Teaching the World to Die

From their beginning, Unitarians have reformed American deathways. They significantly influenced, intellectually and practically, how the greater culture deals with the overarching reality of the human condition: mortality and death. Unitarian innovations and reforms cited in this essay served to domesticate death in the name of the universal human condition; challenged traditions and the supernaturalisms that supported those traditions; resisted the commercialization of death by a funeral industry; and lifted up the dignity and worth of the deceased through artful and meaningful "celebrations of life." As a consequence, there is a palpable Unitarian Universalist way for meeting death with dignity and meaning. The author, a Unitarian Universalist minister, has also written the UU classic, In Memoriam: Modern Funeral and Memorial Services.