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Preaching Death

Name: Preaching Death
Author: Lucy Bregman
ISBN: 9781481314930

The Transformation of Christian Funeral Sermons

by Lucy Bregman

Published by: Baylor University Press

Imprint: Baylor University Press

What Protestants once preached about death and dying, why that message has ceased, and why it matters

Sales Date: Tuesday, 15th Dec 2020

Hardcover
ISBN 9781481314930
263 Pages

$44.99

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Paperback
ISBN 9781602583207
263 Pages

$34.99

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Digital
ISBN 9781602584242
263 Pages

$34.99

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Description
Contents
Authors

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.

Part I: What Christians Used to Say about Death

1. A Changeover of Messages and Images2. What Is a Christian Funeral?3. Funeral Theologies of Death4. Heaven as Home5. Heaven as Journey6. Natural Immortality7. The Lord's Will

Part II: The Age of Silence and Denial

8. "Please Omit Funeral"9. The Challenge of New Theologies10. Death as Enemy

Part III: What Came Next

11. New Words for Death, Dying, and Grief12. The Triumph of the Biographical

Part IV: What Might Have Been

13. Two Alternatives14. What Might Have Been--Lament15. The Eclipse of Poetry

Part V: Conclusion

16. What Christians No Longer Want to Say about Death

Lucy Bregman is Professor of Religion at Temple University. Her previous publications include Death and Dying, Spirituality and Religions: A Study of the Death Awareness Movement; Beyond Silence and Denial: Death and Dying Reconsidered; and First Person Mortal: Personal Narratives of Illness, Dying and Grief. She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Preaching Death

The Transformation of Christian Funeral Sermons