ABSTRACT
‘Religion’ does not need to be the only or even the primary interpretative framework in the study of pilgrimage. Arguing in favor of a widening of the scope of pilgrimage studies beyond religion per se, the chapter mixes personal reflection with interview data in order to explore Greek Cypriot pilgrimages to the Turkish-occupied Christian Orthodox monastery of Apostolos Andreas (Cyprus). Looking at how non-religious performative acts which enable and are enabled by the pilgrimage may become as, or even more important to the pilgrimage experience than the religious performance of devotion, it shows how they construct pilgrimage as a politically loaded journey of ‘return’. Such a conclusion challenges both the notion of a penitential journey that lies at the heart of Euro-American understandings of Christian pilgrimage and the notion of pilgrimage excursion which is often found in the analysis of Christian Orthodox pilgrimages. It further illustrates the usefulness of an approach that does not take religion to be the default motivation for participation in the workings of a shrine.
