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History and Anthropology

ISSN: 0275-7206 (Print) 1477-2612 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ghan20

Replication as Religious Practice, Temporality asReligious Problem

James S. Bielo

To cite this article: James S. Bielo (2016): Replication as Religious Practice, Temporality asReligious Problem, History and Anthropology, DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2016.1182522

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2016.1182522

Published online: 10 May 2016.

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Replication as Religious Practice, Temporality as ReligiousProblemJames S. Bielo

ABSTRACTThis article explores how religious communities actualize the virtualproblem of temporality. Analysing two case studies fromcontemporary America, Mormon Trek re-enactment and acreationist theme park re-creating Noah’s ark, I argue thatreplication is a strategy for constructing a relationship with timein which a strict past–present divide is collapsed through affectivemeans. This work contributes to comparative studies in theanthropology of religion and temporalizing the past.

KEYWORDSReligion; Christianity;Ethnography; North America

Chabad-Lubbavitch Jews are an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community, a transnationalnetwork of more than 100,000 adherents that seeks to spread the mitzvah by evangelizinglapsed and secular Jews (Dein 2011). The sixth Lubbavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Yosef YitzchokSchneerson, was born in 1880 and moved to New York City in 1941 under Nazi persecu-tion. The Chabad World Headquarters, located at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, isa three-storey building that served as Schneerson’s home and office. After his death in1950 it continued as a synagogue, yeshiva, and home to Yosef’s son-in-law MenachemMendel Schneerson, the final Chabad Rebbe and messianic figure. “770” is now a globaldestination of Hasidic mystique, devotion, and pilgrimage.

A classic Collegiate-Gothic style building, 770 is not a particularly special architecturalspecimen. Prior to Yosef’s residence, it was just another building on an East–West arterythat connected Brooklyn neighbourhoods. Never mind these mundane qualities: 770has become sacred space for Chabad adherents. Pilgrimage and ritual caretaking aretwo markers of sacrality, but consider another.

After Yosef’s death, fueled by Menachem’s evangelizing esprit, Chabad adherentsbegan creating replicas of 770 (see Figure 1). Most operate as Chabad Centers in local com-munities with burgeoning Hasidic populations. All model their exterior façade on that ofthe Crown Heights original. Some make more meticulous strides to authenticity; forexample, the replica in Kfar Chabad, Israel claims that the exact same number of brickswas used in its construction as that of the original. The number of replicas grows withthe success of Chabad; presently there are at least five in Israel, three in the UnitedStates and one each in Canada, Italy, Ukraine, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Australia.1

This article is not about Chabad’s global ambitions, nor is it an entrée into the anthro-pology of Judaism. I begin with re-creations of 770 because it is a striking example of a

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT James S. Bielo bielojs@miamioh.edu Department of Anthropology, Miami University, 120 Upham Hall,Oxford, OH 45056, USA.

HISTORY AND ANTHROPOLOGY, 2016http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2016.1182522

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practice performed across religious traditions and communities: replication. As a kind ofritual practice, replication is defined by clipping a particular aspect, event, or era of thepast (actual or imagined) and recontextualizing it in the present using material media.In the case of 770, material replication is ostensibly about honoring a charismatic leaderand using an inspiring symbol to promote a movement. Without denying either ofthese, I see replication as performing more fundamental work with more far reaching com-parative ethnographic purchase.

The focus in this article is on the ways in which replication reveals religion’s capacity toperform temporal work. Put differently, how do religious communities use replication toconstruct relationships with the complex, conflicted, and multi-directional field of time?Recalibrated as a matter of temporality, we see a different efficacy to 770. Through replica-tion Chabad adherents freeze-frame a particular moment from their collective past,pausing and preserving sacred space and freeing it from a singular time–space location.

Here, I outline a method for engaging the question of how religious communities con-struct relationships with time. To illustrate, I examine two case studies of religious replica-tion, both located in the United States: Mormon pioneer trek re-enactment and acreationist theme park featuring a re-creation of Noah’s ark. I argue that in these casesthe strategy of replication works temporally by collapsing a strict past–present dividethrough creating affective affinities. My rationale for selecting these two examples isexplained below, following a theoretical sketch for how we might conceive of temporalityas a kind of generative problem. Ultimately, this analysis is directed broadly to the anthro-pology of religion and advances a comparative claim: replication is one instance of themore general truth that exercising control over time is a fundamental capacity that anima-tes religious life.

Temporality as Virtual Problem

How do religious communities construct relationships with time? Addressing this questionis necessarily informed by the broader anthropology of time. The interests of this field vary

Figure 1. Screen shot of 770 replica at 338 Inkerman Street, Melbourne, Australia. Captured by authorin January 2016.

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from articulating a philosophical approach to the nature of time that is adequately pitchedfor anthropological inquiry (Hodges 2008) to exploring the culturally configured ways inwhich humans phenomenologically perceive and experience time (Gell 1992). My analysisof religious replication echoes Nancy Munn’s focus on “temporalizations of past time”(1992, 112), which assumes that “people operate in a present that is always infused,and which they are further infusing, with pasts and futures” (115). Munn emphasizes“the meaningful forms and concrete media practices for apprehension of the past”(113). A key finding in this analysis is that arranging and performing such meaningfulforms and media practices is pivotal for the affective force of replication’s temporal work.

Influential lines of anthropological inquiry have grappled with how communities con-struct relationships with the past. For example, studies in social memory are robust, offer-ing significant insight about cultural patterns of remembering and forgetting (for example,Climo and Cattell 2002). The “invention of tradition” opened new possibilities for under-standing how claims to historical continuity are strategically loaded with ideologicaland political freight (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). And, Hirsch and Stewart (2005) con-trast historiography with “historicity” to capture “the ongoing social production ofaccounts of pasts and futures” (262). Religious replication resonates with Hirsch and Stew-art’s concept of historicity, and this article complements their analysis by closely examin-ing the temporal work performed through producing accounts of the past.

To understand the temporal work of replication, I apply a theoretical model that con-ceives of religion as a virtual field defined by problems that require actualization. Theterms “virtual”, “actualize”, and “problem” carry precise theoretical meaning. They derivefrom anthropologist Jon Bialecki’s model to account for the dizzying plurality of globalChristianities without conceding a coherent and comparative sense of shared Christianity(2012). Bialecki uses philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s concept of “the virtual”: a state of poten-tial that is not yet actualized but is ontologically real.2 As a virtual field, religions are notdefined by formations like belief, ritual, or social institution. These are already actualiza-tions of the virtual; that is, they are realizations of more open potentiality within a particu-lar socio-historical context. A virtual approach means conceptualizing religion ascomposed of problems that require realization. Problems are not like jigsaw puzzlesthat are solvable once and for all. They are more like steady churning engines, keepingreligions in motion by continually producing new formations. In turn, phenomena likethe dizzying plurality of global Christianities (and their attendant range of beliefs, prac-tices, and institutions) are all attempts to resolve a shared bundle of virtual problems. Inshort, a virtual model is incredibly useful for understanding how differentiation works.

The problem of temporality—models for the nature of time, its passing, and ourrelationship to it—plays an organizing role in composing religious life. The comparativereligion scholar William Paden writes: “each religious world has its own past. Each hasits own history” (1988, 75), and I would add its own present and potential futures aswell. The problem of temporality can be actualized in widely differentiated ways, fromendless cycles of reincarnation to nirvana as a break from the cycle of death andrebirth, dispensational history, rupture moments of creation and destruction, and thepromise of messianic return (to name only a few). The virtual–actual model providesnew purchase for studying the intimate relation between religion and time, which initself is well established.

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We might recall influential work in the history of religions, like Mircea Eliade’s notion ofthe “eternal return” (2005(1954)). For Eliade, a core difference between “traditional andmodern” life was the former’s tendency to be planted in “cosmic rhythms”, alwaysseeking attachment to a sacred history through rituals of repetition. The theme of rep-etition has been used as mimesis (a version of replication) as well as return, such asAndreas Bandak’s study of sainthood in Syrian Orthodoxy (2015). Bandak argues thatthe lives of saints circulate narratively in Orthodox communities as moral and spiritualexemplars that should be imitated, creating connective tissue between past and future.One widely recognized actualization of temporality is also future-oriented, the propheticand preparatory work of apocalyptic communities. For example, Susan Harding’s historicalethnography of American Protestant fundamentalists argues that apocalpyticism is “aspecific narrative mode of reading history; Christians for whom Bible prophecy is truedo not inhabit the same historical landscape as nonbelievers” (232). Harding’s sensethat religion creates a distinct inhabited landscape is echoed by Paden’s proposal that reli-gion is a form of world-making. As distinct lifeworlds, he argues that religion’s time–spaceaxis is its most important feature: “religions are communities of memory more than theyare collections of dogmas” (1988, 78). As responses to the problem of temporality, each ofthese examples highlights religious communities as actively constructing relationshipswith time.

Treating temporality as a virtual problem has the distinct advantage of presuming thatreligious life is open to a wide range of actualizing strategies. The potential relationshipsbetween religion and time are far reaching and multiple, from repetition to contracting,expanding, stalling, accelerating, and decelerating time. To further apprehend the tem-poral work of religion, we can zoom in on one particular temporal actualization:replication.

Brigham’s Trek, Noah’s Ark

Replication is a compelling strategy to work with because it is pervasive across religioustraditions, communities, and contexts. Along with Chabad’s global re-creations of 770,we might fix our attention on replicas of Marian apparition sites, such as Lourdes (McDan-nell 1995), Walsingham (Coleman and Elsner 2004), or Guadalupe (Pena 2011); PassionPlays (Stevenson 2015); or the Durga Puja, where Hindu devotees throughout Bengalfashion temporary images of the goddess from straw, clay, paint, and decorations (McDer-mott 2011).

The objects of materialized replication are diverse (from individual characters to placesand events), the media for materializing is unlimited, and the audience can be eitherinternal or external to religion (a way to create and re-create tradition among adherentsand/or a way to teach or convert non-adherents). As a ritual form, replication works simi-larly to Matt Tomlinson’s adoption of Kierkegaard’s notion of “repetition” (2014). In Kierke-gaard’s theology, “repetition is the temporal mechanism of existence” because humans“fashion their own lives” (165) after God’s creation. Repetition is a mode of “recollectingforward” (163), contrasting with mere recollection which is fixed in the past. Like rep-etition, replication is about bringing the past into the present as a way of progressing.Tomlinson proposes repetition as a model for understanding religious change, a thirdexplanatory direction beyond pure continuity or discontinuity. This article is targeted

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more narrowly on how a relationship with time is constructed through particular practicesof materialized replication.

I analyse two case studies of replication from the contemporary United States: Mormonpioneer trek re-enactment and a creationist theme park centred around a re-creation ofNoah’s ark. Ark Encounter, the creationist theme park, is the focus of an ethnographicproject that I began in 2011. For two and a half years (October 2011–June 2014), I con-ducted fieldwork with the creative team in charge of designing Ark Encounter. As astudy of cultural production, I want to understand the backstage processes of makingthis project of religious publicity and entertainment. In late 2014 fieldwork shifted tofocus on committed creationists who will attend the park after it opens in July 2016. Asa study in devotional consumption, I want to understand how creationists experiencethe park as a sensory, material, and ideological place. It was Ark Encounter that first stimu-lated my anthropological curiosity about practices of religious replication.

The selection of Mormon trek re-enactment is more happenstance. I first learned aboutTrek through a footnote citation in a journal article about the racial and religious elementsof Black Mormon re-enactments (Mueller 2013). My analysis of Trek is based on secondarysource accounts (Eliason 1997, 1998; Jones 2006) and primary text analysis of publicitymaterials from the official LDS website. Immediately, I was fascinated by Trek’s potentialas an expression of religious replication and its differentiation from Ark Encounter. Trekre-creates a relatively recent past, one which contemporary adherents can read about first-hand through historical accounts and diaries, whereas Ark Encounter re-creates a distantpast detailed only in a scriptural story of less than 2200 words (Genesis 6–9). While thereare varying accounts of Trek’s heroism and arduousness, the factuality of the event isundisputed. In contrast, the historical veracity of Noah’ ark is widely disputed among Chris-tians, Jews, and secular scientists (Montgomery 2012; Finkel 2014). Trek is reminiscent ofparticipatory theatre, whereas Ark Encounter conjures images of Disney-style themedentertainment. Irrespective of these differences, both use replication as a strategy foractualizing the virtual problem of temporality.

Pioneer Trek

Pioneer Trek, “Handcart Trek Reenactment”, or simply “Trek”3 is a ritual where LDSyouth and adults re-create the experience of Mormons who travelled from Nauvoo, Illi-nois to Salt Lake City, Utah. After Mormonism’s founding charismatic prophet, JosephSmith, was assassinated in Nauvoo in 1844, Brigham Young emerged from vyingclaims to leadership succession as the Church’s primary authoritative figure. RevivingMormon convictions about a new heaven (“Zion”) on earth, Young organized a massrelocation of the Church: 1200 miles West to Salt Lake City. An initial group of lessthan 200 settlers, led by Young, landed in the Utah territory in 1847. They were fol-lowed by roughly 85,000 Mormons prior to the completion of the transcontinental rail-road in 1869. While these migrants made use of both rail service and steamships, Trekidealizes the 1856–1860 period when roughly 3000 Mormons travelled West on footwith handcarts loaded full of supplies (Figure 2).

Trek is organized primarily as a ritual of youth spiritual formation, where teenagers role-play as 1850s young travelling Mormons and adults role-play as family leaders (“Ma”s and“Pa”s).4 Any congregation or collective can organize a Trek experience on private property,

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but the LDS Church owns tracts of land where Trek is the central activity. As of January2016, there were 10 such land areas: 2 each in Utah, Wyoming, and California, and 1each in Washington, Florida, Oklahoma, and Argentina. The LDS Church provides avariety of web resources to prepare groups for Trek, including a 39-page guidebookand a three-part video series (totaling roughly 30 minutes), “Tracy’s Trek”.5

This series is composed as the diary-like video blog of an LDS girl: white, in her lateteens, cheery, and positively earnest and proper (for example, her repeated exclamationsof “my stars!” to register surprise or consternation). The video follows Tracy and her “besty”Miranda in their training for, experience of, and reflection on Trek. It maintains a fun moodthroughout, with plenty of intended humor and cartoon drawings to illustrate differentscenes and activities. Much of the content is focused on issues of safety: primarily howto stay properly hydrated, but also key items to pack (proper shoes and socks, balm toprevent chapped lips, and insect repellent). The tone is consistently laudatory; Tracydescribes Trek as an “amaaaazing, life changing experience” full of “incredible spiritualexperiences”. In the video’s conclusion Tracy invites viewers to reflect on the particularityof their personal experience (“what did you learn?”), but the pivotal didactic momentcomes in the middle of the second video. Following a group sing along and dance,Tracy and Miranda reflect on a story told by an elder about Brigham Young leading thefirst pioneers in a similar song and dance after an arduous day: “it made [the pioneers]seem more real… you know, they were supported by the Spirit and I think we were too”.

Tracy’s Trek highlights some of the performative features of the re-enactment, many ofwhich index historical authenticity. Trek participants are encouraged to wear 1850s eraclothing, and the guidebook includes an appendix with instructions for how to makeyour own clothing. There is a second appendix for how to build your own handcart,though it is noted throughout the booklet that LDS-owned Trek properties have handcartsalready on site if groups cannot build their own. Participants camp, cook over an open fire,and engage in pioneer-era games and music. Tracy also recounts her completion of the

Figure 2. Promotional image of Trek. Note: Accessed January 11, 2016. https://www.lds.org/youth/activities/stake-and-multistake-activities/camps-and-youth-conferences/treks?lang=eng.

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“women’s pull”, in which an all-female group pulls their handcart up a hill, an event re-created from descriptions in pioneer journals. The sense of historical immersion is elabo-rated further by using the “Overland Trail Database”, an online collection of individualnineteenth century pioneer biographies. Mormon youth are encouraged to consider thelife of one individual during their Trek experience and what that person’s journey mayhave been like.6 Youth are also encouraged to use this Database to search for family ances-tors who were part of the pioneer experience, reproducing the Mormon cultural concernwith genealogy and kinship (Cannell 2013).

Trek also reproduces a broader Mormon cultural commitment to cultivate a sense ofhistorical tradition. “For Mormons, identity with the past is not just an educational enter-prise, but a doctrinal imperative” (Jones 2006, 113). This is visible in two sets of events heldthroughout the United States: annual Pioneer Day Celebrations that commemorate the1847 arrival in Salt Lake City and at least 15 different Pageant Plays (Eliason 1998).Riffing on the broader Christian tradition of Passion Plays, Pageant Plays re-enact signifi-cant scenes of Mormon sacred history, including scriptural stories from the Book ofMormon, portions of Joseph Smith’s life, and the pioneer’s Western journey. CumorahPageant is the oldest, largest, and most well known. It is held near the New York statehill site where Joseph Smith was directed to discover the golden plates. This three-week production uses a cast of over 700 Mormon actors and draws over 50,000 visitors,including both committed adherents and curious spectators (Kaell 2012).

Megan Jones, a theatre scholar at Brigham Young University, published a scholarlyarticle about her experience role-playing as a Trek “Ma” (2006). Jones’ group performedTrek at Martin’s Cove, Utah, a significant Trek site because of its dramatic history: over100 pioneers died there during a harsh winter. In 1997 the LDS Church opened a VisitorsCenter explaining the tragedy to accompany the 15-mile course. Jones notes that Trek“had all the markers of legitimate theatre”, from characters to props, period costumes,and scripts (115). Handcarts, for example, were “roughly the size of a small [truck] pick-up bed” and held 400 pounds of supplies (113). The year’s worth of planning, travel tothe site, and theatrical performance led Jones to describe Trek as a “phenomenal organ-izational feat” (113); not especially “fun” (115) but a powerful “act of worship” (117).

What is the religious payoff for Trek’s significant investment of time, labour, andmoney? The guidebook promotes Trek as providing “powerful opportunities to strengthentestimonies, build unity, do family history, and learn core gospel principles” of faith, obe-dience, charity, sacrifice, and perseverance.7 These promised spiritual benefits aregrounded in a relationship to the past. Trek is a ritual devoted to cultivating LDS sacredmemory. Ever since the decades following settlement in Utah the pioneers were “an essen-tial part of Mormon mythic history” (Mueller 2013, 529). As articulated in the narrative apexof “Tracy’s Trek”, this is not merely about valorizing the pioneers. It is about creating a spiri-tual affinity between the pioneers and contemporary Mormons. Moreover, Trek fosters a“correspondence of past and present persecutions” (Jones 2006, 126). Just as contempor-ary Mormons experience marginalization, their heroic ancestors were forced West afterSmith’s assassination. This correspondence is further intensified by comparisonsbetween pioneer trek and the biblical Exodus: Brigham Young as an American Mosesand the frozen Mississippi River as a parted Red Sea (Eliason 1997, 179).

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Ark Encounter

Trek fosters an analogous relationship to biblical narrative, the pioneer experience as atype of exodus, but more literal biblical replications abound. In July 2015 I launched Mate-rializing the Bible: an interactive, curated website that catalogues Bible-based attractionsaround the world. There are at least 185 attractions, ranging across genres of placesuch as gardens, museums, art collections, theme parks, and various forms of re-creation.The majority of attractions (N = 113) are located in the continental United States, and theremaining are distributed across 26 nation-states: Israel, England, Philippines, China,Taiwan, Netherlands, Canada, Germany, Argentina, Ireland, Brazil, Scotland, Mexico, Aus-tralia, Bahamas, India, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Bosnia, New Zealand, Portugal,Denmark, Croatia, Hungary, and Latvia. The organizing imperative of these sites is to trans-form the written words of scripture into a physical, experiential environment. In December2010, a particularly ambitious act of materializing the Bible was announced: Ark Encounter(Figure 3).

Set on 800 acres of Kentucky rolling hills, 40 miles South of Cincinnati, Ark Encounter is a$150 million biblical theme park affiliated with the creationist ministry Answers in Genesis.The centrepiece of the park is a re-creation of Noah’s ark, built to literalist specificationfrom the text of Genesis 6-9: 51 feet tall, 85 feet wide, 510 feet long, built from 1.5million board feet of timber, and featuring over 100,000 square feet of themed exhibitspace. Ark Encounter’s central purpose is to teach creationist history and theology as anideological and factual challenge to evolutionary science (cf. Bielo 2015, 2016).

Visitors to the park will progress through three decks on the ark filled with a mix of liveanimals, animatronic figures, interactive displays, multimedia exhibits, food vendors, and

Figure 3. Ark Encounter construction site, July 2015. Photo by author.

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children’s play areas. Each deck is organized by a particular affective experience. By aimingto induce a certain series of emotive states, the creative teamwants visitors to first respondviscerally and experientially, an achievement they understand as pivotal for successfullysetting the conditions for conversion.

Deck One centres on the drama of Noah and his family following the closing of the arkdoor. They are relieved to have escaped a terrifying storm, they have just witnessed massdeath, and are anxious about the weeks ahead. The creative team always talked aboutDeck One as the “darkest” of the decks, indexed sensually by low levels of lighting. Thestorm will be audible; visitors will hear sounds of wind, rain, thunder, and debrisbanging against the ark’s sides. Noah and his family will be comforting the animals andeach other amid difficult conditions.

Deck Two focuses on the tasks and challenges of living on the ark. Noah and his familyare settled, going about their liminal living: the daily grind of tending the onboard garden,caring for the animals, and managing daily routines. The creative team envisions Deck Twoas the primary “how-to” deck, addressing numerous “practical” issues about this biblicalstory. How did Noah and his family feed all the animals? What did they do with all theanimal waste? How were air, water, and sunlight distributed? What did Noah’s workshopand library look like? By addressing these questions, Deck Two emphasizes the creationistclaim that pre-Flood people were capable of incredibly sophisticated technology becauseof their long lifespans (Noah ageing to 950 years).

Deck Three continues themes from the first two decks and introduces several newexperiences. More exhibits teach about animal kinds. More exhibits address how-tomatters, such as what the passengers’ living quarters were like and what technologyNoah used to build the ark. Deck Three also captures the salvific realization that God’swrath has been expended, the storm is over, the waters receded, the eight passengersspared, and the whole world is now theirs. This experience of awe then transitions intocreationist teaching points about post-flood life, such as the Tower of Babel dispersal oflanguages and people groups. Deck Three most intentionally teaches creationist typologi-cal hermeneutics, which interprets the Noah story as a type of salvation foreshadowingJesus (Harding 2000, 231–234).

As visitors move through these three decks, 132 exhibit bays (44 per deck) combine topresent a creationist narrative about the steadfast faithfulness of Noah and his family, theirsalvation, and, ultimately, the evangelical Gospel. The iconicity of moving from darkness tolight, from judgement to salvation, is very self-conscious for the creative team. They wantvisitors to experience this narrative progression physically, through the affective force ofsensory and material immersion.

Ark Encounter is, among other things, a $150 million testimony. It is missionization,massively materialized, and performed in the key of biblical literalism. But, the team under-stands their work as infinitely more complicated than merely presenting the basics of crea-tionism to visitors. Their creative labour is organized by a two-part model of culturalproduction and religious conversion: plausibility-immersion.

First, the team must demonstrate the historical plausibility of the Noah story. Theybegin with the premise that it was physically and technologically possible for Noah tohave built the ark described in Genesis 6. Successfully demonstrating this means usingthe exact dimensions detailed in scripture and using only building materials that wouldhave been available to Noah (namely, timber and iron). Park exhibits will illustrate tools

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and techniques likely used by Noah, but the project’s publicity materials repeatedlyexplain that modern construction technology (for example, cranes) is pragmatically una-voidable (for example, to complete construction within the timeframe required by build-ing permits).

However, plausibility alone is not enough. Noah’s story cannot merely be told; it mustbe felt. Again, the role of the affective is vital for the team’s model of conversion. Theyfigure success not simply as communicating creationist doctrine in a coherent discursivemanner, it is about effectively engineering an experience that compels visitors towardsconversion. What was the pre-flood world like, the one so wicked that God decideddeath was the only adequate judgement? What was it like to be surrounded by massextinction? What was Noah’s experience in building the ark, and preparing for theweeks on board? How did it feel to be inside the ark when the door closed; to hear thefierce storm outside and the cacophony of animals? What was the experience of livingon the ark day after day? And, what was it like when the dove did not return, to seethe rainbow and be the centre of God’s saving grace? An immersive experience promisesto bridge the gap between plausibility and believability, and the logic of immersive enter-tainment is the engine that propels the team’s creative labour.

As noted earlier, Ark Encounter and Trek differ substantially with respect to historicalveracity. The event-centred factuality of a westward Mormon migration in the mid-nine-teenth century is undisputed within the LDS and is legitimized even by state institutions,such as the National Park Service.8 Ark Encounter works according to the imperatives ofbiblical literalism, which means it treats the Genesis story as an actual event. Of course,this view of the past is not accepted (and frequently derided) by many other socialactors, from non-literalist evangelicals to mainline Protestants, non-literalist Jews, andsecular historians and scientists.

As forms of historicity (Hirsch and Stewart 2005), this difference matters. Even com-mitted creationists will visit Ark Encounter with an inescapable social fact in tow: thehistory they claim is rejected outside their religious sub-culture. This recognition alsointensifies the creative team’s labour. Their performance of plausibility-immersion—aiming to bolster the faith of creationists and sow seeds of conversion among non-crea-tionists—occurs in the context of promoting a history that is widely disputed and oftenjeered. Trek leaders and participants do not confront this dilemma. While the two casesdiffer in this way, we see in the next section that the temporal affect of their replicationsremains quite close. Both seek to create spiritual and moral affinities between present andpast. That is, regardless of historical veracity, Ark Encounter and Trek both operate at “thecomplex temporal nexus of past–present–future” and “in relation to [contemporary]events, political needs, available cultural forms, and emotional dispositions” (Hirsch andStewart 2005, 262).

Replication as Temporal Collapse

In building this article’s argument, we have presented two elements thus far. First, we out-lined temporality as a virtual problem that animates religious life. As a virtual problem,temporality must be actualized, and replication is one particularly pervasive and potentstrategy for doing so. Second, we outlined two case studies of religious replication:Mormon re-enactments of the pioneer trek experience, and a creationist theme park

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organized by a conversion model of plausibility-immersion. This section examines thedynamics of how a relationship with time is constructed in these two case studies. Theprimary observation I put forward is that these rituals of religious replication seek to col-lapse time by creating affective affinities between past and present. While this temporalcollapse works as an organizing mechanism, the affinities created are susceptible to poten-tial disruption.

Affective Histories

Trek and Ark Encounter both open a performative space where a strict divide betweenpast and present can be collapsed. They seek to create spiritual and moral affinitiesbetween contemporary adherents and characters (pioneers and the biblical Noah) thatare integral to their tradition’s apprehension of the past. This temporal work is distinctfrom ritually returning to ancestral or cosmological pasts. It is less about re-animatingthe past as it is collapsing experiences of faith separated by time. The devotional labourof Trek re-enactors is designed to provoke a sense of relational belonging, enabling par-ticipants to actively cast themselves into the same sacred community as the pioneers. And,the creative team draws a close connection between Noah’s purpose in building the arkand their own purpose. Articulations of this affinity arose spontaneously in everydaymoments at the design studio.

I arrived at the studio one morning to find the team seated around the boardroomtable, talking casually after an abbreviated a.m. meeting. The conversation had turnedto a new “documentary” that would be released in limited theaters at the end of themonth: Monumental, starring Kirk Cameron, a handsome celebrity face of contemporaryfundamentalist Christianity. Amy, the team’s lead administrative assistant, encouragedeveryone to go see the film and tell others to do the same. Cameron funded the filmhimself and if it grossed a certain dollar amount a major media company would purchasethe rights and distribute the film nationally. Monumental repackages the typical funda-mentalist narrative that America is in a national, moral, and spiritual freefall. EchoingAmy’s description of the film, the creative director Patrick described America as “done”,citing public schools as a prime example. Two of the artists, Jon and Kristen, seemed towant to change the tone, adding that “God is sovereign” and that “everything will workout for the glory of God and for God’s people”. Undeterred, Patrick continued that Chris-tians never talk about “revival” and are failing to be any different than those causing thedecline. He concluded by reminding the team that Monumental’s essential purposerhymes with Ark Encounter’s: “that’s why what we’re doing is so important. It’s going tobe this weird little beacon of hope to remind people that we are different”. With that,the team dispersed to their cubicles.

These moral and spiritual affinities work to collapse time by creating an affective bondbetween contemporary adherents and their ancestors of faith. This echoes historianVanessa Agnew’s depiction of re-enactment as a genre for performing the past. She con-ceives of re-enactment as “affective history”, in which participants are

less concerned with events, processes or structures than with the individual’s physical andpsychological experience. Further, testimony about daily life and social interaction in thepresent is often equated with, and becomes evidentiary for, a generalized notion of historicalexperience. (2007, 301)

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Affective history is powerful, in part, because it works through visceral mediachannels. The human body and its materialities are used as the primary medium forteaching ideology, ethics, and normative emotion. Elsewhere, Agnew (2014) describesa particular sensorial ambition of affective history, the provocation of “gooseflesh”.Sometimes known as goose pimples or chicken skin, this “testimony of the body” isan involuntary aesthetic evaluation. When we experience gooseflesh we are movedto believe that we have experienced something real, something timeless, somethingintegral to the history we are re-enacting. While we are often suspicious of wordsand emotions, we trust our bodies to bear truth because we listen to them as respond-ing in an unmediated way.9

The creative team hopes to create an experience of gooseflesh among visitors to ArkEncounter. Perhaps when emerging from the curving road that connects the parking lotto the Ark site, when the whole object comes into firsthand view for the very first time.Perhaps when walking onboard, surrounded at every angle by the smell, touch, andsight of massive timber. Perhaps when interacting with Noah’s library, envisioning thethen 600-year-old man at work or enjoying respite. Wherever possible, the team hopesthe immersive environment they create will lead bodies to testify—hairs and pimplesraising on arms, spines tingling, eyes widening, jaws dropping. They understand suchbodily experience as the catalyst for conversion. I understand the experience as a sitefor temporal collapse, where visitors are brought near to Noah. Gooseflesh is a testimonyof the body, but also a testimony to the potential realities of Noah’s experience. “He toowalked such decks, just as I do now”.

The body also testifies during Trek re-enactment. Aspects of physicality and exhaus-tion define the experiential authenticity of walking long distances, handcarts in tow.Sweat and strained muscles, more so than gooseflesh, are indexical here. “Tracy’sTrek” advises a strenuous exercise training programme before leaving for Trek, andcontinually emphasizes the dangers of dehydration. There is an implicit assertion ofthe body’s unchanging physiology—bodies then are as bodies now—that aids thetemporal collapse. There is also a reliance on an assertion of unchanging land. The“women’s pull” illustrates this well. Pioneer women had to confront the same steeplysloped hills and the same uneven terrain. “Imagine the faith of the pioneers, toendure these hardships”.

Analysing religious replication as a strategy for actualizing the virtual problem of tem-porality does invite some critical reflection on the concept of affective history. Scholarssuch as Agnew approach re-enactment practices as a form of history-making. That is,re-enactors are viewed (quite rightly) as generating a discourse about the past. Onthese terms, re-enactment is clearly subject to scholarly critiques that “[its] central epis-temological claim that experience furthers historical understanding is clearly problematic:body-based testimony tells us more about the present self than the collective past”(Agnew 2004, 335). However, what happens when we reconsider re-enactment as notjust a way to produce knowledge about the past, but as performing temporal work?The argument I am advancing makes this recalibration. Replication is a strategy religiouscommunities use to construct their relationship with time. In the cases of Ark Encounterand Trek, this is realized as collapsing a strict divide between past and present throughmoral and spiritual affinities that create affective bonds.

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Disruptive Potential

As forms of affective history Ark Encounter and Trek are organized by the mechanism oftemporal collapse. The affinities produced are integral to why religious authorities findthese practices promising (to renew commitment, to convert) and why adherents mightfind these practices compelling. Stopping here, though, would leave this analysis incom-plete. The actualization of temporality that is performed through replication does notalways or simply work seamlessly; it is open to disruptions.

A potential source of disruption are historical elements that threaten the idealized past.Replication, like all forms of re-creating the past, requires erasure. Selected realities areremoved because they have the potential to undermine, contradict, or simply co-existuneasily with the version of history being promoted. And, like other forms of historicalerasure, the redacted elements can only be obscured, never destroyed. They persist, avail-able to intrude on narrative and ideological coherence. An analogous case is the historicalerasure that occurs regularly among American evangelical pilgrims to Israel-Palestine.“Protestants seek the ‘original stones’ of Jesus’s day, ignoring (Byzantine Christian andother) remains of later periods as oriental clutter that can be removed to display thetruth of Old and New Testament scripture” (Feldman 2007, 365, emphasis added). Whileunwanted clutter can be ignored and removed, it continues to exist, full of potential tointrude again in other settings, other excavations, other trips.

In the case of Trek, a particular historical experience is idealized, the lives of 3,000 pio-neers who walked and pulled handcarts 1200 miles from 1856 to 1860. Immediately, thisobscures the fact that many more pioneers travelled West without handcarts and with theaid of trains and boats. There is also the more ideologically freighted erasure of historicalrealities from that sliver of the LDS past. In particular, two highly controversial practices –exclusion of non-whites from leadership and polygamous marriage—are removed fromthe lives of pioneers. Trek “can galvanize generations if its drudgery is valorized, itsmost dramatic moments highlighted, and its embarrassing episodes forgotten” (Eliason1997, 175; cf. Mueller 2013).

I began presenting on my fieldwork with Ark Encounter’s creative team in April 2012.One question I have consistently received, often in the frame of joking interactions aftera conference panel’s end, is if the team has plans for depicting Noah’s drunken, nakedepisode. My questioners are referring to Genesis 9:20–21: “Noah, a man of the soil, pro-ceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and layuncovered inside his tent” (New International Version). The answer is no, the teamnever discussed this text. The (probably obvious) reason is that this would both disruptthe park’s central narrative of Noah’s righteousness, and would create ethical-aestheticdilemmas in their goal of designing a family-friendly park.

My purpose is not simply to highlight a pattern of ideologically selective redaction; itis well established that such erasure occurs and predictably serves the needs of narra-tive coherence. I name these examples to highlight the disruptive potentiality of thevery past that is being replicated. This echoes a broader need to suspend notionsthat there is an isomorphic relation between the design of replications and their recep-tion. Why should we expect adherents to experience replications exactly as they areintended? We know from scholarship on pilgrimage and religious tourism that partici-pants are equally capable of suspicion, critique, irony, and play as they are sincere

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devotion, and are also capable of moving freely among these stances (Coleman andElsner 2004).

In her analysis of Trek, Megan Jones documents a clear moment of youthful resistanceto the demand for sincerity. When adult leaders tried to create a sacred space around apioneer burial ground through reverent and silent prayer, some teenagers talked andlaughed throughout the corral to prayer (2006, 125). This moment may index a genera-tional hesitation to valorize the pioneers. “Many younger Mormons view the trappingsof ‘the cult of the pioneers’ as ‘kitsch,’ ‘old-timey,’ and irrelevant” (Eliason 1997, 200).The same can be asked about how creationist visitors will actually experience Ark Encoun-ter. Will the team’s best efforts to immerse fail? What will that failure look like, and whatwill be its result? Is it possible that Noah’s life will appear too implausible to actually beliteral history, even for strict literalists? Could Ark Encounter deconvert creationists? Suc-cessful or not, the disruption of temporal collapse remains an inherent potential in theprocess of replication.

Coda

How do religious communities construct relationships with time? This article has outlineda method for engaging this question. I argued that temporality is a virtual problem that ispivotal for the composition of religion. This problem requires actualization, and religiousreplication is a strategy for doing so, one that is dedicated to constructing a relationshipwith the past. In the case studies of a creationist theme park and Mormon pioneer trek re-enactment, replication takes the form of collapsing time by creating affective affinitiesbetween the past and present.

This article makes a positive case for using the conceptual model of virtual problems-strategic actualizations (Bialecki 2012). This model lends itself to comparative anthropolo-gical inquiry by defining problems as sources of open potentiality. By treating replicationas an actualization of temporality, I hope to have opened a comparative vein for theanthropology of religion. Applying the virtual–actual model refuses to quarantineHasidic replicas of “770”, Trek re-enactment, and the biblical re-creation of Ark Encounterin discrete and respective subfields—case studies only for the anthropology of Judaism orChristianity. Instead, they can be treated as differentiated actualizations of a shareddilemma: how to construct a relationship with time. This temporal work illustrates themore general truth that religion is inextricably about actively managing adherents’location in, and experience of, time.

Religious lives are replete with examples that parallel replication, other forms whereritual is harnessed to induce “the complex temporal nexus of past–present–future”(Hirsch and Stewart 2005, 262). Rituals of memorialization are about grounding adherentsin the temporal trajectory of their tradition; from the Jewish Passover Seder to CatholicEucharist, stations of the cross, and celebrations of saints, to Islamic fasting. Pilgrimage,in particular, can be usefully read alongside rituals of religious replication. The sacred jour-neys and devotional travels that comprise pilgrimage are centrally concerned with build-ing attachments to a religious past through place and place-based ritual. On the Caminode Santiago a spiritually eclectic mix of pilgrims emphasize the significance of retracingthe paths of previous pilgrims (Frey 1998). Or, in the streets of Bahia, Brazil, we find com-peting claims to racial, national, and spiritual pasts when American heritage pilgrims

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interact with local Afro-Brazilians (Selka 2013). The comparative analysis of replication Ihave put forward promises to provide a revealing touchstone for understanding how pil-grimage and other ritual forms work to resolve problems of temporality.

“Temporalizations of past time”, as Munn (1992, 112) describes it, “create modes ofapprehending certain futures” (115). That is, constructing relationships to the past arealways already ways of plotting potential futures. Trek re-enactment is both a strategyfor constructing Mormon religious tradition and a strategy for intensifying the religiouscommitment of Mormon youth. As it materializes a literalist biblical past, Ark Encounter isdefinitely future-oriented: it is an instrument for creating new converts to creationism.Ultimately, these forms of religious replication look ahead as much as they look back.Recalling Tomlinson’s appeal to Kierkegaard, they are ways of recollecting forward(2014).

In addition to advancing the comparative anthropology of religion, this analysis of repli-cation can inform comparative studies in historicity (Hirsch and Stewart 2005). Religion isby no means the only virtual field where the problem of temporality plays an organizingrole. After all, Ark Encounter is fundamentally oriented to ideologically oppose a differentapprehension of the past, evolutionary science. Studies in secular temporality will alsobenefit from close analyses of how the past is brought into the present and with what tem-poral effects.

In treating Ark Encounter and Trek as performances of affective history that build moraland spiritual affinities between past and present, I engaged Vanessa Agnew’s work on his-torical re-enactment. The forms that Agnew highlights, such as historical reality television,mark an affective turn in how the past is consumed in late modern contexts (2007).Museum studies scholar Mike Wallace wrote in the mid-1990s that “Americans crowdinto historic sites, collect antiques, consume historical novels, take in costume epics andmovies about time travel, and devour innumerable docudramas and documentaries ontelevision” (1996, x). The past seems an inexhaustible source of fascination for Americans;what the public turn towards the affective indexes is a consumptive preference for enter-tainment strategies of immersion, simulation, and play.

While Ark Encounter seeks to immerse visitors in a literal biblical past and Trek seeks toimmerse participants in a heroic migratory past, other places conjure other pasts. Theatresstudies scholar Scott Magelssen argues that “simming”, or participating in simulations ofpast conditions, is now a dominant trend in heritage tourism and American historymuseums (2014). He describes a living history museum in Indiana where visitors canrole-play as 1830s fugitive slaves seeking freedom through the Underground Railroad. Visi-tors are immersed through a range of bodily, sensory practices: they are forced to kneel byangry slave owners, they flee from their captors on foot, and they hide silently in secretsafe houses.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum inWashington, D.C. is thoroughly outfitted by theimmersive imperative. The overall frame for the museum’s design insists on an affectiveexperience: “It would have to communicate through raw materials and organization ofspace the feel of inexorable, forced movement: disruption, alienation, constriction, obser-vation, selection” (Linenthal 1995, 88). Numerous strategies collaborate towards this end:the use of “closed, blind windows”; featuring indexical material items such as canisters ofZyklon B; “intentionally ugly, dark-gray metal elevators”; narrow and crowded spaces; and,distribution of a biographical card when visitors first enter the museum to transform the

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Holocaust from a mass, anonymous event to an individual, personalized experience (Line-nthal 1995, 102, 116, 167, 171, 189).

In July 2015 I participated in a compelling example of historical immersion at theNational Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia. The Center’s first floor per-manent exhibition, “Rolls Down Like Water”, uses multimedia exhibits to tell the history ofthe American Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Publicity materials promisethat, “Visitors will be immersed in a visceral experience of sights, sounds and interactivedisplays depicting the courageous struggles of individuals working to transform theUnited States from Jim Crow laws to equal rights for all”.10 The most memorable displayfor me was a re-created 1950s lunch counter. You are invited to sit down, put on a pairof headphones, place your hands on a pair of sensors, and close your eyes. Through theheadphones, an increasingly violent barrage of yells and insults plays, demanding youleave the diner immediately. The sensors alert you if your hands move even a fraction.While I managed to keep my hands in place for the duration of the recording, I openedmy eyes feeling disturbed, shaken, alarmed, and assaulted.11

As affective history performances, Ark Encounter and Trek express something funda-mental about what it means to do religion: they actualize the virtual problem of tempor-ality. In doing so, these cases of religious replication also index a broader cultural realitythat contemporary American publics prefer to consume the past in ways that resonatewith “raw, reactive sensation” (O’Neill 2013, 1095).

Acknowledgements

I owe a special thanks to Jon Bialecki for his incisive feedback on an earlier manuscript draft. Mythinking in the area of temporality and virtuality is deeply influenced by Jon’s work, and the con-tours for this article were built in earnest during our Union Lodge No. 1 conversations at the 2015American Anthropological Association meetings. Additionally, I thank Simon Dein for first pointingme to the phenomenon of 770 replicas; Jacob Hickman for an insightful conversation about Trek;and, Amanda White, a student at Miami University, for helping me design Materializing the Bible.The latter has been most persuasive for me in solidifying the vitality of replication as a religiouspractice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For exquisite photographs of selected 770 replicas, see this collection by a New York-basedartist. Accessed January 13, 2016. http://robbinsbecher.com/projects/770/.

2. Deleuze’s “virtual” has also been used by anthropologists to think through matters of ontol-ogy, variation, and ritual productivity. For example, Kapferer (2004) and Viveros de Castro(2007); cf. Bialecki (In press).

3. Source: Accessed January 9, 2016. https://www.lds.org/youth/activities/stake-and-multistake-activities/camps-and-youth-conferences/treks?lang=eng.

4. Accessed January 10, 2016. https://www.lds.org/youth/activities/bc/pdfs/stake/Handcart-Trek-Guidelines-June-2015.pdf?lang=eng.

5. Accessed January 10, 2016. https://www.lds.org/callings/church-safety-and-health/training-and-video-resources/trek-safety?lang=eng.

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6. This is an established strategy for heightening the immersive effect. For example, visitors tothe United States Holocaust Memorial Museum begin their museum tour by receiving anidentification card with the biography of a man or woman who experienced Holocaust perse-cution (Linenthal 1995).

7. Accessed January 10, 2016. https://www.lds.org/youth/activities/bc/pdfs/stake/Handcart-Trek-Guidelines-June-2015.pdf?lang=eng.

8. For example, accessed February 27, 2016. http://www.nps.gov/mopi/learn/historyculture/index.htm.

9. The use of “affect” in this article to understand relationships of temporality—with emphaseson bodily inscription, expression, and experience—resonates with other mobilizations of theconcept by anthropologists of religion. See, for example, O’Neill (2013) and Johnson (2015).

10. Accessed January 18, 2016. https://www.civilandhumanrights.org/civil-rights-exhibit.11. Auslander (2014) addresses the political and moral complexities of white bodies re-enacting

African-American experiences.

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