Christian tourism: When business and religion collide

WILLIAMSTOWN, Ky. — In less than two weeks, tourists can board a life-sized recreation of Noah’s Ark in northern Kentucky, a tourist attraction advertised as the closest to the legendary ship of the Bible that modern civilization can build.

The insides of the 90-plus-foot-tall ark will feature a unique perspective on what life might have been like aboard the vessel, including a representation of Noah’s quarters and examples of the wildlife (dinosaurs!) that could have been saved from the flood described in the Book of Genesis.

The effort is part of a new $92 million theme park in the middle of a farm field 40 miles south of Cincinnati. One built with such painstaking devotion to biblical accounts that construction workers relied on an ancient measurement known as an Egyptian cubit. 

It’s the latest example of the growing Christian tourism/attraction industry, which includes attractions celebrating or presenting history from a Christian point of view – often based on a quite literal interpretation of the bible.

Theme parks, museums and other attractions are springing up all over the country, within the cluster of museums in Washington D.C. and in places including the capital of family fun parks in Orlando. 

Yet with such ambition comes tensions, both from within and without. In particular, the ark project is a lightning rod for its reliance on public tax incentives and because of a narrative that flies in the face of commonly accepted science. For instance, visitors will be told the earth is only 6,000 years old and that the flood depicted in the Bible killed off the dinosaurs just 4,500 years ago.

And some friction occurs because of a fundamental question: Are these tourist attractions ministries that function as businesses, or the opposite?

But those behind the increasingly grand plans feel confident in their mission.

“More and more, Christians are saying the secular world builds its themed attractions, so why shouldn’t we as Christians build themed attractions to be able to reach people but to get the message out?” said Ken Ham, co-founder and president of Answers in Genesis, the group behind the Ark Encounter and also the Creation Museum that opened in northern Kentucky nine years ago.

“That is our primary motive after all," Ham says.

Indeed, those with such motives are spending (and earning) hundreds of millions of dollars on Disneyesque presentations nationwide that include:

• Broadway-quality stage shows featuring costumes made with nearly four miles of fabric, live animals and even a crumbling stage on which the hero Samson takes down his captors’ temple.
• An animatronic Noah on the new ark answering visitors’ questions about what conditions were like during the 40 days and 40 nights of the biblical flood.
• Millions of dollars worth of fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as the earliest-known printings and writings of ancient Bibles. Most of those millions come from the family that founded the Hobby Lobby craft store chain.

“Each place might have its own view of success in terms of money or attendance or the like – but it’s been clear that people are willing to pay money and show up for things like this,” said Sally Promey, a professor of American and religious studies at the Yale Divinity School.

“But while they push what they do toward what mainstream America might call a museum, they risk losing their role as a Christian witness," Promey said. "So that is a constant dilemma for them.”

"Ye cannot serve God and Mammon," reads the Bible passage of Matthew 6:24. Therein lies a question amid the rise of Christian tourism.

“We feel ourselves to be a ministry, but we recognize we need to use good business principles to keep it going,” said Ham. “But we’re not in this to make money. Now we have to make money to be able to operate it, but we’re not in it as we were an entertainment industry just to make profit.”

Hollywood aims for Christian market, too

Another company that acknowledges this inherent tension is Sight & Sound, a live religious theater group that operates in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and in Branson, Missouri.

“We have certainly been profitable over the last few years,” said Sight & Sound chief executive officer Matt Neff, who declined to share specifics. “But that is not our end-all, be-all goal. A lot of those profits get sunk right back into the production and design of the next shows.

“Our goal has always been as relevant as possible to a broad audience, while also honoring our commitment to the word of God. That’s the founding of our organization that we do view as a ministry.”

Still, the missions can come into conflict.

“When it comes to evangelism, there is always a tension between being in the world and of the world,” Boston University religion professor Stephen Prothero said. “The people behind these efforts have a big struggle between keeping their eyes on heaven and doing worldly things to attract bigger audiences or crowds or followers.

“Sometimes, the secular world pushes back hard, too," Prothero said.

When Ham talks about Disney-style quality, he isn’t kidding, and neither are many other operators of Christian-themed attractions.

They say they have learned from the past, including the ill-fated Heritage USA founded just outside Charlotte, North Carolina, by former evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker that folded in 1989 after Jim Bakker became enmeshed in a sex scandal and went to prison for tax evasion.

Gone are the hokey passion plays put on by local churches, or hand-painted signs advertising the chance to see ancient relics from the Holy Land, or even the old cheesy “Bibleland” theme parks of old.

Can the new digital-era attractions compete with the likes of Universal Studios, Six Flags, Kings Island near Cincinnati, or even Disneyland or Disneyworld?

One expert says it’s a nearly impossible task given the current state of the theme park and attraction industry.

Consultant Dennis Speigel points out there is at least one theme park within a 2 1/2-hour drive of every major American city.

“And theme parks and even museums live on repeat business … how can these attractions manage that if they are not making enough money to reinvest in new features?” asked Speigel, a Cincinnati-based theme park consultant who helped found Kings Island just to the north of the city, and who oversaw the closure of Heritage USA nearly three decades ago.

Such attractions also are usually started by one person with a vision, such as Ham or the Bakkers, Speigel says.

“If something happens to them like it did to Jim and Tammy Faye, watch out,” said Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services Inc. “It’s hard to come back after your main visionary is discredited.”

According to some estimates, the market for religious travel worldwide (including trips to holy sites abroad) approaches $20 billion, with about half of that from U.S. customers. One 2008 survey by the Travel Industry Association found one-in-four U.S. travelers would be interested in taking a religious-themed vacation.

In fact, the National Tour Association recently started a sister group called the Faith Travel Association that is devoted entirely to religious tourism. Association manager Andy Newton says more recent market figures are hard to come by, but indications are demand for faith-based travel and destinations is growing.

“The challenge we have is getting our members to even recognize that this is a bona fide market segment like sports travel or school travel,” said Newton, whose parent organization represents tour operators nationwide. “But to have new destinations like the ark or others like the Museum of the Bible to go to will only grow this market even more than it already has.”

As focus intensifies on the ark in that Kentucky field, the attraction seen as a pioneer and that has a strong financial footing celebrates its 40th anniversary in a similar setting – rural Pennsylvania in the heart of Amish country.

Any visitor to Sight & Sound’s Living Waters Theater would be hard pressed to connect the current theater the organization’s origins in a nearby barn.

The “interactive musical” presentation of “Samson – The Bible’s First Superhero” features pyrotechnics, a robotic rhinoceros, and even crumbling pillars and crashing lights during the dramatic climax when Samson brings the house of his enemies down. Live animals add to the experience, which features singing, acting and humor that breaks through the fourth wall. In terms of sheer spectacle, “Samson” rivals anything on Broadway – and in fact feels like a Disney-fied stage version of the Old Testament tale. (Previous shows include “Jonah,” “Noah,” and “Daniel in the Lion’s Den.”)

The formula works for the bottom line as well. Sight & Sound officials report revenues of between $40-60 million a year (in conjunction with its Branson theater). This spring, the company said it's sold nearly 90 percent of the seats over the course of the summer for the new production.

Sight & Sound’s profitability wasn’t always guaranteed, however, and it took a new approach over the last decade to set that profitable course.

Founded by Glenn Eshelman in 1976, the company is run by chief executive officer Matt Neff and president/chief creative officer Josh Enck, Eschelman's sons-in-law. 

The company also hired a new marketing director in Maria-Jose’ Tennison, who previously worked at a California ad agency in handling the North American Jaguar account among other major brands.

The team worked to change the business model to focus on new shows every year by building up the quality and the “wow” factor of productions.

“We realized that our core demographic was literally dying off,” Tennison said. “So as part of that process we came to the realization that we have to diversify our demographics … but we also had to adapt our shows to attract that audience.”

The new team took over under the kind of turmoil that could face a secular business. In 2011, Eschelman stepped down voluntarily from being president and from the organization’s board after making “choices inconsistent with the values” of the business, the company said at the time.

Company leadership declined to comment on what those choices were, only that they did not involve financial improprieties. Neff also declined to elaborate whether the situation involved “moral transgressions,” according to the Lancaster LNP.

The board took the action because “it’s who we are and what we stand for,” Neff told the newspaper at the time. (Glenn and Shirley Eschelman still act as advisers to the board and are listed as co-founders of the company.)

Unlike their secular brethren, Christian operators face a unique challenge: such attractions are at what Ham calls the “the battlefront” of the ongoing culture wars between secular and Christian America that often form the heart of presidential elections.

Flashpoints include the traditional religion v. science debate, the use or public funds to build such exhibits, and even how historical artifacts are procured and presented.

Religion and science: Whose history is right?

Outside groups such as American Atheists, the Tri-State Freethinkers and even the American Civil Liberties Union all have issues with the ark project in particular and the overall idea of using theme parks or attractions to sell religion.

Organizers from some of these are planning protests in front of the ark when it opens in early July, while others are trying to buy billboard space on a nearby interstate to depict the story of the flood as one of genocide and even incest.

“These groups are trying to have it both ways – acting like a business when it suits them and then as a nonprofit church when they want,” said Nick Fish, national program director for American Atheists. “And then they position religion or children’s stories in a museum setting and have kids go there and teach it as a viable alternative to scientific findings.

“So the best antidote for that is to shine a light on it," Fish says.

Ham, who routinely debates opponents online and on social media, says such criticism is a form of prejudice and persecution in itself.

“If this were a Muslim organization, or if we were just another ordinary secular attraction, we wouldn’t be getting this,” Ham said. “We don’t go around criticizing others or look to pick fights or picket someone else’s efforts. We defend ourselves, sure, but we don’t go out looking for that.”

Three hours to the south of Sight & Sound, another construction site is a busy place.

Next year, the new Museum of the Bible is set to open just three blocks away from the U.S. Capitol and near other major institutions such as the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Art and the Holocaust Museum.

Founded and funded by the Green family that made Hobby Lobby a household name, the museum will display historical copies of not just the Bible, but of old manuscripts and fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as other predecessors to the Bible.

The building, privately financed by the Greens and other donations, is expected to cost more than $400 million. It will take up nearly a city block.

The organization’s board members include a who’s who of modern U.S. religious figures, including the Rev. Rick Warren, OneHope international ministry founder the Rev. Bob Hoskins, and Ashland University President Carlos Campo. (All three declined to be interviewed about the museum project.)

The Green family and those associated with the Museum – including executive director Carey Summers – also declined interview requests. (Summers also helped design the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky.) 

The organization stated in its 2011 nonprofit tax filing that its mission was “to bring 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.”

In a later 2013 filing, however, museum officials said that “we exist to engage with the Bible. We invite biblical exploration through museum exhibits and scholarly pursuits.”

“There certainly has been a change in their tone over the years, and now they say they are non-sectarian any chance they get,” said Joel Badin, a religion professor at the Yale Divinity School. “But they are playing a game by making themselves likable while it’s not so clear that this isn’t still an evangelical effort to make everyone believe that the King James Bible came straight from the mouth of God.”

Badin and Notre Dame University religion professor Candida Moss were some of the last to interview Museum of the Bible Chairman Steve Green about the effort in a piece in The Atlantic earlier this year. In that story, the duo questioned the process by which the Greens have accumulated nearly $100 million in biblical artifacts and the reasoning behind the museum as a whole.

Provenance of Christian antiquities questioned

“I think they believe they are telling the truth, but it’s clear this is now a matter of faith," Moss said. "And they don’t seem to realize or acknowledge that, or that even though this will not be a Baptist-oriented museum that it is still a religious effort.”

Christian tourism alternatives even extend into Disney’s own backyard in Orlando. The Holy Land Experience initially set itself up as a separate organization in 2001, but six years later the religious cable channel Trinity Broadcasting network bought the park for an undisclosed sum.

That provided ample financial stability (and another marketing outlet for TBN’s other offerings), park spokesman Jane Wilcox says.

The theme park doesn’t offer rides, she said, but it does offer high-quality stage shows and other activities for both kids and adults. One such show features the “four women of Jesus,” including portrayals of Mary, the mother of the Christian savior; reformed sinner Mary Magdalene; an accused adulteress who Jesus saves in the “let he without sin cast the first stone” gospel story; and an old woman at a well who helps Christ soothe his thirst in a gospel story.

The park also includes a biblical themed mini-golf course, a rock-climbing wall and the opportunity to make your own music CD.

Wilcox declined to discuss financial specifics of the park, but said the Holy Land Experience is “self-supporting” with a steady attendance of about 250,000 visitors annually (The park is only open five days a week.)

She recounts guests routinely report “joyous experiences” and that some have reported being able to climb out of wheelchairs or even hear better after a day-long visit.

Wilcox is quick to say the park isn’t trying to put itself in on the front of any culture war, and that it wants to coexist with its larger secular neighbors in Orlando.

“We pride ourselves on our good relationships with the other parks,” she said. “Because our mission is different, we don’t feel like we’re in competition with them.”

But when it comes to the actual experience? Judging from some reviews online, it’s no surprise that theme park consultant Spiegel says the Holy Land attraction “is lucky to be eking out an existence."

The park received a three-star average rating out of five on the Yelp.com website, with some reviewers complaining of poor customer service, shabby production values and “inauthentic presentations” of biblical scenes.

“I cannot recommend it at all … once inside you will feel attacked on all sides by people trying to bring you to their religion,” posted one reviewer “Nelson K. N.” who resides in Orlando.

Others point out that the park has received more than $2.2 million in property tax savings due to a 2006 move by state and local officials that exempted such businesses from property taxes.

But there are many who enjoy the experience, with 24 out of 57 reviewers giving the attraction either four or five stars.

“This was an amazing experience for me due to my religious beliefs. In the group next to us was an atheist who was very loud and obnoxious, but by the end of the experience he converted to Christianity. It was a little over the top but you were moved nonetheless!” wrote Marsha L. of Georgia.

Then there’s the Ark Encounter, set to open on July 7. 

At 510 feet long, 80 feet wide and more than 90 feet tall at its highest point, the ship is the largest free-standing timber frame structure in the world.

It will hold up to 10,000 people in a pinch, but will feature three decks of exhibits that range from Answers in Genesis’ belief that the Great Flood explains a lot of modern geology and paleontology, to recreations of how Noah might have survived, to representations of the “kinds” of animals that may have been saved.

And since the ministry believes dinosaurs existed at the time of the flood and were all but wiped out, smaller versions of the extinct creatures will be included.

The Ark Encounter is the brainchild of Answers in Genesis, which Ham helped found with two other Americans, Mark Looy and Mike Zovath. A lifelong believer in creationism, Ham is a native Australian who came to the U.S. in the early 1990s to help found the ministry. The group espouses that all that happened in the opening book of the Bible is literal history.

“The reason we’re really building it is that we wanted to impact as many people as we can with the truth of the word of God,” Ham said. “As Christians, the Bible tells us to go and contend for the faith.

“And Noah’s ark is very well-known around the world, so this seemed to be the logical next step," he says.

Indeed, the ark is not the group’s first foray into using a major attraction to tell its story. Answers in Genesis' Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, just across the border from Ohio, opened in 2007 and draws about a quarter-million visitors annually after pulling in more than 400,000 its opening year.

Ham squared off there against Bill Nye “The Science Guy” in a debate over creationism vs. evolution in early 2014 that was broadcast worldwide on the web.

Nye wrote in an email that he wasn’t allowed to see the entire museum but that what he saw was “troubling.”

“It’s important to note also that this is not a museum as such,” Nye wrote. “There are no artifacts. It’s a series of exhibits with models and mannequins depicting a world that never existed; the displays are completely inconsistent with what we know of the ancient Earth.

“It’s a grim fantasy," Nye wrote. "You would not see any such things in a conventional museum, across the river in Cincinnati for example.”

A recent full tour shows one of Charles Darwin’s books “Descent of Man” is placed in the same exhibit as Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” as an example of evil books published over the last 200 years. The museum also says the aftermath of the eruption of Mount St. Helens is also an indication that geological changes can happen much more quickly than scientists think, and that most of the dinosaurs died off because of the great flood.

Unlike that attraction, which many scientists such as Nye scoff isn’t a real museum, the ark is a for-profit enterprise. And as such, it will receive tax incentives from not only the state of Kentucky, but also tax breaks from the local county and city.

Who pays for the new ark? Taxpayers

Those state incentives were initially offered by the previous Democratic governor but rescinded when it was learned Answers in Genesis would require workers at the ark to sign a "statement of faith” that they were Christian themselves. The ministry sued in federal court and eventually won – and the new Republican governor decided not to contest the ruling.

That angers some civil rights activists and those who espouse the separation of church and state.

“They are using an amusement park setting to be proselytizing and that is dangerous territory,” said Jim Helton, American Atheists’ Union, Kentucky-based regional director. “And now we’ve given them public money and we are allowing them to discriminate against Jews, against LGBT folks, against Catholics, you name it.”

Initial estimates call for between 1.4 million and 2.2 million visitors in the first year. There is some worry that local roads and other amenities might not be ready even as the long-term economic windfall could be impressive.

Still, local political leaders understand that with the good economic impact comes some bad press.

“But now that this is a reality and the ark will open, we think this is going to die down – although I am afraid of the short-term negative attention that might come because the infrastructure may not be ready to handle 1 million people,” said state Rep. Brian Linder, R-Dry Ridge.

Linder, whose district includes the ark, acknowledges he believes Answers in Genesis' teachings on the earth and that the earth is 6,000 years old. But he says that has not clouded his judgment when it comes to working on the ark project at the state level.

“If an atheist group wanted to put an atheist park in Grant County and they met all the criteria, they should receive the tax credits too … we need to be fair here,” Linder said. “But I think all this criticism will go away much like it did with the Creation Museum over time.”

But apart from an initial push created by curiosity, it remains an open question whether the ark will float as a business over the long haul or whether or the overall Christian tourism market will keep up its growth.

“These places are less than several decimal points less than 1 percent of the overall market,” amusement park expert Speigel says. “And the odds are against most of them.”

That doesn’t deter Ham or others like him.

As he stands near the mammoth ark structure, he says Christians deserve their own destination tourism attractions.

“Why shouldn’t we be able to build a place like Disney with that sort of quality for millions of people?” he asks.