Religious tourism explained

Religious tourism, spiritual tourism, sacred tourism, or faith tourism,[1] is a type of tourism with two main subtypes: pilgrimage, meaning travel for religious or spiritual purposes, and the viewing of religious monuments and artefacts, a branch of sightseeing.

Types

Religious tourism has been characterised in different ways by researchers. Gisbert Rinschede distinguishes these by duration, by group size, and by social structure.[2] Juli Gevorgian proposes two categories that differ in their motivation, namely "pilgrimage tourism" for spiritual reasons or to participate in religious rites, and "church tourism" to view monuments such as cathedrals.[3] [4] The Christian priest Frank Fahey writes that a pilgrim is "always in danger of becoming a tourist", and vice versa since travel always in his view upsets the fixed order of life at home, and identifies eight differences between the two:[5]

Distinguishing pilgrimage from tourism, according to Frank Fahey
Element Tourism
always contains "faith expectancy" not required
search for wholeness not required
Community often solitary, but should be open to all often with friends and family, or a chosen interest group
Sacred space not present
externalizes the change within not present
leaving behind a part of oneself, letting go, in search of a better life not present; the travel is the good life
Celebration "victory over self", celebrating to remember drinking to forget
Perseverance commitment; "pilgrimage is never over" holidays soon end

Pilgrimage

See main article: Pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage is spiritually- or religiously motivated travel, sometimes over long distances; it has been practised since antiquity and in several of the world's religions.[6] The world's largest mass religious assemblage takes place in India at the Kumbh Mela, which attracts over 120 million pilgrims.[7] Other major pilgrimages include the annual Hajj to Mecca, required once in a Muslim's life.[8]

Religious sightseeing

Religious sightseeing can be motivated by any of several kinds of interest, such as religion, art, architecture, history, and personal ancestry.[9] [10] People can find holy places interesting and moving, whether they personally are religious or not. Some, such as the churches of Italy, offer fine architecture and major artworks. Portugal, for example, has as its main religious tourism attraction the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima, internationally known by the phenomenon of Marian apparitions. Others are important to world religions: Jerusalem holds a central place in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Others again may be both scenic and important to one religion, like the Way of Saint James in Spain, but have been adopted by non-religious people as a personal challenge and indeed as a journey of self-discovery. Religious tourism in India can take many forms, including yoga tourism; the country has sites important to Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism, as well as magnificent architecture and, for some travellers, the attraction of orientalism.[11] [12] Japan too offers beautiful religious places from Buddhist temples to Shinto shrines.[11]

Secular pilgrimage

A category intermediate between pilgrims belonging to a major world religion and pure tourism is the modern concept of secular pilgrimage to places such as the Himalayas felt to be in some way special or even sacred, and where the travel is neither purely pious, nor purely for pleasure, but is to some degree "compromised".[13] [14] For example, New Age believers may travel to such "spiritual hotspots" with the intention of healing themselves and the world. They may practise rituals involving (supposedly) leaving their bodies, possession by spirits (channelling), and recovery of past life memories.[15] The travel is considered by many scholars as transcendental, a life learning process or even a self-realization metaphor.[16] [17] [18]

See also

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Gannon . Martin Joseph . Baxter . Ian W. F. . Collinson . Elaine . Curran . Ross . Farrington . Thomas . Glasgow . Steven . Godsman . Elliot M. . Gori . Keith . Jack . Gordon R. A. . 54745153 . 2017-06-11 . Travelling for Umrah: destination attributes, destination image, and post-travel intentions . The Service Industries Journal . 37 . 7–8 . 448–465 . 10.1080/02642069.2017.1333601 . 0264-2069 .
  2. Rinschede . Gisbert . Forms of religious tourism . Annals of Tourism Research . 19 . 1 . 1992 . 51–67 . 0160-7383 . 10.1016/0160-7383(92)90106-Y.
  3. Web site: Gevorgian . Juli . Religious Tourism . Academia . 4 December 2019.
  4. [Ralf van Bühren]
  5. Fahey . Frank . Pilgrims or Tourists? . The Furrow . April 2002 . 53 . 4 . 213–218 . 27664505 .
  6. Web site: Guzik . Helena . What is a pilgrimage? . National Trust / University of Oxford . 4 December 2019.
  7. Book: Eck, Diana L. . India: A Sacred Geography . 2012 . Harmony Books . 978-0-385-53190-0 . 153–155.
  8. Book: Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi . Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi . The Laws of Islam . 26 March 2016 . Enlight Press . 978-0994240989 . 22 December 2017 . Modarresi . en . 471.
  9. Book: Makrides, Vasilios . Hellenic Temples and Christian Churches: A Concise History of the Religious Cultures of Greece from Antiquity to the Present . 2009 . NYU Press . 978-0-8147-9568-2 . 2.
  10. Web site: Greenia . George . Pilgrimage and the American Myth . College of William & Mary . 4 December 2019 . 5 . Scholars in religious studies take spiritual sketches of travellers' yearning for the transcendent, while sociologists capture glimpses of mixed motives and intrusions of the definitely non-sacred. Even tourism studies help us see past the picture postcard images of the exotic and wondrous and show us vacationers, trekkers, skeptics, seekers and spenders flowing in and out of the channels of belief..
  11. Web site: Higgs . Andy . Tips for Organising a Religious Sightseeing Trip . Grown-up Travel Guide . 20 May 2019.
  12. Book: Goldberg, Philip . American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation – How Indian Spirituality Changed the West . Harmony Books . New York . 2010 . 978-0-385-52134-5 . 7, 152.
  13. Singh . Shalini . 143325849 . Secular pilgrimages and sacred tourism in the Indian Himalayas . . 64 . 3 . 2005 . 215–223 . 0343-2521 . 10.1007/s10708-005-5649-8 . 41148001. 2005GeoJo..64..215S .
  14. Encyclopedia: Ricketts . Jeremy R. . Tourism to Sacred Places in America: A Spatial Analysis . Tourism to Sacred Places in America: A Spatial Analysis . 2018 . 10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.541 . "Tourism to sacred places" or "sacred tourism" allows the flexibility to include hallowed places that are either formally religious or not. Indeed, sites of secular pilgrimage continue to proliferate wherein "pilgrim" is used indistinguishably from "tourist" because of the mixture of secular and sacred at the site itself as well as the diverse motivations of the people who journey there.. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion . 9780199340378 .
  15. News: Touring the Spirit World . . Ethan . Todras-Whitehill . 2007-04-29 . 2010-05-23.
  16. Web site: Rountree . Kathryn . Goddess pilgrims as tourists: Inscribing the body through sacred travel . 15 October 2008.
  17. Web site: Oberholtzer . Heidi . Pilgrimage in literature of the Americas: Spiritualized travel and sacred place . 15 October 2008.
  18. Web site: 書目明細.

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