Following the Saints, Footfall by Footfall | Matthew R. Anderson:
In the last thirty years, a new form
of pilgrimage has gained popularity in the Western world. If you are
over 30 and living in Europe or North America, chances are pretty good
that someone you know has walked the Camino de Santiago, the "way of St
James" in Spain. That path, once the third most important Christian
pilgrimage route, has undergone a massive renaissance since the 1980s.
Just before arriving in Scotland, I had walked 250 km with five friends
over the high mountains of the St. Olaf Way, an historic Nordic
pilgrimage route that has been revived in the 2000s, five centuries
after its demise, by a partnership of church and state in Scandinavia.
From north to south and around the world, walking pilgrimages are
attracting hundreds of thousands every year, and the numbers keep
rising.
So why is this movement growing so quickly?