Jana Mathews

The Holy Land Experience

THE HOLY LAND EXPERIENCE TIMELINE

1989:  Marvin Rosenthal moved to Orlando, Florida and founded Zion’s Hope, an evangelical ministry whose purpose was to convert Jews to Christianity and illuminate to Christians the influence of Jewish culture and history in the bible.

1990s:  Rosenthal used solicited donor funds to purchase a fifteen-acre plot of land in Orlando’s tourist corridor and started construction on a ministry complex that was then called Zion’s Hope.

1997:  Phase I of Zion’s Hope opened. This $2,500,000 structure took the form of a 20,000- square-foot conference center and exhibit space.

1999:  Ground broke on an interactive living history museum expansion to Zion’s Hope, rebranded as The Holy Land Experience (HLE).

2001 (February 5):  HLE opened its doors to the public.

2002:  Longtime Rosenthal supporters Robert (1938-1999) and Judy Van Kampen financed the construction of the Scriptorium.

2002-2005:  Attendance at HLE steadily declined, as did the attraction’s revenue. At the same time, HLE engaged in a protracted legal battle with Bill Donegan, Orange County (FL) Property Appraiser, over HLE’s unpaid property taxes.

2005 (July):  Facing mounting debt and increased pressure from HLE’s Board of Directors, Marvin Rosenthal stepped down from his leadership role at HLE. Rosenthal’s departure also marked the formal separation of Zion’s Hope ministry from HLE.

2005-2006:  HLE’s daily operations were overseen by the attraction’s Board of Directors.

2006:  The State of Florida passed a state law that made it possible for HLE to gain exemption from federal income taxes.

2006:  Bill Donegan withdrew his suit against HLE.

2006 (September):  Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the world’s largest religious cable television network, acquired local Orlando station WTGL. Around the same time, HLE put out feelers to larger Christian ministries to explore the possibility of a partnership or buyout.

2007 (June):  HLE’s Board of Directors sold the attraction to TBN for an estimated $37 million. Tom Powell, longstanding HLE board member, was installed as CEO.

2007 (August 21):  Tom Powell resigned from his positions as CEO of HLE and member of the Board of Directors. The four remaining board members were TBN founders Paul Crouch Sr. and Jan Crouch, and the couple’s two adult sons, Paul Crouch Jr. and Matthew Crouch. Jan became the attraction’s acting president.

2010:  HLE constructed the Church of All Nations, a 2,000-seat auditorium and film studio.

2012:  Paul Sr. and Jan Crouch were accused by their granddaughter and  former TBN Chief Finance Director, Brittany Koper, of using company money to fund their lavish personal lifestyle.

2012:  Corra Crouch (Brittany’s younger sister) sued TBN, alleging that at the age of thirteen she had been molested and raped by a TBN employee.

2013 (November 30):  Paul Crouch died from heart problems.

2016 (May 25):  Jan Crouch suffered a massive stroke.

2016 (May 31):  Jan Crouch died at the age of seventy-seven in Orlando, Florida.

2016 (July):  HLE held an estate sale at which it liquidated ornate furniture, props, and other items introduced during Jan Crouch’s tenure in an attempt to alleviate financial pressures.

2017:  A jury awarded Corra Crouch $2,000,000 for pain and suffering caused by Jan Crouch’s failure to report Corra’s sexual assault and attempt to cover it up.

FOUNDER/GROUP HISTORY

After a sixteen-year tenure leading a New Jersey-based ministry that aimed both to convert Jews to Christianity and educate Christians about the “Jewishness of the Gospel” (“The History of Zion’s Hope” n.d.), Marvin Rosenthal [Image at right] and his wife Marbeth felt inspired by God to relocate their ministry to central Florida. The couple arrived in Orlando in August 1989, and shortly thereafter, started Zion’s Hope Inc. out of their living room (“The History of Zion’s Hope” n.d.). When Rosenthal arrived in Orlando, he found it to be fertile missionary land, but also one with lots of competition. Specifically, Rosenthal was part of a larger wave of migration by evangelical Christian ministries, organizations and institutions from different parts of the country to Orlando in the 1980s and 1990s that included the likes of Wyclif Bible Translators, Asbury Seminary, and Geneva College (Pinsky 1999).

Exactly how and when Rosenthal came up with the idea of building a reconstructed first-century Jerusalem in Orlando is a little murky, but what is clear is that he spent the better part of the 1990s soliciting funds from wealthy donors and then using that money to purchase a small plot of vacant land right off the I-4 freeway in the middle of the city’s main tourist corridor. On that land, Rosenthal constructed a 20,000-square-foot ministry center for Zion’s Hope that included a conference center and exhibit hall. This structure, identified as the first phase of a multi-year, $10,000,000 capital project, opened to public in 1997 (Pinsky 1997).) Momentum for the project then picked up. To assist with the next phase of construction, Rosenthal commissioned ITEC Entertainment Corporation, an Orlando-based theme park design firm whose portfolio includes Disney World and Universal Studios, to design and build a living bible museum (Canedy 2001) that, once completed, was rebranded as The Holy Land Experience (HLE). [Image at right] This $16,000,000, fifteen-acre attraction opened the doors to the public on February 5, 2001. HLE bills itself as a place “where the bible comes alive” (“The Holy Land Experience” n.d.) and whose signature features include a reproduction of the Qumran Caves, a replica Ark of the Covenant, a simulated recreation of Golgotha and the Garden Tomb, and the world’s largest model of Jerusalem circa 66 AD (Spalding 2002). In 2002, longtime Rosenthal supporters Robert and Judy Van Kampen financed the construction of a high-tech $9,000,000 bible museum (called the Scriptorium), which houses the couple’s personal collection of biblical artifacts and manuscripts (Hampton 2002).

Rosenthal reported that 300,000 people visited HLE in its first year (Flora 2007). After the novelty of the attraction wore off, however, the flood of park visitors trickled down to small stream, and with it the park’s revenue. By 2005, HLE was over $2,000,000 in debt. In a desperate attempt to turn itself around, HLE’s Board of Directors ousted Rosenthal, trimmed down expenses and ramped up its marketing plan. Despite these efforts, the Board failed to get a handle on the debt. By 2006, it was reaching out to larger ministries about the potential of “coming alongside” HLE (Flora 2007).

Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the largest Christian broadcasting network in world, expressed interest. Founded by Paul and Jan Crouch in 1973, TBN is a billion-dollar media empire built by selling airtime to Christian ministries and soliciting donations (via telethons) from its worldwide viewers. HLE needed publicity to boost its attendance, and the Crouches were enraptured with the idea of converting HLE into a kind of “faith-based Universal Studios” (Flora 2007). In 2007, a deal was struck and TBN purchased HLE for $37,000,000. One of the first executive acts by the Crouch family was to hire longstanding HLE board member Tom Powell as the park’s new CEO. Ten short weeks later, however, Powell resigned his post (Kimball 2007). After his departure, HLE’s Board of Directors consisted entirely of members of the Crouch family.

In the wake of Powell’s departure, Jan Crouch [Image at right] took the helm at HLE, a role she held until her death in 2016. While Jan left day-to-day operations to others, her vision and personal taste guided the culture and aesthetic of the park. In the months after purchasing HLE, Jan Crouch set about putting her stamp on the space, which included adding a scaled Temple of Jerusalem, restaurants, gift shops, prayer gardens, and an expanded children’s playground. In 2012, HLE constructed the 2,000-seat Church of All Nations auditorium (“Church of All Nations”). The facility hosts multiple daily live shows, occasional tapings for TBN’s signature show, Praise the Lord, religious concerts and evangelical guest speakers. In recent years, the park has also introduced weekly bible studies, church services, and live cooking demonstrations.

Since its inception, HLE has been subsidized first by private donors and then by TBN. Since 2012, TBN’s contributions to HLE have dramatically decreased, putting greater financial pressure on the organization and leaving its future in doubt. Paul Crouch died in 2013 and Jan in 2016. Following Jan’s death, TBN performed a minor remodel of the park, which mostly involved removing many of the ornate decorations introduced during Jan’s tenure (“Holy Land Experience Faith and Family Theme Park” 2016).

DOCTRINES/BELIEFS

Rosenthal conceived of HLE as an attraction that would use entertainment (in the form of dioramas, displays, performances and theatrical reenactments) both to educate Christians about the role of Jewish figures, history and culture in the bible and to illuminate to Jews “the truth of Jesus Christ as Savior of the world” (“The Ministry.” n.d.). While the theme park openly ascribes to a Christian worldview, under Rosenthal’s watch, the site privileged a specific strand of evangelical Protestantism over denominational viewpoints. Evidence for this could be found most blatantly in the park’s hiring policies, which required new employees to sign a Christian doctrinal statement of belief that excluded Pentecostal beliefs and practices (Clarke 2001).

Rosenthal’s hard line view of Pentecostalism softened under TBN’s stewardship to the point where the park openly and actively promotes a culture of affective piety (Stevenson 2013). Chief among the attractions engineered to “touch” visitors and generate spiritual experiences is the park’s musical theater performance of Christ’s crucifixion called The Promise (The Passion before 2016). Throughout the performance, the stage actors break the fourth wall by soliciting the audience’s reaction. Culminating a string of requests for oohs, aahs, amens, and thank you Lords, is an invitation to become part of the Crucifixion narrative itself. In this pivotal moment, the actor playing Jesus pretends to miraculously heal another cast member, who is playing one of his disciples. Instead of moving the plot forward toward his prescribed end, Christ delays his date with destiny long enough to descend into the crowd and perform “real” faith healing miracles on members from the audience (Lowrie 2014; Silverman 2016).

The faith healing miracles performed on HLE’s stage comprise a practice central to the controversial brand of evangelism to which TBN ascribes. Commonly called prosperity gospel, this theology holds that individuals who give to God in the form of donations to earthly agents will, in return, be blessed with material wealth and health (Woo 2013). One of Jan’s favorite stories to recount on air was the time she raised her pet chicken from the dead. As the story goes, twelve-year-old Jan was horrified and heartbroken when her beloved fowl was hit by a car and its corpse mangled so badly that one of its eyes dangled from its socket. Though the chicken was clearly dead, it didn’t stay that way for long. After beseeching God on the chicken’s behalf, the bird made a full recovery (Zadrozny 2016).

Current visitors to HLE aren’t solicited for donations to TBN, at least not beyond the price of their admission ticket. However, tangible linkages to the fundamental tenets of prosperity gospel are scattered throughout the park, primarily in the form of prayer and so-called healing gardens. These foliage-rich alcoves are designed for personal meditation, but by nature of what they are called and where they are located, these spaces also work in subtle but powerful ways to figure TBN as a critical part of the process of spiritual, emotional, and temporal healing process.

If, by virtue of its association to TBN, HLE operates in the ideological service of prosperity gospel, the Scriptorium, [Image at right]  which is part of the physical footprint of the theme park but is operated and managed separately from it, communicates through its independence that it ascribes to a different ideological agenda. The $9,000,000 interactive bible museum houses the Van Kampen Collection of biblical artifacts, the fourth largest collection of its kind in the world. This timed-entry exhibition takes visitors through the chronological history of the material bible from its humble beginnings in ancient texts to the printed and bound material book. By portraying the European Reformation as the critical moment when the bible proverbially comes of age and, in doing so, attains its fixed and perfected state, the museum adheres to the distinctly Protestant belief of sola scriptura. While the superficial features of the bible (the size of the book, type of font, number of illustrations etc.) may change over time, the word of God is immutable and true (Mathews 2015).

RITUALS/PRACTICES

HLE blurs the boundaries between the categories of living history museum and church by combining period reenactments with real religious practices and rituals. Current visitors to the theme park can get up close and personal with a reconstructed Ark of the Covenant and watch actors demonstrate how it was transported through the wilderness for forty years and why. In addition, they can attend a Last Communion Supper with Jesus, where they sit around a rectangular table in a dimly lit room decorated like a first-century banquet hall. After fulfilling his assigned role in the dramatic reenactment of the Last Supper, the actor playing Jesus makes his way around the room and offers each guest a sacramental wafer. As park employees point out, the ritual isn’t just ceremonial: Jesus also is a real-life ordained minister.

Like other theme parks, HLE’s attractions, shows, and interactive experiences cycle in and out of operation. The cast member who plays Jesus is the indisputable star of the show, and at different moments in the recent past, it is has been possible to visit the park and baptized by him in the custom built Baptism of Jesus Fountain font, [Image at right] located near the front entrance of the Church of All Nations. Those who signed up for the experience (free of charge) changed into white robes, were led into the outdoor font by Jesus and after being fully immersed in the water by him, were told that they had received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Another cyclical attraction that emulates a religious ritual to the point of serving as a parody of it is the reenactment of the Sermon on the Mount. After delivering a brief speech and pronouncing a blessing on what appeared to be plastic loaves and fishes, Jesus solicits costumed cast members to feed the crowd. In lieu of real bread and fish, Jesus’s disciples deposit a handful of processed cheddar goldfish crackers into each visitor’s hand.

The line between real and simulated religious practice becomes even more fuzzy when visitors encounter HLE’s replica Western Wall. Like pilgrims who trek to Jerusalem, visitors to HLE’s wall are invited to write prayer requests on provided slips of paper and insert them into the cracks of the wall. Every week, HLE sends these prayer slips to Jerusalem, where volunteers insert them into the authentic Western Wall. Between 60,000 and 100,000 of these slips are filled out at HLE every year (Mayerowitz 2010).

Arguably the most compelling example of how the theme park works to collapse the distinction between church and museum is what happens on-site when the park is not open. HLE is closed to tourists on Sundays, but crowds still flock to the attraction every Sunday morning for non-denominational worship services held in the Church of All Nations. [Image at right] Hosted by senior pastors Tye and Shanté Tribbett of Live Church Orlando (“Live Church” n.d.), these services also are broadcast live online, and occasionally on TBN.

ORGANIZATION/LEADERSHIP

Marvin Rosenthal oversaw the construction of HLE and managed the attraction until his departure in 2005. In the two-year transitional period that followed, HLE’s Board of Directors oversaw the park’s daily operations. When Trinity Broadcasting Network purchased HLE in 2007, they brought in a new leadership team, headed first by Tom Powell and, shortly thereafter, by Jan Crouch. After Jan’s death in 2016, HLE has passed into the stewardship of her and Paul Crouch Sr.’s younger son, Matthew Crouch, and his wife Laurie.

In the seventeen years since its grand opening, the basic footprint of HLE has remained largely the same; the two major structural additions to the park since that time include the Scriptorium (2002) and the Church of All Nations (2012). Surrounding the park’s walls, interspersed in its parking lot and following the sidewalk leading up to its entrance are life-sized painted statues of animals. Passing by the frozen families of elephants, giraffes, hippos, rhinos, apes, and other creatures conditions the visitor to expect to be deposited at the front door of the Garden of Eden. Instead, one passes through metal turnstiles underneath a scaled reproduction of the Jaffa Gate. In the broadest sense, the park proper aims to reproduce the look and feel of first-century Jerusalem, which makes the temporary immersion into an Old Testament bible story a bit disorienting. But this is precisely the point. Conflation, of time and place and history and legend, is a hallmark feature of HLE, as well as one of its governing principles.

Since its opening, the park has housed what it claims as the world’s largest indoor 3-D model of Jerusalem, circa 66 A.D. This impressive and exceptionally detailed display makes clear that HLE cannot replicate the size, scope or scale of the real Holy Land on its fifteen-acre plot, even if it wanted to. What HLE offers the visitor is a compromise. Specifically, the park successfully collapses the topography of the region by reproducing its most defining structures. Included among the featured structures are inconsistently scaled replicas of the Great Temple, Bethlehem, Golgotha (including Calvary and the empty Garden Tomb), Via Dolorosa, the Mount of Olives, Qumran Caves, and the famed Upper Room, site of the Last Supper. At one point or another, all of these structures doubled as sets for live theatrical performances. The most notable of these multipurpose spaces is the reconstructed Golgotha, where, for years, the park’s bloody Passion play was staged.

When the Church of All Nations opened in 2012, the overwhelming majority of the live performances were moved inside this auditorium. Part of the reason for this move surely had to do with the comfort of the park’s visitors: Central Florida’s climate is punishingly hot and humid for most of the year. Another benefit that came through this relocation of theatrical performances had to do with technology, and specifically, access to the latest and greatest special effects. While staging Christ’s birth, ministry, and Crucifixion in outdoor theaters may produce a more historically accurate viewing experience, animating these stories from the bible on a high-tech stage with the aid of laser light shows and fog machines increases the likelihood that modern spectators will have a specific kind of emotive reaction to what they experiencing. In colloquial terms, HLE wants visitors to be “touched” by what they see.

While the Passion play has a permanent spot of HLE’s daily show schedule, the park’s other stage productions are temporary, with some rotating out seasonally. Other permanent fixtures at HLE include its Mediterranean-themed restaurants, bistros, and cafes that serve up house specialties like Goliath burgers and hummus salads. Located in a small building nearby one of the park’s restaurants, the park’s museum houses an eclectic mix of authentic and reproduction artifacts. A stone from Gethsemane is there, as is a piece of the Western Wall, several old bibles, a whip, and a crown of thorns. Around the corner is another exhibit (which is open to the public at irregular intervals and for only short periods of time) that houses a sampling of Paul Crouch’s personal collection of devotional objects, artifacts, and art.

At the newly revamped Jerusalem Marketplace, visitors can watch live demonstrations at a reconstructed carpenter’s shed, inn, and blacksmith shop. They can also shop for souvenirs. Like other theme parks, HLE has multiple gift shops that sell objects that range from evangelical books, DVDs, miniature shofurs and menorahs to stuffed animals, commemorative mugs and t-shirts, essential oils, and toy swords and plastic centurion helmets.

Just outside the main gift shop is the Smile of a Child play area for children. In addition to the predictable craft center and jungle gym-like contraptions, HLE also has a rock climbing wall, a dress up area (where kids can don period clothing and pretend to be their favorite biblical characters), and a gigantic replica whale head and mouth, into which kids can enter and hang out for long periods of time, just like Jonah. The children’s area also features a prayer cross, a wood crucifix with holes bored into it, which is designed to serve as a kind of juvenile analogue to the park’s replica Western Wall. In the same way that their parents are encouraged to submit prayer requests to the latter, the park’s youngest patrons are provided with the opportunity to write down prayers and insert the slips of paper into the cross’s holes.

While many of HLE’s featured attractions have stood the test of time, others have faded out of existence. In 2012, HLE opened Christus Gardens, an elaborate seven-part diorama display of salvation history featuring life-size wax figurines adorned largely in sequined and bedazzled costumes. The display’s ostentatious aesthetic blended in so perfectly with the ornate, gilded theme park décor favored by Jan Crouch that it was easy to miss that the whole diorama set was not native to the park, but rather, purchased from the defunct Christus Gardens bible attraction in Gatlinburg, Tennessee and imported in its entirety to HLE (Walsh 2012). After a five-year run, the exhibit closed for unexplained reasons.

Other HLE features that are no more include numerous life-size cut-outs of humans. As recently as 2015, there was one of HLE’s Jesus actor, walking on the Sea of Galilee (i.e. a man-made retention pond), and another of a smiling, purple-haired Jan Crouch. Other cut-outs that have surfaced and disappeared at intervals in recent years include images of Jesus and two thieves, nailed to their appropriate crosses on Calvary; Jesus walking on water in a 3D diorama located in the Smile of a Child section of the park, and a contemporary Jesus, dressed in ripped jeans, a white t-shirt, and angel wings, straddling a black motorcycle.

ISSUES/CHALLENGES

The public announcement that a ministry (whose mission was to convert Jews to Christianity) was constructing a religious theme park in the heart of Orlando did not sit well with many, including and especially the local Jewish community. Speaking about HLE’s evangelizing mission, National Jewish Defense League spokesman Irv Rubin famously stated, “There are two ways you can murder a Jew—physically like Auschwitz, and spiritually, the way of Marvin Rosenthal.” (“Controversy at Religious Theme Park” 2001). JDL representatives joined forces with locals to protest the opening of HLE. In addition to refuting the foundational principles upon which HLE is built, many took issue with way that HLE was appropriating Jewish culture, history and heritage (Pinsky 2006). Included on their lengthy list of complaints was the fact that religious objects were for sale in the gift shop and that the Scriptorium used sacred Hebrew texts to make a claim about Protestant exceptionalism (Mathews 2015; Branham 2009).

In addition to the controversies related to its existence, HLE also has been plagued with financial woes. When Rosenthal sold HLE to TBN, the theme park was over $2,000,000 in debt. Financial reports reveal that TBN’s ownership didn’t ameliorate HLE’s financial woes, but rather intensified them, resulting in the cable network having to pour millions of dollars each year into the theme park’s coffers. According to the Orlando Sentinel, these cash payments have decreased exponentially since 2012, the year that TBN voluntarily stopped soliciting pledges from their viewers (Justice 2016). If dwindling cash infusions by TBN put financial pressure on the attraction, the death of Jan Crouch sent it into a tailspin. Just months after Crouch’s death, HLE announced that it was holding a glorified estate sale, where it sold off furniture, a Harley Davidson motorcycle, and other decor (Brinkmann 2016). HLE responded to the rumor that the sale signaled that the attraction was going under by clarifying that the event was both an act of belt-cinching and a necessary precursor to a park-wide remodel (Wolf 2016).

While Jan’s death paved the way for a new, slightly more subdued aesthetic, it is still too early to tell if the other controversies tied to Crouch can be smoothed over as quickly. When HLE opened in 2001, it garnered the considerable attention, including from Bill Donegan, Orange County’s (FL) Property Appraiser. Donegan argued that HLE looked like a theme park, functioned like a theme park and thus should be taxed like one. HLE’s owners (Rosenthal and then the Crouches) countered by refusing to pay over $1,000,000 in allegedly owed back taxes and sued the county for tax exempt status on the grounds that it was not a theme park but rather a “living biblical museum” (Rodgers 2016).

The dispute ignited a protracted and very public legal battle that reached an abrupt end when the state of Florida passed a law granting tax exempt status to organizations that display biblical manuscripts and exhibits (“Florida Statute 196.1987” 2006). The law in part states that tax exemption may be extended to organizations that

exhibit, illustrate, and interpret Biblical manuscripts, codices, stone tablets, and other Biblical archives; provide live and recorded demonstrations, explanations, reenactments, and illustrations of Biblical history and Biblical worship; and exhibit times, places, and events of Biblical history and significance, when such activity is open to the public and is available to the public for no admission charge at least 1 day each calendar year” (“Florida Statute 196.1987”).

If the timing of the law struck the public as suspicious, the general suspicion was confirmed when the Washington Post reported that HLE paid lobbyists between $10,000 and $30,000 to push the legislation through (Alter 2006). According to financial reports, between 2006 and 2016, HLE saved itself over $2,000,000 in taxes (Rodgers 2016). The same law that grants HLE tax-free status also stipulates that the theme park must not charge admission on at least one day per year. HLE managed to draw ire for this act of compulsory generosity first by failing to advertise its annual free day and later by holding it on different days and in different months every year (Rodgers 2016). Despite HLE’s attempt to limit access to the park on its designated free day, the attraction ultimately retreated in response to the public’s shaming. For the past few years, the park has announced its annual free day in advance, albeit only by a few days.

HLE was still struggling to recuperate from one public relations nightmare when it was hit with another. In 2012, the Ghost of Tax Evasion Past resurfaced, this time with accusations that the Crouches were trying to claim his-and-her Windermere (FL) mansions as tax-exempt properties. TBN’s lawyers claimed that the properties were used as parsonages, or homes where church pastors live. Bill Donegan, however, was having none of it. The county property appraiser summarily denied TBN’s tax exemption request on the grounds that records showed that neither Paul nor Jan lived in the homes full-time (“Holy Land Experience Seeks Mansion Tax Breaks” 2012). Just three years after that, the Crouches were back in the local news again, this time for painting a mural of Jesus on a retaining wall near the entrance of HLE. The problem, as local reporters pointed out, was that the wall turned out to be public property (Tracy 2015).

By far the most serious charges levied against HLE and its owners have not come from external critics, however, but from the Crouch’s own inner circle. In 2012, Paul and Jan’s granddaughter, Carra Crouch, sued TBN for an incident that took place in 2006 when the then thirteen year-old Carra was raped by a TBN employee during a telethon taping in Georgia (Vincent 2016). In 2017, an Orlando jury awarded the now twenty-four year-old woman $2,000,000 in pain and suffering compensation resulting from Jan’s knowledge of the sexual assault, and attempt to cover it up (Stevens 2017).

To make matters worse for Paul Sr. and Jan, Carra wasn’t the only Crouch granddaughter to come forward with accusations of misconduct and impropriety in 2012. That same year, Carra’s older sister Brittany, who serving as the finance director of HLE at the time, claimed that Paul Sr. and Jan dipped into the company coffers to fund their extravagant personal lifestyles. Included among the luxuries allegedly financed in part by tax exempt viewer pledge funds were a luxurious mobile home (converted into a five-star doghouse for Jan’s two animals), extravagant dinners, and multiple homes used by family member and friends (Ritz 2012)

In a simultaneous attempt to sway the court of public opinion back into their favor and discredit Brittany, the Crouches fired back with the claim that Brittany’s accusations were retaliatory and meant to distract attention away from her own act of criminal embezzlement (Eckholm 2012). The family feud played out for several years before ending in a ceasefire that resulted in a deep relationship rift that included Paul Crouch Jr. and his children severing ties with the TBN empire.

IMAGES
Image #1: Photograph of Marvin Rosenthal.
Image #2: Photograph of the entrance to The Holy Land Experience.
Image #3: Photograph of Jan Crouch.
Image #4: Photograph of the Scriptorium.
Image #5: Photograph of a baptism taking place in the Baptism of Jesus Fountain.
Image #6: Photograph of the Church of All Nations

REFERENCES

Alter, Alex and ra. 2006. “Bibleland Orlando’s Holy Land Experience and Other Religious Theme Parks Mix Faith and Entertainment—But Not Without Controversy.” The Washington Post, September 23. Accessed from  https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2006/09/23/bibleland-span-classbankheadorlandos-holy-land-experience-and-other-religious-theme-parks-mix-faith-and-entertainment-but-not-without-controversyspan/509d1eaf-4063-49d9-88cf-fdc4d3c111de/?utm_term=.59b08b5a1e4f on 4 April 2018.

Branham, Joan R. 2009. “The Temple That Won’t Quit: Constructing Sacred Space in Orlando’s Holy Land Experience Theme Park.” Crosscurrents, September:358-82.

Brinkmann, Paul. 2016. “Holy Land Experience to Unload Furniture, Statues Amid Financial Turmoil.” Orlando Sentinel, July 20. Accessed from http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/brinkmann-on-business/os-holy-land-auction-20160719-story.html on 4 April 2018.

Canedy, Dana. 2001. “A Biblical Theme Park in Florida Begets Ill Will.” The New York Times, February 3. Accessed from https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/03/us/a-biblical-theme-park-in-florida-begets-ill-will.html on 4 April 2018.

“Church of All Nations.” The Holy Land Experience. Accessed from https://holylandexperience.com/exhibit/church-of-all-nations/ on 4 April 2018.

Clarke, Susan Strother. 2001. “Holy Land’s Hiring Doesn’t Work for Some Christians.” Orlando Sentinel, April 8. Accessed from http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2001-04-08/news/0104080137_1_holy-land-land-experience-first-pentecostal on 4 April 2018.

“Controversy at Religious Theme Park.” 2001. CBS News, February 5. Accessed from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/controversy-at-religious-theme-park/ on 4 April 2018.

Eckholm, Erik. 2012. “Family Battle Offers Look Inside Lavish TV Ministry.” The New York Times, May 4. Accessed from  https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/05/us/tbn-fight-offers-glimpse-inside-lavish-tv-ministry.html  on 4 April 2018.

Flora, Brad. 2007. “The Holy Land Experience: Who Shall Inherit the Kingdom?” News 21, August 21. Accessed from https://news21.com/story/2007/08/23/the_holy_land_experience_who on 4 April 2018.

“Florida Statute 196.1987.” 2006.  Accessed from http://law.onecle.com/florida/title-xiv/196.1987.html on 4 April 2018.

Hampton, Jim. 2002. “Scriptorium Brings in World-class Biblical Collection.” Orlando Business Journal, January 14. Accessed from https://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/stories/2002/01/14/newscolumn1.html on 4 April 2018.

“Holy Land Experience Seeks Mansion Tax Breaks.” 2012. WESH News, April 20. Accessed from http://www.wesh.com/article/holy-land-experience-seeks-mansion-tax-breaks/4415916 on 4 April 2018.

“Holy Land Experience Faith-and-Family Theme Park Announces Fresh New Look, Updated.” 2016. Cision PR Newswire, August 3. Accessed from https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/holy-land-experience-faith-and-family-theme-park-announces-fresh-new-look-updated-exhibits-and-productions-300308142.html on 4 April 2018.

Justice, Jessilyn. 2016. “Paul and Jan Crouch’s Holy Land Experience Plummets to Financial Chaos After Their Deaths.” Charisma News, July 21. Accessed from https://www.charismanews.com/us/58756-paul-and-jan-crouch-s-holy-land-experience-plummets-to-financial-chaos-after-their-deaths on 4 April 2018.

Kimball, Josh. 2007. “Head of U.S. ‘Holy Land’ Theme Park Resigns.” The Christian Post, September 5. Accessed from https://www.christianpost.com/news/head-of-u-s-holy-land-theme-park-resigns-29196/ on 4 April 2018.

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Post Date:
15 April 2018

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