Synopses & Reviews
In the summer of 2002, Timothy K. Beal loaded his family into a twenty-nine-foot-long motor home and hit the rural highways of America in search of roadside religious attractionssites like the Worlds Largest Ten Commandments and Precious Moments Chapel. Roadside Religion tells of his attempts to understand the meaning of these places as expressions of religious imagination and experience, and to encounter faith in all its awesome absurdity.
Beal quietly goes beneath the surface to show you that what you see is not always what you get . . . [Answers] questions you might never have thought of asking, even as it keeps the pages turning.” Caroline Leavitt, Boston Sunday Globe
A definitively open-minded professor of religion . . . In his introduction, Beal notes that his daughter, Sophie, has said that what he likes to do is make creepy things interesting. Smart girl.” Sarah Ferrell, New York Times Book Review
Full of gentle humor and clever observations . . . Whether hes tackling the popularity of biblical mini-golf courses or Precious Moments figurines, Beal . . . uncovers serious questions about religion and its sometimes highly singular practitioners.” Publishers Weekly, starred review
Timothy K. Beal is Florence Harkness Professor of Religion and director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. His books include Religion and Its Monsters and The Book of Hiding, and his essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Washington Post. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Synopsis
In the summer of 2002, Timothy K. Beal loaded his family into a twenty-nine-foot-long motor home and hit the rural highways of America in search of roadside religious attractions--sites like the Worlds Largest Ten Commandments, Golgotha Fun Park, and Precious Moments Chapel. Why, he wanted to know, would someone use miniature golf to tell the story of the Creation? Or build a life-size replica of Noahs ark in Maryland?
As a scholar, Beal hoped to come to understand the meaning of these places as expressions of religious imagination and experience. But as someone who had grown up in an evangelical Christian church in which he no longer rested comfortably, Beal found himself driven by a desire to venture beyond the borders of his cynicism to encounter faith in all its awesome absurdity. And so he found himself deep in conversation with people like Bill Rice, whose Cross Garden features thousands of makeshift crosses and old air conditioners bearing the message NO ICE WATER IN HELL! FIRE HOT!
Part travel narrative, part religious study, and part search for the divine madness that is faith, Roadside Religion takes the reader on a tour of the strange and often wondrous ways people have tried to give outward form to their inner religious experiences. Religion is most interesting--and most revealing--Beal shows us, where its least expected.
Synopsis
In the summer of 2002, Timothy K. Beal loaded his family into a twenty-nine-foot-long motor home and hit the rural highways of America in search of roadside religious attractions-sites like the World's Largest Ten Commandments and Precious Moments Chapel. Roadside Religion tells of his attempts to understand the meaning of these places as expressions of religious imagination and experience, and to encounter faith in all its awesome absurdity.
About the Author
TIMOTHY BEAL is Florence Harkness Professor of Religion at Case Western Reserve University. He has published eleven books, including Biblical Literacy: The Essential Bible Stories Everyone Needs to Know and Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, the Strange, and the Substance of Faith, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and one of Publishers Weekly's ten best religion books of 2005. He has published essays in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.