https://politicalresearch.org/ The latest research related to death and dying en https://religiondispatches.org/2021/02/18/it-okay-celebrate-death-rush-limbaugh-or-should-we-let-dead-judge-dead Rush Limbaugh was a persistent son-of-a-gun, by which I mean he persisted at being an evil, racist, bloody-minded drug addict and possible sex tourist. And no, I’m afraid that unlike similar charges lobbed at public figures, none of that is… Thu, 18 Feb 2021 12:15:08 EST Daniel Schultz ace21886-09a7-4e66-b754-05b270854fc5 https://religiondispatches.org/2016/11/04/vatican-instruction-cremation-rankles-many-give-it-second-look When my best friend died of cancer earlier this year, at age 44, her body was cremated, a choice now made by close to half of the people in the US. Fri, 04 Nov 2016 11:03:30 EDT Karen E. Park ea027b7c-e791-409c-850e-9ec9c4d9b375 https://religiondispatches.org/2014/05/14/debating-death-it-really-end Death is not final. Last week, four scientific big thinkers settled into their seats on stage at NYC’s Kaufmann Center to debate this provocative proposition for NPR’s Intelligence Squared. They would be discussing this proposition from a purely scientific, not… Wed, 14 May 2014 03:12:16 EDT Angela Bonavoglia 6112face-3578-4588-b235-9a0bb9a7038e https://religiondispatches.org/2013/04/01/end-life-lessons-walking-dead The living and the dead are sharing territory all the time, at Terri Schiavo’s bedside and in the post-apocalyptic South of The Walking Dead. Mon, 01 Apr 2013 04:59:06 EDT Ann Neumann 27f2d686-f14d-4d79-8b8d-48fafc99b5c8 https://religiondispatches.org/2012/12/10/photo-dying-man-all-wrong-reasons Without the framing device of community, without any context in which to shape the interpretation of the events, such images become simply sensational, the prick of pain without the moral payoff. Mon, 10 Dec 2012 07:46:02 EST Rachel Wagner 9fb36a80-f4af-4df7-9960-895a5ec1870e https://religiondispatches.org/2012/12/10/photo-dying-man-journalists-job We rely on a journalist to just stand by—it’s a practical act of witness: while you report the story you stand in the presence, neither blinking nor stepping up. Mon, 10 Dec 2012 07:43:15 EST Jason Anthony 04742759-7706-41c7-9b99-66ef3001338e https://religiondispatches.org/2012/12/10/should-post-have-published-photo-subway-victim-two-opinions Is it simply a part of the conflicted role of the journalist or does the photo’s work as cultural catharsis ignore the specific agony of the victim’s loved ones? Mon, 10 Dec 2012 07:39:43 EST Jason Anthony cd551d55-5c87-4277-8a67-5aacd444c824 https://religiondispatches.org/2012/09/19/death-without-religion Many (obviously) look to religion for answers. Not me. Even if I consider myself somewhat religious, I have a hard time accepting the life-after-death claims of my own religion, Judaism. The dilemma is not uncommon: Although 80-90% of Americans believe in God, some 25-50% do not believe in life after death (the numbers depend on the study). So when considering death, many of us turn to less spiritual pursuits. Two recent books attempt exactly that: to explore the nature and meaning of death without religious filters. Shelly Kagan’s Death uses philosophy to define mortality and how best to live with the knowledge of it; Dick Teresi’s The Undead explores how science and technology is changing how we define death—and not for the better. Wed, 19 Sep 2012 04:59:12 EDT Gordon Haber 70f0be0c-c698-4453-9b14-a3487d902fbe https://religiondispatches.org/2012/04/17/pornographic-war-gazing-why-we-dont-look-away It is easy to blame the war machine or the pornography industry, but the more mundane problem is with our addiction to visual thrills. What some people see as a lack of moral vision (watching a porn video, for example) is perhaps better approached as an amoral astigmatism, a lazy eye, a privileging of the visual over our other evolved senses. The thrill of watching may mingle with compassion for those being harmed, but unless you as a viewer do something to actually alleviate that suffering, you are only a voyeuristic addict, entranced by the power of the gaze. Tue, 17 Apr 2012 04:37:51 EDT Daniel Martin Varisco a60b11bf-0cfc-49eb-9116-3a6c27fb894a https://religiondispatches.org/2012/04/17/looking-death-images-911-during-and-after What might it mean for a synagogue, a church, a mosque, or a temple, to set up a video screen in its sanctuary and play these images of death from September 11—and then turn around and respond to them? What reinvented rituals might result from a ritualized, contextualized reception of these images? Such communal framing gets us beyond the questions of morbid voyeurism because it eliminates the one-way dimension and places images within a social setting. It further allows us to reflect and come to terms with dying, thereby stirring the potential for a good death. Tue, 17 Apr 2012 02:11:13 EDT S. Brent Rodriguez Plate 364d172e-608e-4195-871f-64975e3015a8 https://religiondispatches.org/2012/04/09/easter-underdog-holiday Once a major factor in shaping the modern calendar, Easter has fallen in significance, to put it mildly, which is another reason I think it’s tops. I tend to like underdogs and faded glory. I live in Baltimore. Mon, 09 Apr 2012 01:31:25 EDT Mary Valle 6416f700-1aee-40c1-b2be-7bd24d1a8b43 https://religiondispatches.org/2011/12/19/saturns-sake-remember-dead So what is the connection between devouring children and a superabundance of grain? Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:21:12 EST Louis A. Ruprecht 9f51098d-9523-491b-a9c5-3eac17909d7a https://religiondispatches.org/2011/12/13/holiday-tradition-just-wont-die One sign of success is leaving your mark on society, making an impact; being famous brings you out of the anonymous masses and bestows celebrity, a status that affords you to an afterlife that most will never achieve; individual biographies of lives lived are more compelling than questions of postmortem judgment or the possibility of reincarnation—these lists of the dead convey profound lessons about what counts in life to the living in twenty-first century America. And nothing teaches a profound moral lesson like a corpse. Tue, 13 Dec 2011 03:19:50 EST Gary Laderman 20cd32c1-44cd-4b0d-8d48-54ae45d5102a https://religiondispatches.org/2011/07/10/drowning-bin-laden That nobody wanted bin Laden’s body provides hope that we may finally distinguish between what he and his followers did with what Islam teaches. Sun, 10 Jul 2011 10:32:00 EDT Haroon Moghul 692ecb4b-4bce-41f7-8b02-ca012b4998d6 https://religiondispatches.org/2011/05/27/rapture-theology-cultural-critique-what-campings-prediction-tells-us-about-ourselves It should not go unnoticed that Camping’s followers headed directly to Times Square (rather than Oakland, say) to prepare for the rapture. Times Square stands for ultimate worldliness, the crossroads of capitalism, the epicenter of corporate globalization. Camping’s group intentionally or unintentionally brought an alternative way of telling time and assessing value to the place for which time is money and values are a matter of cross-marketing, re-branding, and logo recognition. Fri, 27 May 2011 07:05:02 EDT Rosamond C. Rodman 86c9f5a6-3249-491f-bfbe-1b1d18035647 https://religiondispatches.org/2010/12/14/wojnarowiczs-ant-covered-jesus-blasphemy-or-religious-art It doesn’t take much to realize the main theme of A Fire in my Belly is death. More specifically, it is the vulnerability, penetrability, and perpetually possible disintegration of the human body. This fleshly mortality became especially real to Wojnarowicz in the still emerging AIDS crisis of the time. Thus, by necessity it is a deeply human and deeply religious artwork. Which does not mean these images are pleasant and easy to look at. No warm and fuzzy pop spirituality this. Tue, 14 Dec 2010 09:57:56 EST S. Brent Rodriguez Plate 6380f947-f3a4-417e-b11d-277549013135 https://religiondispatches.org/2010/11/10/life-after-death-double-feature-eastwoods-hereafter-and-noes-enter-void Two very different films about what happens after we die are in the theaters right now: Clint Eastwood’s gentle Hereafter and Gaspar Noe’s raw, hallucinatory Enter the Void. While covering the same cosmological territory, the films couldn’t be more different, stylistically, thematically, and religiously. Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:35:18 EST Jay Michaelson ebfd9c83-25b5-40df-ae2c-c5ad0d851c0c https://religiondispatches.org/2010/03/05/when-are-you-dead-science-just-made-work-religion-bit-more-difficult A new study of brain activity in those thought to be in a “vegetative” state blurs the line between life and death. Fri, 05 Mar 2010 04:01:02 EST Arri Eisen 12dd35d4-d9f3-4b1c-9b40-f90dd67e37d3 https://religiondispatches.org/2010/01/05/death-secularist The funeral of an atheist friend inspires examination of the Here and the Hereafter. Does death rob life of meaning or does it provide it? Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:51:47 EST Austin Dacey dcc76ba9-fedc-425b-848c-23c34afa6995 https://religiondispatches.org/2009/08/26/health-care-post-mortem-left-right-right-left-and-public-loser So long as the health care battle is focused on the model of market competition—the very notion that health care is best conceived as a for-profit industry—the whole debate is a non-starter. If a meaningful health care reform is to pass, Democrats and liberals will have to return to their social justice roots. Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:25:09 EDT Louis A. Ruprecht cfc042f3-14a7-475d-b7b7-8cd201e10955 https://religiondispatches.org/2009/07/17/desecration-graves-burr-oak-cemetery-illinois-whys-it-so-disturbing The scale and longevity of mistreating the remains at Burr Oak Cemetery is astonishing indeed, but it does have a familiar ring to it in the longer view of US history, if not human history generally, of attitudes toward and abuses of the dead. Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:32:43 EDT Gary Laderman 62a52783-c76b-4153-877d-2ccac0c00cf2 https://religiondispatches.org/2009/06/15/sacredprofane-living-dead This Halloween, apart from your garden-variety ghouls, skeletons, monsters, witches, vampires and zombies, Americans will be visited by the ghosts of past presidents, the spirits of dead soldiers, and by the souls of those who endured slavery. It is a season of reckoning, both social and political. The election, on the other hand, is about life, today, now. Or is it? Mon, 15 Jun 2009 09:29:56 EDT Gary Laderman 855d715e-d793-48d2-95fd-3a213277695b https://religiondispatches.org/2009/04/16/necessary-sacrifice-sundance-mormon-movies-and-race-oscar-night Ritual violence at this season’s film festivals… Thu, 16 Apr 2009 01:56:42 EDT Kathryn Lofton e081b0c9-4787-476a-a782-29fc99041f0a