Spirituality in Contemporary Funerals

Funerals are changing rapidly in contemporary British society but evidence is as yet patchy and largely anecdotal as to the nature of these changes. Secularising trends have been observed to have led to an emphasis on the grief and needs of the bereaved rather than the rituals associated with the commemorating and departing of the deceased; personalisation of the ceremony over the use of traditional liturgies; celebration of the life over the confronting of death. It is not known to what extent these new practices reflect a new engagement with spirituality and religion or represent a discarding of both. Further, the perspectives and experiences of religious and ethnic minority communities and their impact on mainstream social practices in the marking and management of death have not been documented. This project will explore the ways in which meaning is sought, ascribed and expressed in contemporary funerals and whether, and for whom, this can be termed 'spiritual'. The investigation will be conducted through 50 case studies comprising: observation of the arrangement meeting between families and funeral directors; observation of the funeral; follow-up interviews with families and celebrants. The final stage of data collection will comprise of interviews with the funeral directors participating in the project concerning the themes arising from analysis of the case studies. This is a qualitative study which will produce a large amount of data from different sources. Funeral observations will be recorded in field notes and interviews will be taped and transcribed (subject to permission). Date will be entered using NVivo, a software package facilitating the sophisticated integration of large amounts of different types of data. Analysis will use grounded theory and thematic analysis. The project will contribute to the further understanding of contemporary funerals as well as contemporary spiritualities and the juxtaposition of each. It will contribute to theoretical development concerning the management of death in contemporary society as well as the refining of practical responses. The re-theorising of death, dying and bereavement is an important development in contemporary sociology and psychology and the study of spiritual and religious expression in funerals offers a significant interdisciplinary contribution to this revision.