Experiencing and Teaching Pilgrimage in a Sacred Spaces Course
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 4
Abstract
As part of an integrated studies curriculum at the author’s college, all juniors must take a Reflections course in which students consider personal values and analyze familiar and unfamiliar systems of thought and belief, in order to explore their own and others’ ideas about the ultimate meaning and purposes of life. “Sacred Places Past and Present”, is a course designed to fulfil this requirement. This course focuses on a number of important religious sites in the ancient Mediterranean and in the modern world, including the Parthenon, Olympia, Delphi, Stonehenge, and Muir Woods. These places are compared and contrasted in terms of what makes them sacred. Two pilgrimage experiences are part of this course: the hajj to Mecca and the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. In the past, the unit on the Camino focused on Emilio Estevez’s 2010 film “The Way”; however, during the summer of 2016, the author walked the Camino de Santiago. As a result, the course was substantially revised to reflect the author’s own personal experiences as a pilgrim. In particular, Paulo Coelho’s The Pilgrimage was incorporated into the course and students were given an opportunity to participate in a one-day pilgrimage walk in western Illinois.
Authors and Affiliations
Thomas J. Sienkewicz
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25968
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9040102
- Views 308
- Downloads 11
God and Guns: Examining Religious Influences on Gun Control Attitudes in the United States
Mass shootings in the United States have generated significant media coverage and public concern, invigorating debates over gun control. Media coverage and academic research on gun control attitudes and reactions to ma...
Theodicies as Failures of Recognition
This paper examines the ethical failure of theodicies by integrating the perspectives of philosophical argumentation and literary reading and analysis. The paper consists of two main parts. In the first part, we propos...
Economic Functions of Monasticism in Cyprus: The Case of the Kykkos Monastery
The article presents a comprehensive overview of the various economic activities performed by the Kykkos Monastery in Cyprus in its long history (11th–20th centuries). The article begins with a brief review of the earl...
Television Dramas, Disability, and Religious Knowledge: Considering Call the Midwife and Grey’s Anatomy as Religiously Significant Texts
Images and narratives of people with disabilities in popular culture shape the perceptions of people with and without disabilities. When these narratives raise philosophical and religious questions emerging from the li...
Only (Dis-)Connect: Pentecostal Global Networking as Revelation and Concealment
Contemporary forms of Pentecostalism, such as that of the Faith Movement, are often represented as inherently global, constituting a religion ‘made to travel’ and to missionize across the world. I argue that while much...