Materializing the Bible: Scripture, Sensation, Place(Bloomsbury Studies in Material Religion)

What happens when the written words of biblical scripture are transformed into experiential, choreographed environments? To answer this question, anthropologist James Bielo explores a diverse range of practices and places that “materialize the Bible,” including gardens, theme parks, shrines, museums, memorials, exhibitions, theatrical productions, and other forms of replication. Integrating ethnographic, archival, and mass media data, case studies focus primarily on U.S. Christianity from the late 19th-century to the present. Composed as 20 short chapters that may be read in any order, the book is divided into three sections. Section I, “Variations on Replication,” analyzes examples that recontextualize elements from the (actual or imagined) biblical past. Section II, “The Power of Nature,” turns to the natural world associated with Christian scripture and how it is mobilized as a privileged media. Section III, “Choreographing Experience,” examines lived interactions with the affordances of materializing the Bible. Bielo argues that materializing the Bible works as an authorizing practice to intensify intimacies with scripture and circulate potent ideologies. Performed through the sensory experience of bodies, physical technologies, and infrastructures of place, Bielo illustrates how this phenomenon is always, ultimately, about expressions of power.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part 1: Variations on Replication 1. 1:1 2. Miniaturizing 3. Re-Enacting 4. Imagineering 5. Plastic Jesus 6. Ways of Remaining Part 2: The Power of Nature 7. Flora 8. Fauna 9. Ingesting the Word 10. How Stones Do Things Part 3: Choreographing Experience Circulation 11. Miracles and Lavatories 12. Greetings From... 13. Like-able Me, Like-able There Design 14. In Place, In Motion 15. Interactivity 16. Engulfed I 17. Engulfed II Classification 18. In the Garden 19. Rev. Ruth's Yard Poetics 20. Four Crosses Over Waterbury Conclusion Bibliography Index

About the Author :
James S. Bielo is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA. He is the author of four books, most recently Ark Encounter: The Making of a Creationist Theme Park (2018), and is the co-founder and lead curator for the digital scholarship project Materializing the Bible.

Review :
James Bielo has a gift for explaining complicated concepts in a highly accessible manner, which is on display throughout this book. The research process is impressive and the focus on materializing the biblical text is superb as it creates innovative links between scholarship across adjacent fields, including art history, history, folklore studies, tourism studies, and anthropology.