The medicalization of death is a challenge for all the world's religious and cultural traditions. Death's meaning has been reduced to a diagnosis, a problem, rather than a mystery for humans to ponder. How have religious traditions responded? What resources do they bring to a discussion of death's contemporary dilemmas? This book offers a range of creative and contextual responses from a variety of religious and cultural traditions. It features 14 essays from scholars of different religious and philosophical traditions, who spoke as part of a recent lecture and dialogue series of Drake University's The Comparison Project. The scholars represent ethnologists, medical ethicists, historians, philosophers, and theologians--all facing up to questions of truth and value in the light of the urgent need to move past a strictly medicalized vision. This volume serves as the second publication of The Comparison Project, an innovative new approach to the philosophy of religion housed at Drake University. The Comparison Project organizes a biennial series of scholar lectures, practitioner dialogues, and comparative panels about core, cross-cultural topics in the philosophy of religion. The Comparison Project stands apart from traditional, theistic approaches to the philosophy of religion in its commitment to religious inclusivity. It is the future of the philosophy of religion in a diverse, global world.

Christians traditionally have had something substantive and important to say about death and afterlife. Yet the language and imagery used in sermons about life and death have given way to language designed to comfort and celebrate.In Preaching Death, Lucy Bregman tracks the changes in Protestant American funerals over the last one hundred years. Early-twentieth-century "natural immortality" doctrinal funeral sermons transitioned to an era of "silence and denial," eventually becoming expressive, biographical tributes to the deceased. The contemporary death awareness movement, with the "death as a natural event" perspective, has widely impacted American culture, affecting health care, education, and psychotherapy and creating new professions such as hospice nurse and grief counselor. Bregman questions whether this transition-which occurred unobserved and without conflict-was inevitable and what alternative paths could have been chosen. In tracing this unique story, she reveals how Americans' comprehension of death shifted in the last century-and why we must find ways to move beyond it.

What do the world's religious traditions tell us about death, dying, bereavement and afterlife? While today, medical perspectives seem to dominate Western society's understandings of these topics, for most of history and in many parts of the world, religious and spiritual frameworks inform how human beings view mortality and its place in the cosmos. This book provides an introduction to the wide variety of religious and philosophical traditions's teachings and practices regarding death and dying. Written for college students with no prior background in the academic study of religions, it intends to widen appreciation of the contribution of diverse cultures and traditions, as it examines the meanings each attribute to dying, death and what comes after. While death and awareness of death are human universals, the contribution of this book is to broaden awareness of the multiplicity of beliefs, rituals, spiritual practices and communities that religions have provided, as persons worldwide have encountered death and dying. The Chapters begin with ancient civilizations Mesopotamia and Greece then move into presentations of the three ""Abrahamic"" traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The contributions of Asia are represented by Chapters on Brahamic Hinduism, Buddhism, China and Japan. Finally, a contribution on Africa and African-Diaspora traditions completes the volume. Each of these includes a Bibliography and a short list of Study Questions; some also feature a Glossary

Christians traditionally have had something substantive and important to say about death and afterlife. Yet the language and imagery used in sermons about life and death have given way to language designed to comfort and celebrate. In Preaching Death, Lucy Bregman tracks the changes in Protestant American funerals over the last one hundred years. Early-twentieth-century ""natural immortality"" doctrinal funeral sermons transitioned to an era of ""silence and denial,"" eventually becoming expressive, biographical tributes to the deceased. The contemporary death awareness movement, with the ""death as a natural event"" perspective, has widely impacted American culture, affecting health care, education, and psychotherapy and creating new professions such as hospice nurse and grief counselor. Bregman questions whether this transition - which occurred unobserved and without conflict - was inevitable and what alternative paths could have been chosen. In tracing this unique story, she reveals how Americans' comprehension of death shifted in the last century - and why we must find ways to move beyond it.

Lucy Bregman guides the reader through the wealth of recent literature on death and dying, giving special attention to the autobiographical narratives of terminally ill people and to books offering counsel to the dying, their caregivers, and the bereaved. She argues that this literature should supplement, not supplant, Christian understandings of death.