The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality - International Voices in ...

154 The Old Testament and Christian Spirituality
location, and this contributes strongly to the Creation Museum
attracting between 3,000 and 4,000 visitors a day during its
summer season—much more than any similar sites, such as a
smaller creation museum in San Diego,
(www.icr.org/discover/index/discover_museum), and a fossil
museum in Germany with a similar creationist disposition (cf.
www.nwcreation.net/museums.html).
Though a tongue-in-cheek assertion would hold that
creationists, given their partiality to a strictly circumscribed
placement of all things on earth and in time, could be expected to
choose their prime site wisely, at the very least the choice of this
location was a well-considered business decision. However, there
clearly is more to this choice of geography. Here a deliberate
selection was made for a specific place (rather than a non-place) 50
that is integrally meaningful to the mission of the Creation
Museum. The Cincinnati region itself holds no symbolic currency
for creationists as would, for instance, Salt Lake City, Utah, for
Mormons; however, it is not a holy site that the founders of the
Creation Museum sought. The RPC debate in which this museum
is engaged regards the entire American populace (and wider) as its
site of struggle. The spirituality it seeks to promote is regarded by
its proponents as both timeless and borderless (in geographical
sense). Therefore, openness and convenience are the main criteria
for such an engagement. 51 This is communicated not only by the
extensive travels to speaking engagements of the leadership of the
Creation Museum/Answers in Genesis, but also by the deliberate
50 Cf. D. Perrin, Studying Christian Spirituality (New York: Routledge, 2007),
63–68, drawing on M. Augé, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of
Supermodernity (London: Verso, 1995).
51 This general impression of openness was somewhat belied by the imposing
security in the form of armed guards with police dogs at the facility. This was
however ascribed to “post 9/11” vigilance, an atmosphere which was (not
surprisingly) most evident at United States airports. Still, I retained a sense of
unease that the reason given may not have been all that was behind these
security measures.