Teaching Death, Religion and Culture and Why I Make a Bad Dinner Guest

For Dr Christina Welch, who runs a postgraduate course on death, religion and culture at the University of Winchester, death and the way we remember the dead, reveals much about our attitudes towards life.

I am possibly the worst person to invite to dinner; a religious studies scholar who teaches about death – add in a touch of politics and some sex to the subject, and well, no polite society would have me at their table. But it would be tricky to talk about death without touching on other subjects too. Anything to do with an afterlife means there must be something religious going on. What’s more, death is often used to make a political and religious statement. One example is the Buddhist monk who set himself on fire in protest at the plight of Tibet.

And sex and death are intimately linked - with reincarnation, procreation is necessary for a spirit to return to this realm, and in Christianity, sex and mortality came through the Fall from the Garden of Eden; both death and birth stem from Eve taking that piece of fruit from the forbidden tree!

So looking at death can tell us a lot about how people live – in fact, learning about death means learning about life – who and what is important in society, how individuals and cultures cope with the loss of someone, and how can we all try to conquer the brevity of life. For example, looking at who is important in a society, if we examine the Aztec people, they believed that warriors who died in battle greeted the sun as it rose and escorted it to its zenith. From there, women who died in childbirth bore the sun on a litter of bright feathers to the horizon. The sun, vital to life, therefore was kept in motion by the help of certain socially privileged deceased, without the help of these select dead heroes, life on earth would not continue. In Christian England the Medieval elite had effigies in cathedrals while the poor had an unmarked grave, and the Victorian monied designed grand monuments for their new cemeteries, while the poor had a tiny wooden cross. Memorialisation is significant when exploring the sociology of death, and who was considered important in any culture.

When exploring how people cope with grief, anthropological approaches are useful. The Jewish ritual of Shiva where the bereaved are excused from the norms of society, helps individuals start to address their feelings. By not having to cook or clean, and by having mirrors covered, and the opportunity to just talk about the deceased as and when feels right, the process of living with the pain and anguish of death can be aided. Some societies coped by having a communal second burial for their dead, such as the ancient Huron of North America. In this way not only could the souls of the deceased travel to the land of the dead together, but those recently bereaved could express collect sorrow, and find collective support, in the loss of their loved ones.

Because death constantly shows us the brevity of life, religions and cultures have developed numerous ways to help the living deal with this reality. A Christian might die, but the Church continues, just as Christ died but rose again and therefore gives believers life eternal in Heaven. For the African Yoruba peoples who have the highest rate of twin mortality in the world, babies are remembered by making little figures of them which stay with the mothers until they too pass over. And in many Eastern religions, the belief in reincarnation ensures that an individual is never just dead, but will return in some form. Societies too are aware of this and by emphasising the collective, although life may be brief for individuals, the collective continues; Maori have their tipuna (their ancestors), and Muslims have the Umma (the worldwide community of Islam).

But as well as looking at death through the eyes of religions and culture, and the academic lenses of anthropology and sociology, death is also political and personal, and is intimately connected with art and literature. Death can be slow or swift, unforeseen or expected, it can be natural, self-inflicted, or at the hands of another, but however someone dies, death is something that connects us - with the past, across cultures, and with what is important. Death holds up a mirror to life and is endlessly fascinating to study, but it does make me an unsuitable dinner guest.

Dr Christina Welch runs a postgraduate course on death, religion and culture at the University of Winchester, which runs by both taught and distance learning. She can be contacted at e-mail: christina.welch@winchester.ac.uk or phone: 01962 827521

Sex and death are intimately linked...

So looking at death can tell us a lot about how people live – in fact, learning about death means learning about life – who and what is important in society, how individuals and cultures cope with the loss of someone, and how can we all try to conquer the brevity of life.

For the African Yoruba peoples who have the highest rate of twin mortality in the world, babies are remembered by making little figures of them which stay with the mothers until they too pass over.

" This crisis is part of a much wider debate: how we are looking after our older population in general."
  - Christine Shaw, Help the Hospices