Christian Tourist Attractions, Mythmaking, and Identity Formation - (Critiquing Religion: Discourse, Culture, Power) by Erin Roberts & Jennifer Eyl

Book Synopsis

Christian Tourist Attractions, Mythmaking, and Identity Formation examines a sampling of contemporary Christian tourist attractions that position visitors as the inheritors of ancient, sacred traditions and make claims about the truth of the historical narratives that they promote. Rather than approaching these attractions as sacred expressions of religious experience or as uncontested accounts of history, the book applies recent work on mythmaking and identity formation to argue that these presentations of the past function as strategic discourses that serve material concerns in the present.

From an approach informed by social and materialist theories of religion, the volume draws upon a variety of methodological approaches that enable readers to understand the often-bewildering array of objects, claims, demands, and activities (not to mention the seemingly endless array of gifts and personal items available for purchase) that appear at attractions including Ark Encounter, the Creation Museum, the Holy Land Experience, Bible Walk Museum, Christian Zionist tours of Israel, and the recently opened Museum of the Bible. Discourse analysis, practice theory, rhetorical criticism, and embodied theories of cognition help make sense not only of the Christian tourist attractions under examination but also of the ways that "religion+? is entangled with contemporary social, political, and economic interests more broadly.

Review Quotes

"A terrific book. These highly readable and fascinating case studies make important but sometimes dense theoretical work highly accessible.+?
Julie Ingersoll, Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Florida, USA

"In Christian Tourist Attractions, Mythmaking, and Identity Formation, Erin Roberts and Jennifer Eyl bring together experts in the critical and coherent study of discourses about religion, politics and mythmaking to a surprisingly understudied area of Christian tourism. As expected from the editors and the contributors, this volume is of high intellectual quality but it remains accessible for university courses and modules on religion and the reception history of the Bible.+?
James Crossley, Professor of Bible, Society and Politics, St Mary's University, UK

"This hugely welcome examination of Christian visitor attractions in the US (and of Christian-Zionist tourism) brings together scholars from very different disciplines. Their shared lens is the analysis of mythmaking, and together they contribute greatly to the study of the renewed role of religion in tourism and of tourism in religion.+?
Crispin Paine, Honorary Lecturer at the, Institute of Archaeology, University College London, UK

About the Author

Erin Roberts is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, University of South Carolina, USA.

Jennifer Eyl is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion, Tufts University, USA.