Category Archives: History of Boston

Giving Group Tours

24 Saturday Aug 2013

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IMG_0968I don’t usually like giving tours to large groups, but today we led a fairly successful Faith-based Freedom Trail tour of downtown Boston with a group of 11, and my first child guest! Okay, so it was my oldest daughter who went (age 8), but I was still impressed that she found it all interesting.

The group was from my own Orthodox Christian parish, and enough Russians were present to insist on walking the entire way. Usually to get to the section of the tour in New Boston (Back Bay) and behold the crown jewel, Trinity Boston, I take my guests on the subway. But this time, every one of these hearty souls wanted to walk the full length of the Common and Public Garden.

It was a real treat for me as the tour guide since we were able to pass by the new location of the First Church in Boston, a place not usually visited on the standard Faith-based Freedom Trail. Let me customize a group tour for you! I love the special challenge of a church group like the one I hosted today.

Two Tours Down and Several Scheduled

19 Friday Jul 2013

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IMG_0579First two tours down and several lined up for the rest of the summer. I have been in contact with a lot of my friends and making many new ones along the way. Please be in touch with me and let me know what your preferences are. We love to customize at Boston Pilgrim Tours. Already, at the end of this month, I am in the midst of planning a specialized tour of select sites that contain original icons of our company’s patron, St. Botolph. This is just one sample of the variety I hope someday to offer with the help of the right contacts and faithful research. With God’s help, we will put religion and faith back on the map as a way of talking about or seeing the beautiful city of Boston!

Why Faith-Based Tours of Boston?

30 Sunday Jun 2013

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June 13/30, Feast of St. Botolph (Old Style)
Abbot and Confessor, of Ikanhoe, England (+680)
Patron saint of all Travelers,
Boston, England (founded 654)
Boston, Massachusetts (founded 1630)
and Patron of Botolph’s Town Tours (founded 2013)

In a society increasingly alienated from religion, among a people who more and more identify themselves as SBNR (spiritual, but not religious), why launch a tour company specifically dedicated to speaking of faith? After all, has not science proved faith irrelevant at best and recent fundamentalist expressions of faith proved it downright dangerous at worst?

But faith is the narrative of the people who first built the two cities of Boston (literally “Botolph’s Town”  elided together into Bo’s-To’n).  If we are going to properly understand how our fair American city of Botolph began, we have to engage at some degree with this narrative. Faith, especially Christian faith, was the reason for the original pilgrim fathers to flee Boston, England, to come to the New World, and to settle here permanently. Faith was the center not only of their spiritual life, but of their whole community.

And it remains the center of our city to this day. Though the number of people non-affiliated with any church or religion is growing nationally, Boston over the past several decades has been celebrating a bit of a quiet revival, with the population remaining around 600,000 and the total number of churches increasing by over 100. It is this kind of spiritual life and vitality that we wish to reveal in our faith-based tours, not just the historic faith of the founding fathers. For the Christ that St. Botolph confessed is alive and well in His Church and reveals Himself in many unexpected ways.

Come take a tour with us and perhaps you too can become a pilgrim!