The Secularization of Death in Scotland, 1815–1900: How the Funeral Industry Displaced the Church as Custodian of the Dead (A Study of Private Cemeteries, Public Crematoria, and Bereavement Practices in Edinburgh) Michael Smith Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, NY, 2014, xix + 305 pp (hardback £169.95) ISBN: 978-0-773421-6

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-370
Author(s):  
Stephen White
2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hundzukani P. Khosa-Nkatini ◽  
Peter White

Burial rites are very common among many Africa communities. In the African context, burials are not the end of life but rather the beginning of another life in the land of the ancestors. In spite of the importance of the African funeral rites, the missional role of the church in mourning and the burial of the dead in the African communities, the COVID-19 pandemic led protocols and restrictions placed a huge challenge on the African religious and cultural practices.Contribution: In the light of the above-named challenges, the article discusses the religious-cultural effect of the pandemic with special focus on the African liturgical and missiological challenges in the context of the COVID-19 restrictions on funerals and burial rites.


2020 ◽  
pp. 233-248
Author(s):  
Tadeusz Zadorożny

The custom of burying the dead is not merely commonly accepted by Christianity the way of disposal of the human body after the death. It is most deeply rooted and perfectly expressing Christian anthropology, revealed in the Holy Scriptures as a consequence of original sin, sign of hope in the Resurrection, and imitation of Christ, who was buried in the tomb. In Catholic view the burial is a corporal work of mercy, act of care for the dead and their loved ones. Gaining popularity the practice of cremation is accepted by the Church for the sake of hygiene, economy, or community. Human remains, also in the form of ashes, always must be buried or placed in the columbarium. Church does not allow the human body to be disposed via resomation or promession. Alternative forms of memorializing the deceased, though attractive esthetically and sentimentally, are not only outlandish in Christian culture, but also contrary to the Christian teaching on origins, nature, and destination of the human person.


2019 ◽  
pp. 104-118
Author(s):  
Quincy D. Newell

By the 1880s, Jane James began a campaign to get permission to perform the temple rituals she believed were necessary to reach the highest degree of glory after death. She wanted to be sealed to Joseph Smith as a child and to receive her endowment, requests that church leaders denied. In 1888, James received a temple recommend to do baptisms for the dead in the Logan Temple. James’s children, meanwhile, made their ways out of the church. She received a second patriarchal blessing in 1889, which may have encouraged her to persist despite her disappointments. Her ex-husband Isaac James returned to Salt Lake in 1890 and lived with Jane James until his death in 1891. The following year, Jane James’s brother Isaac Manning came to live with her. In 1894, church leaders created a temple ceremony to seal Jane James to Joseph Smith as a servant rather than a child.


2000 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-24
Author(s):  
Christiaan Mostert

The church is the “people of God” in a particular way, namely as an eschatological community, living in the present in the light of God's promised future, already made real proleptically in the ministry of Jesus and in his resurrection from the dead. This eschatological character shapes every aspect of ecclesial life and work. In particular, it makes the church an anticipatory sign of the unity of humankind. Among the implications that follow from such a view of the church are ecumenical ones, with challenges at both local and wider levels. The article concludes with some critical reflections on the three great problems of faith and order: baptism, eucharist and (especially) ministry.


Augustinianum ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-197
Author(s):  
Alberto Ferreiro ◽  

Braulio of Zaragoza (c. 585/595-651) was one of the most prolific writers of seventh century Visigothic Spain. The collection of 44 letters that he wrote are a unique and rich depository of information for that era and region of western Christendom. He was a personal adviser to three Visigothic kings, Chinthila and Chindasvinth and Reccesvinth, and he correspondended with his renowned contemporary Isidore of Seville. This study focuses on the letters that he directed at people who had lost a loved one and who needed consolation in their moment of mourning. The letters do not reveal anything about funerary burial practices, but they do yield a rare personal glimpse of what the Church taught about mourning the dead. Personal letters by their very nature are a literary means where peopleexpress their intimate feelings, in this case both those who were the recipients and Braulio who wrote to them. We see the Bishop of Zaragoza at his pastoral best in the letters of consolation written to family and friends who were mourning.


2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 616-640
Author(s):  
Robin A. Leaver

Brahms's German Requiem stands at the end of a long line of Lutheran funerary music. Luther reworked funeral responsories into a new, totally Biblical form, and later Lutherans collected anthologies of Biblical texts on death and dying. Such sources were used by later composers, including Schüütz and Bach, to compose funeral pieces on Biblical texts together with appropriate chorales. Brahms's opus 45 is similar in that its text is made up of Biblical verses assembled by the composer, and connections may be drawn between chorale usage in this work and the composer's Protestant upbringing in Hamburg on one hand, and in his knowledge of two cantatas by Bach (BWV 21 and 27), on the other. The text and structure of the work accord with general, north German Protestantism, and the famous letter to Reinthaler, which many have taken as a demonstration of Brahms's general humanistic tendencies, shows Brahms to be standing aloof from the theological controversies of his day in favor of a basic understanding of Biblical authors. Part of the problem was that the first performance was scheduled for Good Friday in Bremen cathedral; Reinthaler, the organist, and the cathedral clergy would have preferred passion music of some kind and what Brahms gave them was something different. Brahms surely knew of the distinctive Lutheran observance of "Totensonntag," the commemoration of the dead on the last Sunday in the church year (the Sunday before Advent). There are many similarities between Brahms's Requiem and Friedrich Wilhelm Markull's Das Gedäächtnis der Entschlafen (The Remembrance of those Who Sleep) of ca. 1847. Since Markull's work is subtitled Oratorium füür die Todtenfeier am letzten Sonntage des Kirchenjahres (Oratorio for the Celebration of the Dead on the Last Sunday of the Church Year), it is possible that Brahms had the same occasion in mind when composing his German Requiem.


Archaeologia ◽  
1853 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-115
Author(s):  
H. L. Long

Among the archives of the municipality at Vevay are a few notices respecting General Ludlow. He was under constant apprehension of assassination, and by way of protection he was allowed, if necessary, to ring a large bell, suspended in an old tower, since pulled down, which stood on the edge of the lake, at the south-east corner of the market-place, and which was his first habitation at Vevay. His last abode was the house adjoining the eastern gate of the town, which is still in perfect preservation, and well known as Ludlow's residence. Until within the last few years the original inscription remained over the door; it was carved on wood in the form of a scroll, and was given by the present possessor of the mansion to an Englishman travelling through Vevay, who represented himself as a descendant of Ludlow. Permission was accorded him by the government at Berne to erect a small guardhouse in front of the house, in the lake, to watch any boat coming from Savoy; one attempt was made upon his person, as he was coming out of the church in which his ashes now repose, but was frustrated by the authorities of the town surrounding and protecting him. The permissions to ring the bell and to build the guard-house are recorded in the archives. There is also some memorandum relating to “Madame la Genérale Ludlow,” after his decease. On the 6th of June, 1832, having obtained the obliging permission of the syndic to search the records, I proceeded to their examination. One of the conseil d'etat, and the secretary, whose name was Demontel, attended me; unfortunately there was no index, and the person belonging to the establishment, said to be the only man capable of laying his hand upon anything required, happened to be absent at Orbe. So I was left to hunt along the margin for the name of Ludlow,—a tedious and somewhat unprofitable task, for I could not find all I wanted. I have a friend here, at Lausanne, who has engaged to furnish me with some particulars respecting the investigations that followed the assassination of Lisle, in the Place St. François. It would be satisfactory to discover some remnant of the papers and correspondence of the regicides, but none are known to exist, and Ludlow's widow no doubt carried off all his literary remains when she left his mortal remains in the church of St. Martin. The epitaph she put up to him is well known: so are those of Broughton and Love. Interment in the church is no longer permitted, so the old Parliamentarians are likely to have it all to themselves, and to lie there undisturbed until the “crack of Doom,” for we can hardly calculate upon churches being pulled down, and the dead pulled up, in this tranquil, neutralised, unchanging country.


2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Hunsinger

‘All the gifts of God set forth in baptism,’ wrote John Calvin, ‘are found in Christ alone’ (Inst. IV.15.6). The baptismal gifts, for Calvin, were essentially three: forgiveness of sins, dying and rising with Christ, and communion with Christ himself (FV.15.1, 5, 6). They were ordered, however, in a particular way. Communion with Christ, Calvin considered, was in effect the one inestimable gift that included within itself the other two benefits of forgiveness and rising with Christ from the dead. Forgiveness and eternal life were thus inseparable from Christ's person and so from participatio Christi through our communion with him. Only by participating in Christ through communion could the divine gifts set forth in baptism be truly received. Any severing of these gifts from Christ himself would result only in empty abstractions. No spiritual gift—neither forgiveness nor eternal life nor any other divine benefit—was ever to be found alongside Christ or apart from him. Christ's saving benefits were inherent in his living person. Only in and with his person were they set forth and available to the church. Communion with Christ was thus bound up with Christ's person in his saving uniqueness. He himself and he alone, for Calvin and for the whole Reformation, was our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).


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