Location
Palermo
Start Date
26-6-2025 3:30 PM
End Date
26-6-2025 4:30 PM
Description
This presentation examines the motivations behind pilgrimage-like travel among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) to religious heritage sites such as Palmyra, Nauvoo, and Salt Lake City. Although LDS doctrine does not include a formal theology of pilgrimage, these journeys fulfill spiritual, social, and pedagogical functions that align closely with traditional pilgrimage frameworks. Drawing from the interdisciplinary fields of pilgrimage studies, religious tourism, and Latter-day Saint theology, this research conceptualizes LDS heritage travel as a form of modern, constructed pilgrimage grounded in processes of place-making, memory, identity, and faith reaffirmation.
Through qualitative synthesis of existing scholarship and ethnographic observations, this presentation explores how these sacred journeys contribute to religious socialization and communal memory. Motivations for travel include seeking spiritual inspiration, honoring sacred history, fostering intergenerational connections, and deepening one's religious identity. For many Latter-day Saints, visiting these sites becomes an embodied form of testimony bearing, an opportunity to walk where prophets walked, and a chance to reinforce collective narratives of divine restoration and covenantal belonging.
By framing LDS heritage travel within broader trends of contemporary religious mobilities, this presentation contributes to understanding how pilgrimage is evolving beyond traditional doctrinal mandates and towards more fluid, experiential expressions of belief. It suggests that LDS heritage travel constitutes a meaningful religious practice shaped by both institutional encouragement and personal devotional aspirations.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/pf6b-4c22
Included in
F2) Seeking Zion: Motivations Behind Latter-day Saint Pilgrimage-like Travel to Religious Heritage Sites
Palermo
This presentation examines the motivations behind pilgrimage-like travel among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) to religious heritage sites such as Palmyra, Nauvoo, and Salt Lake City. Although LDS doctrine does not include a formal theology of pilgrimage, these journeys fulfill spiritual, social, and pedagogical functions that align closely with traditional pilgrimage frameworks. Drawing from the interdisciplinary fields of pilgrimage studies, religious tourism, and Latter-day Saint theology, this research conceptualizes LDS heritage travel as a form of modern, constructed pilgrimage grounded in processes of place-making, memory, identity, and faith reaffirmation.
Through qualitative synthesis of existing scholarship and ethnographic observations, this presentation explores how these sacred journeys contribute to religious socialization and communal memory. Motivations for travel include seeking spiritual inspiration, honoring sacred history, fostering intergenerational connections, and deepening one's religious identity. For many Latter-day Saints, visiting these sites becomes an embodied form of testimony bearing, an opportunity to walk where prophets walked, and a chance to reinforce collective narratives of divine restoration and covenantal belonging.
By framing LDS heritage travel within broader trends of contemporary religious mobilities, this presentation contributes to understanding how pilgrimage is evolving beyond traditional doctrinal mandates and towards more fluid, experiential expressions of belief. It suggests that LDS heritage travel constitutes a meaningful religious practice shaped by both institutional encouragement and personal devotional aspirations.