Christian Pilgrimage

Christian Pilgrimage in Modern Western Europe is a commanding exploration of the importance of religious shrines in modern Roman Catholicism. By analyzing more than 6,000 active shrines and contemporary patterns of pilgrimage to them, the authors establish the cultural significance of a religious tradition that today touches the lives of millions of people. Roman Catholic pilgrimage sites in Western Europe range from obscure chapels and holy wells that draw visitors only from their immediate vicinity to the world-famous, often-thronged shrines at Rome, Lourdes, and Fatima. These shrines generate at least 70 million religiously motivated visits each year, with total annual visitation exceeding 100 million. Substantial numbers of pilgrims at major shrines come from the Americas and other areas outside Western Europe. Mary Lee Nolan and Sidney Nolan describe and interpret the dimensions of Western European pilgrimage in time and space, a cultural-geographic approach that reveals regional variations in types of shrines and pilgrimages in the sixteen countries of Western Europe. They examine numerous legends and historical accounts associated with cult images and shrines, showing how these reflect ideas about humanity, divinity, and environment. The Nolans demonstrate that the dynamic fluctuations in Christian pilgrimage activities over the past 2,000 years reflect socioeconomic changes and technological transformations as well as shifting intellectual orientations. Increases and decreases in the number of shrines established coincide with major turning points in European history, for pilgrimage, no less than wars, revolutions, and the advent of urban-industrial society, is an integral part of that history. Pilgrimage traditions have been influenced by -- and have influenced -- science, literature, philosophy, and the arts. Christian Pilgrimage in Modern Western Europe is based on ten years of research. The Nolans collected information on 6,150 shrines from published material, correspondence with bishops and shrine administrators, and interviews. They visited 852 Western European shrines in person. Their book will be of interest to many general readers and of special value to historians, cultural geographers, students of comparative religion, anthropologists, social psychologists, and shrine administrators.

Research on pilgrimage has traditionally fallen across a series of academic disciplines - anthropology, archaeology, art history, geography, history and theology. To date, relatively little work has been devoted to the issue of pilgrimage as writing and specifically as a form of travel-writing. The aim of the interdisciplinary essays gathered here is to examine the relations of Christian pilgrimage to the numerous narratives, which it generates and upon which it depends. Authors reveal not only the tensions between oral and written accounts but also the frequent ambiguities of journeys - the possibilities of shifts between secular and sacred forms and accounts of travel. Above all, the papers reveal the self-generating and multiple-authored characteristics of pilgrimage narrative: stories of past pilgrimage experience generate future stories and even future journeys. Simon Coleman moved to Sussex University in 2004, having spent 11 years at Durham University as Lecturer and then Reader in Anthropology, and Deputy Dean for the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health. John Elsner is Senior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

This volume provides a theoretically and empirically-grounded study of the significance of landscape in the experience of Christian pilgrimage across different denominations and its intersection with cultural heritage and tourism. The book focuses on pilgrimages to Meteora (Greece), Subiaco (Italy) and the Isle of Man. These are each sites of scenic beauty that boast a rich heritage associated respectively to Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Ecumenical/ Protestant denominations. The study discusses different Christian theologies, practices and perspectives on the nature and the purpose of pilgrimage in these traditions. It draws on participant experiential accounts, archival research, and interviews with clergy, laity and local stakeholders. Special attention is paid to the themes of sacred space and practice, aesthetics, mobilities, embodiment and performance, emotional geographies, theology, cultural heritage, consumption and commodification, and the pilgrim-tourist continuum.

“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” — 1 John 2:15 Those who struggle with habitual sin are keenly aware of the despair and fatigue that comes from trying harder and harder to control the desire to do what is wrong in the eyes of God. For this person, there be times of limited success in overcoming sin, but eventually he/she falls back again into unhealthy patterns. In "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection", Thomas Chalmers argues that no matter how hard we may try, we’ll never overcome habitual sin in our lives unless we switch our affections from the world to Jesus Christ. Thankfully Christ loved us first and is more than willing to set us free if we’d only realize the true Gospel power that we can all have in our lives today.

Originally published: 1978, in series: Lectures on the history of religions; new ser., no. 11. With new introd.

We all encounter times when our spirit feels dry, when doubt looms. The opportunity to tour Israel came at a good time. For months, my life has been a mindless plodding through necessary routine, as monotonous as an all-night shift on an assembly line. Life gets that way sometimes, when nothing specific is wrong but the world around us seems drained of color. Even my weekly worship experiences and daily quiet times with God have felt as dry and stale as last year's crackers. I'm ashamed to confess the malaise I've felt. I have been given so much. Shouldn't a Christian's life be an abundant one, as exciting as Christmas morning, as joyful as Easter Sunday? With gripping honesty, Lynn Austin pens her struggles with spiritual dryness in a season of loss and unwanted change. Tracing her travels throughout Israel, Austin seamlessly weaves events and insights from the Word . . . and in doing so finds a renewed passion for prayer and encouragement for her spirit, now full of life and hope.

Since the 1950s, millions of American Christians have traveled to the Holy Land to visit places in Israel and the Palestinian territories associated with JesusOCOs life and death. Why do these pilgrims choose to journey halfway around the world? How do they react to what they encounter, and how do they understand the trip upon return? This book places the answers to these questions into the context of broad historical trends, analyzing how the growth of mass-market evangelical and Catholic pilgrimage relates to changes in American Christian theology and culture over the last sixty years, including shifts in Jewish-Christian relations, the growth of small group spirituality, and the development of a Christian leisure industry. Drawing on five years of research with pilgrims before, during and after their trips, a Walking Where Jesus Walked aoffers a lived religion approach that explores the tripOCOs hybrid nature for pilgrims themselves: both ordinaryOCotied to their everyday role as the familyOCOs ritual specialists, and extraordinaryOCosince they leave home in a dramatic way, often for the first time. Their experiences illuminate key tensions in contemporary US Christianity between material evidence and transcendent divinity, commoditization and religious authority, domestic relationships and global experience. Hillary Kaell crafts the first in-depth study of the cultural and religious significance of American Holy Land pilgrimage after 1948. The result sheds light on how Christian pilgrims, especially women, make sense of their experience in Israel-Palestine, offering an important complement to top-down approaches in studies of Christian Zionism and foreign policy."

"Drawing on contemporary accounts and a wealth of illustration, Sacred Treks captures the atmosphere of pilgrimage through the ages. Divided into three sections - "Early Paths," "Medieval Roads," and "Modern Ways" - the book describes every aspect of pilgrimage past and present, from the practicalities of setting out, to the difficult conditions of travel, to the great sites such as Rome, Jerusalem, Santiago de Compostela, and Canterbury. The book looks at the pilgrims themselves, from St. Brendan, who is said to have cast himself adrift, letting God guide his search for a paradisal holy island, to the penitents, cure-seekers, and adventurers who in the Middle Ages set out for the unknown in their millions."

The Christian life is a journey not just spiritually but also physically and experientially. As global travel becomes more accessible, new opportunities arise for these journeys to be spiritually significant. You may find yourself in historic places where Christian faith shaped entire civilizations. And you may realize that you too are being changed—from a tourist to a pilgrim. Christian George recovers the ancient spiritual practice of pilgrimage, in which travel to sacred sites leads to the transformation of the soul. In engaging narratives of his worldwide voyages, he follows in the footsteps of spiritual pilgrims from across the centuries, from Luther in Wartburg to Spurgeon in England. His travels to landmark places from Iona to Assisi give him not only a better understanding of his Christian heritage, but also of God's inner work in pilgrims throughout history and today. Come with Christian as he breaks bread with Benedictines in Ireland and worships with the Taizé community in France. Experience the transforming power of spiritual pilgrimage. And discover what it means to be a pilgrim as you follow God wherever he leads.