Encyclopedia of Religion

(Darren Dugan) #1

co, and the Inca ceremonial center of Machu Picchu in Peru
remains a favorite stop for tourists.


Places where contemporary people continue to practice
their religion also capture the attention of tourists. Tourists
can view the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest sites for
Muslims in the ancient city of Al-Quds (Jerusalem). Also in
Jerusalem, an ancient ruin that remains an active place of re-
ligious practice for Jews is the Western Wall of the Temple
Mount, popularly known as the Wailing Wall. In Rome,
holy places of Christianity abound; among the most popular
are St. Peter’s Basilica and other sites of the Vatican. In
Japan, the Ise temple complex, the most sacred site of the
Shinto ̄ religion, is a favorite destination for tourists.


Tourists often take more interest in witnessing religions
in practice than in merely viewing the places of religion. A
visit to a church, temple, mosque, or shrine becomes more
meaningful and fulfilling if a ritual or some other event hap-
pens to be occurring at the time of the visit. Special celebra-
tions and religious festivals generate even more enthusiasm
among visitors. Widely known festivals such as Carnival in
Rio de Janeiro in Brazil or Mardi Gras in New Orleans in
the United States attract huge crowds every year. But smaller,
lesser-known celebrations often have greater appeal for trav-
elers. Visitors in China intent on experiencing authentic
Chinese culture may have more interest in a local village’s
Lantern Festival than in a large celebration that is widely pro-
moted in tourist literature.


There is no end to the places and events of religion that
tourists visit each year, and an attempt to list all the possible
religious attractions for travelers would prove futile. Indeed,
outsiders visit religious sites and witness religious activities
virtually everywhere. Many of these visitors do not regard
themselves as religious practitioners or pilgrims; they come
as tourists, modern consumers of religious culture. Certainly,
a good number find themselves actively participating in reli-
gious practices at the places they visit, but at the same time
they rarely falter in pursuit of their touristic objective to have
authentic, aesthetically pleasing experiences.


HISTORICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN RELIGION AND TOUR-
ISM. It is tempting to suggest that tourism has its roots in
religious pilgrimage. In fact, as categories of practice and ex-
perience, pilgrimage and tourism are easily confused. In con-
temporary settings, pilgrims often engage in touristic activi-
ties; like tourists, they take photographs of the places they
visit, they purchase souvenirs and gifts, and they avail them-
selves of the same transportation and lodging accommoda-
tions that tourists use. At the same time, tourists who visit
religious sites, including pilgrimage destinations, sometimes
find themselves participating in religious practices, and many
so-called tourists are overtaken by feelings that can be de-
scribed as religious at sites regarded as sacred. Thus, it is easy
to confuse the experience of the tourist with that of the
pilgrim.


Yet despite the difficulty of distinguishing between
them, the practice of tourism has origins largely independent


of the traditions of religious pilgrimage. By 1780, when the
term tourist first appeared in the English language, conven-
tions of recreational and educational travel in the Western
world already had established themselves with more than two
centuries of development. In fact, the history of touristic
practices follows on the same historical forces that challenged
the traditional authority of Christianity and consequently led
to the demise of pilgrimage in much of northern Europe.
These include the rise of humanism beginning in Renais-
sance Italy and spreading northward; the Protestant reforma-
tions of the sixteenth century that shook the foundations of
traditional church authority in Christian Europe; and the
Enlightenments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
which introduced new models of political authority and
modern forms of subjectivity. Along with their profound im-
pact on European societies in general, these movements also
changed the expectations and requirements for an educated
citizenry. Sara Warneke (1995, p. 30) notes that, instead of
a pure scholasticism pursued in earlier times, the Renaissance
education sought to prepare students for a life of service to
their community, their prince, and their state; this often in-
cluded stays in foreign states to learn firsthand the culture
and politics of other societies. By the second half of the six-
teenth century, significant numbers of travelers were leaving
their homelands in hopes of gaining the educational benefits
of a continental journey.
Following the Thirty Years’ War of the seventeenth cen-
tury, travelers settled into a conventional pattern of educa-
tional travel that would be the basis for what became known
in the eighteenth century as the Grand Tour. Not unlike
their counterparts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
participants in the Grand Tour sought education and refine-
ment. But tourism changed over the course of the eighteenth
century. Early in the century a classical view of the Grand
Tour dominated, most typically involving young men travel-
ing with an entourage of servants and tutors to selected Euro-
pean destinations, most often Paris and Italy, to finish their
education and practice the refinements of cultivated society.
But in the second half of the century, as Jeremy Black (1992,
p. 300) points out, the classical model became less typical as
more people traveled for enjoyment and amusement. Black
goes on to note that although many aristocratic families con-
tinued to send their sons abroad for education and social fin-
ishing, the emphasis on education declined as tourism joined
in the growing European fascination with leisure activities
(p. 303).
By the time of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815,
travel practices in Europe were undergoing significant
changes that precluded a return to the heyday of the Grand
Tour. Steamships and railroad service allowed for more con-
venient, more enjoyable, and less time-consuming tours of
the Continent. And although tourist travel throughout most
of the nineteenth century remained primarily a privilege of
wealthy classes, the growth of railroad transportation made
travel available to at least a few members of the middle class-

TOURISM AND RELIGION 9261
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