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 watches 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 who want a trip back in time to biblical days.

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.

‘Embracing popular culture’

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.

“I see them not as shapers of American culture, I see popular culture shaping them,” said Wolfe. “Evangelicals are different from fundamentalists who reject popular culture because they think it is corrupt. 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.”

Moneymakers

The Christian book industry remains among the top moneymakers with more than 875,000 religious books sold in 2005. Christian-theme movies are becoming a billion-dollar industry and last year, more than 43 million spiritual albums were sold, fueled by more than 1,400 Christian radio stations and the Gospel Music Channel, which offers MTV-style entertainment.

The secular entertainment industry is beginning to take notice.

Two years ago, “The Passion of the Christ” brought in nearly $400 million nationwide. The film spun off a Christian product market, including witness cards with prayers written on them to nail pendants representing the spikes driven through Jesus’ feet. Last year, “The Chronicles of Narnia,” which Walt Disney Pictures directly marketed to churches and other religious outlets, racked up more than $290 million. Items marketed from that film are still bringing in cash.

Music and other outlets

Since the Christian music genre became popular in the 1970s with crossover artists like Amy Grant, whose mixture of religious lyrics and contemporary music took her to the top of the charts, spiritual music has expanded to include everything from Christian rock to Christian rap. On almost any weekend, young people fill arenas across America to rock for Christ to the sounds of BarlowGirl, a three-sister band that blends hard-rocking guitars with wholesome lyrics, or Superchic(k), a Chicago-based pop/rock group that appeals to Christian and general audiences with its faith-based songs.

“Christian rock groups took off in the 1990s and now they are an everyday thing,” said Philip Goff, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University. “Like TV commercials, the religious market is designed to appeal to young people. If evangelicals do not attract the youth, they will not be able to survive in the future.”

Florida’s Walt Disney World and Universal Studies hold dueling Christian concerts each summer. Disney’s “Night of Joy,” an adult contemporary event, brings in artists like Kirk Franklin. Universal’s “Rock the Universe” appeals to teens and showcases hip-hop groups like Grits.

“This is not just a bunch of nerds up there singing ‘Kumbaya,’ these concerts are very fascinating events with a lot of talented musicians,” said Chad Turner, 29, a seminary student from Orlando who owns about 200 Christian rap and worship CDs and attends concerts regularly.

The experience

While mega-churches have sponsored huge theatrical pageants at Easter and Christmas for decades, the Holy Land Experience was the first to try it on a daily basis five years ago. Earlier this year, a similar but smaller park, Explorations in Antiquity Center opened in LaGrange, Ga., less than two hours from Atlanta and near the Alabama state line, hoping to attract patrons from the buckle of the Bible belt.

Though attendance at the Holy Land Experience pales in comparison with the Goliath Disney, it attracts a steady stream of visitors seeking reaffirmation of their faith. Employees wearing robes, shawls and sandals greet guests at the gate. Visitors enter through the Jerusalem Street Market.

Recorded harp and violin music flows through the park, helping to block sounds of the secular world from a highway just beyond the hedges carved with the message “He Is Risen.” The sound of an ancient shofar announces the days events – a musical performed in The Great Temple, a 60-foot tall marble-facade structure, or a re-enactment of Christ mingling with the Israelites in the Wilderness Tabernacle.

The park holds the world’s largest indoor model of Jerusalem, a 45-by-25-foot long miniature structure of what Jerusalem looked liked in A.D. 66. It also features the Scriptorium, a museum housing a private collection of antique manuscripts, Bibles, scrolls and other historical religious artifacts.

It holds church services on Sunday and a weekly Bible study on Thursdays. But the most popular event is when the actor portraying Christ is crucified and then rises from the tomb.

“We have a core message here – that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world – and we present that message through entertainment,” said Hayden, the executive director. “Some people find their faith here and some come to have their faith strengthened. At the end of the day, that’s the most important thing.”