Religion, Death, and Dying (3 Volume Set)

814 Pages·2009·2.57 MB·English

by  Lucy Bregman

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Religion, Death, and Dying

Religion, Death, and Dying
Volume 1: Perspectives on Dying and Death
Edited by Lucy Bregman
P P
RAEGER ERSPECTIVES
P
RAEGER
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Copyright(cid:3)C 2010byLucyBregman
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Religion,death,anddying/editedbyLucyBregman.
p.cm.—(Praegerperspectives)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN 978-0-313-35173-0 (set : hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-35174-7 (ebook) —
ISBN 978-0-313-35175-4 (vol. 1. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-35176-1 (ebook) —
ISBN978-0-313-35177-8(vol.2:alk.paper)—ISBN978-0-313-35178-5(ebook)—ISBN
978-0-313-35179-2 (vol. 3 : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-35180-8 (ebook) 1. Death—
Religiousaspects.2. Bereavement—Religiousaspects.3. Death.4. UnitedStates—Religion.
I.Bregman,Lucy.
BL504.R43 2010
2020.3—dc22 2009028725
ISBN:978-0-313-35173-0
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CopyrightAcknowledgments
Excerpts from Nadine Pence Frantz and Mary T. Stimming, eds., Hope Deferred: Heart
HealingReflectionsonReproductiveLoss(Cleveland:ThePilgrimPress,2005).Reprintedwith
permission.
MoravianBookofWorship,1995,p.543(InterprovincialBoardofCommunication,Moravian
ChurchinNorthAmerica,www.moravian.org).Usedwithpermission.
Excerpts from Research Report: “Beyond the Death of a Child: Social Impacts and Eco-
nomicCostsFollowingtheDeathofaChild”byDr.JonStebbinsandDr.TrevorBatrouney.
ReprintedwithpermissionbyTheCompassionateFriendsVictoriInc.,July2007.ISBNNo:
978-0-646-47444-1.www.compassionatefriendsvictoria.org.au.
CONTENTS
PrefacetoSet
LucyBregman vii
Acknowledgments xiii
IntroductiontoSet
LucyBregman xv
Chapter1FuneralandMourningRitualsinAmerica:
HistoricalandCulturalOverview
KathleenGarces-Foley 1
Chapter2GriefandtheRitualsSurroundingDeath:
AJewishApproach
RebeccaAlpert 25
Chapter3TheRitualsforDying,Death,andBereavement
amongRomanCatholicsandEasternOrthodoxChristians
ReginaA.Boisclair 41
Chapter4ProtestantismandDeathRituals
GlennH.AsquithJr. 63
Chapter5AfricanandAfrican-AmericanTraditionsinAmerica
TonyaD.Armstrong 83
Chapter6WhenDeathOccurs:IslamicRitualsandPractices
intheUnitedStates
GiselaWebb 111
vi Contents
Chapter7GrievingTraditioninaNewLand:Hindu
DeathandDyingRitualsinAmerica
KyokoMurata 127
Chapter8TheGreatMatterofLifeandDeath:
DeathandDyingPracticesinAmericanBuddhism
JeffWilson 149
Chapter9Din(cid:2)e(Navaho)NarrativesofDeathand
Bereavement
LawrenceShortyandUlrikeWiethaus 171
Chapter10MourninginAmerica:CivicRitual,
PublicRemembrance,andSavingGrace
StephenJohnson 191
AbouttheEditorandContributors 217
Index 219
PREFACE TO SET
Lucy Bregman
These volumes intend to inform and provoke thought regarding religion,
death, and dying. The focus is on the United States today, but to study re-
ligion is to study that which is “handed down” and what is experienced
now. Therefore to understand it, we must look at its roots, history, and
depth in time. Meanwhile, to study death and dying today is to examine a
human universal experienced under very novel conditions. As many of the
authors in the volumes of this anthology insist, there were traditional ways
to face death and die, but by and large, these have been displaced today in
this country by the hospital setting and the “medicalization” of death.
Indeed, so overwhelming is this new setting and context that to retrieve
any of the wisdom of the past, or of alternative perspectives, is daunting.
Finally, the face of America has changed, so that increased diversity and
increased public awareness of it require attention to religious and cultural
traditions long considered exotic and “other.” It is this total situation, and
openness to discussion of it, which has prompted Praeger to publish this
anthology.
This new setting for many discussions of dying and death led us to
devise the framework and organization of the anthology. The basic ground
plan of this set is to start with understanding the human meanings and
implications of medicalized death, then with particular religious responses
to it. These concerns constitute Parts I and II of Volume 1. We then turn
to special issues and topics of contemporary interest, which for a wide
range of reasons do not fit snugly within the parameters of that
“medicalized death” umbrella. These are the “special issues” of Volume 2.
Finally, because bereavement and the rituals surrounding death are also an
important element in religious responses to it and yet seem to escape the
medical framework so dominant in the first volume, Volume 3 covers these
concerns. Yet even here, some of the dominance of medicine, in the form
of public health regulations and a psychiatric stance toward grief, often
viii PrefacetoSet
appear in the background. Some of the principles that have guided our
understanding of what to include and how to organize it are important to
state here at the very start.
Religious diversity is a fact of American life. Whatever one’s personal
commitments, it is important for contemporary Americans to recognize
and learn something about how different world religions deal with im-
portant human concerns, including death, of course. At the most prag-
matic level, hospital chaplains, hospice volunteers, and others with
direct contact with the dying must accommodate the diverse religious
beliefs and practices of their clients and patients, whenever this is possi-
ble. Moreover, because religion has a dramatically increased public pres-
ence over the past few decades—it is in the news a lot more than
before—many persons are rightfully curious about how members of dif-
ferent religions believe and practice. Some of this curiosity may be filled
with apprehension: “Do Muslims really advocate suicide for the sake of
holy war?” “What happens to unbaptized children, according to Chris-
tian teachings?” “Does religion interfere with medical care when it seeks
to impose its teachings on terminally ill patients?” Not all questions
about religions are motivated by this kind of fearful concern, of course,
but we should acknowledge it as a behind-the-scenes motive. However,
given the presence of many relatively new immigrants who brought
their religious commitments with them to America, curiosity about how
Hindus or Buddhists or Jains have retained or accommodated or trans-
formed their faiths once here is an important part of the story for all of
us to hear.
Religion matters, but so do other factors and forces. Religion was once
predicted to be an illusion that had no future, a leftover from the past that
would simply wither away as people became more educated and scientifi-
cally oriented. This has not happened. All of the contributions dealing
with medicalized death reveal how religion continues to be an element in
the specialized setting of the intensive care unit, the emergency room, the
hospice program, and so forth. Even those contributors who avoid use of
the term “religion” in favor of some more experiential concept of
“spirituality” do not deny that such dimensions of human beings as mean-
ing-making creatures really do matter, but it would be ridiculous to ignore
other social and psychological factors. That is why, for example, we have a
chapter on the impact of inequality of health care for understandings of
end-of-life issues of African-Americans. In some of the other chapters,
such as the one about caregivers for Alzheimer’s patients, gender appears
to be a dominant factor because women are the assigned caregivers in our
society. Race and gender also appear as important elements of the story in
the two chapters on homicide in America and the death penalty.
Although there are some disputes about whether the concept of “religion”
as a category is useful in all situations, the inter-relations among religious