Sebastian Emling und Katja Rakow, Moderne religiöse Erlebniswelten in den USA. “Have Fun and Prepare to Believe!” (Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2014), 266 pp. Amerikastudien/ American Studies, 61.2. (original) (raw)

Experiential design and religious publicity at D.C.'s Museum of the Bible

The Senses and Society, 2020

This article examines the sensory dimension of religious publicity, focused on the case of an evangelical museum in the United States. Washington D.C.’s Museum of the Bible (MOTB) was envisioned and funded primarily by conservative Protestants, and is a revealing case of religion in public life because most of the creative labor of design was conceived and executed by secular firms who do not typically work for faith-based clients. The professional expertise of these firms, “experiential design,” informs a sea change in contemporary museology and the expansion of the experience economy in late modernity. Ultimately, I argue that MOTB’s engagement with experiential design indexes the power of entertainment in late modern life, as the sensory repertoire at play operates with largely unquestioned legitimacy and presumed efficacy. By mobilizing the cultural capital of design, an evangelical museum makes a claim for diverse audiences in a deeply public setting.

Lakewood Megachurch: Bodily Dis/Orientations in a Climate of Belief

2023

This interdisciplinary project examines the entanglements of body, belief and site through an examination of evangelical megachurch imaginaries within destabilised ecological contexts. The megachurch is defined as a church with more than 2,000 in weekly attendance, although globally, a significant proportion reach the tens and hundreds of thousands. I focus on North America’s largest megachurch, Lakewood, based in Texas, which deploys scale, spectacle and performance to immerse believers in its story-world. Through theoretical and experimental writing I explore how the individual and collective body is oriented within the site. The believer’s gaze is directed heavenward toward victory and success, away from complex realities. Setting out from new materialist understandings of the body as entangled in a web of relations and combining philosophy, visual and literary theories, I draw on my position as exvangelical and my own experiences of megachurch evangelicalism to analyse the story-world of Lakewood. Using Mieke Bal’s schema of ‘narrative,’ ‘story,’ and ‘fabula,’ I examine how Lakewood’s immersive multi-sensory texts form a ‘total work of art,’ conveying ideological imaginaries of belonging, order, progress and comfort. I consider how embodied response produces affective atmospheres, a ‘climate of belief’ in which bodies weather unequally. The racially diverse congregation are caught between a sky-bound gaze and earth-bound realities of a locale threatened by hurricane, flooding, subsidence and pollution. Alongside the dissertation, my experimental text There is a Miracle in Your Mouth is formed of memoir, research and speculative fiction. Informed by a practice of floating and new materialist thought, it reorients the megachurch. Through writing the religious building-body as a fluid, porous and emergent phenomenon, a body/ site that is always enmeshed in ecological connections, I highlight the certainties of belief and the disorientation of disbelief as a bodily and materially produced phenomenon, disrupting the solidity, simplicity and sky-bound orientation of the evangelical narrative.

This-Worldly Explanations for Otherworldly Growth: Vitality in an Ozarks Megachurch

Missouri State University Graduate Theses, 2008

James River Assembly, a Pentecostal megachurch in the Missouri Ozarks, grew from forty-two people in 1991 to over nine thousand in 2008. What led to such growth? Using ethnographic research methods such as interviews and twenty months of field observations, this study uses the story of James River Assembly to enter into the debate on congregational vitality. Three reasons emerge for the growth and strength of the church: excitement and optimism, an apocalyptic worldview, and a clear sense of identity embraced as a worthy pursuit by members. Each chapter presents theories of vitality that are useful for understanding growth at James River Assembly. In the end, this study demonstrates the complexity and often paradoxical nature of American Religion.

The magic of science and the science of magic in evangelical publicity

Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft, 2022

This essay reflects on two cases of evangelical publicity; that is, on situations where an evangelical cultural form operates in spaces that are open to diverse audiences and not wholly or strictly definable as religious. The first was a traveling science-themed ministry active between the 1930s and 1990s. The second is a biblically-themed museum that opened in Washington, D.C. in 2017. I take up these two cases in this forum because together they offer a valuable reflection on the entanglement of magic, technology, spectacle, and religious publicity. Both examples are defined by their use of sensory play through technology in order to arrest the attention of audiences. They surprise, confound, disorient, and otherwise upend sensory expectation in service of broader evangelical ambitions.

The New Pulpit: Museums, Authority, and the Cultural Reproduction of Young-Earth Creationism

Since the mid-twentieth century there has been increasing concern among evangelical Christians over the depiction of human origins in American education. For young-Earth creationists, it has been a priority to replace scientific information which contradicts the six-day origin story reported in Genesis 1 with evidence they claim scientifically reinforces their narrative. As this has failed in public education, creationists have switched tactics, moving from “teach creationism” to “teach the controversy”. The struggle over evolution education in the classroom is well-documented, but less attention has been paid to how young-Earth creationists push their agenda in informal educational venues such as museums. Given the authoritative nature of museums and the ubiquity of these institutions in American life, museums have become targets for the creation message. This project was undertaken to critically analyze the use of the museum form as an authoritative source which facilitates the cultural reproduction of young-Earth creationism. I propose a tripartite model of authority and museums is the best way to understand the relationship between young-Earth creationism and American museums, with the creation, contestation, and subversion of authority all acting as critical components of the bid for cultural reproduction. Assessing the utility of this model requires visiting both creation museums alongside mainstream natural history, science, and anthropology museums. Drawing from staff interviews, survey data, museum visits, and the collection of creation-based literature for secular museums, these sources combine to create a comprehensive picture of the relationship between young-Earth creationism and museums in the United States today.