Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, the Strange, and the Substance of Faith

In the summer of 2002, Timothy K. Beal loaded his family into a twenty-nine-foot-long motor home and hit the rural highways of America in search of roadside religious attractions—sites like the World's Largest Ten Commandments and Precious Moments Chapel. Roadside Religion tells of his attempts to understand the meaning of these places as expressions of religious imagination and experience, and to encounter faith in all its awesome absurdity.

"Beal quietly goes beneath the surface to show you that what you see is not always what you get . . . [Answers] questions you might never have thought of asking, even as it keeps the pages turning."
—Caroline Leavitt, Boston Sunday Globe

"A definitively open-minded professor of religion . . . In his introduction, Beal notes that his daughter, Sophie, has said that what he likes to do 'is make creepy things interesting.' Smart girl."
—Sarah Ferrell, New York Times Book Review

"Full of gentle humor and clever observations . . . Whether he's tackling the popularity of biblical mini-golf courses or Precious Moments figurines, Beal . . . uncovers serious questions about religion and its sometimes highly singular practitioners."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Timothy K. Beal is Florence Harkness Professor of Religion and director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. His books include Religion and Its Monsters and The Book of Hiding, and his essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Washington Post. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.