Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys

Dallen Timothy, Daniel Olsen, Dallen Timothy, Daniel Olsen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780415354455
• eBook ISBN: 9781134257560
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Religion and spirituality are still among the most common motivations for travel - many major tourism destinations have developed largely as a result of their connections to sacred people, places and events. Providing a comprehensive assessment of the primary issues and concepts related to this intersection of tourism and religion, this revealing book gives a balanced discussion of both the theoretical and applied subjects that destination planners, religious organizations, scholars, and tourism service providers must deal with on a daily basis.

Bringing together a distinguished list of contributors, this volume takes a global approach and incorporates substantial empirical cases from Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, New Ageism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and the spiritual philosophies of East Asia. On a conceptual level, it considers, amongst other topics:

• contested heritage
• the pilgrim-tourist dichotomy
• secularization of pilgrimage experiences
• religious humanism
• educational aspects of religious tourism
• commodification of religious icons and services.

A vibrant collection of essays, this outstanding book discusses many important practices, paradigms, and problems that are currently being examined and debated. It raises an array of significant and interesting questions and as such is a valuable resource for students, scholars and researchers of tourism, religion and cultural studies.

1
Tourism and religious journeys

Daniel H. Olsen and Dallen J. Timothy

Religious travel is not a new phenomenon. Religion has long been an integral motive for undertaking journeys and is usually considered the oldest form of non-economic travel (Jackowski and Smith 1992). Every year millions of people travel to major pilgrimage destinations around the world, both ancient and modern in origin. Jackowski (2000) estimates that approximately 240 million people a year go on pilgrimages, the majority being Christians, Muslims, and Hindus. Religiously or spiritually motivated travel has become widespread and popularized in recent decades, occupying an important segment of international tourism, having grown substantially in recent years both in proportional and absolute terms. A continued increase in this market segment seems to be a foreseeable trend in the future as well (Bywater 1994; Holmberg 1993; Olsen and Timothy 1999; Post et al. 1998; Russell 1999; San Filippo 2001; Singh 1998).

Increases in spiritually motivated travel have coincided with the growth of tourism in the modern era (Lloyd 1998), and even though the industry and its “associated practices interact with religious life and the institutions of religion in virtually every corner of the world” (Bremer 2005: 9260), religious tourism is one of the most understudied areas in tourism research (Vukonić 1998). This is particularly so when compared to other aspects of the tourism system and their associated markets. This is surprising because religion has played a key role in the development of leisure over the centuries and has influenced how people utilize their leisure time (Kelly 1982). As such, modern travel patterns and activities cannot be fully understood unless religion is also considered (Mattila et al. 2001). Only recently have scholars, governments, and tourism agencies taken notice of the increasing numbers of religiously motivated travelers, or at least the increase in visitation to sacred sites in conjunction with the general growth of cultural and heritage tourism. This public interest has arisen mainly owing to the economic potential of religious tourists. As a result, venerated places are now being seen as tourism resources that can be commodified for travelers interested in cultural and historic sites. Mosques, churches, cathedrals, pilgrimage paths, sacred architecture, and the lure of the metaphysical are used prominently in tourism promotional literature, as evidenced in the recent marketing efforts surrounding the year 2000 and its millennial religious connotations (Olsen and Timothy 1999). As a result of marketing and a growing general interest in cultural tourism, religious sites are being frequented more by curious tourists than by spiritual pilgrims, and are thus commodified and packaged for a tourism audience (Vukonić 1996; Shoval 2000; Shackley 2001a; Olsen 2003).

Researchers from a variety of disciplines have considered different aspects of the relationships between religion and tourism (e.g. Turner and Turner 1978; Morinis 1992; Vukonić 1996; Stoddard and Morinis 1997; Olsen and Timothy 1999, 2002; Schelhe 1999; Swatos and Tomasi 2002; Timothy and Boyd 2003). These and other observers have tended to focus on a number of theoretical and practical concerns, including critiquing the paradigms, theories, definitions, and characteristics of religious travel, the planning of pilgrimages, the management and interpretation of sacred sites, and the training of tour guides (Kaszowski 2000). Bremer (2005) notes three broader approaches in which researchers have considered the intersections of religion and tourism: the spatial approach (pilgrims and other tourists occupying the same space with different spatial behaviors), the historical approach (the relationship between religious forms of travel and tourism), and the cultural approach (pilgrimage and tourism as modern practices in a (post)modern world).

The only attempt to date to examine religion and tourism in a holistic manner has been by Vukonić (1996) in his book Tourism and Religion. However, he mainly documented his observations and reflections on the topic rather than critically evaluating the existing literature within any of the theoretical or paradigmatic frameworks that have guided most research on tourism and religion. Messenger (1999) investigated early Methodist theologies of leisure at Ocean Grove, a religious seaside resort in nineteenth-century America. More recently, Swatos and Tomasi (2002) compiled a collection of essays focusing on the shift from medieval penitential pilgrimage to modern tourism, a special issue of Tourism Recreation Research (2002) was dedicated to spiritual journeys, the Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Research Group of the European Association for Tourism and Leisure Education (ATLAS) has published a book based on papers presented at its first expert meeting (Fernandes et al. 2003), and Badone and Roseman (2004) edited a volume discussing the intersections of religion and tourism from an anthropological perspective. As well, there are a number of recent journal articles and book chapters that relate to various aspects of religion and tourism (e.g. Cohen 1999; Tweed 2000; Cai et al. 2001; Epstein and Kheimets 2001; Jacobs 2001; Joseph and Kavoori 2001; Mattila et al. 2001; Shackley 2001b; Tilson 2001; Collins-Kreiner and Kliot 2000; Collins-Kreiner 2002; Koskansky 2002; Bar and Cohen-Hattab 2003; Digance 2003; McNeill 2003; Poria et al. 2003; Coleman and Eade 2004; Schramm 2004). However, the literature is still fragmented and lacks synthesis and holistic conceptualization.

The aim of this book is to contribute to the growing literature on religiously motivated travel by reviewing and challenging existing paradigms, concepts, and practices related to pilgrimage and other forms of religious travel. It focuses on a number of theoretical and practical perspectives related to spiritual journeys, including the nature, creation, and management of hallowed place, the pilgrim–tourist dichotomy, the economics of religious tourism, and the educational implications of religious tourism. In addition, much of the book focuses on the intersections of religion and tourism from a perspective that has been little studied, even the perspective of religion and spirituality, whether it is religious leaders commenting on tourism as a social phenomenon, or the perspectives of religious adherents who travel to various destinations in search of truth and enlightenment.

Religion, tourism, and spirituality

Traditionally and historically, pilgrimage has been defined as a physical journey in search of truth, in search of what is sacred or holy (Vukonić 1996: 80). It is where people are drawn to sacred places “where divine power has suddenly burst forth” (Sallnow 1987: 3) as a result of their spiritual magnetism (Preston 1992). This search for truth, enlightenment, or an authentic experience with the divine or holy leads people to travel to sacrosanct sites that have been ritually separated from the profane space of everyday life. Religiously motivated travel, including pilgrimage, has grown tremendously during the past fifty years, surprising many who conjecture that religious pilgrimage is losing social and institutional significance. Modern religious pilgrimage “appears to be at odds with our widely held belief in the progressive development of the West into a complex modern civilization based on science, technology, and reason, rather than on magic, religion, and irrationality” (Campo 1998: 41). As well, postmodern culture, the privatization of religion, and the ability to take cyberpilgrimages (Heelas 1998; Inoue 2000; Kong 2001; MacWilliams 2002), it could be argued, should lead people to participate in unmediated, reflexive forms of spiritual travel rather than pilgrimages where authenticity of experience is dependent in part on ecclesiastical institutions and structures (Sharf 1998; Rountree 2002; York 2002). Kosti (1998: 5) observes, however, that pilgrimage is increasing at a rapid rate rather than diminishing. This can be seen in Europe, where visitation to religious sites has been increasing while regular church attendance has been on the decline (Nolan and Nolan 1992).

This global resurgence of religious pilgrimage has occurred for many reasons, including the rise of fundamentalism (Friedland 1999; Riesebrodt 2000; Stump 2000), the retreat of some religious faiths into traditional forms of medieval spirituality and religious ritual (Post et al. 1998), the increasing investment in mass transportation infrastructure (Griffin 1994), the globalization of the local through the mass media (termed mediascapes by Vásquez and Marquandt 2000; see Koskansky 2002), and the recent turn of the millennium (Olsen and Timothy 1999). This indicates in part the increasing numbers of people who are searching for the answers to basic questions of human existence, including “What is the meaning of life?” or, more specifically, “What is the meaning of my life?” (Olsen and Guelke 2004; Clark 1991). This parallels some scholars’ view that a growing number of people experience feelings of dislocation and rootlessness, particularly those immersed in western, postmodern social life (MacCannell 1976; Lowenthal 1997), who “search to be themselves, to be givers of sense” (Voyé 2002: 123). According to Nuryanti (1996: 25), the twentieth century has been characterized by the heritage movement, where people actively search out their ancestral roots. In essence, this quest for an understanding of the past involves the asking of the question “Who am I?” in terms of “Who was I?” (Dann 1998: 218) through searching for “new points of orientation… strengthen[ing] old boundaries and… creat[ing] new ones” (Paasi 2003: 475).

The popularity of religious travel can be seen not only in the increase of religiously motivated travel to sacred sites but also in the combining of New Age spirituality with pilgrimage travel (Rountree 2002). The concept of religion has shifted with the advent of modern secularizing trends, such as post-industrialism, cultural pluralism, and scientific rationality (Baum 2000), which have, according to some social commentators, led to decreasing significance of religious institutions and their associated practices (Houtman and Mascini 2002). As such, the term “religion” is used in everyday public discourse to refer to things outside the realm of traditional religious institutions. This may come in part, as Williams (2002: 603) suggests, in that the use of such terms in everyday vernacular “reflect[s] the deep penetration of New Age ideas of ‘spirituality’ into… culture” (see also Marler and Hadaway 2002). As a result of both of these secularizing trends and the changing use of the word religion, religion is being seen more and more as a privatized and pluralized experience where the “spiritual” and the “religious” are separate. As Heelas (1998: 5) notes, “people have what they take to be ‘spiritual’ experiences without having to hold religious beliefs.” In other words, spirituality is an individual experience that is outside “preconstituted discourse[s] of meaning” (HervieuLéger 1999 quoted in Voyé 2002: 124), where experimenting with the mixing of various religious traditions – both traditional and alternative – is seen as both accepted and encouraged; thus making “real” religion identifiable with personal faith outside of religious institutions (Tilley 1994: 185). Thus, many people who consider themselves spiritual would not see themselves as religious and vice versa. In fact, atheists and agnostics may also have deep spiritual experiences in relation to nature and their own self-consciousness without believing in god or any organized religious affiliation.

This separation of the spiritual from the religious has led to a reinterpretation of what constitutes the “sacred,” where people are no longer constrained by religion in interpreting what spaces they view as sacred (Hammond 1991: 118). While historically the search for the metaphysical or the supernatural has led people to sites where, in their minds, there was the potential to commune with the “holy” (Hauser-Schäublin 1998), Tomasi (2002: 1; italics in original) argues that today “the search for the supernatural [has been replaced] by [the] search for cultural-exotic and the sacred.” Because of this, modern society has expanded what it defines as sacred, bringing about the creation of new sites of sacrality, with travel to these sites being termed pilgrimage in its own right because rather than pilgrimage being travel to sites where heaven and earth converge, it is considered to be journeys “undertaken by a person in quest of a place or a state that he or she believes to embody a valued ideal” (Morinis 1992: 4; italics added). In this light, then, pilgrimage has also been extended beyond the “religious” realm to include travel to places symbolizing nationalistic values and ideals (Zelinsky 1990; Guth 1995), disaster sites, such as Ground Zero in New York and the site of the Oklahoma City bombing (Foote 1997; Blasi 2002; Conran 2002), war memorials and cemeteries (Johnstone 1994; Lloyd 1998; Gough 2000; Seaton 2002), New Age and pagan sacred sites (Attix 2002; York 2002), places related to the lives of literary writers and the settings of their novels (Herbert 2001), places associated with music stars, such as Elvis Presley’s mansion (Graceland) in Memphis, Tennessee, or John Lennon’s monument, ‘Strawberry Fields’ in New York City (Alderman 2002; Davidson et al. 1990; King 1993; Kruse 2003), nostalgic tourist attractions (e.g. Walt Disney World) (Knight 1999), sporting events (Gammon 2004), genealogical trips (Kurzwell 1995), shopping malls (Pahl 2003), and even cyberspace (Kong 2001; MacWilliams 2002).

Likewise, many people travel to a widening variety of sacred sites not only for religious or spiritual purposes or to have an experience with the sacred in the traditional sense, but also because they are marked and marketed as heritage or cultural attractions to be consumed (Timothy and Boyd 2003). They may visit because they have an educational interest in learning more about the history of a site or understanding a particular religious faith and its culture and beliefs, rather than being motivated purely by pleasure-seeking or spiritual growth. While not necessarily motivated by their own religious beliefs, tourists who belong to a particular religious tradition may visit a site associated with their faith out of a sense of obligation to do so while in the area, for nostalgic reasons, or to educate their family members about their religious beliefs. Tourists also visit sacred sites seeking authentic experiences, whether through watching religious leaders and pilgrims perform rituals or by experiencing a site’s “sense of place” or sacred atmosphere (Shackley 2001a, 2002).

Present inquiries

This “blurring of the lines” (Kaelber 2002) between pilgrimage and other forms of travel traditionally viewed as part of tourism has led to an increase in religiously and spiritua...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Tourism, religion and spiritual journeys
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Tourism and religious journeys
• Part I: Concepts, concerns and management issues
• Part II: Religious traditions and tourism