Pilgrim or Tourist? Helping Define the Modern
Christian Visitor to Jerusalem?
In Part 01 of our series, we learned that there
has been a continuous flow of Christian pilgrims from the very early days of
the Church. Today, Christians visit the Jewish state more than any other group,
usually above the 50% mark.
In Part 02, we learned about the ‘tourist
factor’ that has helped to stimulate Christian visits. Promotion of Christian
Biblical Tourism has been a constant since the Six Day 1967 War.
In Part 03, we have seen that this ‘continuous
flow’ and ‘tourist promotion’ has resulted in increased visit by Christians to
Jerusalem and Israel. They come from all over the world, including countries
that do not have diplomatic ties to Israel (including Indonesia and Malaysia
and parts of the Arab world). Concurrently, visits to Jordan dropped dramatically
after the Six Day War. Jordan once controlled eastern Jerusalem but once that
ended, tourist numbers dropped, too.
In Part 04, we will examine the important
question: are modern Christian visitors ‘pilgrims’ or ‘tourists’ or both? We
need to construct a contemporary definition, though this will not be easy.
Modern Christian visits are truly fluid and versatile grass roots movement of
highly motivated and passionate people. It is not ordered by ecclesiastical or
political command.
With modern Christian visitors, there can be a mixture
of motives, including spiritual, emotional, human interest, and leisure, the
proportions of which are hard to measure and vary from group to group. Modern
tourism often blurs the distinction between ‘pilgrim’ and ‘holiday-maker.’ Whenever
there is a recreational component to the tour, it is easy, perhaps lazy, to
simply call such visits ‘tourism.’ After all, a faith-filled believer, boarding
a plane and travelling to the Middle East, is a complex, fluid, and/or semi-
unstructured ‘avant-garde experience’ with an undeniable spiritual motivation.
Traditionally, Israel’s Ministry of Tourism classified
many holy land groups as ‘tourists’ than than ‘pilgrims,’ even when it is a
church group led by a clergyman. Why? The reasons vary. Some groups do to
perform proscribed rituals at the holy places while others seems to be having
too much fun: shopping, swimming in the Sea of Galilee, floating in the Dead
Sea, visiting non-Biblical sites like Masada. Francis Peters, a prolific scholar
on the subject of Jerusalem and comparative monotheism, concurs with this view:
...in Jerusalem the pilgrim has been palpably replaced by the visitor,
and, in fact, by the tourist; holy places have declined--the word is chosen
advisedly in the present context--into the secular status of historical
sites....Contemporary visitors to Jerusalem do not lack for piety on occasion.
But very few of them are there...in fulfilment of a religious obligation
(PETERS 1986:74).
Seeking to define a Christian visitor to Jerusalem as a ‘pilgrim’ is not
as easy as it is for other holy cities. We learned earlier that there is no
Biblical or apostle command that Christian believers must visit the holy city.
Christendom does not have a single spokesperson who can speak clearly and
indisputably on behalf of all Christians about what constitutes a ‘pilgrim’ or ‘pilgrimage.’
The various streams of Christendom have vastly different attitudes towards a
Jerualem visit. Catholics and Orthodox highly venerate holy sites and are
oriented towards ‘place and space.’ Protestants, particularly evangelicals and
Pentecostals, are not at all enamoured by holy places and are more interested
in natural things like the Sea of Galilee and Mount Carmel, or educational
sites like archaeological ruins and places like Nazareth Village, a
reconstruction of the Nazareth of Jesus’ day.
Barber comments:
The physical act of pilgrimage is almost universal: the only major
culture from which it is largely absent is Protestant Christianity (Barber
1991:2).
The question is, does this perceived lack of a ‘physical act of
pilgrimage’ (of which there are as many variations as there are pilgrims), or
Peters non-‘fulfilment of a religious obligation’ mean that Protestant visitors
to Jerusalem, who constitute a large percentage of the total Christian number,
and other Christian visitors, are not pilgrims?
Does it even matter what a Christian visitor thinks of himself or
herself - pilgrim or tourist - when they come to Jerusalem? Short answer: Yes1
TO BE CONTINUED
SOURCES:
BARBER Richard. (1991) Pilgrimages, Woodbridge, Suffolk, The Boydel Press.
PETERS Francis. (1986) Jerusalem and Mecca, New York: New York University Press.
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