Cross Cultural Theologies

1 total work

Bibles and Baedekers

by Mike Grimshaw, Michael Grimshaw, Jione Havea, Clive Pearson, and Anthony G. Reddie

Published 24 June 2008

Contemporary tourism and travel have become a form of religion, a new opiate of the masses. However, could Church and theology be religious forms of tourism and travel? 'Bibles and Baedekers' offers a theology of tourism and exile for a modern and postmodern world. It examines the ways in which location, identity and movement have made use of religious texts and metaphor and questions the relative absence of secular texts and ideas in theology. The theology of the tourist and traveller is one of new experiences, the acquisition of identity through movement. 'Bibles and Baedekers' uniquely applies this to the postmodern Christian, embodying the fulfilment of Bonhoeffer's 'religionless Christianity', dislocated from both a secular and 'religious' world.