The Monastery, the City and the Human Future

Abstract

Despite our times being labeled “secular age,” unanticipated currents of spirituality in both new, old and mixed forms keep appearing. I many places pilgrimages have reemerged often to traditional sacred sites but with new meanings layered onto older ones in Europe, America and Asia. In this phenomenology of pilgrimage the author catalogs some of the characteristics of these post-secular journeys. They attract conventionally religious people, seekers, New Age adherents, amateur historians, health buffs, nature lovers and tourists who together constitute a new and different sort of “congregation,” which like many aspects of the world today is temporary, in flux and in motion. They often exhibit an element of commercialization, but hint at one kind of “post-secular” spirituality. This phenomenon presents a challenged to architects, urban planner and scholars of religion.