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Chapter 5. Religious Organizations and Support for Hikers
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chApTer 5 religiouS orgAniZATionS And SupporT for hikerS Churches, Retreat Centers, and Outreach to Hikers A unique feature of the Appalachian Trail is the involvement, along its length, of churches, retreat centers, and religious nonprofits in hiker care. The National Park Service has allowed a Christian nonprofit to recruit unsalaried, volunteer ministers, many of whom are seminary students. They organize worship services for national park campgrounds, at least during the summer vacation months. The ministers pursue seasonal paid employment to feed themselves, and find their own housing. Religious organizations’ support for the Appalachian Trail, in contrast, has not been based in providing ritual opportunities for coreligionists, but offers housing, food, and guidance to the nearest sandwich shop or pharmacy . Further, no umbrella organization sets standards, provides oversight, advertises the availability of assistance, or solicits volunteers for ministries to the AT. The participating bodies look like a list of congregations and camps from the yellow pages in a small-town phone book. Independent good citizens, motivated to serve because of their religious beliefs, emerge as an eclectic collection of salespeople, schoolteachers, doctors, contractors, farmers, military veterans, engineers, and shop owners. They are the people next door, in the truest sense. The religious organizations and churches reaching out to hikers generally have not been motivated by strategies to recruit new members from the AT to their home congregations. A mobile population such as the AT end-to-enders are not likely to join and remain with a church they encounter on the way. Kesher Howes reported that Twelve Tribes had already started a business in Rutland, religious organizations and Support for hikers 82 VT, and they kept seeing hikers arriving in town, seeming lost and isolated because they did not know anyone. Their integrative community began by offering a friendly outreach and just trying to make hikers feel welcome in the city. A pastor confessed that he did not allow the first few hikers who arrived on the church lawn to go into the building complex, but permitted them to camp outside. Assisting hikers who needed medical attention—one of whom had symptoms of full-onset Lyme disease—encouraged him to allow hikers to use some of the church’s indoor facilities. The director of a retreat center reported that an end-to-ender, whom she had offered a ride, suggested she offer assistance to AT users.1 She decided to open a small hostel, away from her usual retreat participants. The well-known hostel The Place, operated by the United Methodist Church in Damascus, VA, originally catered to transcontinental bicyclists, and then began to absorb AT hikers as well. A number of the religious organizations offered services to AT hikers that paralleled other charitable programs or shared the same space. One church used a common area as a hiker hostel for most of the year, while also closing the area to hikers for a few weeks annually and taking in families needing temporary housing as part of a diocese-based program. Retreat centers were already serving meals and providing housing or campsites for visitors. The managers and spiritual mentors confirmed that they had found that the AT hikers, owing to their individualized schedules, were better separated from their other guests. The exception was an integrative community where temporary residents usually camped. Some of the most stable volunteer-run overnight facilities were the hostels constructed specifically for one- or two-night stays by hikers and bicyclists , such as the quaint barnlike building that is a short walk from the Holy Family Roman Catholic Church parish hall in Pearisburg, VA (fig. 5.1). Hospitality as Ministry When we asked clergy or members of religious organizations if they considered their service to hikers as “ministry,” all but one responded positively. The angels invoked two major concepts: (1) offering physical support to people in need is a core Christian principle; and (2) assisting others who are on a spiritual journey is ministry. Jeff Fife, a YMCA director, considered coordinating a campsite for hikers and allowing hiker use of the Y swimming pool as compatible with the Christian basis of the YMCA’s mission. Fife immediately associated their simple [44.223.37.137] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 08:02 GMT) religious organizations and Support for hikers 83 but effective program for hikers with “Christian values—caring and responsibility .” He also related the YMCA’s participation with the AT to the Y’s desire to serve the greater community. The Christian director of an interreligious facility...