Each year, millions of people embark on spiritual pilgrimages or journeys that will take them across the globe in search of answers to lifes biggest questions. Bruce Feiler, a renowned expert on religion in modern life, took this feat to the next level, becoming the first person ever (he thinks) to complete six pilgrimages in one calendar year.

Feilers six-part PBS series, Sacred Journeys With Bruce Feiler, tells the story of his encounters with American pilgrims who traveled to Lourdes, Shikoku, Jerusalem, the Hajj, the Kumbh Mela and Osun Osogbo. Salon spoke with Feiler to learn about his groundbreaking, trying adventure and to learn about humanitys common quest for spirituality and meaning.

This interview has been lightly edited.

Ive been for most of the last 20 years going on religious adventure trips like this, Walking the Bible, Abraham, Where God Was Born. Walking the Bible became a three-hour series on PBS in 2006. WGBH, which is the public television station in Boston, came to me five years ago and said they wanted to do a show on pilgrimage, was I interested in partnering with them. And I said no. I said I didnt want to make a show that was a series of Wikipedia entries about strange people going on strange journeys in strange places. But what I said and what I felt then and what I feel now is: What is the thing you hear most often in religious circles these days? That is, Im not religious, Im spiritual. Im on a journey of some kind. And I really wanted to make a series in which whatever journey youre on you could find that reflected in what you were seeing on the screen.

So we got together. It took us five years. It was a year to plan it, a year to raise the money, a year to find the pilgrims, a year to shoot itI did all of these journeys in the course of one year. Im assuming or guessing Im the only person who has ever done it. It hasnt been logistically possible in the past. The pilgrim part was very important because in Walking the Bible, the TV show, I was in every scene basically and I was the one going through the intellectual and emotional transformation. But I obviously couldnt be expected to go through the emotional transformation in all these different places, so getting the pilgrims was really important because without the emotional component youve got those Wikipedia entries I wanted to avoid.

How did you find the featured pilgrims?

It was challenging because we needed to find people who were going, we needed to find people who were willing to share their story, but I think the power of the series at the end of the day is in their stories. Take Lourdes [France], for example: we traveled, as you know, with 40 wounded warriors. People have their legs blown off, they were blinded, an African-American sniper from Kansas who literally had a grenade go off in his mouth. They make this journey, and to me, the juxtaposition of these grizzled war veterans who have seen some of the worst of human nature and this 14-year-old peasant girl who sees the Virgin Mary 150 years ago, that tension between the purity of that story and the intensity of the veterans is remarkable. And where the emotion of the show comes from.

It then took us a year to get permission from the Pentagon because this had never been put on film before. So were not just getting permission from the pilgrims, it was getting permission from all the people around them. So thats an amazing, remarkable story that Im thrilled people are going to get a chance to see.

What is the difference between spirituality and religion? How is American religion evolving in relation to that difference?

Well, I think that organized religion is more threatened than ever before. Attendance is down, membership is down, but its not down that much. Heres what I think is going on. The idea that you would go to a building at the time of the buildings choosing and sit in a pew while someone stands up on a high platform like a mountain and tells you what to think and believe from a text that has been closed for hundreds or thousands of yearsevery part of that is completely anathema to how we live today.

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You have to go on a journey: How one man traveled to the end of the Earth in search of spirituality