Religion and Politics

What is a Good Death? Ritual, Whether Religious or Not, Still Counts

Marking the U.K.’s “Dying Matters Awareness Week,” Matthew Engelke, an anthropologist writing for The Guardian, remarks how “ritual, even in this postmodern age, is flourishing,” even if religion is not. Engelke notes churches have less hold on the ritual of funerals now. He studied the British Humanist Association (BHA) and found that within a year, it had “300 humanist celebrants … conduct more than 8,000 funerals.” He concludes that, “in our rituals of death, we get a particularly good glimpse of the post-religious, post-secular condition.”

Read at The Guardian

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