Churches Tourism Association

The Celtic Tradition of Welcome

The lives of the Celtic Saints are filled with accounts of their ministry of hospitality, writes author and divinity lecturer Dr Ian Bradley. "The desire for pilgrimage... was one of the great motifs in Celtic Christianity... Pilgrimage did not just mean going to a particularly holy shrine. It involved a whole approach to life and faith which stressed the themes of journeying, travelling and moving on. It meant sitting lightly to the things of the world and understanding that here we have no abiding city. It led people to join up with others as they walked the great highway of faith."

"The borderline between tourism and pilgrimage is very narrow", Dr Bradley concludes, in an essay in the Sacred Scotland website, Entertaining Angels. In making visitors welcome to our churches we are continuing in that tradition of hospitality practised by Ninian and Columba.