“Walking the Streets of San Bernardino with the Traveling Chaplain.”

Currently, I am conducting research among an urban church (Celebration Center Ministries) that helps the community and people living on the streets of San Bernardino with basic needs. One of the main spiritual leaders of this church, Rev. Gualbert Augustin (aka Gus), often walks around different cities in the Inland Empire, CA area and beyond, and prays for the cities. He often posts short videos online of him praying. Joining Gus on these walks, this essay explores conversations of theology and religion on the streets that Gus and I had while walking around some of the streets of San Bernardino. Often scholars of lived religion explore religious communities and use scholarly tools to study religious beliefs and practices, but might there be a way to walk alongside community members and to co-create knowledge together? Gus is an active chaplain who is involved daily with serving the community, thus his understanding of religion in this urban space can offer rich insights to scholars and the public in general. Reflecting on San Bernardino’s recent history, its current issues such as the growing unhoused population, and the realities of living on the streets – during these walks Gus and I have conversations that explore social, religious, spiritual and theological subjects in conversation with the city. In this essay, I suggest that these conversations provide an entry into a co-created conversation that explores urban religion in the streets and more. The paths and places that we walk were selected by both of us. This in turn, allowed Gus to also direct the walk and the potential experiences we had, and the topics we explored. This essay allows Gus, a community leader practicing his faith in the urban city, to share his reflections on religion as it exists in these city streets, how religion and the city’s problems interact and to bring attention to specific issues that he sees in the city. In addition to talking with Gus in this urban space, the methodology of “Walking the city” is considered further in this paper as a useful approach to explore religion in city space and to co-create knowledge with one’s interlocutors. Thus, this paper highlights the potential of a method of co-walking in the city: it can be used to walk with others, to reflect on subject matter together in a situated way and to learn from each other. “Walking with” another person can also be used to explore the uniqueness of an individual life as they inhabit the city. 

San Bernardino has one of the largest counties in CA and in the U.S in general with over 20,000 square miles, and with a population of over 2,000,000. Yet, the city has been called by the LA Times as a “distillation of urban woes in America.” The city has a recent history that is ridden with poverty and violence. In my ethnographic work for my dissertation I have met some people who are acquainted with these histories and realities in the streets of San Bernardino. As the city has undergone multiple crises in the past decades, more recently, in the 2023 Continuum of Care Homeless Count and Survey Final Report, it was indicated that an estimated 4,195 adults and children were documented as living without a home in the county of San Bernardino. In the county, the city of San Bernardino had the highest numbers with over 485 in sheltered conditions and 1,017 in unsheltered conditions.

“Walking the city” is a method that has been used to “explore the city.” Different scholars have employed the method to explore cities. Consider the work The New York Nobody Knows: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City (2013) by William B. Helmreich, or Patrick Polks walking tours through the city of Angels, where he explores art and religion on Vermont Avenue. However, as Maggie O’ Neil and Brian Roberts have noted, the idea of “walking the city” can be seen as early as the 19th century when night life became more of a social event with the invention of city lights. People began to go out at night and “stroll” around the city. Later, as more of an approach to studying urban woes, the Chicago School would later pick it up to study the emerging issues of urban life. Other examples that would use and develop this method included, the Mass Observation Project – who developed methods like WIBM (Walking Interview as a Biographical Method) –, the flaneur, street-photographer and the situationists. In brief, these were all groups and movements that used “walking the city” as a way to learn, explore and experience the city. 

My research will be in conversation with the following authors and will consider walking methods in conversation with religious studies: O’Neil and Roberts (2019) note how on one hand this approach could be seen and understood within the practice of ethnography (16-17), yet on the other hand, beyond the role of the interview, they note how WIBM involves movement and scholars needs to take into consideration dynamics of space and time while walkers explore new sites and scenes. Furthermore, while “on the move,” this method gives attention to the environment and “changing sensual, cognitive, and relational feelings”; the relationships between people and space (16-17). WIBM opens up the possibility of considering social space in a deeper way in relation to fields like social sciences and the humanities. Yet in conversation with this method, other scholars like Michael Barnes (1999) have used Michel De Certeau’s theories of walking, and have tried to use this method more conceptually to create interreligious dialogue. Thus, Barnes’ focus is on creating moments of conversation. Writing from a Christian background, Barnes draws from De Certeau’s concepts of “strategies” and “tactics” in order to discuss approaches to accomplish interfaith dialogue without imposing one’s views on others. Barnes is using “walking the city” to address the interrelations and contact of people of different faiths in contexts filled with the possibility of diversity.