photo credit: womansday.com

Summer is prime time for vacations. School is out, and the warm weather is perfect for outdoor adventure, or just lounging at the beach or the pool. For many of us, vacations are a way to relax, recharge, and escape the stress of everyday life, but we often don’t realize the implications of our vacationing practices for the people and places we visit.

Back in June, I wrote an article  for a magazine called Christ and Pop Culture about how to vacation without checking our ethics at the door. The magazine offers their readers a digital subscription for tablets and iPads, so the article has been behind a pay wall until now–but today it’s being featured on the website for free. Here’s how it starts off:

          “From royals relaxing at summer palaces to wealthy Americans seeking out natural surroundings for the sake of health during the Victorian era, vacations have historically been a privilege of the social elite. It wasn’t everyone who could afford a second house by the sea or a trip out to the wilderness to escape the cramped conditions of cities. Yet both rest and connection with nature have always been basic human needs whatever your station in life.

          These days, the world’s cities, cultures, and natural landscapes are often marketed as prepackaged commodities available for consumption to anyone who can pay the ticket price (which still includes people with money, and excludes people who are poor). But this purely materialistic understanding of vacation is a destructive oversimplification of God’s creation. As consumers, we are encouraged by industry executives and advertisers to narrow our focus to the monetary cost of our trip. But as followers of Jesus, we are called to be concerned about the rest, health, and wholeness of the places and people we visit as well as our own…”

Click here to read the rest of the article, in which I examine the unsavory specifics of cruises, all-inclusive resorts, and air travel, and offer practical advice for vacationing in ways that are just and compassionate.

ethical vacations