Sacralizing the Church Inside a Mall: Redefining Religious Tourism in the Philippines

Abstract

The potential for drawing tourists to the Philippines may be facilitated through religious tourism, the type of tourism that involves pilgrimage to sacred sites as act of worship. As the only largely Christian nation in Asia, the Philippine government hopes to increase tourist arrivals, particularly among Catholics worldwide to visit the multitudes of magnificent churches all through-out the islands and to marvel at the vibrancy of Filipino Catholicism. The present paper however argues that visiting these churches may show how deep-seated religiosity is among Filipinos but does not show the complete picture because some churches that Filipinos that frequent are inside malls, which traditionally do not pass as pilgrimage sites. The study intends to describe the experiences of Catholic Filipinos who attend mass and other church services in a mall church to ultimately delve on the possibility of considering these mall churches as part of pilgrimage in the Philippines. Using key informant interviews and survey, several findings are notable. First, church goers in a mallchurch believe that a space can be made sacred, and hence, the place where mass is celebrated does not matter so much. Second, there is ambivalence as to the notion of considering mall church as a pilgrimage destination because mall churches are devoid of religio-historical significance which regular churches have, but with the Filipinos‘ penchant for malling, church attendance is high in these mall churches. Third, despite the secularizing effect of globalization, church attendance among Filipinos remains high because churches are established where people flock such as the malls. The study concludes that it might be an oversight to simply dismiss mall churches as pitiable alternatives to the typical churchbecause Filipinos patronize it. It is recommended that future studies on religious tourism include a more thorough investigation of mall church-going to gain a more nuanced grasp of the uniqueness of Filipino religiosity.