Proper religious funerals are dying out. I mourn for them

When my time comes, I don’t want a ‘celebration of life’. I want tears.



Stewart Dakers
14 May 2016
9:00 AM

Funerals ain’t what they used to be. Today’s emphasis is more on celebrating a life past than honouring the future of a soul. While I am not averse to a celebratory element, the funeral is morphing into a spiritually weightless bless-fest. This was brought home to me last week at the funeral of Enid, a lady I knew only through our mutual attendance at bingo in the community centre.

I was uncomfortable from the moment we gathered outside the church, where my sombre suit set me apart from the Technicolor crowd of family and friends. The atmosphere was more akin to a wedding, even a hen do, than a funeral, the air drenched in perfume and aftershave. Inside, there was pew-to-pew chatter, wall-to-wall music (Robbie Williams’s ‘Angels’, inevitably), not a single moment of silence, and not a single sacred song, let alone a prayer (an inaccurately mumbled Lord’s Prayer excepted). There were two readings, one by a grand-niece of perhaps eight, snivelling, bless, a poem about being only next door; then a nephew offering a eulogy, the main point of which was that his aunt had been a keen gardener ‘and she will plant her flowers in heaven’.

I know I shouldn’t sneer. Religion, the Anglican version anyhow, is a broad church with a wide liturgical spectrum. But I could not help feeling that such celebration missed the point. It somehow connected with a virtual life rather than a real death. It was spiritual displacement activity.

As someone already in the queue, so to speak, I can see why this is becoming the norm. Social media declares that privacy is theft: your life is public property. The same must apply to death. And yet selfie culture insists, ‘Look at me, I’m having a wonderful time.’ It is uncomfortable with any performance conflicting with that message. Grief falls into this category.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/proper-religious-funerals-are-dying-out-i-mourn-for-them/