Black Country Churches Engaged

the sub-region’s ecumenical intermediate body

Simon Mansfield on Faith Tourism

A pilgrim is not a modern invention as it is as old as Christianity. Modernity has given it a new prominence. As Rome lay in ruins St Augustine wrote
   it is recorded of Cain that he built a city, while Abel, as though he were a merely a
   pilgrim on earth, built none. True city of saints is in heaven, here on earth Christians
wander as on pilgrimage through time looking for the Kingdom of eternity (St
Augustine, 1958).

Pilgrimage throughout history has been regarded as ‘an escape from reality’. Pilgrims dreams of being in another place as this world tempts them to relax and forget about their destination (Smith, 1992). The rigid dichotomies between pilgrims and tourists seem no longer tenable in modern day travel as the distinctions between them involves assumptions about the motivations of travellers who undertake journeys to sacred places as pilgrims have mixed motivations to go on pilgrimage (Smith (1992). Tourists visiting sacred sites in search of heritage may not be unmoved by the religious atmosphere.

The popular depiction of the tourist as a superficial hedonist seems just as far removed from the pious pilgrim who is motivated by faith to undertake an ascetic journey to a religious shrine. Edith and Victor Turner (1978) observe
A tourist is half a pilgrim, if a pilgrim is half a tourist

Furthermore Graburn (1972) maintains that
the terms ‘pilgrim’ and ‘tourist’ can be potent in native discourses that seek to
appropriate resources or advance particular interests

Graburn (1972) poses these questions ‘pilgrims, or tourists for whom, from whose perspectives, in what contexts and why? These questions seemed relevant after conducting an empirical study at Chester Cathedral on visitor experiences. As visitors entered the cathedral a till indicated an admission charge. Some went in the shop, not the cathedral, others objected to paying and were told if they wanted to pray no fee would be charged; they did not enter. There are three areas addressed in this paper: the origins of pilgrimage, pilgrims, pilgrimage, tourism and tourists and pilgrimage to religious tourism.
Origins of pilgrimage

Christian pilgrimage is rooted in journeying to holy places and began in the second century AD when the veneration of saints’ came popular. Nolan and Nolan (1992) maintain there are three types of pilgrimage

First, shrines are places serving as goals for religiously – motivated journeys.
Second, religious attractions are significant from a historical view point. Third,
festivals with a religious significance (Nolan and Nolan, 1992, p. 68)

When tourists visit religious sites they are shocked at the commercialisation and the lack of a reverential atmosphere. This contrasts to pilgrimages in the Middle Ages which related to the hardship of the pilgrim’s journey and their devotion (Sumption, 1975). According to Thomasi (1998) pilgrimage has altered
   to what they can get out of it. Today’s pilgrims experience all the joy and none of the
   guilt as they encounter preferences rather than rules (Tomasi, 1998, p. 363).

What is a pilgrimage? First, for a religious purpose it is a journey culminating to visit a place considered to be a holy site. The typical image
   of a pilgrim is of a poor wayfarer travelling on foot (Bauman, 1996, p. 26).

Second, Cohen (1984) describes a pilgrimage as

an individual on a journey to an ‘elsewhere’ sometimes more desired than known, which may assume utopian features in the imaginations of those undertaking it (Cohen, 1984, p.373).

Few written accounts of what occurred on a pilgrimage exist until the fourth century. ‘Pilgrim’ stems from the Latin word ‘peregrinus’ meaning ‘traveller’ (Outerhoust, 1990) The distinction between ‘pilgrim’ and ‘traveller’ lasted until the twelfth century. It is impossible to differentiate between ‘pilgrims’ and ‘travellers’,
as pilgrims were travellers who went to sacred places to pray (Outerhoust, 1991, p.26).

After the twelfth century the word ‘peregrinus’ referred to a ‘pilgrim’, and not ‘traveller’. Churches cared for pilgrims as in the case of Egeria in the fourth century who wrote about her visit to pilgrim sites where guides conducted bible readings and prayers (Wilkinson, 1988).

There are four aspects of tourism indicating the close relationship. First, tourists and pilgrims demonstrate a deep attraction for holy places making it difficult to distinguish between them as pilgrims join in touristic activities taking photographs, buying souvenirs, visiting other sites, using coaches, banks, restaurants and hotels (Nolan, 1989). Tourists join in religious activities, view religious artefacts, join in acts of worship, view religious objects and are overwhelmed by religious experiences (Franklin and Crang, 2001).
Second, the simultaneity of places where tourists and pilgrims make the space a religious or tourist site as they move between a tourist and a pilgrim on the same site (Franklin and Crang, 2001). An example of this shift is at St Paul’s Cathedral, London. Tourists attending services sit in the choir where service sheets and directions are given as to what to do. Others sit in the nave where no service books or directions given (Turner, 1978). There is more mobility with these tourists, but most stay once seated, others walk round the aisles. St Paul’s officially closes at 4.00pm, but from 4.15pm until 6.00pm other tourists come. No entrance fee is paid as a service is about to begin. At St Paul’s worship and tourism is ‘an open performance’ (Jay, 1968).

Third, tourists seek aesthetically pleasing experiences of the places they visit. Tourists visiting holy places see them as beautiful, uplifting and edifying (Sears, 1989).

Fourth, tourists are consumers and no experience or culture escapes them. Every experience is a commodity including religion. People in other cultures perform religious activities for them, sell religious items as commemorative reminders (MacCannel, 1995).
Tourists and pilgrims visited Ground Zero and the World Trade Centre following the terrorist attacks in 2001. They took photographs, vendors capitalised on its appeal, but this did not diminish their religious experiences. Few visitors to Ground Zero could resist its emotional gravity as prayers were said and remembrances were common (New York Times, October 22nd January 2002)
but did they go there as tourists or pilgrims? (New York Post, October 7th, 2001).

Pilgrims, pilgrimage, tourism and tourists
Pilgrimages are a stepping stone between people and their faith. Pilgrimage challenges the church as it focuses on an ambivalent relationship between a person’s inner spiritual journey and their outward journey of life. Pilgrimage is rooted in the conviction that life is a process of continual change (Moore, 1988). It is possible to label a pilgrim as
    a devout Muslim who journeys to the hajj, or a catholic attending Holy Week in
    Rome, or a Hindu performing ancient ancestral rites at Gaya, but it frays where
   Russians take their new born children for a blessing at Lenin’s tomb and the
   pilgrimage–like aspects of tourism to Disneyland, seaside places and other touristic
   ‘Meccas’ (Moore, 1980, p.207).

Pilgrimages are described by Preston (1988)
    as a journey undertaken by people in quest of a place that embodies a valued ideal. A
    pilgrim visits a shrine located at a geographical point which has acquired a reputation.
    The allegorical pilgrimage seeks a place not located in the geographical sphere. Sacred
    journeys are wanderings that have no fixed goal: here is the search for a hidden goal
    (Preston, 1988, p.24)

What is the difference between ‘a tourist and a ‘pilgrim’? Pemberton (1997) writes
   the line between pilgrims and tourists can be fluid. Someone says ‘I started out as
   a tourist, but a few days later I realised I was a pilgrim’. When this happens a shift in
   the person’s inner focus occurs, what was an intent for increased education is an
   unmistakably an experience of the Holy. This can happen on a conventional tour or on
   any other tour, and people are deeply enriched by the shift (Pemberton, 1997, p.45).

Westwood (1997) and Nolan (1989) provide different interpretations of the difference between a tourist and a pilgrim Westwood (1997) maintain that
   Pilgrims share a common focus with their fellow travellers, whereas tourists come
   because they have chosen a particular itinerary, so it is difficult to have a deep
   conversation as there is little in common between them, on a spiritual pilgrimage
   there is a deeper goal: the growth of the inner self (Westwood, 1997, p.9)

Nolan (1989)
: a tourist visits to see, take in and learn, buy souvenirs from a place, and move on: a
pilgrim offers themselves and share personally with those who live and work there
in order to seek further inner growth (Nolan, 1989, p.67).

Pilgrims wore distinctive clothing,
a plain tunic, a leather belt, a large cross around their neck, a staff, a purse: this was a ‘uniform’ which is depicted on stained glass windows. Pilgrims wore a badge saying ‘they had been there’ and engraved their footprints along paths so their travels could be preserved as they thought life was ‘a pilgrimage’ (Nolan, 1989).

Cameras and photographs prevail today, but the medieval pilgrims wore medals to validate their journeys (Davies, 1988). Lasch (1985 believes four types of tourists have emerged since medieval times who he describes as:
vagabonds, stroller and the player (Lasch, 1985, p. 117)

Clifford (1992) makes a distinction between ‘religious pilgrim’ and the ‘secular tourist’ :
‘pilgrimage’ is a more interesting comparative term to work with as it includes a range
of different experiences. It is less class and gender biased than ‘travel’ It is a way of
subverting the constitutive modern opposition: traveller / tourist. Its ‘sacred’ meanings
predominate, even though people go on pilgrimage for secular and religious reasons. It
is hard to make ‘pilgrimage’ stretch to include ‘travel’ than the reverse. (Clifford, 1992,
p.110)

Pilgrimage has changed as pilgrims left everything behind them to concentrate on spiritual matters. When pilgrims returned they were greeted with admiration (Sumption, 1976). Pilgrimages increased an individual’s spirituality which was different from those who travelled for touristic reasons where the emphasis was to search for the truth. Pilgrimages were less frequent in the eighteenth century as tourism grew. People’s work patterns changed with reduced working hours, so there was more leisure time to go on holiday (Smith, 1987). The growing demand for excursions led to the birth of travel agencies in 1841. As Smith (1987) argues twentieth century tourism was turned into a business after 1945,
          as tourism began to signify the personal transfer of one place to another of
          income as the result of economic well being and technological progress (Smith,
         1989, p.145).

Pilgrimage to religious tourism
Nooteboom (1997) describes his ascent to Santiago de Compostella:

there is no one on that mound, a bare field, a closed chapel. I climb it and stare into the distance. I see a cathedral, hidden behind green hills, three fragile towers drawn in infinitesimal detail, whether I like it or not an indefinable chemistry floods my body with joy. I sit until the dusk and the cars turn on their lights and beam towards the city in ribbons of light. I have arrived in Santiago (Nooteboom, 1997, p.333)

Nooteboom (1997) visited Santiago three times and his reasons are:
it will not in my case be a pilgrimage to the apostle, rather to an earlier, shadowy,
self, the capture of a past passage (Nooteboom, 1997, p. 5).

Nooteboom’s account (1997) reflects on the experience of journeying as underlying it is the notion of ‘pilgrimage’ and ‘tourism’. Pilgrims have been characterised as pre-modern day travellers who were aware of the reasons for going on pilgrimage as Tomasi (1998) argues
   old pilgrimage sites attracted masses of pilgrims, today pilgrims are tourists on
   holiday. The tourist industry offer pilgrimages as consumerism. Tourists share
similar attitudes as pilgrims - the search for authenticity at different levels of depth and
involvement. It could be said pilgrims are partly tourists and tourists are partly pilgrims.
‘Religious’ tourism today is devotional and cultural as it is proof of the existence of this
common search. Today individuals are searching for transcendental values to overcome
the fragments of society and they are the ‘pilgrim tourist’ of modern times (Tomasi,
1998,   p.363).

In the Middle Ages pilgrims were thought to be extremely spiritual people as it involved devotion going to holy places for personal purification, but as Urry (1990) writes

fifteenth century travellers were keen observers of their surroundings. During the
Middle Ages travellers described the dangers they faced. After the sixteenth century
travellers observed the landscape or the local inhabitants customs, but the journey was a
diversion as they travelled for pleasure (Urry, 1990, p. 167)

There is not an antithesis between pilgrims and tourists as the concepts intermingle with each other making it difficult to disentangle them. Bauman (1996) argues
it is hard to distinguish between the curious and the religious traveller and to
comprehend their identity (Bauman, 1996, p.25)

Pilgrims behave in a similar way to tourists as they book accommodation, organise tours, visit other sites which is similar to medieval pilgrimages as Thomasi (2002) writes
there is a resemblance to medieval pilgrimages found in groups of sick and the bereft
that travel in large numbers to sanctuaries in the hope of being healed or finding help
(Thomasi, 2002, p.19)

People who go on ‘pilgrimages’ according to Swatos (2006),
    must have strong religious motivations, yet as studies of pilgrimages show, this
    is not so as people had mixed motivations. A pilgrimage can be described as a
     religious trip (Swatos, 2006, p.26)

A ‘secular’ tourist is described as
   those who enter a cathedral as tourists are beguiled by place, mood and size of a
   building into a mode of wonder. They can acknowledge a desire to understand, to
   question, even to confront the God whose inspiration made the building possible.
   A tourist may be transformed into a pilgrim (Heritage and Renewal, 1994, p.36)

Scholars maintain tourism can undermine the sacred nature of a holy site helping us to understand why people have mixed motivations when visiting them (O’Dea, 1961). Religious sites draw people to them, but when so many visitors come the religious message can get debased as at Westminster Abbey which Swatos (2006) believes
has many different layers of meaning it is impossible to do a pilgrimage, except on
special occasions, and then it is by special arrangement (Swatos, 2006, p.27).

If tourism is a sacred journey a tourist must have the possibility to become a pilgrim. Tourists and pilgrims share similar characteristics. Pfaffenberger (1983) found the two groups use different words when visiting sacred sites. Pilgrim’s use words like:
miracles, faith, encounters with the divinity. Tourists speak of recreation, leisure and
outdoor pursuits (Pfaffenberger, 1983, p.72).

Williams, Francis, Robbins and Annis (2007) ‘Visitor experiences of St David’s Cathedral; the two worlds of pilgrims and secular tourists’ make an empirical distinction between two groups of cathedral visitors as ‘Pilgrims’ and ‘Secular tourists’. The authors define ‘Pilgrims’ as:
people who normally attend church services most Sundays and have been shaped in
the Christian tradition (Williams, Francis, Robbins and Annis, 2007, p.112)

‘Secular Tourists’ are defined as:
people who never attend church on Sundays and have not been so deeply shaped in
the Christian tradition (Williams, Francis, Robbins and Annis, 2007, p.112).

Platten (1999) agrees with Williams et al (2007) as he observes four types of visitors at Norwich cathedral who he describes as:
   tourists, pilgrims, those seeking solace and those in trouble (Platten, 1999, p.12).
Conclusion
Old pilgrimage sites are beginning to attract masses of pilgrims, but the big difference is that they come across tourists on holiday. What does this mass movement signify? Tourists and pilgrims share similar attitudes and
     pilgrims are partly tourists and tourists are partly pilgrims: thus they complement one
    another. The modern individual seeks transcendental values to overcome the fragments
     of modern society and they are the ‘pilgrim tourist’ of modern times (Tomasi, 1998).

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