glücks Königreich (Japan) 81, 106 ‘God’s Ark of Safety’ (United States) 128 Gold Reef City Theme Park (South Africa) 106 Golokdham Project (India) 98–9 Gomber, Sunil 115 Gordon, General 144

Gorky, Maxim 122, 194 n.7 Goscinny, René 85 Goshiki-en (Japan) 174 Gospel According to Disney, The (Pinsky) x government investment, in religion park 170–2 Graburn, Nelson 97 Great Passion Play Theme Park (United States) 53, 62, 147, 161, 171, 186 n.6 Greece 137 Green, Steve 194 n.2, 198 n.6 Greene, Patrick 128 Greene, Richard 195 n.16 Griego, Dinah 185 n.4 Grotto of the Annunciation (Israel) 111 Gruber, Christiane 194 n.7, 196 n.9 Guan Yin Inter-Religious Park (Thailand) 130, 138, 162, 163 Guan Yin statue (China) 132 Guardian Online 64 Guo Songmin 64 Halloween 125, 137 Ham, Ken 36, 127, 159–60 Hamid, Abdul 196 n.8 Hamilton, Carolyn 193 n.1 Hangzhou Songcheng Park 9 Hargrave, Harry 161 Harry Potter (Rowling) 84, 85–6 Harvey, Graham 93 haunted attractions 153 Haw Par Villa (Tiger Balm Gardens) (Singapore) 26–33, 81, 82, 123, 138, 164, 195 n.8 Hayden, Dan 3 Hazelius, Artur 76, 112 heaven and hell, in religion park 122–7 Heidi theme park (Switzerland) 191 n.11 Heilig Land Stichting (the Netherlands) 131 ‘Hell House’ 125 Hendry, Joy xi, 80, 81, 93, 104, 109, 110 heritage 8, 12, 15, 30–2, 45–6, 48–50, 77, 79, 88, 91, 112, 114–17, 171 authenticity and 109–11 Heritage Park Historical Village (Canada) 112

Index Heritage USA 43–4, 93–4, 103, 158–9, 180, 193 n.17 Herschend, Jack 160, 161 Herschend, Jo Dee 160 Herschend, Mary 160 Herschend, Peter 160, 161, 188 n.17 Herschend, Sherry 160, 197 n.6 Herschend Family Entertainment Corporation 161, 198 n.6 Hervieu-Léger, Danièle 50 Hezaro Yek Shahr (Iran) 103 Hinduism 31, 48, 59, 60, 96, 126, 130, 137, 144, 146, 150, 169, 172 see also Akshardham; Swaminarayan sect Hingley, Liz 190 n.16 His Dark Materials (Pullman) 84 History and Presence (Orsi) 115 Hoffstaedter, Gerhard 67 Holy Hills of the Ozarks (Ketchell) x Holy House of Loreto 112 Holy Land, in religion park 119–21 Holy Land Experience (HLE) 4, 10, 17–22, 55–6, 58, 59, 61, 62, 72, 92, 107, 115, 117, 139, 142, 151–2, 157, 171, 172, 177, 183 Jerusalem model at 144, 145 Holy Qur’an Park (upcoming in Dubai) 132, 171 Hong, Lysa 187 n.12 Hong Kong 26, 29, 68, 128, 180 Horn, Dora 195 n.14 Huang, Jianli 187 n.12 Hui Culture Park 69 Huis ten Bosch park (Japan) 187 n.18 Huskinson, Benjamin 187 n.19 imagineers (theme park designers) buildings and 153–6 cinema and 151–2 haunted attractions and 153 models and 144–5 panoramas and dioramas and 140–2 parks and gardens and 135–8 play, performance and people and 147–50 relics and museums and 142–3 rides and 145–7 statues and 138–40

221

water shows and 150–1 India 24, 32, 47, 64, 95, 97–100, 138, 140, 141, 144, 146, 148, 150, 167, 169, 170, 172–4, 187 n.9, 196 n.5 Indian Museum (India) 196 n.5 Indianness 48, 53 Indonesia 13, 65–6, 81, 116, 129, 171 influential authenticity 114 Inoue Enryo 136 Iran 103, 116, 132, 133, 145 Iraq 47 ISKCON 172–3 Islam xi, 22, 62, 66, 69, 103, 105, 121, 130, 136, 144–5, 148, 185 n.7 in religion park 132–3 Israel 49–50, 56, 95, 105–6, 111, 128 see also Jerusalem Italy 58, 141, 143 Jackson, Peter A. 163 Japan 3, 7, 47, 57, 79, 80, 81, 92, 97, 104–5, 106, 112, 136, 171, 174 Jedism 87 Jenkins, John 185 n.6 Jenny’s Whim (United Kingdom) 139 Jerusalem 8, 62, 105, 119, 121, 129, 137, 141, 142, 144, 194 n.4 Jones, Peter 82 Juergensmeyer, Mark 185 n.4 Kalyana 194 n.3 Kane, Josephine 154 Karasjok 78 Kennedy, Douglas 158 Kenzo Tange 166 Kersel, Morag M. 70 Ketchell, Aaron x, 51, 161, 178, 195 n.13 Khamenei, Ayatollah 145 Khawhanat Pagoda complex (Burma) 110 Kiddie Lands (United States) 84 King, Sam 165 King of Kings (film) 152 Kings City (Israel) 157, 158 ‘King Solomon’s Waterfalls’ (Israel) 128 Kirill, Patriarch 67 Kitiarsa, Pattana 45 Klein, Norman 154–5

222

Index

Knight, Leonard 107–8, 167 Koda, Tara 92 Korean Folk Village (South Korea) 112 Krishna Lila Park (India) 151, 167, 170, 172–3 Laarhoven, Jan van 195 n.20 Labyrinthia (Denmark) 137 Labyrinth Park (Greece) 137 Land, Richard 61 Langley, Lloyd 113 LaplandUK (United Kingdom) 83, 191 n.8 Larkin, Philip 45 La Ronde park (Canada) 137 Last Supper, reenactment of 21 Lebanon 105, 132 Lê Đàm Ngọc Tú 34 Lee Kuan Yew 170 Legoland Dubai 196 n.12 Legoland parks 145 leisure ix, xi, 1, 2, 5, 16, 33, 41, 47–8, 54, 97, 102, 111, 140, 173, 181, 183 Lek Wiriyaphan 100, 191 n.5, 192 n.6, 194 n.3 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 2 Lewis, C. S. 84 Lim, Catherine 31 Lim Hiong Li 30, 31, 32 Ling Bao hotel (Brühl, Germany) 57 Li Siguang 64 Little World: Museum of Man (Inuyama) 81, 171 Liu Huaqing 64 Long, Burke 11 Long, Huey 162 Lord of the Rings (Tolkein) 84 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904) 10 luang pho (famous monks) statues 198 n.8 Lukas, Scott x, 2–3, 12, 21, 50, 88, 107, 111 MacCannell, Dean 91 McCarthy, Kate 7 McDaniel, Justin x, 6, 100, 111, 132, 167, 168–9, 175, 187 n.15, 191 n.5, 194 n.8 McDorman, Stephanie 187 n.21 Madhu Pandit Dasa 167

Magic Park Aparecida 58 Mahabarata (film) 152 Majidi, Majid 116 Makley, Charlene 67, 68, 102, 103 Malaysia 32, 66, 115, 133 Malaysian Taman Mini Malaysia park 66 Malik, Nasrine 132 Manby, Joel 161 Margate (United Kingdom) 15 Marschall, Sabine 78 Martin, Eddie Owens 198 n.15 Material Religion (journal) 183 Mathur, Saloni 187 n.9 mazes and labyrinths 136–7 Mazur, Eric 7, 92 media and religion 48–50 Meiji-mura museum (Japan) 112 Merlin Entertainments Group 9 Meyer, Birgit 183 Micklethwait, John 44–5 middle class xi, 1, 6, 9, 13, 16, 48, 53, 54, 77, 92, 94, 114, 154, 181, 182, 183, 199 n.5 rise of 41–2 Middle of Nowhere (Patterson) x, 107 Miller, Diane Disney 14 Miller, Lewis 11 miniature parks 196 n.11 Miniatürk theme park (Turkey) 63, 145 Mini Israel 70 Miracle Park (India) 139, 154, 169 ‘Mirror of Retribution’ 123–4 Mitrašinović, Miodrag x, 10, 60, 92 Mleeta (Lebanon) 105, 133 modernism/modernity xi, 5, 6–9, 33, 44, 45, 47, 53, 55, 76, 140, 154, 166, 182 Modi, Narendra 98 Mohamad, Mahathir 170 Molter, Céline 21, 67, 189 n.1, 195 n.15 Mongolia 95 Monsopiad Cultural Village 115 Moore, Alexander 92 Moore, Sam 161 ‘Mormonism and Tourist Art in Hawaii’ (Webb) x Morris, William 114 Moss, Candida x motive for religion, in theme parks 55–7

Index to make money 57–8 patriotism, national unity and 65–71 staff and volunteer motives and 71–3 tourism promotion 59–60 unavowed aims 60–5 Mt Blanco Fossil Museum (United States) 187 n.19 Mountford, Lydia Mamreoff von Finkelstein 12 Muhammad: The Messenger of God (film) 116 multiculturalism 65, 70 multifaith, in religion park 129–32 Museum of the Bible (United States) 56, 120 Museumpark Orientalis (the Netherlands) 131, 195 n.20 Mutwa, Credo 63 ‘Mystic India’ (Film) 151 mythology parks 3, 60, 81–3, 172 Mythos Park 82 Nantian (Southern Paradise) Temple (Taiwan) 123 Narain, Suryanandini 115 Narnia (Lewis) 84 Nasrallah, Sayyed Hassan 105 nationalism 24, 53, 60, 63, 66, 70, 73, 80, 98, 164, 165, 194 n.3 Naveena Neerada Dasa 198 n.12 Nazareth Village (Israel) 49–50, 56, 95, 105–6, 197 n.6 Nepal 166–7, 198 n.11 Netanyahu, Benjamin 62 the Netherlands 84, 85, 131 Neumeier, Martin 193 n.12 New Zealand 107 Nigeria ix Niles, Robert 88, 199 n.5 Noah, in religion park 127–8 Noah’s Ark (Hong Kong) 128 Norway 82–3 nostalgia xi, 3, 13, 14, 50–4, 65, 75, 76, 80, 94, 160, 161, 196 n.11 O’Guinn, Thomas 94, 180 O’Rourke, P. J. 180 OCT Parks China 9

223

open-air museums ix, 1, 3, 59, 60, 76, 77, 79, 81, 98, 109, 111–13, 131, 142, 149, 186 n.13, 196 n.16 open-air tableaux 174 Oriental House 11 Orient Strikes Back, The (Hendry) xi Orsi, Robert 83, 115 Orzech, Charles D. 195 n.10 Our Lady of Aparecida (Brazil) 57 Ozark Hills (United States) 95 Paine, Peter 199 n.1 Pakistan 196 n.8 Palestine Park 11 panoramas 140, 141, 142, 196 n.6 Panoramic Victory Museum 63 Parc Asterix (France) 85, 193 n.14 Pargament, Kenneth 185 n.3 Park Inn group (Italy) 58 ‘Park of people’s unity and harmony’ project (Russia) 129–30 Parque España (Japan) 80, 114 Parton, Dolly 50, 188 n.13, 198 n.6 Passion of the Christ (film) 152, 186 n.5 ‘Passion of the Christ, The’ live show 21 Patel, Jagrut 187 n.7, 199 n.25 Patterson, Sara x, 107, 108 Patton, Thomas 154 Pemberton, John 66 Pentecostalism 42, 94, 160 Pépin, Yves 150 period parks 78–80 Phalke, Dadasaheb 152 phantasmagorical style parks 154–5 PheZulu Safari Village (South Africa) 77–8, 187 n.18 Phra Khom 164 Picketty, Thomas 53 Pinsky, Mark x Plimouth Plantation 186 n.13 Polynesian Cultural Centre (Hawai’i) 70–1, 72, 109 Portugal 144 postmodernism ix, 6–9, 80, 117 Pozzo, Andrea 155 Pramukh Swami Maharaj 165–6, 173–4, 190 n.14

224

Index

Prasat Sacchatham (Sanctuary of Truth) 100 Precious Moments Park and Chapel (United States) 126, 150 Pretzel Amusement Company 146 ‘prewrath’ 61–2 Prophet Muhammad Cinematic City (Iran) 116, 121 prosperity gospel 42–3, 44, 54, 94, 188 n.4, 189 n.10 Protestant Christian theme parks 11 Pullman, Philip 84 Puri, Siddharth 140 Putin, Vladimir 67, 68 Puy du Fou (France) 164, 198 n.9 Qur’an Park (Iran)

133

Radosh, Daniel x Rapture Ready (Radosh) x Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces, A (Lukas) x Reagan, Ronald 42, 43 rebuilt structures 62, 77, 96, 112–13, 117, 154 recalled/ represented parks 112, 113–14 reconstructed structures 38, 39, 52, 66, 71, 79, 82, 104, 105, 112, 120, 128, 148, 164, 171, 192 n.22 redemption through violence and forgiveness myth 58 referential authenticity 114 relics 25, 46, 47, 83, 139, 142–3, 187 n.8 replica 115 Religion and Tourism (Stausberg) x, 48 religion parks x–xi, 3, 5, 10–14, 16, 43–5, 48, 53–9, 72–3, 92, 93, 95, 99, 100, 116, 117, 137, 138, 141, 146, 147, 149, 150, 152, 154, 177, 178, 180–3, 186 n.13, 189 n.1, 199 n.4 atheism in 133–4 business 157–75 heaven and hell in 122–7 Holy Land in 119–21 Islam in 132–3 multifaith in 129–32 Noah in 127–8 Solomon in 128–9 see also individual entries

Religious Land of Huppa Sawan, The (Thailand) 162 Rentzhog, Sten 113, 196 n.16 Reoma World 81 replica 8, 11, 18, 38, 49, 59, 66, 68, 70, 79, 80, 81, 88, 101, 103, 105, 106–7, 110, 111–17, 121, 128, 129, 141, 154, 159, 171 Holy Land 116–17, 141 museums 115 parks 112, 113 relics 115 tomb 119–20 Righting America at the Creation Museum (Trollinger and Trollinger) x right-wing 41, 48, 162, 164, 180 Ritual and Religious Belief (Harvey) 93 Roadside Religion (Beal) x, 167 Rock and Murder in the Cathedral, The (Eliot) 147 Ron, Amos S. 49, 192 n.2 Rosary and Litany Garden (India) 138 Rosenthal, Marvin J. 22, 61, 62 Ross, Andrew 71, 72 Rovaniemi (Finland) 84 Rowan, Yorke 70, 152, 186 n.2 Rowling, J. K. 85 Ruffer, Jonathan 198 n.9 Russia My History parks 67 Russian Village (Japan) 106 Ruthven, Malise 187 n.2 Rycenga, Jennifer 195 n.13 sacred places, theme parks as 91–6 responding to sacred and 107–8 temples merging with theme parks and 96–100 weddings 106–7 worship in theme parks and 101–6 Sacred Projects 120, 162 Sagar, Ramanand 172 St Fagans National History Museum (United Kingdom) 112 St Louis World’s Fair (1904) 146–7, 153 Sala Keaoku (Thailand) 168 Salvation Mountain (United States) 107, 167 Santa Claus Land (United States) 191 n.9 Santa Claus Village (Finland) 84

Index Santa Park (Finland) 84 Santaworld (Sweden) 83 Sápmi Park (Norway) 78 Saunders, George 194 n.2 Schlehe, Judith x, 113, 116 Schouten, Leendert 144 Schuller, Robert 147 Scriptorium (Holy Land Experience) 18, 117, 142, 171 secular/secularization xi, 5, 7, 8, 32, 45, 68, 94, 99, 102, 103, 133, 142, 178, 189 n.1 Seed of Promise (short film) 151 self-staging culture park 15, 76, 79 Selling Jerusalem (Wharton) x ‘Send a Message to Mickey’ campaign 60–1 Sensational Devotion (Stevenson) x Shahre Gheseh (Iran) 103 Shakaland (South Africa) 109, 193 n.1 Shakhnovich, Marianna 190 n.23 Shamir, Milette 8 Shandler, Jeffrey 195 n.14 Shantytown Heritage Park (New Zealand) 107 Sharjah 132 Shepherd of the Hills, The (Wright) 51 Shows of London, The (Altick) 142 ‘Shtetl World’ (Horn) 195 n.14 Shūkyō Lando 57 Siberia 112 Silver Dollar City 52, 55, 104, 160, 161, 177, 188 n.17 Singapore 26–33, 81, 82, 123, 138, 164, 183 Singh, Kavita x, 24, 154, 187 n.9 Skansen (Sweden) 76, 77, 112 Smit, Tim 137–8, 158, 185 n.2 Smith, Gerald K. 120, 121, 161–2, 171 Smithsonian Museum 139 Soboslai, John 185 n.4 Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings 114 Solomon, in religion park 128–9 Solomon Law Park (South Korea) 129 Somnath temple (India) 98 Sorensen, Colin 50 South Africa 63, 77, 106, 137 South East Asia 64

225

South Korea 47, 112, 129 Spain 82 Splash Kingdom Family Waterpark (United States) 87 Spooner, Paul 186 n.15 Sri Lanka 47 Srivastava, Sanjay 53 ‘staging of places’ parks 114 ‘staging Self ’ theme parks 65–7 ‘Staging the Other’ parks 80–1 Star Wars 84 statues and theme park designers 138–40 Stausberg, Michael x, 48, 59, 95, 114, 185 n.4 Steinkrüger, Jan Erik 185 n.3 Stevenson, Jill x, 21, 53, 147, 177, 186 nn.5–6 Stowe Landscape Gardens(United Kingdom) 135 Stuyt, Jan 131 Suchart Kosolkitiwong 130, 162, 163 Suharto, Siti Hartinah 65–6 Summers, Cary 161, 188 n.18, 198 n.6 Suối Tiên (Fairy Stream) Theme Park (Vietnam) 33–6, 95–6, 138, 147, 187 n.15, 193 n.9 Suys, Arnold 131 Swaminarayan sect 23–5, 44, 48, 139, 151, 165–6, 173 Sweden 76, 77, 83 Switzerland 142 Taiwan 64, 68, 123 ‘Tale of Beryn, The’ 5 Taman Mini (TMII) park (Indonesia) 13, 65–6, 116 Taman Tamadun Islam (Islamic Civilization Garden) (Malaysia) 133 tēma pāku theme park(Japan) 3, 79 Temple of Solomon (Brazil) 129 temples, merging with theme parks 96–100 Ten Courts of Hell (Haw Par Villa) 27–8 Teo, Peggy 187 n.12 Terra Mítica park (Spain) 82 Tetsugakudo Park (Japan) 136 Thailand 59, 79, 94, 97, 99, 100, 124, 130, 138, 162–4, 168–9, 175, 194 n.8

226 Theme Park Design (Younger) x Thomas Nelson, Inc. 161 Tibetans 66–7 Tierra Santa Theme Park (Argentina) 105, 138 Times, The 144 Times of India, The (newspaper) 173 Tokyo Disneyland 9 Tokyo Disney Sea 9 Tolerance Monument (Indonesia) 129 ‘To Pray, Pay and Play’ (Graburn) 97 Torriano, Gianello 139 Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space (Mitrašinović) x Tower of Terror ride (DisneySea) 14 Toying with God (Bado-Fralick) 6 tradition xi, 1, 5, 7–8, 12, 13, 16, 21, 26, 30, 34, 35, 39, 42, 45, 46, 51, 56, 61, 63, 66, 68, 70–1, 72, 76–8, 92–7, 99, 102, 103, 109, 111, 113–16, 122–5, 132, 143, 148, 149, 151, 152, 154–5, 162–4, 166, 169, 177, 182, 183, 186 n.13, 188 nn.10, 17, 193 n.9, 196 n.5 Trần Hưng Đạo 33, 34 Trinity Broadcasting Network 62, 157, 189 n.10 TripAdvisor 100, 107, 180, 193 n.24 Trollinger, Susan x, 37, 197 n.3 Trollinger, William x, 37, 197 n.3 Trump, Donald 162, 188 n.4 Turbeville, Tina 27 Turkey 63, 145 Turner, Victor 93 Tusenfryd Theme Park (Norway) 82–3 Uike-Bormann 113, 116 U Nar Auk 110, 194 n.3 United Kingdom 15, 32, 41, 83, 87–8, 112, 125, 135, 136, 137, 140, 154 United States 103–4, 144 see also individual entries Universal Church of the Kingdom of God 129 Universal Studios 9, 84 Universal Studios Japan 9 UNWTO 188 nn.7, 9 World Tourism Barometer 47 ‘Upper Room’ 103, 193 n.17

Index urbanism/urbanization 51, 76, 103 U Thant 166 Utundu, Shiriki 14

9, xi, 29, 33, 48,

Vaghela, Vipul 150 Van Kampen, Robert 18, 172 Vatican to Vegas, The 155 Vauxhall Gardens (United Kingdom) 136 Vaz, Keith 190 n.13 Veegaland Amusement Park (India) 192 n.21 Verba, Svetlana Josephovna 67 Vialand theme park (Turkey) 63 Vietnam 33–6, 47, 95, 106, 187 n.15, 193 n.9 Vincent, John Heyl 11 Virasat-e-Khalsa (the Khalsa Museum) (India) 141 virtual reality 152, 169–70 Vogel, Lester I. 185 n.8 Voldemort, Lord 191 n.12 Vrindavan park (India) 95 Waiying Sum 26, 187 n.10 Walt Disney World 9, 14 Wang Saen Suk Hell Park (Thailand) 124 Wa people 69–70 Washington Post 103 water shows 150–1 Wat Khao Roop Chang (Thailand) 59 Wat Mahabut (Thailand) 99 Wat Phai Rong Wua (Thailand) 125, 138 Webb, C. Travis 187 n.8 Webb, Terry x, 71, 72 Webster, Andrea 169 wedding types and theme parks 106–7 Wharton, Annabel x, 22, 114, 141 ‘Where Christ Dies Daily’ (Callahan) x Whitehead, Amy 191 n.7 Wilhelm, Andreas 101, 193 n.10 Wonderland (Canada) 87 Wooldridge, Adrian 44–5 World’s Fairs 75 worship, in theme parks 101–6 Wright, Harold Bell 51, 188 n.17 Wycliffe, John 19

Index Wycliffe Discovery Center (United States) 178 Xcaret Park (Mexico) 116 Xingsha Ecological Park (China) Xinyuan Wang 188 n.10 Yeoh, Brenda S.A. 187 n.12 Yggdrasil mythology park 81–2 Yinchuan 69

64

227

Yongjia Anti-Cult Association 133 Yongjia County Office on Prevention and Handling of Cult Issues 133 Younger, David x, 84, 197 n.22 Zeiss, Tony 56 Zionism 63, 70 Zukin, Sharon 154 Žužek, Slavoj 190 n.24