From Mecca to Mount Kailash: The Enduring Power of Pilgrimage in the Modern World

As the summer travel season starts and the annual Hajj — the Islamic pilgrimage to holy sites in Saudi Arabia required of all Muslims who are able — is expected to begin on June 26, it seems a good time to reconsider the concept of “spiritual travel” or, more specifically, pilgrimage.

Pilgrimage is generally defined as a journey with a religious purpose, often taken to a place of spiritual significance involving certain rituals or paths.

More broadly, pilgrimage can be any journey and its associated activities, undertaken by people to and from one or more places made meaningful by the pilgrims themselves.

Though long associated with European Christianity in Western academia, or perhaps with significant sacred shrines like Mecca or Mount Kailash in Tibet, pilgrimage can also include trips to seemingly mundane places or movement to and from otherwise unexceptional locations.

Furthermore, pilgrimage is not restricted to institutional religions. Some pagans and others with a focus on old traditions (i.e., Reconstructionists or "Recons") travel to lands where they believe original gods were from or to ancient sites of significance. For example, a Greek Recon may go to Greece; Celtic practitioners to standing stones in the United Kingdom; heathens to Iceland; African traditionalists to significant sites in South Africa or Uganda.

Visits to nonreligious sites have also become increasingly popular as a form of pilgrimage in recent years. Large numbers of people find meaning in traveling to memorials of suffering, pain and bloodshed like the 9/11 Memorial in New York City or the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia. There are also pilgrimages to places linked to such pop culture icons as Elvis Presley, Susan B. Anthony, Steve Prefontaine or Taylor Swift.

With all these varying expressions, pilgrimage — like other religious rituals and phenomena — is what we make it. Less than looking for the transcendent meaning or chasing after miracles, the student of religion should pay attention to the human elements of spiritual travel: Things like tourism and economics, politics and place.

The importance of place, people and politics.

Journeys to holy sites and major religious celebrations can be shot through with multiple meanings, personal motivations, and traveling trajectories.

Take, for example, the pilgrimage experience of those who make the expedition to Tepeyac hill in modern-day Mexico City. There, each December, pilgrims from all over the world gather to celebrate the annual feast of the Virgen de Guadalupe, joining a centuries-old Catholic tradition of celebrating what is known as “the miracle on Tepeyac Hill.”

According to celebrants, it was at that spot that May, the mother of Jesus, appeared to a Nahua villager named Juan Diego. The cloak she gifted him included an image of herself as a radiating, brown-skinned goddess robed in stars. Despite its linkages with Spanish colonialism and forced conversion, the image and festival have enduring cultural importance in Mexico. After 500 years of devotion, the annual celebrations are some of the most robust in all of Catholicism.

But each year, it is not only Catholic devotees who make the pilgrimage to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City. So do some of the city’s Sufis. According to religion scholar Lucía Cirianni Salazar, members of the Nur Ashki Jerrahi tariqa in Mexico City join millions of others to commemorate the Virgin’s apparition. Justifying their presence from a universalist perspective, the leader of the group — Shaykha Amina — told Salazar that the location represents one of the most powerful places for connection to the “one God.”

This example reminds us that far from removing people from the world, pilgrimage is all about places in the world. Less about the world beyond, pilgrimage is often very much about places we inhabit and fill with meaning.

This means that although often associated with the extraordinary and faraway, pilgrimage sites can be local and surprisingly unremarkable. What matters is context and the meaning people give such locales.

Pilgrims frequently journey with the expectation of miracles or receiving spiritual blessings from contact with significant religious figures, symbols and artifacts (e.g., relics or icons). Or they expect the travel itself will provide some transcendent benefit. Even so, pilgrims' progress and practices are intimately tied up with the worldly dynamics of tourism, local economies and the embodied experience of bumping up against fellow pilgrims with blood, sweat and tears along the way.

Pilgrimage also has powerful political overtones. For example, the disputed site of Marian pilgrimage in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, is suffused with symbols of Croat nationalism, featuring prayer beads in national colors and Mary set against the backdrop of a Croatian national flag on everything from pillows to pillboxes. Still, despite its contentious place in the civil war of the 1990s and ongoing tensions in the Balkans, Medjugorje has become a huge draw for pilgrims drawn to its calls for peace and the renewal of faith along with prophecies of divine intervention.

Other pilgrimages such as the Hajj become playgrounds for political football, with nation-states and power brokers fighting over everything from logistics and management to the miracles and blessing associated with sacred sites.

The politics of pilgrimage are also at play around physical boundaries and borders that some spiritual travelers must contend with. Beyond visas and travel quotas, pilgrims must navigate the vicissitudes of state power and the various impediments that are put in place to deter, capture, or otherwise manage and control traveling bodies.

Those journeying to and from pilgrimage sites are often on the margins of official religious communities. Instead, their motivations for movement are linked to personal spiritual trajectories, frequently with little or nothing to do with institutionalized religion.

The physicality of pilgrimage must also be taken into consideration. To return to Tepeyac, Elaine Peña talks about Marian pilgrims’ “devotional labor.” Peña writes of “the moments of pain and discomfort” for pilgrims making their way to offer devotos to the Virgin of Guadalupe every December — “walking on blistering feet, proceeding on injured knees and cramped legs, with growling stomach and salty saliva, with too much light and too little sleep.”

Enjoy the journey.

As I write this blog, I am already starting to plan for my own travels this summer, including a visit to the largest mosque in the United Kingdom and some off-the-beaten-track churches in Berlin, Germany. While not explicitly pilgrimages, these trips will be filled with divine intimations.

This means I will be looking out for some of the very things mentioned above: The importance of place, the role of politics and economics and the position and plurality of bodies that inhabit a space or move around, through and within it.

Perhaps you too are getting ready for a trip. Maybe, you are embarking on a pilgrimage of your own this summer. As you do so, try to not only savor the spiritual importance of such travel, but the very human aspects of how these journeys are made holy in the midst of the mundane.

FURTHER READING:

•Read “A pilgrim’s progress: Resources for reporting on religious journeys,” from ReligionLink.

•Explore the Routledge Studies in Pilgrimage, Religious Travel and Tourism book series.

•Read Powers of Pilgrimage: Religion in a World of Movement, by Simon Coleman (2022).

•Explore the Oxford Bibliography on Pilgrimage for numerous resources, studies and possible sources.

Plague Started Their Passion Play in 1633. COVID-19 Canceled It in 2020.

As an epidemic raged across Europe, a picturesque German village in the mountainous south of Bavaria decided to do something about it. 

Having already lost 80 of their own to the plague, the villagers of Oberammergau pledged to perform the Passion of Jesus Christ—his suffering, death, and resurrection—every tenth year, so that no one else might die. 

So goes the historical legend of the origins of the Oberammergau Passion Play, an almost four-centuries-old tradition that takes place once every 10 years. 

The year of the pledge was 1633, not 2020. The Pest—German for plague—was the so-called “Black Death,” not the COVID-19 pandemic.

But, in an ironic twist of fate, the 42nd Oberammergau season—set to run between May 16 to October 4, 2020—was postponed last week due to measures taken by local government authorities in response to the new coronavirus outbreak. 

For my latest story in Christianity Today, I spoke to organizers, tour operators, locals, and potential pilgrims about their hopes, fears, and the realities of what it means to postpone a once-in-a-decade ritual in light of COVID-19’s rapid spread across the globe.

Coronavirus: How a Possible Epidemic is Shaping Muslim Pilgrimages

Coronavirus news, fears, and realities are impacting everything — even sacred pilgrimages.

Due to concerns over the global spread of the coronavirus – especially in nearby Iran – Saudi Arabia has temporarily suspended travel to its holy sites. Millions of Muslims visit the Saudi kingdom around the year for pilgrimage.

The current travel restrictions prevent the entry of both overseas pilgrims and Saudi citizens into the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. This has had a direct impact on the umrah pilgrimage, known as the “lesser pilgrimage,” that can be performed at almost any time of the year.

The question is whether or not the continuing spread of the virus will put a halt to the hajj later this year.

Click below to read about how past experiences with epidemics might shape the decision and understand the difference between umrah and hajj.

What does the Hajj mean to millions of Muslims?

Nearly 2 million Muslims will gather in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia on Aug. 9 for an annual pilgrimage known as the hajj. 

The five-day journey is a once-in-a-lifetime obligation for all Muslims who are physically and financially able to undertake it. It is considered the fifth pillar of Islamic practice, along with professing faith, saying five prayers daily, giving to charity and fasting during Ramadan. 

In calling Muslims to perform the hajj, the Quran says: “Proclaim to men the pilgrimage: they will come to thee on foot and on every lean camel, coming from every remote path.” 

The millions of Muslims from around the world who meet each year in Saudi Arabia dress simply to mask any differences in wealth and status. Women wear plain, white dresses and headscarves. Men drape themselves in seamless, unhemmed clothing.

As a scholar of global Islam, I’ve interviewed many Muslims who have gone on the hajj. They have described to me having profound experiences on the pilgrimage, both political and spiritual.

Test #LutherCountry With Me!

I'm a fan of the Clash. You know, the famous British punk rock band? As you might have figured out already, I am also a huge religion-nerd, traveler, Lutheran pastor, and Ph.D. candidate in religious studies. 

Those different threads of my life are all coming together in my upcoming trip as the official LutherCountry “Tester.” From 23 October - 1 November my job will be to “test” the full LutherCountry experience and report back and share the story of the Reformation and its legacy based on first-hand experience in the lands, places, castles, monasteries, churches, and city-streets where it took place. 

I look forward to sharing all of this on Instagram and Facebook. I invite you to follow me @KenChitwood or @KenChitwoodPhD if we aren’t connected already. 

I also want to share my stories and experiences on my blog and via my e-mail newsletter. 

I know a lot of you are going to love getting e-mails from me throughout my journey in LutherCountry. Some of you, however, might not…

…so I am inviting you to sign-up for a special short-term e-mail list and subscription to my blog.  

Subscribe to the #TestingLutherCountry list!

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If you do, I promise you are going to get insider information, inspiring stories, and my in-depth reflections on the places and people that made the Reformation what it was.

Now, if you’ve been wondering how The Clash song fits in with all of this, let me tell you and give you a little taste of what my blogs and updates will be like in the weeks to come:

While I knew some things about the Reformation that class opened my eyes to the revolutionary power of the Reformation and the stunning stories of the people who were involved in it. 

Can’t wait to get back to Eisenach for Lutherhaus…and a restaurant there called “The Totally Crazy Potato House!”

In particular, my professor impressed upon me — based on his extensive experience traveling in the land of the Reformation and studying in Germany's archives —  how vital it was to see not only the big names and famous moments, but to take in the seemingly simple stories of individuals who can sometimes be considered tangential to the grand narrative. There we can see just how vital the Reformation was for individual lives and liberty. 

That is how I came to write "Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? The Choices Females Faced as Nuns During the Reformation." The Clash song-inspired title spoke to the struggle that women faced with new-found freedoms (including Katharina von Bora) and showed me just how meaningful the Reformation was, and is, for so many people across the world — Lutheran and non-Lutheran, great and small, known and unknown. 

As a Lutheran, a religious educator, and a writer I continue to be inspired by my Reformational heritage to learn more about the world, the people in it, and how through exploration and education we can continue to inspire, enlighten, and liberate one another with our stories and experiences.

Just as Lutheran ideas started in places like Erfurt and Eisleben and spread across the globe, it would be my humble honor to walk in the reformers' footsteps in Germany and go on to share my experience and inspiration with the world in photos, writing, and video. It would allow me to share my passion for the Reformation, its history, and its principles with a wide audience. And that, after all, is one of the things the Reformation is about — having your own experience with a source of knowledge, sharing your story, and inspiring others to step out into the world and do the same.

I hope you’ll join me as I Test #LutherCountry next month! 

Explaining the Hajj pilgrimage

Nearly 2 million Muslim pilgrims are gathering in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia for the Hajj. This five-day pilgrimage is a once-in-a-lifetime obligation for all Muslims who have the physical and financial ability to undertake the journey.

Millions of Muslims come from countries as diverse as Indonesia, Russia, India, Cuba, Fiji, the United States and Nigeria – all dressed in plain white garments.

Men wear seamless, unstitched clothing, and women, white dresses with headscarves. The idea is to dress plainly so as to mask any differences in wealth and status. 

The pilgrimage is considered to be the fifth pillar of Islamic practice. The other four are the profession of faith, five daily prayers, charity and the fast of Ramadan.

What is the religious and political significance of this annual pilgrimage?

"A Pilgrim's Tale of Religious Body Art" published in Diolog magazine

This summer I got a pilgrimage tattoo in Jerusalem. It was an amazing experience. You know what's even better? After writing about it on my blog Diolog magazine -- the Texas Episcopalian digital magazine -- asked to publish it. Even better? The editor Carol Barnwell paid me with a pecan pie. It was delicious. I can only hope the article is as well. Check out how it starts below and then head over to the digital site to read the rest! 

Apparently, getting tattoed on your chest is one of the more painful spots one can get a tattoo. When I buzzed the “call up” button with the name “Razzouk” sketched in Sharpie above it in one of the winding alleyways of the suq in the Old City of Jerusalem I didn’t know that little tidbit. What I did know was that I was about to be in contact with a seven-century old tattooing tradition. 

Indeed, for nearly 700 years tattooing has been the profession and the prestige of the Razzouk family. I finally found the parlor by asking a jeweler near the Jaffa Gate, “I’m looking for a tattoo artist, do you know…?” Before I could finish my sentence, the jeweler said, “You mean the Razzouks?” Their name and notoriety preceded my rendezvous with history. 

Inscribing pilgrimage on my body - a pilgrim's tale of religious body art

Apparently, getting tattoed on your chest is one of the more painful spots one can get a tattoo. When I buzzed the “call up” button with the name “Razzouk” sketched in Sharpie above it in one of the winding alleyways of the suq in the Old City of Jerusalem I didn’t know that little tidbit. What I did know was that I was about to be in contact with a seven-century old tattooing tradition. 

Indeed, for nearly 700 years tattooing has been the profession and the prestige of the Razzouk family. I finally found the parlor by asking a jeweler near the Jaffa Gate, “I’m looking for a tattoo artist, do you know…?” Before I could finish my sentence, the jeweler said, “You mean the Razzouks?” Their name and notoriety preceded my rendezvous with history. 

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The Razzouk home is located on one of the crowded, bustling, streets of the Old City in Jerusalem. PHOTO: Ken Chitwood

After a circuitous and, at times, comical scavenger hunt for the Razzouk family home running up and down the winding streets of Jerusalem’s Old City I finally shook hands with the capable and charismatic Wassim Razzouk in the baby-blue ceilinged and confined space of his family’s home, which doubles as a pilgrimage tattoo parlor. In contrast to the bustling passageways of the Old City, the Razzouk home is tranquil and quiet, with only the whir of the electric needle and my bated breath to interrupt the calm.

Yes, I held my breath throughout the process. Not only did I not want to rattle the rock-solid hand of Razzouk as he etched a sacred design over my heart, but I felt the weight of history upon my chest as well. After all, in this moment I was inscribing a mix of faith, physical journeys and spiritual intimations onto my body with ink, flesh, and blood. I was not alone. Not only because my wife was there or Wassim and I would talk motorcycles and traditions during the process, but because thousands of pilgrims stood before me and the traditions of myriad religious personages wove their way into my tattoo as well. 

A Coptic Christian family, the Razzouks originated in Egypt. However, in the 18th-century an ancestor came on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As Anton Razzouk, the family’s elder statesman, recalls, “the business can be traced back to a Coptic ancestor who traveled by camel and donkey from Egypt to Jerusalem for a pilgrimage about 300 years ago and decided to remain.”

His name was Jersuis and he was a Coptic priest. He brought the tattooing art he had learned from his forefathers to Palestine and later to Jerusalem around 1750. 

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Wassim Razzouk carries on a tradition that is centuries old. Here, his father's tools and work desk are featured with respect in a corner of the current parlor. PHOTO: Ken Chitwood

In the Coptic tradition (and also among other Eastern Christian communities — Ethiopian, Armenian, Syrian, Maronite, Kildanian, etc.) tattooing serves as a marker of Christian identity. Historically, small crosses tattooed on the inside of the right wrist were given to Coptic Christians (some as early as 40 days old) and granted religious peregrines access to sacred sites across Christendom.

Designs of pilgrimage tattoos have ranged from that of the Annunciation (for virgins, apparently) to the classic Coptic cross and images of Christ in his passion. In the past, the Razzouks and other artists used olive and cedar wood blocks to stencil the designs on before commencing the tattoos. The blocks were important in allowing for rapid work during busy seasons (e.g. Easter). The Razzouk family has had as many as 200 different tattoo designs over the years. Several of these wooden stamps remain in the Razzouk family and are said to have been used to tattoo the likes of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, King George V and King Edward VII of England. Their designs are various and many contain dates to mark the year of pilgrimage. The oldest design block bears the date “1749;” the tattoo I received can be dated back to the 17th-century.

Pilgrimage tattoos also include designs that signify where the pilgrim had journeyed to, which sacred sites she had visited. This was not only inscribing one’s spiritual journey in ink and blood, but one’s physical pathway through the Holy Land. Simultaneously, tattoos among Christians in the Middle East could be maps, keys, and testimonies.

As time wore on European devotees who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land would get Christian symbols or scenes inked onto their bodies to remember and commemorate the experience. In 1680, Lutheran theologian Johannes Lundius spoke of Christians who made pilgrimages to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and made marks on their bodies “because of the special sacred awe associated with the place and because of the desire to prove that they had been there.” 

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The author's tattoo design representing his journey to Jerusalem (the Jerusalem Cross in the center), Bethlehem (the star), and Nazareth (where the "Three Kings" visited Jesus and his family). 

Many tattooed pilgrims over the last 300 years undoubtedly came to the Razzouk family in the Old City of Jerusalem, but there were other tattoo artists who would perform the service on the cobblestoned streets or in passageways between churches and shrines. 

Now, the Razzouks stand alone as the sole tattoo artists in the Old City; but they are not alone in the tradition of religious tattooing, which is still prevalent the world over. Across the globe, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, New Agers, Pagans, Druids, Jews and other religious adherents get tattoos to represent their religion.

From Judeo-Christian symbols to Pentagrams to Buddhist mandalas, many religious adherents choose to proclaim some aspect of their faith or practice through body art. Though the symbols may fade with time, or cause a commotion today, they are ultimately simple and yet strong expressions of personal devotion. In a recent article by Miliann Kang and Katherine Jones in the e-zine New Tattoo Sub-Culture they share:

“The tattoo speaks to the ongoing, complex need for humans to express themselves through the appearance of their bodies. The tattooed body serves as a canvas to record the struggles between conformity and resistance, power and victimization, individualism and group membership. These struggles motivate both radical and mundane forms of tattooing. The popularity of tattoos attests to their power as vehicles for self-expression, commemoration, community building, and social commentary. At the same time, the tattoo’s messages are limited by misinterpretation and the stigma that still attaches to tattooed people.”

Without entering into a full-fledged discussion of religious aesthetics and meaningful religious iconography, religious tattoos serve as powerful vehicles for self-expression and whether they are beautiful or boring, contentious or cool, they act as an interpretive tool for people to understand religion, their own or others'. All religious art serves a dual purpose as a hermeneutic of a theological truth (for the artist, or the inked) and as a window through which outside observers interpret a religion and its adherents. In the end, religious tattoos, just like a Christian fresco or an artistically scribed Qu’ran, serve as interpretive vehicles through which humans give voice to their religious devotion and allow others to apprehend religious truth through art.

*    *    *

Just a few years ago it seemed that the family line of Razzouk tattoo artists would finally come to an end. The tradition had been passed from father to son for ages, but when Anton Razzouk came to retirement his son Wassim was not initially interested. 

“I was young and more into motorcycles than family,” Wassim told me, “then I realized what I was giving up and that I did not want the centuries old story to end with me.” He then expressed interest to his father that he wanted to apprentice under him. From the moment he took over a tattoo midway through because his father's eyes were tired, Wassim has never looked back. 

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Wassim Razzouk in his tattoo parlor and family home. PHOTO: Ken Chitwood

Now, using a few rooms of the original family house where his ancestors tattooed the faithful of the world, Wassim feels compelled to pass on the tradition. While he is a man of many ventures (even a possible motorcycle shop lies in his future) he knows his son will take up the sacred work of pilgrimage body art. When I ask if his son will learn, Wassim said, “of course.” While the lines of pilgrims wanting tattoos has died down and the path of the future is as uncertain as the unassuming location of this tiny parlor in Old Jerusalem the tradition will live on, carved into the unwritten laws of the Razzouk family and its forebears. 

As he wraps up his work on my chest, Wassim comments to me, “you have the skin for tattoos.” This is good news, I plan on getting more in addition to the two I have already, both of places (Israel and Palestine, California, respectively) and symbols of the land, its meaning in my life, and my journey in, and through, them. 

I look at the finished project and for a moment the room is still and silent. It is a solemn second in time.  As I sit looking in the mirror I soundlessly reflect on the fact that I have now imbedded this journey — both of faith and of pilgrimage — onto my body and joined thousands of pilgrims past, present, and future. 

This is not just a tattoo, I think, but a history, a community, a place, and a people. This is more than ink, it is part of how I make my way through this world in thought and deed, with ritual, and embodied movement. The good news is that I am meant for this journey and I am not alone. 

*Special thanks to Wassim Razzouk for the tattoo, to my in-laws Paul and Linda, and to my wife who accompanied me on the journey to find the Razzouk home in the Old City. 

A pilgrim's progress - an ethnographic perspective on evangelical Holy Land tours

“Casting our eyes to the right, lo! like a flash of lightning the oft-mentioned and oft-to-be-mentioned holy city of Jerusalem shone forth...the pilgrim, or stranger who had never seen Jerusalem could not but...beheld with our eyes the long-desired holy city, we straightaway dismounted from our asses and greeted the holy city, bowing our faces to the earth.”

— Felix Fabri, German pilgrim, 1480

As holy as Holy Land pilgrimages are, they are also, concomitantly, very human affairs. The humans who make these journeys make meaning of them as well. They move through these spaces with bodies that have sore feet, smell the incense, bump into fellow pilgrims, and get sunburnt on an archaeological dig. They craft their own narratives and share their own perspectives through photos and stories. There is also, on every trip, conflict and miscommunication. Indeed, as important as the holy sites of a pilgrimage are, equally so are the human sites which seek, explore, and interact with them. 

I recently accompanied a group of evangelical Lutherans on a Holy Land tour with the group Educon Travel (read about their "7 Principles of Christian Travel"). Along the way I enjoyed participating, leading devotions and studies, and also observing the group as we "walked where Jesus walked."

To assist my understanding of the human phenomenon of pilgrimage to the Holy Land I read two books: R. D. Kernohan's The Road to Zion: Travelers to Palestine and the Land of Israel for historical perspective and Hillary Kaell's (Assistant Professor of Religion at Concordia University Montreal), Walking Where Jesus Walked: American Christians and Holy Land Pilgrimage for an ethnographic lens. 

Pilgrimage to the "Holy Land" has a long history. The first recorded pilgrim to the Holy Land was a bishop named Mileto, who hailed from Sardis in Asia Minor. His journey occurred around 160 C.E. and Christian historian Eusebius, writing in the 4th-century, shared that Bishop Mileto visited those locales “where the Scriptures had been preached and fulfilled." Others such as the anonymous Bordeaux Pilgrim, the excitable Egeria (a.k.a. Etheria), the Roman widow Paula, and German friar Felix Fabri left journals that recount their adventures and experiences in the footsteps of the Bible. 

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Journeying through the "Holy Land" -- shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims of all stripes -- some pilgrims struggle with the encounter with variant rituals, beliefs, and bodily practices. Others join in. PHOTO: Ken Chitwood

Yet, it wasn't until after the end of the Six Day War that the throngs of modern pilgrims began to flock to Israel and Palestine. Kernohan shares that "one result of the Israeli conquest was a decisive victory in the battle for pilgrims and tourists. Probably more Christian visitors have come to the Holy Land in the [latter half of the 20th-century] than at any other time in history." (149)

Indeed, since the 1950s, millions of U.S. Christians have traveled to the Holy Land to visit places in Israel and the Palestinian territories associated with Jesus’s life and death. Millions of others come from Africa and Asia, Russia and Europe, Latin America and Oceania. 

Questions abound? Why do they come/go? Why do they come in such numbers? How do they react to the encounter with other religions and customs there? What's the cost -- financially, personally, culturally, politically? How do they interpret the trip before, during, and after? How do they cope with the dissonance between dream and reality? How do they seek out "the holy thing behind the seemingly holy place?" (Kernohand, 154) How do they wrestle with the juxtaposition of sanctity and commercialism in simultaneity? How do they collate through politics and particular personages who are want to share their opinion on Palestinians and Israelis and Muslims and Americans and more? What links are there between home and away, pilgrimage and every day life? 

Considering why the influx today, Kaell chose to analyze how the growth of mass-market evangelical pilgrimages emerged out of changes in U.S. Christian theology and culture over the last sixty or so years, including the growth of the small group movement, the development of an entire industry of Christian leisure travel, and changes in Jewish-Christian relations.  

Essentially, Kaell boils all the questions above into one -- what does it mean for 21st-century U.S. Christians to return to "the source" - in her words "walk where Jesus walked" - in the context of their everyday faith? 

Kaell drew on five years of participant observation and interviews with pilgrims before, during, and after their pilgrimages. She tracked Catholics and evangelicals, but for the purposes of this blog we will focus on her findings about evangelicals. 

What she discovered was that the pilgrimage is a hybrid harmony between holy and human, divine and mundane. The journey that pilgrims take, and the interpretations that they give to their experiences are tied to the ordinary, the everyday, and their roles, rituals, and realities at "home." Not only do pilgrims grapple with the tension between the material and the mystical, commodification and religious control, the home and the "Holy Land" during their journey, but also betwixt and between places like Apache Junction, AZ and the Arab Quarter in Jerusalem. 

“This book shows us how Holy Land pilgrimage is embedded in the everyday lives of pilgrims, before and after their trip. But it also does much more. We learn how the Holy Land occupies a powerful place in the American religious imagination, and examine what it means to be Protestant or Catholic in an age of contested modernity.”

— Simon Coleman, University of Toronto

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A pilgrim's feet caked in the mud from the Jordan River, near "Bethany Beyond the Jordan" where Jesus was said to have been baptized. PHOTO: Ken Chitwood

I found Kaell's reflections to be eerily prescient. Frequently, as I read the book on the bus or in my room at night I would laugh out loud as I recollected a moment from the day that passed that proved a perfect illustration for a perspective that she offered. 

For example, Kaell was discussing how the "image of Israelis as American-style pioneers persists today, which, by contrast, means that Palestinians can be construed as dangerous 'Indian' interlopers." (Loc. 872) That day, I'd not only heard our tour guide refer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one of "cowboys vs. Indians," but had heard one of my fellow travelers talk about Jordan as "the Wild West." 

To me, this not only illustrated how guides are "conscious of their unique opportunity to shape the group's outlook...therefore [spending] significant time promoting their political/theological ideologies" (Loc. 1002) but that "spiritual interest in Palestine, including the Christian interest in the tradition of pilgrimage, will [remain] one of the constant factors" in this ever-changing situation. (Kernohan, 158) Knowing that U.S. Christian perspectives matter in the Middle East -- both politically and poetically -- it is important therefore for groups of pilgrims to be intentional about their engagement with such issues, taking in both sides and hearing divers perspectives from Jews, Christians, and Muslims who live in that context every day. 

On that point, I was also drawn to the interstices of U.S. Christians' encounters with other religions. Christian pilgrims struggle with multiple religious "others" in the context of contested space in the "Holy Land." From the Orthodox jostling for their moment to grace the spot where Jesus was born to the Roman Catholics who booted us out of the wedding chapel at Cana to the adhan, or "Muslim call to prayer" rousing us to wake in the mornings, many pilgrims struggle with denominational and confessional fault lines. Mostly, pilgrims feel that their experience is the authentic one. After all, Muslims weren't here in Jesus' day -- why should they distract us now? Catholic and Orthodox Christians are all about rituals, I will stick with my private, personal, evangelical piety. Copts? I have no clue what to do with them. I feel for them as martyrs at the hands of ISIS, but I would condemn them as heretics if they got in my way. To be sure, evangelical pilgrims vie for space in the Old City and at the Church of the Holy Nativity and draw on centuries of battles to wrest control of the "Holy Land" from "infidels" (Muslims), "schismatics" (the Orthodox), and "legalists" (Catholics) to stake their claim.  

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Pilgrims jostle for photos and feelings with other Christians bumping their way to the place of Jesus' birth at the Church of the Holy Nativity. PHOTO: Ken Chitwood

It was difficult, nigh impossible, to interject any grand opportunities to share my insight and background from, and in, religious studies during the trip. While there were those who asked sincere questions of Muslims and Druze, Copts and Zionist Jews I could barely get a word in before my inquirers interjected with their own perspectives and interpretations informed by their own news consumption, e-mail discussions, and experiences from home. Granted, I too was headstrong with my views and opinions as I listened to our tour guide woefully represent Muslims and express what was to me an errant perspective on the religion and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Just as my compatriots were not to be moved, I too remained recalcitrant. Negatively, this meant that divisions were doubled-down and fault lines morphed into fissures. Positively, for some, the trip came to exemplify and perhaps positively reinforce, recent shifts toward ecumenism and pluralism.

As Kaell noted, ne'er did we let this boil over into full blown conflict. This trip was far too expensive and important to let interfaith rivalries or political opinions ruin our time. After all, this is a "holy" trip...even though other humans are unfortunately on our buses, in Bethlehem, and in our bedrooms. 

Related to the point above about transporting our previous perspectives from home into our experience on the pilgrimage, Kaell concludes by discussing various dualities throughout the book - particularly those between domestic relationships at home and global experience traveling to and in the Holy Land. Insightfully, she shows how each pilgrimage derives its power and relevance from the interaction and tension between the two.

Just as their trip through Jesus' backyard is significantly shaped by their home life, so too upon their return the "Holy Land" is remembered, reordered, and reconstructed "according to the subjective interpretations and cultural expectations" of home. Likewise, pilgrims use their encounters and experiences in the "Holy Land" to decode their spiritual lives back in the U.S. They are forced to reimagine their spiritual struggles, feelings, and physical encounters in the context of the domus. In the interplay between before and after, over there and right here at home, both places are reinterpreted and reshaped. Pilgrims often find that just as they struggled to find the holy in the "Holy Land" -- as ruins disappointed, churches were too busy, and some experiences too commercialized for their liking -- so too they strive to find the holy at home. Just as the numinous evaded their reach in the places where Jesus was himself was they find it hard to brush up against him in their church, in their small group, or in their daily life. 

“...the Holy Land pilgrimage is not religious in spite of its commercial or touristic or global nature. It is powerful precisely because participants engage with defining characteristics of Christian modernity through the juxtaposition of these dualities: the dynamic tension between material evidence and transcendent divinity, the intersection of commoditization and religious authority, the interplay between domestic relationships and global experience. American Christians navigate these categorizations and ways of being every day, of course, but the intentional nature of “walking where Jesus walked” brings them into heightened relief. It is the extra-ordinary nature of this “trip of a lifetime” that makes it such a good experience to think with—for American Christians and for the scholars who study them.”

— Hillary Kaell

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Pilgrims struggle with commercialization and pluralism on their journey, juxtaposed against holy sites of Christian lore. They take this tension home with them. PHOTO: Ken Chitwood

In this way, pilgrimage simply serves as the microcosm of the mundane, as a journey into the everyday, but in a far away place. As a parallel to the odyssey of lived piety at home it can often leave pilgrims more frustrated than illuminated. Yet, at its best, this voyage can turn us into regular religious site-seers who turn their senses to appreciate the divine intimations that percolate in the everyday. If truth be told, not only are pilgrimages of this sort an encounter with the divine, the religious "other," a potent political situation, or crotchety companions, these peregrinations are engagements with our own spiritual selves in relation to the world we live in -- near and far, local and global, at home and in the "Holy Land." 

With that said, this gives us an opportunity to learn that our world is evermore one of compressed space and time, where the global and the local interact and intermesh on regular occasions, and there may not be as much difference as we thought between home and the "Holy Land." On the negative side, we may be unhappy to discover that the divine evades us on our pilgrimage. From the glass-half-full perspective, we may find that the sacred, in all its multifarious manifestations, was waiting for us back at home.    

The Seven Principles of Christian Travel

For two weeks I traveled from Tel-Aviv Yafo, Israel to Madaba, Jordan; from Kiryat Shmona to Bethlehem, Palestine. As I sojourned in these places I listened and learned, I watched and weighed what I saw, tasted, heard, and walked around. Not only did I pay attention to the communities and locations I was visiting, but also the group -- the evangelical "Holy Land" tour -- with which I participated. 

Last week I started sharing perspectives and informed observations from my time in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan. They are limited, to be sure. However, I want to take the time to focus on pertinent issues regarding these places and U.S. involvement and experience. To do so, I am inviting other informed and expert voices into the conversation. The blogs focus on two particular issues: politics & peace in the region and Christian travel and "Holy Land" tourism. 

*Read last weeks' posts on politics & religious freedom in Israel & reading the bible through Palestinian eyes. 

This week, we turn to reflecting on "Christian tourism" and "pilgrimage" in the "Holy Land." That's a lot of quotation marks, but that's because all of these terms need defining, reflection, critique, and nuance. Later on in the week, I will be sharing my reflections on evangelical Holy Land tours and pilgrimages, but first I invited our tour organizer and leader (and a good friend and mentor of mine) Rev. Richard Ross to share his intimate insight on Christian travel with us. His guest blog will help us begin to understand what Christian tourism is, why it happens, and who is involved. 

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Richard Ross, guest blogger and Christian travel aficionado. 

Richard is the founder and director of Educon Travel, which you will hear more about below. Over the years he has traveled around the world, meeting people and building relationships, immersing himself in a variety of cultures and ministry settings. Plus, he's a cool dude with a beard, a coffee drinking habit, jazz inclinations, and a motorcycle hobby that would make any hipster green with envy.

*For more on religion & culture, follow Ken on Twitter!

Below, Richard shares some of his influences as a professional traveler and entrepreneur and also some reflections on what it means to travel with Christian intentions and looking for divine intimations in holy sites and cultural experiences. Enjoy! 

After I graduated from high school my friend, John, and I went to Europe for three months. We’d been planning all year long for it, working odd jobs to raise money to go, studying the sites we might see, and dreaming. Every couple of weeks we’d go to the international terminal at SeaTac Airport (Seattle) and watch the flights come and go. Our enthusiasm was palatable. We could taste it. If you knew us, you could probably taste it too! We were so excited for the “Go!” We wanted to go to Europe, breaking free from our daily routines and experiencing the world.

We were not disappointed. We stayed in the cheapest hostels money could buy! I remember being in a sleeping bag on the rooftop of a youth hostel in Athens listening to young people like us play their guitars and flutes into the wee hours of the morning. And I remember lying on top of a 3-high bunk bed in a hostel in Venice listening to the water splash against the wall of our dorm room. And I remember sleeping on the trains we took from city to city in the night.

And the sites we saw were magnificent! Their histories predated my own country by hundreds of years, which was humbling. And the preservation of the sites by the countries we visited showed me the respect the people had for history, which instilled in me a respect and appreciation for the old things: history, art, architecture, language, culture, all of it.

One ah-ha experience I had as I traveled western Europe was my realization that no culture has it all sewn up. Each has something unique to offer the world. I ate food I would never have eaten in America (and it was delicious), I saw architecture and art that was unique to its own region (and it was beautiful), I experienced different ways of looking at the world through the eyes of friends I made along the way (and it was challenging), and I realized there is no “us and them,” but there’s only an “us.” My world got bigger on this journey, but at the same time it got much, much smaller as I came to understand the things I held in common with the people I met along the way. 

In college a few years later I went to the Holy Land on a study tour. My world again grew as it got smaller, but more importantly, for me as a Christian, I was able to set the stories to the places. At first my reason for going to Israel was the “Go!” But after I got there my perspective changed. Now it was about seeing the stories in the Bible through the eyes of those who wrote it, who lived it. And the Bible came alive for me in a new way when I saw things like the foundations of the ancient walls of Old City Jerusalem; the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the waters of the Jordan River. These and other sites brought to life 2,000 years of Bible history for me, and my faith was encouraged.

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PHOTO: Ken Chitwood

Since that time I’ve felt that visiting places of history is something that should not be thought of as a leisure activity or as something to do only after one has raised a family and retired. But it’s something that every person should do as a part of their experience of becoming human, growing in one’s understanding and appreciation of other people and their culture, history, art, and language. And visiting the Holy Land and other places of biblical importance (like Turkey, Greece, Italy, Egypt and Jordan), can play a huge part in a person growing as a Christian.

For me “Christian travel” is Christians on a pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is a very old word usually associated with particular religious traditions. However, I like to think of pilgrimage in broader terms, as something as simple as “the search,” the search for meaning, for depth, for a sense of connection as regards one’s faith. For instance, I wanted to connect with the call Moses got from God at Mt. Sinai. What was that like? What did Moses experience when he was on the mountain? So I led fellow pilgrims on an early morning climb up to the summit of Mt. Sinai, where we saw the sun rise and read the words of God to Moses from Exodus 3. It was a moving experience. And so it is when we visit the Jordan River where Jesus was baptized, or Mt. Gerizim where the blessings were read to Israel, or Antioch on the Orontes from which St. Paul launched his ministry. Christian travel and pilgrimage are about reflecting on the heart of God in the Bible and what this means for me.

The reason I started a new Christian travel organization was an accident. As a pastor I wanted to lead my church on a tour of the 7 Cities of the Revelation. I’d been on a Footsteps of St. Paul tour a couple of years earlier, one a friend had promoted. But I was very disappointed. The guides were sour, the hotels were in terrible locations, there were all kinds of additional fees we had not been warned about, and the selection of sites was sometimes disappointing. It was then that I realized that Christian tours are often organized by people who are not necessarily Christian or in tune with the whole point of a pilgrimage, that is, a transformative, life-changing experience, and they obviously did not understand that everything that happens on a tour makes a difference.

For over a year I searched for someone who could organize my tour the way I envisioned it: a 3-day educational retreat on the Island of Patmos followed by a tour of the ruins of the 7 Cities of the Revelation in Turkey. But no one could do it. No one. Well there was one, but his prices were out of this world! (Literally, as no one in my world would be able to afford his trip!) So I did it myself, and in the process I created a tour organization.

Educon Travel is the name of my organization. Our motto is, educational and economical Christian touring. I think Educon Travel is unique and fills a niche in the market of Christian travel. To my knowledge no one else offers tours which are rooted in an understanding of the power of educational and experience-based touring. I talked to a man whom I met at a site on a Footsteps of St. Paul tour. He was with another tour group. I asked him how it was going, and he said, “I don’t know yet. We’ve been touring for five days and I still don’t know what the point of it is.” If he’d been on our tour, he would have known!

The locations we organize our tours around all have something to do with the story of the Christian faith. My two favorite countries are Israel and Turkey. Greece, Italy, Egypt and Jordan follow close behind, but Israel, for example is where it all began. There are great archaeological sites and worship sites at every turn, and because it’s a very small country one can see and experience the land very easily and quickly. Turkey, called Asia Minor in the Bible, unarguably has the best biblical archaeological sites, in number and quality, to be found anywhere on the planet, dating from the Neolithic era to the Greeks, from the Romans to the Byzantines. In all of the countries we visit we always enjoy great hospitality, food, accommodations, and local, cultural entertainment.

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PHOTO: Ken Chitwood

When I organized my 7 Cities of the Revelation tour I evaluated a whole bunch of things that I thought might make a tour good or bad. I wondered why some sites were selected for a tour and others weren’t. I was frustrated with the added-on expenses for “special” excursions and with the lousy food I’d eaten at hotel buffets. I marveled at the hotel selection, often finding ourselves in shoddy, unwalkable neighborhoods. I thought about all of the grumpy tour guides I’d met. And I also questioned whether or not group touring had to be as tedious as what I’d experienced. This led me to write what I call the “7 Principles for Touring,” the building blocks for all of my future tours. Here they are:

1. Our tours are theme-based: We choose a theme which guides us as we create an itinerary for a tour, one which people will find personally gratifying in their minds and hearts.
2. With a carefully chosen theme and itinerary in hand, we craft an educational outline for the tour. For us it’s not enough to just see the sites, but we want to understand what happened in these places and what those events mean in our lives today.
3. Our prices are economical and up-front: Our goal is to give everyone, not just the “traveling class,” the opportunity for Christian travel. We keep prices low and we don’t surprise people with exorbitant fees for “special excursions.”
4. We handpick our guides: Believing that a guide can make or break a tour, we look for positive, personable, smart, energetic, guides who can add value to our tours.
5. We enjoy authentic local food, which is so much better than “American buffets” in hotels!
6. We stay in accommodations in interesting, walkable locations.
7. We create memorable WOW! experiences throughout our tours. If you’ve ever been on a bus tour for a week or two, you’ll immediately notice the difference. We do things like renew marriage vows in Cana, sing hymns in the theater in Ephesus, share the Lord’s Supper in the Dormition Abbey, have a dinner cruise on the Bosphorus Straight, learn Greek dance on the Island of Patmos, worship the Lord on Mt. Sinai, and many, many other things.

These principles are the things people talk about after a tour, the things that make a tour memorable. 

Sometimes a person asks me for advice about how to put together their own tour. I always point them to my 7 Principles, highlighting the importance of having a theme and creating an itinerary. After all, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you probably won’t find it! So I say, choose a theme. It could be something as simple as learning more about the missions of St. Paul, or something as deep as meeting God. With a theme, a Bible, and a focused itinerary a person will usually enjoy a tour that changes their life in some exciting ways.

Traveling in the Middle East, which is where most of the great biblical and church sites are, can be a challenge for Christians. For the majority populations are Jewish in Israel and Muslim everywhere else. So some cross-cultural sensitivities are always helpful. For example, my guides in Israel were a Zionist Jew, an Arab Muslim, and an Arab Christian. And they all had opinions! But I enjoyed absorbing everything they said, because for me that’s one of the best things about traveling abroad. Getting to know people in their own cultures, which are dramatically different from mine in a 100 different ways, makes me a better person in my heart, and mind, and spirit. And that’s a good thing. May you enjoy the same kind of enrichment in your pilgrimage.

*For more on religion & culture, follow Ken on Twitter!

I'm going to Israel, you should come too!

Pilgrimage. History. Oath. The food. Solidarity. The sights. Adventure. Religious intimations. 

There are may reasons that people embark on a journey to "the Holy Land" — to Israel. There are also many reasons that people do not — danger, conflict, persecution. 

I am going to Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, from May 22 - June 3, 2015 and I want you to come with me. For me, it is an opportunity to travel with friends (new and old) and combine a tour experience with biblical education, devotional moments, and pertinent discussions about conflict and peace.

Israel and various sites in Palestine are holy to many, There are multiple motivations and many ways in which Jews, Muslims, Christians, and secular individuals hold the land, the monuments, and the culture in honor. 

For Christians in particular, it is an honor and opportunity to step into the land of Scripture and see, touch, taste, and hear the environment from which their faith emerged and which, in many ways, continues to shape their religion today. 

Educon Travel provides you with the opportunity to experience the cultures, art and history of the world in the most dynamic and inspirational ways imaginable. The trips are sometimes called pilgrimages, others call them faith-based tours, still others call them Bible tours or Christian tours. Regardless what title one gives them, however, their tours give you an inspirational, life-experience you’ll never forget! 

This tour is particularly exciting for me, as I get to take part in the teaching and devotions and explore the land, its people, and culture with folks like you. 

So, what are the details? Here is our TOUR SUMMARY:

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While I can't promise Rhys Davies, Sean Connery, and Harrison Ford will, or will not, be on this trip you can't risk not being able to hang with these dudes on a horse in front of the treasury at Petra, Jordan. Just sayin'

• Days 1-5 Starting out from Tel Aviv, we’ll visit Jaffa, where St. Peter raised Tabitha from the dead, and Mt. Carmel, where Elijah challenged the false prophets. We’ll go to Megiddo, Jezreel and Nazareth, and we’ll celebrate the institution of marriage in Cana. We’ll visit Mt. of Beatitudes along with the other great sites of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. We’ll also explore Mt. Transfiguration, Tel Dan and Caesarea Philippi too. 
• Days 6-7 On our way to Jordan we’ll see the great Old Testament sites, Jericho and Beit She’an. In Jordan, we’ll celebrate God’s grace in baptism at Bethany-Beyond-the-Jordan, where Jesus was baptized, and explore Mt. Nebo, where Moses saw the Promised Land. Before returning to Israel, we'll explore the ruins of Petra (think Indiana Jones).
• Days 8-12 Nearing Jerusalem we’ll visit the fortress of Masada, and we’ll also explore Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. With Jerusalem as our base we’ll explore the Old City, walking the Via Dolorosa, for example. We’ll also visit the sites around the Old City, like Mt. of Olives and City of David. In addition, we’ll visit the Holocaust Museum and the Shrine of the Book, where the Dead Sea Scrolls are displayed. We’ll have a day trip to Hebron, home of the tombs of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and we’ll also visit our Lord’s birthplace, Bethlehem. 
• Day 13 You’ll fly home with your heart and mind full of memories or continue with the Sinai Extension! 

Unique highlights of this trip include:

• An experienced tour guide and educator, Dr. Paul Steinbart from Hosanna Lutheran Church in Mesa, AZ and professor at Arizona State University
• Rev. Paul Frank and Rev. Ken Chitwood (that's me!) leading conversations, Bible studies and devotions.
• Elizabeth Chitwood (that's my wife!) leading music
• Discussion of archeological, historical, and cultural context for the sites we are visiting
• An opportunity to participate in an archeological dig
• Addressing pertinent issues in the Holy Land and benefiting the local economy through tourism
• A booklet put together by Dr. Steinbart, Rev. Frank, and Rev. Chitwood that is yours to keep, and refer to, for a lifetime
• Wedding vow renewal at Cana & baptism remembrance at "Bethany-beyond-the-Jordan."
• Comfortable, and unique, accommodations (we're staying in a castle...seriously)
• Fantastic food 
•  A really FUN group of people to travel with (c'mon, we'll make it tons of fun). 

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Get it. 

Despite the obvious, and awesome, benefits of going on such a trip, some are still concerned about safety, especially given recent conflict during Summer 2014. Others may feel that tourism reenforces oppression or supports terrorism and/or apartheid. Ultimately, considering these apprehensions, whether or not to go is an individual decision, but I rest assured that traveling to Israel and Jordan is both safe and advantageous. HERE is a link to a great article on safety, which included this critical outlook: 

“ultimately it is as safe as ever to travel in Israel and the situation in the south of the country is not affecting tourists who are traveling in the country.”

— The Jewish Voice

Furthermore, if you want to explore issues concerning the Middle East and conflict between Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis, Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. one of the best ways to do this is to visit the area, talk to locals, and engage in dialogue as a group to discuss the poignant issues from a perspective of participation and observation on-the-ground. 

As a backpacker traveling in the area over the summer shared:

“While you should stay open to developments of the conflict, travel in Israel is still safe. It’s important to remember that the main tourist areas are away from Gaza, where this current conflict is taking place (and where any travel in close proximity is prohibited). You may come across very small incidents or have to follow the protocol of sirens, but you should not be put off travelling there. Travel in Israel and in the West Bank is also an opportunity to better understand this conflict from both sides – and that alone is invaluable.”

— Becki Enright

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As I said, there are many worthwhile reasons you may want to come on this trip. I pray you will thoughtfully consider joining me, and others, on this trip in May to make the most out of our time together and add to those who are already signed up and ready to go! 

*To learn more about the trip and its cost, visit Educon Travel.

*To talk to me about the trip and its details, use the Contact Form.