Theos Report on AI and the Afterlife

A new report from Theos has been published:

Nathan Mladin, AI and the Afterlife: From Digital Mourning to Mind Uploading (London: Theos, 2024).

More information can be found here, and a pdf of the full report is available here.

Kathryn Mannix on Dying for Beginners

Theos, the public theology think tank, is curating some resources on death and dying.

‘In modern British society, death is out of sight and behind closed doors. Many of us lack direct exposure to the dying process – with all sorts of potential emotional and spiritual consequences for how we grieve our loved ones, as well as how we prepare for our own deaths.’

Dr Kathryn Mannix, who gave this year’s Annual Theos Lecture, narrates a short animation on the process of dying, which is available to watch here.

Theos Report on Dying, Death, and the Afterlife

A new report from Theos has been published:

Marianne Rozario and Lia Shimada with contribution from Wendy Appenteng Daniels and Simon Perfect, Ashes to Ashes: Beliefs, Trends, and Practices in Dying, Death, and the Afterlife (London: Theos, 2023).

Some paragraphs from the Theos website:

‘Practices around death and dying are changing rapidly. In particular, as the UK becomes less traditionally religious, there are growing preferences for cremation over burial and a rise of “celebrations of life” over traditional funerals. However, there still exists a wide range of religious and spiritual beliefs surrounding death and the afterlife…

‘In light of this changing picture, Theos and the Susanna Wesley Foundation investigated current trends on, and attitudes towards, dying, death, and the afterlife in the UK, and explored the role of churches and faith communities…

‘We found continued shared concerns around what makes a “good death”, including no pain/suffering, being surrounded by family/at home, peace/reconciliation, and preparedness, but a wide range of religious and spiritual beliefs desired in memorialisation practices and when contemplating the afterlife. 

‘While the religious landscape is changing, churches and faith communities have an important role to play in offering both pastoral care and theological accompaniment to the dying and the bereaved.  There is a challenge and an opportunity for churches and faith communities to (re)claim their role – to re–weave religion and death.’

More information can be found here, a video introduction here, and a pdf of the full report is available here.

Tim Keller on Faith in the Face of Death

A friend and colleague directed me to a helpful and moving piece in The Atlantic, by Tim Keller, ‘Growing My Faith in the Face of Death’.

He writes about his and his wife’s response to his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer:

‘My wife, Kathy, and I spent much time in tears and disbelief. We were both turning 70, but felt strong, clear-minded, and capable of nearly all the things we have done for the past 50 years. “I thought we’d feel a lot older when we got to this age,” Kathy said. We had plenty of plans and lots of comforts, especially our children and grandchildren. We expected some illness to come and take us when we felt really old. But not now, not yet. This couldn’t be; what was God doing to us? The Bible, and especially the Psalms, gave voice to our feelings: “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?” “Wake up, O Lord. Why are you sleeping?” “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”’

He notes that ‘religious faith does not automatically provide solace in times of crisis, and that a belief in God and an afterlife ‘does not become spontaneously comforting and existentially strengthening’. In fact, such beliefs, if we have them, ‘are often abstractions’. ‘If we don’t accept the reality of death, we don’t need these beliefs to be anything other than mental assents.’

Keller writes that, for him, ‘theoretical ideas about God’s love and the future resurrection had to become life-gripping truths, or be discarded as useless’.

What’s required, he says, is ‘both intellectual and emotional engagement: head work and heart work.’

The rest of the piece, which can be read here, goes on to describe what that has looked like for him and his wife.

9Marks Journal (December 2020) on Heaven

The latest issue of the 9Marks Journal, available from here in various formats, looks at ‘Heaven: Rejoicing in Future Glory’.

In the Editorial Note, Jonathan Leeman writes:

‘There’s been a lot of talk about politics and pandemics lately. These are important things to talk about. Disciples of Jesus should care about justice in this world and about physical well-being […]

‘Still, unless the saints continually focus the eyes of their hearts on the eternal, we will wrongly prioritize the temporal over the eternal, what we can see over what we cannot see – our present cities over the city whose architect and builder is God (Heb. 11:10).

‘Therefore, as we come to the close of 2020, with all its important talk about politics and pandemics, 9Marks wants to help all of us once again cast our eyes toward the eternal – toward heaven. After a tough year like this one, we need to recalibrate. We need reminding of what’s of first importance, lest we lose our way […]

‘The world yanks our eyes to focus only on right now. But we must always fight to look toward eternity. Only then will politics and pandemics, work and play, the world or life or death or the present or the future, assume their right places (see 1 Cor. 3:22).’

On Dying, Death, and What Comes Before

The below is an excerpt from an email written for the congregation where I am one of the pastors.

It was Woody Allen who quipped: ‘I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.’ He echoes the sentiment of many who say they would prefer to die in their sleep, quickly and quietly, with no warning or suffering, and without being a burden to their nearest and dearest. We’d prefer to skip the ‘dying’ part that comes before death.

And yet, for centuries, Christians prayed for the kind of death that most of us would now prefer to avoid. They wanted to ‘die well’ – to have time to get their spiritual lives in order, to make sure loved ones were provided for, to prepare themselves for what lay ahead.

John Wyatt explores this in his moving book, Dying Well (IVP, 2018), reflecting on what it means to die faithfully in the light of the hope the gospel brings. In the 14th century, when the Black Death was sweeping across Europe, killing more than 25% of the population, documents on the ‘Art of Dying’ started to circulate. Essentially, they were self-help manuals encouraging the dying person to prepare for the journey ahead. John Wyatt holds that we have much to learn from the practical wisdom that helped Christian believers of the medieval period face the ending of their lives on earth.

If you’ve read this far, you may feel this is all terribly morbid for a sunny Wednesday afternoon! Except that death really is the one eventuality that none of us can avoid.

While death has largely disappeared from the fabric of our consciousness as a society, we are now having daily reminders of its reality in every news bulletin. Sadly, with the passing of friends and colleagues, some of us have already been bereaved during this period; many more of us know people who have.

Critics of Christianity sometimes claim that belief in an afterlife devalues life in the here and now, and discourages action that would help people live longer and happier. The argument is that those who are fixated on the ‘life to come’ don’t really care about life now.

Just to be clear, the reality is the exact opposite. Many studies show not only that religious people tend to live healthier and more fuflilled lives than non-religious people, but that belief in an afterlife provides a sharper focus about what’s truly important in this life.

For many Christians through the ages, the certainty of death freed them from the mistaken idea that wealth or power would protect them from it, freeing them to live full lives in loving God and serving others. As C.S. Lewis said: ‘If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.’

Indeed, according to the apostle Paul, confidence in what comes after death provides a motivation for how we live now. At the end of his long chapter on our future life, he writes: ‘Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain’ (1 Corinthians 15:58).

By the grace of God, we are able not only to die well but to live well. May it be so.

Bible Society on Easter and the Coronavirus

Bible Society released three short videos over the Easter weekend, fronted by their Chief Executive, Paul Williams (whose recently-published book, Exiles on Mission, I am currently enjoying reading).

The videos can be accessed at the links below:

Where is God in our pain?

This is a special message from Bible Society for those in the thick of it taking on the coronavirus crisis, whether in healthcare, as key workers or helping those who are suffering.

Is Coronavirus the end of the world?

Is coronavirus the end of the world? Or just the end of the world as we know it? What does the Bible have to say, and what other wisdom might it have for us as our lives are put on pause?

What if I didn’t have to fear death?

Is there anyone who doesn’t fear death? Apparently so. This Easter Sunday we explore why Christians take strength from the Easter story and how it can give us hope as we face the coronavirus crisis.

On Being Overwhelmed [Redux]

I wrote this piece for ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. If it sounds familiar to the two regular readers of my blog (Hi, Mum! Hi, Brett!), that’s because it’s a beefed-up version of a piece I wrote last week.

It was Harold Wilson who allegedly said that ‘a week is a long time in politics’. In these recent momentous days, it looks as if that should be reduced to five minutes.

In the space of a very short time, life has been turned upside-down. Work, school, family life, daily routines, leisure activities, as well as that number one pastime – shopping – have changed for all of us, almost overnight.

It’s easy to see why our nation – nay, our world – is uneasy. You may feel it yourself, identify it in friends and colleagues, or see it reflected in your social media feeds. We’re experiencing what theologian David Ford has called ‘multiple overwhelmings’. Whether personally, professionally, or politically, it’s one thing to have a single event that knocks us off our feet. But what if the knocks continue to come thick and fast? Is it any wonder we’re confused, anxious, distrustful, and fearful?

In all this, though, shafts of light manage to break through – the neighbours forming WhatsApp groups to support people in their street, the already-exhausted NHS workers coming in for the next shift, the rainbows in windows of houses saying more than the occupants of those homes perhaps know about the commitment of God to his creation.

They’re all traces of grace, showing something of a refusal to be shaped by the prevailing culture, which Christians of all people should understand. Because while some ‘overwhelmings’ wound and crush us, others are life-giving and transformative. As David Ford says, the wisest way to cope is ‘not to expect to be in control of everything’, but ‘to live amidst the overwhelmings’ in a way that lets one of them shape the others.

During this period of Lent, Christians remember that Christ himself embodied ‘multiple overwhelmings’ – baptised in the Jordan, driven into the wilderness, tempted by the devil. Then, at the climax of his life, betrayed, deserted, tortured, crucified. But, as Ford writes, ‘then came the resurrection, the most disorienting and transformative overwhelming of all’.

Given that death-and-resurrection pattern, what would it look like at this time to be overwhelmed by gratitude? Overwhelmed by generosity? Overwhelmed by a commitment to pray? Overwhelmed by a desire to see others thrive, even if it comes at our expense? Overwhelmed by an assurance of God’s love?

Given the resources available to us in the gospel, what might we be overwhelmed by today?

Bulletin of Ecclesial Theology 5, 1 (2018)

The latest issue of the Bulletin of Ecclesial Theology is now available, carrying the below essays on the historical Adam, and several book reviews which ‘likewise focus both on both contemporary and classic works relating ‎to the Historical Adam, original sin, and theological anthropology’.

The issue is available from here via a painless sign-up link.

Joel Willitts

Adam and Eve ‘Above and Beyond’ Darwin: Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a Model for a Faithful Theological Interpretation of the ‘First Human Beings’

Edward W. Klink III

Genesis Revealed: Second Adam Christology in the Fourth Gospel

John W. Yates III

The Image of Adam: Death in Paul and Genesis 1–5

Gerald Hiestand

A More Modest Adam: An Exploration of Irenaeus’ Anthropology in Light of the Darwinian Account of Pre-Fall Death

Matt Ward

Liturgical Adam: What Every Pastor Needs to Know

Book Reviews

Theos Report on Assisted Dying

The latest report from Theos has just been published:

Andrew Grey, Dignity at the End of Life: What’s Beneath the Assisted Dying Debate? (London: Theos, 2018).

Here is the summary blurb:

‘In spite of Parliament’s emphatic rejection of a “right to die” bill in 2015, the issue of assisted dying remains a live one. Central to both sides of the debate is the idea of “dignity”. This essay examines the different meanings of the word and then outlines what an understanding of dignity as being loved and valued would look like for the terminally ill.’

As Baroness Ilora Finlay of Llandaff writes in the foreword:

‘This report… examines concepts of dignity in living, particularly in the face of deteriorating health, and develops a more informed view of what dignity really is, how it is respected and enhanced, and what it can and should look like for everyone.’

A pdf of the full report is available here.

Centre for Public Christianity (September 2017)

Among other interesting items, the Centre for Public Christianity has posted a video interview with Sarah Williams (from Regent College in Vancouver) on ‘Life or Death’, in which she describes how 20 weeks into her third pregnancy she and her husband received the devastating news that their baby was not ‘viable’.

Also posted is an audio interview with Sarah on ‘The Story of Gender’, looking at the history of gender, how we’ve arrived at the understandings we have today, and the key roles that the Bible and Christianity have played in gender equality and women’s rights movements.

Holiness 3, 1 (2017) on Holiness and Pastoral Relationships

The latest issue of Holiness, the journal of Wesley House Cambridge is now available online, this one devoted to ‘Holiness and Pastoral Relationships’.

The editor, Andrew Stobart, leads into the theme with a reflection on the Wesleyan Methodist Conference, meeting in Liverpool in 1820, and being faced with a sharp decline in membership. Among the range of measures adopted, ‘increased pastoral intercourse’ with Methodist people ‘at their own homes’ was recognised as an ‘absolute obligation’. The Conference encouraged its ministers to show ‘unremitting diligence’ in conducting pastoral visitation, which included ‘giving seasonable counsel’, ‘exhorting them to a faithful and loving observance of all the duties of personal and family religion’, and ‘kindly inquiry into their Christian experience’.

The entire journal, containing the below collection of peer-reviewed essays, lecture, and short articles, is available as a pdf here.

Bill Mullally

The Effect of Presence and Power in the Pastoral Supervisory Relationship

This article addresses the important elements of presence and power in the pastoral supervisory relationship. It is based on qualitative research, which used a questionnaire methodology with six Methodist ministers, all of whom had taken part in group pastoral supervision for a period of two years. The aim of this research was to gain insight into their experience of the supervisory process. The article explores how an open, authentic and trusting environment can be created within the pastoral supervisory relationship that has regenerative and healing potential, whereby ministers will be better able to face the challenges of ministry. It contends there is a need for well-qualified, skilled and spiritually sensitive supervisory support for ministers. Such pastoral supervisors will understand the dynamics of power and presence to create a sacred space for ministers to ‘come apart and reflect a while’. This covenant relationship creates transformational possibilities for those who commit to the journey.

James Dunn

Why Four Gospels? Why Only Four?

This is a transcript of the 2016 Fernley-Hartley Lecture, which was delivered during the 2016 British Methodist Conference at the Lambeth Mission, London, and is published here with acknowledgement to the Fernley-Hartley Trust. It stands largely unchanged from its first delivery in the hope that the texture and tone of the lecture might also be retained. The article argues that answering the questions ‘Why four Gospels?’ and ‘Why only four?’ provides a clear picture of the character of the gospel of Jesus as ‘the same yet different’, as well as a challenge to today’s Christians to retell the good news in their own contexts with equal or equivalent effect. The article discusses the context in which the four canonical Gospels were recognised, pointing out that the term ‘gospel’ was coined in the process. The distinctive emphases of the Synoptics and John show how the same story can be told differently, an essential restatement of the same message for new and changing audiences.

Christopher Collins

Reimagining Dementia: Seeing Ourselves More Fully in the Dementia-Diagnosed

How does the Church respond to the increasing number of dementia-diagnosed within our communities? This paper argues that the Church inhabits Kitwood’s ‘standard paradigm’ of dementia, which focuses on the loss and decay of the person. This diverts our attention away from a more theologically nuanced understanding of the person and personhood. Using Lartey’s Theological Form model of action and reflection, I will reflect on the pastoral experience of caring for the dementia-diagnosed and seek to promote an alternative theology of personhood as relationship based on Moltmann’s ‘social trinity’ explored through the creation narrative of Genesis 2. This will allow us to develop an alternative model of pastoral care which enables us to see the ‘angelic mission’ of the dementia-diagnosed.

Paul Gismondi

Fear and Faith: Reflections on Ministry and Death

An experience of observing a cremation instigates theological reflection on the fear of death. Using Laurie Green’s model of action to reflection, and then reflection to action, the article moves through three cycles of theological reflection, exploring first the author’s response to the crematorium, then a subsequent encounter with a family during a funeral visit, and finally a conversation with colleagues. Each cycle produces further insights: the universality of death; the particularity of death; and a final glimpse of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Through this, the author explores the interaction between his fear of death and his faith.

Catherine Minor

Beyond Horror: Mapping the Contours of Holiness in an Acute Hospital

Reflecting on the experience of hospital chaplaincy in an acute hospital in the north-east of England, this article explores the conviction that God is with us both in and beyond horror. Echoes of Scripture are identified in a number of pastoral encounters, which help to illustrate the presence of God in the midst of horror. The work of chaplaincy also points to God’s presence beyond the horror of present pain and death, turning the hospital into ‘holy ground’.

Elizabeth Dunning

A Good Death? Pastoral Reflections on Closing a Chapel

This article reflects on an experience of the closure of a chapel, exploring ways to challenge the assumption that closure is a failure. Noting the lack of intentional resources to aid churches considering closure, the author identifies the Passion and resurrection narratives as a biblical model for the stages of church awareness of change. Reflecting on these narratives enables the closure of a chapel to be considered as a fitting conclusion to work accomplished, as ‘a good death’.

Jane Leach

‘On Visiting the Sick’: The Art of Pastoral Conversation

This article is a transcript of a lecture delivered as part of the first series of Wesley Memorial Lectures given at Wesley Memorial Church in Oxford in July 2016. Originally entitled ‘Speaking of God in Private’, this lecture was followed by a second, ‘Speaking of God in Public’. It is included here as part of the ongoing journal series exploring what the sermons of John Wesley have done for us, and it stands largely unchanged from its first delivery in order to retain its texture and tone. This article addresses the questions of why in Western culture it is a problem to speak of God in personal conversation; why this is true even within some churches; and whether there are any pointers towards how intentional conversation about God might be recovered in the contemporary Western context in the sermon of John Wesley’s of 1786, ‘On Visiting the Sick’.

Janet Morley

‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ A Reflection and Intercession Based on Mark 9:14–29, and on John Reilly’s Painting, Healing of the Lunatic Boy

Gillian Houghton

Reflections on Self Portrait by Eddy Aigbe

Reviews

Word & World 34, 1 (2014) on The Funeral

The latest issue of Word & World is devoted to ‘The Funeral’. The content (with main articles and abstracts as below) is available from here.

Editorial

Frederick J. Gaiser

“Douglas ist tot”

Articles

Thomas Lynch

All Saints, All Souls

The religious and community response to a death in the family has gone astray, leaving the bereaved hard pressed to reinvent a wheel to work the important space between faith and feeling, body and soul, bereavement and belief, the living and the dead. It falls to first responders, clergy among them, to help the heartsore find their way again, to funerals that affirm faith, manage grief, and – by getting the dead where they need to go – get the living where they need to be.

Brian Wentzel

Expressing Grief and Proclaiming Hope: Toward a Proper Hymn of the Day for Funerals

By choosing a hymn of the day to be sung regularly at funerals, congregations can truly preach to one another and to those who grieve. An appropriate funeral hymn of the day will possess context, substance, and ownership; that is, it will be a well-known hymn that is responsive to the day’s texts or themes in a theologically substantive way.

Mark Granquist

From the Other Side: Funeral Directors Talk about the Changing Face of Funerals

This report of interviews with funeral directors will provide pastors with insight on funeral trends from the side of these professionals. More, it might serve as an impetus for useful conversations between pastors and funeral directors in their areas.

Gracia Grindal

Making a Good Death

What practices make a good death for a faithful Christian? It might be more important to plan for the event of dying itself and to relate this to our family and friends than to plan for the funeral.

Andrés Roberto Albertsen

Politically Charged Funerals in Argentina

The enforced disappearance of persons is not a chapter of Argentine history that can be left in the past, but a crime of continuous nature that is and should remain part of the Argentines’ present. God will not let those afflicted be satisfied until the last disappeared person is located. This, of course, cannot happen in history, so God will not let Argentines and others who care be satisfied this side of the eschaton.

Martha Stortz

Practicing Resurrection: Grief and the Christian Funeral

The Christian funeral invites mourners from suffering into grief. Meaning is being restored as the shards of a life now ended come together into a new narrative: the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

Michael Rogness

Preaching at the “Tough” Funerals

Funerals for the “tough” cases – tragic deaths or deaths where there has been little or no evidence of faith in the deceased – provide difficult moments for pastors but also moments of great opportunity. The good news of the gospel is always applicable, but its articulation and application in these hard situations will call forth all of a pastor’s skill and tact.

Thomas G. Long

The Possibility of a Good Funeral

A “good funeral” is one that fulfills two primary purposes: to accompany the body of the deceased to the place of farewell and to tell well the story of what this life and death means. The good funeral will have a sense of movement and a sense of meaning.

Justin J. Lind-Ayres

The Power of Biblical Metaphor in the Face of Death

In the face of death, God’s people and Christian pastors turn to the Bible, often to a relatively small group of texts (a “canon within the canon”) that use rich metaphors to redescribe the reality of the people gathered for the funeral service.

Face to Face

Gary Dreier

The Funeral Sermon: Remembering the Deceased

John E. Quam

The Funeral Sermon: Proclaiming the Gospel

Texts in Context

Richard Nysse

Funerals before the Funeral Service

Addressing the reality of death at the time of the funeral is too late. The pastor’s judicious use of biblical laments prior to any specific funeral will help prepare people to recognize the full terror of death so resurrection can be heard with the surprise it deserves.

Reviews

Ethics in Brief Volume 19, Nos. 1 & 2 (2013)

Two issues from Volume 19 of Ethics in Brief, published by The Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics, are now available online:

Claire Hordern, ‘Defining Death: New Pathways to Consider’, Ethics in Brief 19, 1 (2013).

By drawing on recent neurological research this article challenges some prevailing medical assumptions about the definition of death and explores some of the philosophical contours of the brain death debate.

Benjamin S. Wall, ‘Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader: Theological Contributions to Disability Discourse’, Ethics in Brief 19, 2 (2013).

Disability in the Christian Tradition: A Reader, edited by Brian Brock and John Swinton, is an indispensable contribution not only to the field of disability studies but also to any contemporary attempt at engaging in serious anthropological, theological, and ethical discourse. This article provides a summary sketch of the book tracing some of the issues it addresses.

Christian Reflection on Death

The latest issue of Christian Reflection, published by the Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, is now available, this one devoted to ‘Death’. The whole issue is available as a pdf here, and an accompanying Study Guide is available here. The main articles, with their abstracts, are as follows:

Robert B. Kruschwitz

Introduction

Our contributors explore how to provide better care for the dying, remember the dead rightly, and prepare for our own deaths – for these, they explain, respond to dimensions of the same problem, our avoidance of death.

Eric Howell

How the Tomb Becomes a Womb

By baptism “you died and were born,” a fourth-century catechism teaches. “The saving water was your tomb and at the same time a womb.” When we are born to new life in those ‘maternal waters,’ we celebrate and receive grace that shapes how we live and die.

Paul J. Griffiths

Defending Life by Embracing Death

In a Christian equipoise between death-seeking and death-avoidance, we would not be especially disposed to postpone our deaths; neither would we be disposed to seek them. We would want to continue to give our lives away as we have received them, as sheer gift. But can we be disposed to equipoise in an immortalist culture?

Brett McCarty and Allen Verhey

The Virtues for Dying Well

With the Ars Moriendi tradition, we should focus on the paradigmatic significance of the death of Jesus in order to learn how to die well. We would learn faith, hope, patient love, humility, serenity, and courage as we commend our lives and our deaths into the hands of a living God.

Regina Easley-Young

Remembering the Dead Rightly

We can over-identify with powerful emotions that accompany grieving, make an idol of the deceased, or harbor the poison of estranged or hostile relationships with them. Remembering the dead rightly – with love that is undistorted by our passions – is a difficult spiritual discipline.

Heidi J. Hornik

All My Life Is Vanity

Heidi J. Hornik

The Grim Reaper

When Life Well Lived Is at an End

David W. Music

Eric L. Mathis

Worship Service

Other Voices

Terry T. Lester

It’s Time to Get Up!

The raising of Lazarus is a preview that prompts us to trust and to glorify God. For in a few short days Jesus too will face his dying and death. But on Easter morn the voice of God echoes into the mystery and darkness of death, “It’s time to get up!” And Jesus, the risen Christ, comes forth.

Glenn E. Sanders

What My Students Teach Me about Death

The class lesson on the practice of dying well is mainly about how a community can comfort the dying and react in spiritually positive ways to death. But the discussion always turns to the students’ experiences of death. One should never assume that young adults know little about death.

Joel Shuman

Dying Well

We most often die as we have lived, and the hope for a “good” death demands a faithful life. The authors of the four books reviewed here make this point, arguing that preparation for death is an essential aspect of Christian discipleship and that the “art of dying” is a skill requiring lifelong cultivation.

Todd Buras

Loving Our Last Enemy

Unaided human reason may teach us to face death fearlessly, but it can do no more. To make peace with death – to embrace our end – we need more by way of wisdom. This is part of what the Church claims to have in Christ.

Charles W. Christian

Restoring the Christian Funeral

Futile attempts to deny death and escape from dying pervade our society. The two books reviewed here seek to restore a distinctively Christian voice to how we understand the dying process and death, and how we articulate their meaning in the funeral service.