Learning from the Puritans: life as pilgrimage

We have much to learn from the spirituality of the 17th-century Puritan movement. One perhaps surprising example of this is their emphasis on pilgrimage.

In the Old Testament, Jerusalem was seen as a place of pilgrimage. The annual feasts encouraged worshippers to journey to Jerusalem. The Psalms of Ascent testify to the significance of this journey. But with the coming of Jesus the nature of pilgrimage changes. Jesus himself is the temple (John 2:18-22), so we come to Him rather than journeying to a physical location (1 Peter 2:4-5). Nevertheless, in the medieval world, pilgrimage became a major feature of spirituality and a major money-spinner if you could establish yourself as a holy destination. Pilgrimage was a physical act that required physical movement. For some it was an act that earned merit before God. Others journeyed to sacred relics or sites since these were thought to have inherent power. It was a chance to pray to a saint at his or her shrine for a miracle or for time off purgatory.

The Puritans rejected these beliefs as mere superstition. But that doesn’t mean they dropped the theme of pilgrimage. It remained a central feature of Puritan spirituality, but with a radical reorientation.

The primary change was that pilgrimage became an image for the Christian life. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress begins: ‘As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.’ The dream tells the story of how a man named Christian loses the burden of his sin and then travels through life to the Celestial City. It is the story of life as a pilgrimage. Even the opening non-dream element alludes to pilgrimage: ‘As I walked through the wilderness of this world.’ This world is a wilderness through which Christians are travelling.

Charles Hambrick-Stowe, in his fascinating study of New England Puritan piety, says: ‘The sense of being on pilgrimage structured Puritan religious experience from the first stages of conversion on through the saint’s growth in God’s grace, and it strongly coloured the daily and weekly disciplines of of devotional activity’ (The Practise Piety). Though it reworked medieval ideas of pilgrimage, it primarily drew on the wilderness wanderings of Israel in Exodus interpreted through Hebrews 11. Thomas Hooker, among the first generation of Puritan preachers in New England, said: ‘There must be Contrition and Humiliation before the Lord comes to take possession … This was typified in the passage of the Children towards the promised Land. They must come and go through a vast and roaring Wilderness, where they must be bruised with many pressures, humbled under many overbearing difficulties, before they could possess that good land which abounded with all prosperity, flowed with Milk and Honey.’

The experience of the Puritans, both individually and corporately, was interpreted in the light of Old Testament patterns, but always in the light of their fulfilment in Christ and the hope of heaven. The New England Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet wrote a poem entitled ‘As a Weary Pilgrim’ (1669) which includes the lines:

A pilgrim I, on earth perplexed
With Sins, with cares and sorrows vext,
By age and pains brought to decay,
And my clay house mold’ring away.
Oh, how I long to be at rest
And soar on high among the blest.

So Puritans used the metaphor of pilgrimage in three ways.

First, to describe Christians as those who are estranged from the culture and honour of this world (1 Peter 1:1,17; 2:11). This was particularly expounded in the face of the hostility and corruption of the established church.

Second, as a metaphor for pilgrimage to the individual soul, travelling through life towards heaven, by faith experiencing en route ever-increasing joy in Christ (Heb.11). The idea of keeping a spiritual journal, so popular among Puritans, itself had strong pilgrimage connotations. The words ‘journal’ and ‘journey’ both stem from the same root meaning ‘day’. In the Middle Ages the word ‘journey’ was used of the distance of about 20 miles, a day’s travel. People often kept a journal when travelling. So a journal was the record of a journey – either a literal journey or a person’s pilgrimage through life.

Third, for the Puritans in New England, pilgrimage was a particularly strong theme because it had a physical counterpart in their own experience. They were, after all, ‘the Pilgrim Fathers’. Their own lives had involved a journey made for spiritual reasons. They had travelled out of captivity in the Egypt of old England and saw New England as a staging post on their journey to the heavenly Jerusalem. They were not a settled people, physically and spiritually. Indeed, many of the first generation feared for the second generation as they began to settle down.

The Puritans remind us that earthly life is merely a staging post as we travel to our heavenly home. Viewing life as a pilgrimage helps view this earth aright: as our temporary home, we treat it and its inhabitants with respect and care. But, because it is only temporary, we are more interested in laying up enduring treasure in heaven. Tim Chester is a senior faculty member of Crosslands Training and the author of over 40 books. He has a PhD in theology, a PgDip in history and 25 years experience of pastoral ministry. He is married with two grown-up daughters and lives in rural Derbyshire where he’s part of a church plant. His book Into His Presence: Praying with the Puritans is available from The Good Book Company.