The A-Z of Believing: P is for Pilgrimage

Ed Kessler, head of the Woolf Institute, presents the next part in a series on belief and scepticism

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This hill, though high, I covet to ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend.
For I perceive the way to life lies here.
Come, pluck up, heart; let's neither faint nor fear.
Better, though difficult, the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe.

– John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

Pilgrimage is not for the weak. Anyone who spends a week or a month (or more) on a pilgrimage returns home weary, perhaps blistered and sunburnt from walking along the Camino, or with memories of being hassled by street vendors in the Old City of Jerusalem, or of being bitten by insects alongside the River Ganges. So why do it? Because pilgrimage connects the past to the present; so much so, that what happened a hundred years ago can seem historically remote compared to ancient sacred events, which are viewed as almost contemporary.

The British prime minister during the First World War, David Lloyd George, once said: “I was taught more in school about the history of the Jews than about my own land.” This was one factor, which led his government to support Jewish aspirations for a sovereign state in Palestine, and to the publication of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. In other words, biblical imagery and geography have the power to transform the present and give meaning to political decision-making, they influence world history.

Yet, holy geography is a double-, if not multiple-edged sword because ownership of land is viewed in terms of a divine gift, the fulfilment of a divine promise and, at least as far as the land of Israel is concerned, conflicting biblical promises do not define the same borders – leading to the temptation by some zealots of choosing the widest ones possible.

Think not only of Jewish religious nationalist claims but also those of Hindu religious nationalists to Mother India, which in 1992 led Hindu zealots to destroy a 16th-century mosque in Ayodha, on the justification that it was built on the site of a temple dedicated to the god, Rama.

Christian pilgrimage began in earnest in the fourth century, soon after Christianity became the legal religion of the Roman Empire. Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine, established shrines in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and accounts of her pilgrimage inspired an influx of pilgrims and a corresponding outflow of relics that linked the Christian world with the Holy Land. According to folklore, Helena discovered the True Cross as well as the site of the tomb of Jesus at Golgotha. Large numbers of Christian pilgrims soon followed.

The proliferation of holy places and pilgrim services gradually Christianised the land and centuries later, the Crusades combined the spiritual paradigm of pilgrimage with the notion of holy war, massacring Jews en route to Jerusalem and Jews and Muslims in the Holy Land itself. Of course, there are strands of religion that oppose the concept of a physical pilgrimage. Christianity also exhibits a marked ambivalence regarding the significance of sacred space and the merits of pilgrimage with its emphasis on the heavenly rather than earthly Jerusalem. Jerome, who in the fourth century translated the Bible into Latin, questioned the value of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and settled in Bethlehem, six miles away. Protestant reformers of the 16th century emphasised the need to de-territorialise holiness, but pilgrims 300 years later were enthralled by the power of the Promised Land and biblical archaeology, which verified their identity and vivified the Scriptures. As John Bunyan wrote in The Pilgrim’s Progress, “Though the hill is high, I still desire to walk up it. I don’t care how difficult it is, because I understand that it leads to the way of life.”

For Muslims, the Hajj, the great Islamic pilgrimage to the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, attracts over two million pilgrims every year during Ramadan. According to tradition, Hagar and Ishmael ended their wanderings near Mecca, the birthplace of Muhammad. When Abraham went to see them, he and Ishmael rebuilt the Kaaba, which Adam had originally built in Mecca as a place to worship the one, true God. Abraham also established the rites of pilgrimage to Mecca, many of which re-enact the experiences of Hagar and Ishmael.

In India too, places become centres of pilgrimage or thirtas, that is “crossing over”, when a temple to a deity is built to denote that it has become worth visiting for religious purposes. Similar to Jewish attitudes to Israel, for Hindus, it’s the land itself, not so much specific things that have happened there, that is sacred. The River Ganges, in particular, is regarded as mother and nurturer and many Hindus believe that to die at its bank liberates one from the ceaseless round of rebirth into moksha (“liberation”).

The world’s largest congregation of pilgrims takes place in India. An estimated 120 million people visited Maha Kumbh Mela in 2013 in Allahabad, over a two-month period, including over 30 million on one day. And 5 million pilgrims a year go to Lourdes in southern France, where the Virgin Mary was seen in 1858. And even in the secular UK, at Walsingham in Norfolk, 250,000 pilgrims a year visit the 11th-century replica of the house of the Holy Family in Nazareth. Even Henry VIII walked two miles barefoot to the shrine, but ended up pillaging it and having the buildings burned in 1538, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. So, pilgrimages are no lasting guarantee of good behaviour.

But then, life’s a pilgrimage, and the most important thing is the direction of travel.

Next week is: Q is for Quietness

Listen to each episode of ‘An A-Z of Believing: from Atheism to Zealotry’ on the Woolf Institute podcast site or wherever you get your podcasts

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Written and presented by Dr Ed Kessler MBE, founder and director of the Cambridge-based Woolf Institute, this compelling guide to religious belief and scepticism is a must-read for believers and nonbelievers alike.

Founded in 1998 to explore the relationship between religion and society, the Woolf Institute uses research and education to foster understanding between people of all beliefs with the aim of reducing prejudice and intolerance.

Says Dr Kessler: “Latest surveys suggest that 85 per cent of the world’s population identify themselves as belonging to a specific religion, and in many parts of the world the most powerful actors in civil society are religious. Understanding religion and belief, the role they play and their impact on behaviour and decision-making is, therefore, vital.”

Dr Kessler – who was awarded an MBE for services to interfaith relations in 2011 – is an affiliated lecturer with the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, a principal of the Cambridge Theological Federation and additionally teaches at the Cambridge Muslim College.

He says: “This A-Z of Believing aims to show how the encounter between religions has influenced and been influenced by the evolution of civilisation and culture, both for good and for ill. I hope that a better understanding of believing will lead people to realise that while each religion is separate, they are also profoundly connected.”