Here I Walk

November 14, 2016
Wilson, pastor and columnist for Christianity Today, presents the story of a modern-day pilgrimage he and his wife, Sarah, a scholar at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in France, took in 2010 to retrace the walk that Martin Luther made from Germany to Rome in 1510. The idea for the walk stemmed from a conversation he and his wife had during their time in graduate school. The story follows the Wilsons across a good swath of European territory starting in Strasbourg and ending in Rome at the Scala Sancta. Wilson tells a fairly mundane story of bad weather and missed connections with his parents who are providing a kind of pilgrimage support and mobile babysitting service for the Wilsons’ young son. Despite bewailing divisions within Christianity, both historic and modern, the Wilsons make free critiques of the Catholic landscape they walk through, condemning the Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, for instance, on the basis of aesthetics rather than considering what the church might represent to believers and what role it might play in their community—which would have been disrupted by Lutheran theology. With all the ingredients in place to make a thoughtful narrative, it’s a shame so little is done with the rich source material. This work never finds a pace, wandering somewhere between historical analysis, travel diary, and spiritual testimony to Wilson’s own personal Lutheran belief.