Flooded with Emotions at The Ark Encounter

certain things occur in specific parts of the world that just don’t happen anywhere else.

If you didn’t grow up in the Bible belt or a Christian part of the world, some of this Substack might not make much sense. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read along though, hell, you might learn something.

In July I had the unique pleasure of visiting The Ark Encounter, an enormous Noah’s Ark replica in Kentucky, built, interestingly, by an Australian Young Earth Creationist named Ken Ham. If you’d like the gist of it, with photos you can read my quick write up in the Newcastle Herald, (it’s free to read) and also it appears my video interview with the Texas couple made it to multiple Aussie news sources.

Why go?
I have been wanting to go for years. It’s for the same reason I want to visit and interview folks at a snake handling church before I die; these are interesting people who see the world differently from the way I do. The Ark Encounter folks built the Ark biblically, based on the story of Noah in the book of Genesis. People like this pique a primal curiosity in me. I once told my parents’ pastor that I wanted to interview some snake handlers in some church deep in a holler somewhere, and she rolled her eyes. She listed progressive, left-leaning Christian southerners I could interview instead. I understand the desire to shine a light beyond the backwoods, backward bible thumpers, (note I regularly do so in my Substack, if you read my interviews) but what she, and many other democratic southerners fail to realize is that progressive do-gooders are everywhere in the world. And yes they’re great and of course we should tell their stories, but certain things occur in specific parts of the world that just don’t happen anywhere else. The stories that are a combination of religion/upbringing/tradition and a whole lot of other special ingredients make particular regions fascinating, and not just to me, a Southerner who escaped and is now weirdly more obsessed with where she came from than most people are who never leave

I digress, as per usual.

I’d love to experience Mecca for the same reasons I wanted to do the Ark Encounter. The ark is a lot closer to home (Williamstown, KY) so easier to tick off the bucket list. I’d also love to hang out with the Amish and the Mennonites. It’s why I loved experiencing The Burning of the Dolls in Argentina or Dia De Los Muertos in Mexico.

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It’s why I loved experiencing a molasses Stir Off in Appalachia, why I want to go to an American Indian Powwow with my Aunt Lisa and I loved trying the Kava ritual in Vanuatu.

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I want to go to the Red Light District in Amsterdam. I want to try Holi in India, I want to do Carnival in Brazil, Mardi Gras in New Orleans and ayahuasca in Peru. (It dawns on me I’m not sure what the unique Australian cultural experience is… is it sports?! Please someone tell me in the comments.)

Things are odd to the rest of the world and normal within certain small circles and that, my dear readers, is what makes life interesting. I’m of the controversial opinion that as long as nobody is harming anyone else with their rituals or beliefs, no matter how batshit crazy they are, then it’s actually fine. And maybe if we all were more open to each others’ wild and weird ideas we might all get along better and become less tribal. Maybe we could understand the other and even change the minds of those on the more questionable, problematic ends of the spectrum. But enough hippie bullshit, let’s jump into more details of my afternoon at the Ark Encounter.

Please note. I have written this Substack in one night. I have not done the deep dive into the people, the politics, the money, the architecture, the development, any of that stuff that went into this monstrosity. Some casual Googling tells me that it was a $100 million dollar project and Bill Nye the Science Guy said it was ‘hogwash.’

I officially interviewed three different people on this little holiday and all of them were there to experience something spiritual. Scroll down to get to the interviews.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
For a tourist attraction that is actively advocating for an alternative education to what I learned in school, it wasn’t all bad. There were multiple plaques and displays talking about how Christianity is not racist and racism is bad. I saw people of every color and cultural background (far more ranges in skin colors here than I saw at Dollywood I must admit, although of course these are anecdotal observations.)

In fact, I learned from talking to one of the volunteers that the Ark Encounter takes in students from Bolivia every summer who want to learn English. This seems like a fairly different mentality to the “Build The Wall” evangelicals who passionately attend Trump Rallies. This was quite refreshing to me as I grew up with a few “God fearin’ folk” who probably wouldn’t consider themselves racist but wouldn’t hesitate to tell you why interracial marriage is wrong and how the slaves didn’t all have it bad, etc. You know the type.

Anyways, that was refreshing, as was the $12 Uncle Leroy’s Caramel Corn that I bought from the gift shop and scarfed down on the way home as America’s largest All you can eat buffet next door was closed.

Also refreshing were the references to animals and nature, including the facts about endangered species I read as I walked towards the ark. I didn’t factcheck the facts at the Creationist theme park, but I feel like even if it was all nonsense, if people are leaving worried about endangered species, that’s a plus for our planet.

Please note, the bird you see above is not real. I saw heaps of animal (and dinosaur!) displays, but it wasn’t until I left the ark and made it to the petting zoo where I saw actual real live animals.

Less exciting were some of the signs absolutely denouncing Darwin’s theory of evolution, but the flood of refill unlimited drinks sign cracked me up.

I wanted to interview the staff, but they made it clear they didn’t want talk to the press, even a harmless part-time travel writer like me. On both the second and third floor of the ark there were movies produced by the founders, both with a particularly negative message about journalists and the media, who, I’m guessing, were not kind to Ken Ham and his team, especially when it was being built.

Grace and bitterness
If you follow my Substack you know I grew up in a Christian household, but probably more importantly I had Christian friends and partook in Christian traditions. In Bible study I learned about missionaries and heard about how Christians have been persecuted as I’m sure many zealots from many different religions have been. And for some folks, the more you try to dismiss their beliefs, the stronger they feel validated and self righteous in said beliefs. (I reckon people do this with political ideologies as well, but that’s a rant for another time.) I can imagine why strongly Christian people are defensive and part of me thinks that knee-jerk reaction is valid. But then my-live-and-let-live mentality only goes so far…

According to the scripture, the reason God flooded the earth was because there was too much sinnin’ going on. I wore a long, modest dress to the Ark Encounter and multiple people there complimented me on how nice I looked. I thanked them kindly, but part of me felt a flicker of rage. I wondered if they liked how I looked because it was wholesome and handmaiden-ish. I wasn’t encouraging lustfulness. Glory be to god for my modesty and not driving them poor helpless menfolk to have sinful thoughts.

One of the Ark Encounter’s interpretation of sinning, (regrettably I didn’t get a photo) looked to me like a giant fantastic orgy. I remembered why the church has occasionally really pissed me off. I remember going to my friend’s church retreat as a teenager where we were all asked to bow our heads and raise our hands if we promised to save sex for marriage. I remember feeling like a bad person because I was curious about having sex before marriage, because I was curious not just about same-sex relationships, which in my more progressive community was probably mostly okay, but just for exploring sex in general. I remember feeling judged and shamed because I wanted to look sexy, and part of that made me feel guilt and part of that made me want to double down and shock people even more. And that comes back to my big issues with religion/dogmas/ strong beliefs and that is it’s wrong to try to use an ideology to control people and change their nature.

Am I going on a tangent? Am I seeing religion through the lens of my attention-hungry, teenage-girl wound? Poor little Alex.

I could unpack religions, idols, my desire to be promiscuous and provocative and how it’s connected to culture, but maybe I’m just naturally a little shit stirrer. Who knows.

The most disappointing part of the ark was when I got to the last level when it went from at least attempting to be educational and entertaining and instead just this, like, large-scale, poster-sized version of the leaflets born again Christians hand out on street corners that warn of hellfire and brimstone if you don’t convert. If my intelligence wasn’t insulted at first, it certainly felt like that on the way out. It’s like the curators said “and after we take them through the fun part with Noah and the dinos, we hit ‘em in the heart where it hurts.” We guilt ‘em into Gawd for the grand finale!

I mean seriously, there were even a little bible leaflets to take with you when you leave.

Anyway readers, I’m not sure how you’ll feel about this Substack. Was it too much about me? Was I too harsh? Was I not harsh enough? Did I offend you? Did I bore you?!

I have included the recordings below of different people I interviewed, in the hopes to display how differently this place affected others. I let it get my goat a little bit, but also, as I said in my Herald article, who am I to judge?

It’s whatever floats your boat.

Click play to hear the interviews below!