ABSTRACT: Not all sacred pilgrimages are far-flung, once-in-a-lifetime, or extraordinary. Some pilgrimages are local, routine, and mundane. Scholarly literature examining the former kind of pilgrimage has blurred the supposed boundaries between pilgrim and tourist, enabling a flourishing of literature focused on religious tourism. My research, on the other hand, argues that attending to the latter kind of pilgrimage enables a similar blurring of boundaries—this time between pilgrim and resident. Based on fieldwork conducted in a small, rural, Latter-day Saint (LDS) community in Canada that is home to an LDS temple, I demonstrate that the desire to live close to a temple, in order to enable routine attendance, factors prominently in Latter-day Saints’ decisions about where to live. In this, the resident-pilgrims impact the viability and stability of the resident economy. Consequently, this essay’s arguments are two-fold. First, that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) practice regular, routinized pilgrimage in the form of temple attendance. Second, that the experiences of pilgrims living close to these pilgrimage sites problematize the seemingly discrete categories: pilgrim vs. resident. This research contributes to an emerging anthropology of Mormonism attentive to the LDS Church in its globalized contexts. It also contributes to a more nuanced understanding of pilgrimage—one which becomes accessible only through anthropological inquiry premised on observant participation in the local, routine, and mundane aspects of religious life.
C. William Campbell (Thu,) studied this question.