The Practice of Cremation

This is going to sounds extremely maudlin, but the practice, and even the concept, of cremation is something that has interested me since my Anglican seminary days when I really first encountered it as an adult. Where I grew up in the Bible Belt Appalachia, cremation was simply not a thing. I don't think any reputable funeral parlor did them or even had the capacity to do them if requested. It was simply not culturally or religiously acceptable to virtually any one to my recollection. 

There were maybe a few exceptions in a few of the wealthy parishes and maybe one of the synagogues in downtown Knoxville that had columbaria to place ashes near a main altar or a place on the house of worship's grounds. But if memory serves, that was more for what remained of bodies burned up in like a horrendous car crash or sometimes even for instances when there was no body at all but people wanted some place to have a small interment of a deceased's personal effects like a teddy bear from a kid that disappeared or a place to inter the flag for a solider who was killed in a war but no body was ever recovered from a battlefield or something tragic like that where there was a literal absence of any physical remains. 

But, largely, for most people, cremation was not even on the radar of a possible option for burial or funeral purposes. It was just simply not done at all. It was a practice that was neither wanted nor offered from probably 95%+ of funeral parlors or undertakers. This was true I think well into the late 1990s or even beyond. 

I do not think I ever even really thought about the practice much until I was in seminary. I remember I was a visiting seminarian at a Anglo-catholic Anglican seminary in urban Chicago. So, I generally helped out on Sundays and other sacramental occasions throughout the week like funerals as I could, assuming they did not conflict with classes, etc. I remember there was one funeral we did that had ashes in lieu of a casket. It was the first time I had ever seen such a thing. I had heard of such occurrences, but never actually witnessed a regular funeral liturgy with just an urn. If memory serves, it was something of a novelty even to the seasoned Anglican priest there who had been in ministry for almost 25 years by that point in his career. I remember him saying it was the first time it had occurred at that particular parish since he had been the vicar there, and he had only seen it a few times at his previous parishes elsewhere in Illinois prior to that. Even in a place like urban Chicago circa 2005 (at least in the Episcopal Church world) that was unusual. 

I recall at that point thinking that it was very odd but largely did not think much more about it at the time. Fast forward a few years to when I was in England for part of my seminary training. I was taking a class at the other Anglican seminary across Cambridge on the History of Liturgical Practice. We got to the section on funerals, and I recall the professor opened the class with a question to the students of, "Who here has actually ever seen a dead body?" I think I was like one of maybe 3 students out of a full classroom who raised their hands, and I think one of the other 2 students who raised there hands was also an American. So, of a classroom of soon-to-be ordained Church of England clergy, literally one British student out of the maybe 30+ or so in the room had actually ever seen an actual dead body. 

Needless to say, I was astounded. It has become an ingrained custom in British culture if someone died, they just called the undertaker and the body would be taken away ASAP. No one ever saw it. It just disappeared, and with the trend for cremation that had already taken hold in England or as was Anglican custom, completely closed casket funerals, the body was never to be seen again at the funeral or ever. They have created a culture where no one, barring a horrendous accident or something, under the age of 40 sees a body ever. 

I think from that point on I have kept tabs in my brain on the trend towards cremation as a cultural practice. It is a practice that theologically troubles me, and that I have never quite agreed with. I will admit I did do a few funerals as an Anglican vicar with cremains but it was never my preference. I always tried hard to convince grieving family to do something other than cremation. 

NT Wright wrote an interesting book on the topic called Surprised by Hope a few years ago where he mapped out the history of cremation and it's relationship to Christian liturgical practice over the centuries. It is not the main theme of the book, but he certainly does a bit of deep dive into it. As I recall, he took a pretty grim view of the practice historically from a Christian perspective, but then sort of wimped out at the end and did not outrightly condemn the practice. He was still the Anglican Bishop of Durham at the time, so he was probably hedging his bets.

As such, I remain convinced that this should not be Christian practice for the most part for several reasons. Namely, as NT Wright pointed out, that historically, Christians refused to cremate remains for centuries in the Early Church. It would have been very easy for them to do it because cremation was normative Ancient Roman practice. It was very clearly a pagan practice that was viewed to separate the corrupt body which philosophers like Plato and the later Stoics viewed as a prison for the pure spirit or soul that was the really real part of the human person. As such, fire was the purgative release of the soul from the corrupt body. 

Christians largely rejected this because we say in the Creed "we believe in the Resurrection of the Body." We die with Christ in Baptism so that we might be raised with Christ and join Him in His Resurrection. The Bible talks about the body is a temple, and just become the person dies does not mean that the temple-ness, if you will pardon the term, of the body is at that point voided. The body is not garbage to be disposed of. It was created by God, and God called it good. There is a reason Christians have always frowned up desecration of bodies, and burying the dead is viewed as one of the corporal works of mercy. 

This is also why bodies of enemies were intentionally desecrated by Christians. There was a meta-belief that if you destroyed the body, the soul could not be reunited with the body at the Resurrection. It was an act of complete annihilation of one's enemy. The soul would be forced to permanently end up in hell because it could not join with Christ in the Resurrection at the end of time for lack of a physical body. This was never a formal teaching the Church, but many did believe it. This is, sadly, also why heretics were burned at the stake and not simply beheaded or some other less drastic means of execution. It was one last spiritual act of eternal violence directed at the enemies of the Church for all time. 

This is one of the examples of the sheer twisted genius of Herman Melville in his classic novel Moby Dick. Captain Ahab goes on a football coach halftime speech about hunting down the great white whale to convince his crew to not mutiny and continue on his quest for vengeance, saying, “Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave...” Literally, Ahab's quest for revenge is so total, he's willing to risk giving up his seat in heaven by destroying his own body in fire and missing the Resurrection. Ahab so inverts the Christian message that we are body and soul that will one day hopefully be reunited with Christ in the Resurrection when we are given our renewed bodies at the end of time. Truly a marvelous piece of literature, but I digress.

My other major objection to cremation is not so much theological as it is pastoral and psychological. The liturgy changes without a physical body present. The words may be exactly the same in a funeral with an urn as with a casket, but the funeral feels different. The funeral feels like a memorial service. That sense of saying goodbye to the deceased is simply not there. That feeling of closure with an actual body present is gone. You can pretend like it's all the same, but it is simply not. There is just something missing, and I think it robs many people of the ability to grieve properly because it does not feel like a funeral. I think that does psychological damage to people, particularly people who come from very non-emotional cultures that don't tend to publicly express emotions. The funeral is the one public work in cultures like that where it is acceptable to grieve and cry and express sadness and sorrow. You simply don't get that in a funeral with an urn. It really does revert back to the Roman Stoic pagan notion of 'we watch the body burn and free the soul from it's Platonic prison.'

In closing, I came across this excellent reflection from an Orthodox priest on why the Orthodox Church does not allow cremation. I have to agree with the Orthodox on this. I think he's right on so many levels here. It's worth a watch: