Corpse care : ethics for tending the dead /
Cody J. Sanders, Mikeal C. Parsons.
- xii, 150 pages ; 23 cm
Includes bibliographical references (pages 135-145) and index.
The corpse : from antiquity to antebellum garden cemeteries -- The corpse : from the Civil War to the industrialization of deathcare -- The corpse in the web of life : a practical theology -- The corpse to come : imagining deathcare anew.
Corpse Care relates the history of death care in the U.S. to craft robust, constructive, practical ethics for tending the dead. It specifically relates corpse care to economic, environmental, and pastoral concerns. Death and the treatment of the dead body loom large in our collective, cultural consciousness. The authors explore the materiality and meaning of the dead body and the living's relationship to it. All the biggest questions facing the planetary human community relate in one way or another to the corpse. Surprisingly, Christian communities are largely missing in the discussion of the dead, having abdicated the historic role in care for the dead to the funeral industry. Christianity has stopped its reflection about the body once that body no longer bears life. Corpse Care stakes a claim that the fact of embodiment, this incarnational truth, this process of our bodily becoming, is a practical, ethical, and theological necessity. -- Provided by publisher.
9781506471310 1506471315
2022303467
Dead--Religious aspects--Christianity. Death care industry--History.--United States Morts--Aspect religieux--Christianisme. Industrie funéraire--Histoire.--États-Unis Dead--Religious aspects--Christianity Death care industry