peculiarly modern challenges to traditional religious authori-
ty: empiricism and cultural pluralism. Indeed, the claim of
authentic religious experience forestalls critiques of religious
authority on strictly objective, empirical grounds. At the
same time, cross-cultural similarities of religious experiences
lend a universal authority to the category of religion beyond
the limited claims of particular religious traditions. In a simi-
lar fashion, touristic experiences, at once both authentic and
aesthetic, confer validity, authority, and meaningfulness on
the modern traveler.
As a modern practice, however, tourism submits these
experiences to a thoroughgoing process of commodification.
Every sight, sound, and taste; every locale and event; indeed
every experience available to modern travelers becomes sub-
ject to a system of exchange that commodifies them in aes-
thetic terms for touristic consumption. Tourists are hyper-
consumers of aestheticized culture, including religion. In
fact, religious people themselves oftentimes adopt touristic
practices to commodify their religion for touristic consump-
tion. They do this not only for financial gain, but also to
proselytize, and in many cases religious groups capitalize on
touristic attention simply to present themselves and their re-
ligion publicly in the best possible light. For example, the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints takes advantage
of touristic interest at Temple Square in Salt Lake City to
tell the Mormon story in heroic terms and to draw visitors
into the church’s missionary process. On the other hand, nu-
merous churches in Europe pay for their upkeep and im-
provements by charging admission to visitors and by operat-
ing retail shops where tourists can purchase souvenirs and
religious paraphernalia.
This process of commodification highlights the implica-
tions of the encounter between religion and tourism. Nearly
all religious people in the world today must contend with the
challenges that modernity presents to long-standing tradi-
tions, and tourists bring those challenges into the sacred
spaces of the world’s religions. By involving themselves in the
touristic discourse on experience, both authentic and aesthet-
ically pleasing, religious people conform to conventional as-
sumptions about the role of religion in the modern world
even as they assert the validity and power of their religious
traditions and values in modern terms. At the same time,
tourists experience religious life according to their own as-
sumptions, expectations, and desires. Consequently, most
tourists rarely appreciate the uniqueness and complexity of
the religious practices and traditions they observe in their
touristic travels. On the other hand, viewing tourism from
the perspective of its spatial dimensions, understanding its
historical origins, and regarding it as a cultural phenomenon
of the modern world obviates a simple dichotomy between
religion and tourism. Differentiating religious people and
tourists in strictly oppositional terms becomes more difficult
when considering the many dimensions of their relationship.
Indeed, tourism and religion are not mutually exclusive, and
in fact they often reside together in individuals who remain
at once both tourists and religious adherents.
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tourism and American identity.TOURISM AND RELIGION 9263