Andrea Gagliarducci
Religious diplomacy: A resource for religious tourism
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Andrea Gagliarducci
Religious diplomacy: A resource for religious tourism
In the 1990s, Tony Blair's spin doctor Alistair Campbell outlined New Labor's religious policy with a now iconic phrase: “ We don't do God.” It was the mid-1990s, a period when, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was thought that a new and prosperous world was on the horizon, and that faith was only a hindrance to humanity's magnificent future.
In short, religion, which had been a tool for identity and had created communities during the Iron Curtain era, now merely became a hindrance. If faith had previously represented a necessary antidote to the atheistic Soviet bloc, now that an enemy was missing, there was also no reason to speak of faith.
But was it really so? September 11th, preceded by a somewhat underestimated Islamist resurgence, demonstrated that religion could still be used for political purposes. And it was during those years that a group of analysts brought religion back to the center of the international relations debate, recognizing that faith represents something more than a simple "glue" that holds society together. Faith is what people believe in; it is the reason why people make decisions. Faith is the destiny of a people.
I described all this in a book, A World Order Without God? ( https://edizionicittanuova.it/prodotto/un-ordine-mondiale-senza-dio/ ), currently available only in Italian, in which I try to explain how God can, and must, still be at the center of debate, especially today when we talk about war, peace, and supposedly new rights. God is a stable, strong, constant point of reference, compelling humanity to look to something greater than itself, something that surpasses the moral conscience that, according to philosopher Immanuel Kant, is inscribed in every human person.
Awareness of faith is what drives millions of pilgrims around the world and brings them to many places, from the Camino de Santiago to visits to great sanctuaries, from the search for great cathedrals to places significant to faith, be they apparitions, statues, or historical memories. Religious tourism speaks of a shared memory and an inner search, which can only represent one of the great paths to peace in today's world.
This community that seeks faith and recognizes itself in places of worship is the greatest antidote to the depersonalization brought about by artificial intelligence. It is made up of familiar faces who share a common journey, built on a shared history that also requires knowledge of the symbols and history of faith, and is rooted in the hearts of each individual through its moral callings.
In his utopia of a united Europe, the venerable Robert Schuman started from the idea that war should be impossible, and that for war to be impossible, equal opportunities and fair trade had to be created that would prevent the expediency of going to war to grab resources.
But I believe that for a war to be impossible, it requires an even deeper understanding, a fundamental religiosity that cannot be defined at a political level, but can be delineated through a shared spirituality.
For this reason, I believe that the World Religious Tourism Network today can be a path to peace. It can do so by helping to define new, meaningful itineraries, by rekindling pilgrimages and identities in the search for common ground, and by developing a brotherhood born of the awareness of having only one Father, and that humanity is therefore made up of brothers.
To this tourism effort, we can and must add peacebuilding work, which involves awareness of the impact of faith on people, examining the Social Doctrine of the Church and papal diplomacy, and questioning the role other religions and faiths play in building nations outside the Western world.
There's a project I'm working on in this regard: a think tank on religious diplomacy called The Roman Watch (www.theromanwatch.org). The think tank aims precisely to put religions back "at the center of the village," to analyze the world through the lens of people's faith, and to build peace and communities starting precisely from this humanity renewed by faith.
Religious tourism, in this project, is complementary and essential to the program, because it helps to raise awareness, creates culture, and expands the spaces for dialogue, which are essential for peace.
For this reason, I hope that these projects will one day converge, be equipped with university and training programs, and create a new religious culture through travel and diplomatic thought. I am certain that it is possible, and that such a convergence will truly create new paths to peace.
Author: Andrea Gagliarducci
Vaticanist
Founder and Executive Director
The Roman Watch
@andygag
The Roman Watch: @theromanwatch
The authors are responsible for the choice and presentation of the facts contained in this document and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of Tourism and Society Think Tank and do not commit the Organization, and should not be attributed to TSTT or its members.
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