ORLANDO, Fla. — In a small theme park not far from the Magic Kingdom, Jesus is the star attraction.
Each afternoon at 4:30, barring heavy rain or lightning, an actor portraying Jesus stumbles along a path to the top of a makeshift mountain where Roman soldiers nail his tortured body to a cross. A chorus of professional singers tells the story of the Crucifixion as the audience members watch in awe, tears flowing down their cheeks.
"I've always said we should have someone standing at the exit with a box of tissue," said Dan Hayden, executive director of the Holy Land Experience, an attraction that draws more than 200,000 people a year, most of them Christians.
The theme park — providing a daylong dose of sermons, music and theatrics designed to reinforce evangelical teachings — is one of the most obvious signals that Christian entertainment has entered the mainstream. The park began as a daring experiment in 2001 to lure a portion of the 50 million visitors who travel to Orlando each year. And by most accounts, it has succeeded in proving that in America, religion sells — big time.
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In recent years, evangelical Christians, disillusioned by what they consider to be the "sinning" of Hollywood, have created a more than $4 billion a year religious-entertainment industry, including amusement parks, music, books, movies, wrestling matches and rock concerts.
With nearly 87 percent of Americans identifying themselves as Christians, experts said, religion has become a lucrative part of American popular culture.
The influence of evangelicals is everywhere in today's society, according to Alan Wolfe, a sociologist at Boston College, but that is because evangelicals are being influenced by popular culture, not the other way around.
"Evangelicals are different from fundamentalists who reject popular culture because they think it is corrupt," Wolfe said. "Evangelicals don't want to reject the world, they want to persuade others to the way of Jesus and engage other people in their religion. Embracing popular culture has allowed them to do that."
