Is pilgrimage for Christians today?

The Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century eschewed pilgrimage as a devotional practice and this quote from Martin Luther well represents their wholesale condemnation: “...there is no good in [pilgrimages], no commandment, but countless causes of sin and of contempt of God’s commandments”.[1] They continued to embrace the concept of pilgrimage as metaphor (John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is a good example of this), but reinforced that since God is omnipresent, “access to the courts of heaven”[2] does not require pilgrimage to so-called sacred places – this resulted in a widespread dismissal of pilgrimage as a spiritual discipline by Protestants that has influenced the attitudes of evangelical Christians up to the present.[3] 

While it is true that pilgrimage to holy places is nowhere commanded nor specifically recommended by Scripture as a spiritual discipline, and it is certainly not a necessary condition of being a good Christian, during the second half of the twentieth century “spiritual travel” (for the most part Protestants do not call it pilgrimage) has experienced an extraordinary resurgence of popularity even among Reformed evangelicals who are rediscovering the benefits of travelling Reformation pilgrimage routes and journeying to the Holy Land to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.[4] It is almost as if Protestant Christians have begun to recognise the spiritual dimension that millions of Catholic and Orthodox believers have long sought by setting out along ancient pilgrim pathways: an inner journey of spiritual growth and mental transformation.[5]

The act of Christian pilgrimage is imbued with strong meaning-making potential and may be described as an act of faith that involves stepping out of one’s everyday life and self into an Abraham-like existence of relative simplicity which can strengthen the sense of community between fellow travellers as they share physical hardship, personal struggles and support each other (i.e. social connection), and pilgrimage also provides opportunities for prayer during parts of the journey covered in solitude and silence (i.e. spiritual connection).[6] Studies have shown that even secular pilgrimage journeys can have therapeutic or healing dimensions by providing a communal structure with similar individuals who gain a narrative framework for coping with emotional pain and issues such as guilt, alienation and loss as pilgrims move through rituals concurrently.[7] There is also research which suggests that repetitive movement facilitates experiences of transcending that lead to heightened awareness, sudden insights and revelations, therefore the rhythmic activity of walking would be conducive to self-reflection, prayer, contemplation, and meditation on God.[8]

Last, but not least, pilgrimage allows Christians to discover “that places where Jesus walked and talked, suffered, died and rose again can and do resonate with the meaning of what he did."[9] This is what separates Christian pilgrimage from other forms of travel: it goes beyond merely appreciating

the historicity of the biblical story to the incarnational nature of the Christian faith which enables pilgrims to experience the reality of its happenedness and invites believers into fresh intimacy with God.[10] There is something about simply being in the Holy Land which does not leave the true pilgrim unchanged: 

“We will come back changed. Of that I am certain. But of course that is why you go on pilgrimage in the first place, to find the holy, stumble upon God in action, and be changed forever by the experience”.[11]

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[1] J. G. Davies, Pilgrimage Yesterday and Today: Why? Where? How? (London: SCM, 1988), vii; Ted Olsen, “He Talked to Us on the Road: The Surprising Rewards of Christian Travel”, Christianity Today (April 2009), 23. 

[2] This is part of a statement from Jerome (Letter 58) who wrote: “Access to the courts of heaven is as easy from Britain as it is from Jerusalem for the kingdom of God is within you. Nothing is lacking to your faith though you have not seen Jerusalem”. Ian Bradley, Pilgrimage: A Spiritual and Cultural Journey (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2009), 35.

[3] Olsen, 23; Tom Wright, The Way of the Lord: Christian Pilgrimage Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 1, 2.

[4] Dee Dyas, “Christian pilgrimage today”. WWW page.  <http://www.york.ac.uk/projects/pilgrimage/content/index.html> (n. d., cited 30 July, 2016); Olsen, 23, 24; Wright, 9, 10.

[5] Philip Jenkins, “Restored pilgrim paths”, Christian Century (September 2015), 45; Andrew L. Wilson, “The Genesis, Development, and Reception of an Ecumenical Pilgrimage”, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 49.3 (2014), 505.

[6] Tatiana Schnell & Sarah Pali, "Pilgrimage today: the meaning-making potential of ritual", Mental Health, Religion & Culture 16.9 (2013), 887, 891; Heather A. Warfield, Stanley B. Baker & Sejal B. Parikh Foxx, “The therapeutic value of pilgrimage: a grounded theory study”, Mental Health, Religion & Culture 17.8 (2014), 860-861; Wright, 10.

[7] Warfield, Baker & Foxx, 861.

[8] Schnell & Pali, 892; Wilson, 505.

[9] Wright, 7.

[10] Bradley, 30; Olsen, 26; Wright, 10.

[11] Canon Trevor Dennis introducing a pilgrimage to Russia, quoted in Bradley, 17.

The Historical Practice of Pilgrimage.

Even though there was little to be seen at biblical sites in Palestine and Jerusalem for most of the first three centuries of Christianity, from the earliest days of the church, a few Christians, motivated initially by intellectual curiosity rather than a spiritual yearning to deepen their faith, made the hazardous journey to visit the locations associated with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.[1]

However, the nature and development of Christian pilgrimage underwent a dramatic change in AD 312 when Constantine established Christianity as the favoured religion of the Roman Empire and began restoring biblical sites, building churches to commemorate sacred places, and encouraging pilgrimage to them,[2] thus from the fourth century onwards, Christian pilgrimage has been conceived of and practiced in three main ways: moral pilgrimage, interior pilgrimage, and place pilgrimage.[3]

Moral pilgrimage emphasises the theological meaning of pilgrimage, i.e. the whole of the Christian life is viewed as an ongoing journey towards the heavenly Jerusalem and this concept is based in the portrayal of Christians as “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Heb 11:13), residing here temporarily (cf. 1 Pet 1:1), but whose true “citizenship is in heaven” (Phil 3:20; cf. Eph 2:19; Heb 13:14).[4] The present life of faith is the path of daily obedience expressed in moral behaviour and service to God and others.[5]

Irish monks in the sixth and seventh centuries likewise saw pilgrimage not as a journey to a particular holy place like Jerusalem or Rome, but as voluntary and perpetual exile from one’s homeland undertaken as a form of asceticism - they renounced the comforts and distractions of this world and embraced a life of separation from everything they loved for the sake of God.[6] Their approach was based specifically on imitating the biblical example of Abraham who, in obedience to God, left his home and native land and went to live in a foreign country (Gen 12:1; Heb 11:8), and they understood themselves to be undertaking a perpetual pilgrimage which focussed on the interior journey of the soul toward God achieved by suffering hardship and practicing spiritual disciplines such as fasting, prayer, meditation, and penitential exercises.[7]

Place pilgrimage was a social movement that became prominent in the medieval period (500-1500 AD)[8] and is generally defined as “journeys to holy places undertaken from motives of devotion in order to obtain supernatural help or as acts of penance or thanksgiving”.[9] With it came a marked growth in the veneration of saints (the draw of St Peter and St Paul’s tombs in Rome was already strong) eventually resulting in Canterbury, Cologne, Santiago de Compostela, and Constantinople also becoming major pilgrimage destinations, however the Holy Land, and Jerusalem in particular, remained the place Christians most desired to visit because the (empty) tomb of Jesus Christ himself – the central figure of the Christian faith – was located there.[10] Therefore, although there were many unbiblical[11] and less than pious reasons for undertaking a pilgrimage,[12] by the eleventh and twelfth centuries many Jerusalem pilgrims considered their pilgrimage to be an imitatio Christi in which they imagined and re-enacted in their own lives the events associated with Jesus’ service and suffering.[13]

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[1] Ian Bradley, Pilgrimage: A Spiritual and Cultural Journey (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2009), 30. 

[2] Bradley, 31-32. 

[3] Dee Dyas, “Pilgrims and Pilgrimage: Pilgrimage in Christianity”. WWW page.  <http://www.york.ac.uk/projects/pilgrimage/content/index.html> (n. d., cited 30 July, 2016). 

[4] “pilgrimages” in Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3^rd ed., eds. F. L. Cross & E. A. Livingstone (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1997), 1228; Dyas, “Pilgrimage in Christianity”. 

[5] Dyas, “Pilgrimage in Christianity”. 

[6] Bradley, 37, 39; Dyas, “Pilgrimage in Christianity”; “pilgrimages” in Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1228. 

[7] Bradley, 38-39; “pilgrimages” in Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1228. 

[8] Justine Digance, “Religious and secular pilgrimage”, in Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys, eds. Dallen J. Timothy & Daniel H. Olsen (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 36. 

[9] “pilgrimages” in Dictionary of the Christian Church, 1228. 

[10] J. G. Davies, Pilgrimage Yesterday and Today: Why? Where? How? (London: SCM, 1988), 7, 9. 

[11] Medieval pilgrimage was commonly regarded as a penitential activity which could reach its climax with the remission of an individual’s sins. Davies, 2. 

[12] There was a great eagerness to obtain relics which had a commercial potential, and long before,  Augustine had criticised the base commercialisation of many hypocrites selling the relics of martyrs or so-called martyrs, but relics were also thought to embody the personal holy presence of the saint with which they were associated therefore they were believed to be able to effect remarkable cures. Davies, 3, 4. Christian pilgrimage has been associated with purification, penance, worship, and healing, but pilgrims were known to be driven by more secular desires, such as wanderlust, pastime, curiosity, and exploration. Tatjana Schnell & Sarah Pali, “Pilgrimage today: the meaning-making potential of ritual”, Mental Health, Religion & Culture 16.9 (2013), 890. 

[13] Bradley, 46.