Go to Church on Vacation
This is not a story about your religious commitments! Even my Bible-loving parents never dragged their families to church when our vacation coincided with Sunday morning. But there are two good reasons to attend a religious service while traveling, regardless of your personal beliefs.
Get an aesthetic experience
If you are the type who may have already toured a church (or other place of worship) on vacation, then this is just a more exciting way to do it. Look for a church that has kept its traditions as well as its building. Then immerse yourself in hymns, sermons, and blessings as you gaze at the architecture from your pew – the way you were supposed to appreciate the church.
Growing up, I went to a gaudy “modernized” church with PowerPoint sermons and soft rock instead of hymns, so even in the turbulent early years of my atheism, I enjoyed choosing a particularly beautiful church and attending services. It was a great way to appreciate the historic site, and I appreciated the more humanistic and less fundamentalist preaching of the San Francisco churches. It was a way to discover my own city, but it is also a great way to discover a new one.
Don’t take more than one or two pictures and don’t act like a tourist. If you want to wander around the building for a bit, stay there after the sermon, when congregants tend to gather around and you may see several different points of view.
Check the temple in advance for service-related customs (and if there are any planned activities after this service). Also look for etiquette in relation to that particular religion. You can consult How To Be The Perfect Stranger , a book on etiquette for attending services of many religions and Christian denominations.
Go for people
Here’s a more intense tactic: Meet people. While I was keeping myself in churches, New York Times writer Seth Kugel recommends attending church as a way to meet locals and find new experiences. In his book Journey Again: A Guide for the Curious Around the World, he writes:
As a lone traveler, I have been to church dozens of times because the church is the most intimate part of people’s lives, open to the public and welcomed by order.
Kugel describes a trip to Hungary, where he attended evening mass, chatted with several local college students, and ended up being invited to the godfather’s house of one of the students to buy a local fruit brandy. This is MO Kugel; he is friendly with people and tries to communicate directly with the locals, finding much more authentic and interesting food than he could find in a local restaurant. Hear him discuss his approach on the Think radio show ; he talks about churches at 06:33.
You don’t need to break into someone’s house; you can just talk a little with some of the friendlier members, or praise the choir and clergy for the service. (Don’t call it performance.) Still, try to stretch a little outside your comfort zone; that is the difference between a traveler and a tourist.
Seth Kugel on Think | through the Art of Noticing