On the second floor of a cultural center at Christ Cathedral in Orange County, an AI-rendered depiction of Jesus, calm and smiling, fills one side of the room. Breaking a piece of flatbread in two, he passes it to the 12 similarly enlarged men projected on all four walls around him. On the ground are images of heaping plates of food — roast lamb, vegetables, olives and dips.
“Take and eat,” the AI Jesus says. “This is my body.”
In the center of the room, real-life visitors arrayed on 26 swivel chairs turn their heads back and forth to take in the supersized Last Supper occurring all around them. Already, they have been plunged into the sea of Galilee watching as Jesus walked on water and witnessed his transfiguration on a mountain top. It was all part of what’s being touted as “a museum unlike any other, where faith and forensics meet.”
Located five miles from Disneyland on the campus that once housed televangelist Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral Ministries, the Shroud of Turin Experience is Orange County’s newest tourist attraction with a Christian twist. The 10,000-square-foot exhibit, which opened to the public last week, uses digital projection, artificial intelligence and special effects to introduce visitors to the life of Jesus as depicted in the Gospels with a focus on the mysterious linen burial cloth that believers say wrapped his body after the crucifixion…