by Jo Cox-Darling.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that we are all going to die.
In this first of two contributions to Theology Everywhere some of the issues around current trends in the death industry are explored. The second article will tell the story of a local community seeking to discover what bereavement resilience might look like in practice.
Death is an ultimate fact of life, yet it’s surprising how distant people have become to death, dying, and the impact of grief in daily life. The death knoll to the church’s involvement in all stages of bereavement has been tolling for a while.
Much can be placed at the door of our under-researched experience of Covid lockdowns. Those who were deemed vulnerable were kept at a distance from the rest of society. Care workers were expected to make impossible decisions about who received treatment options and who did not. Locally, temporary mortuaries were constructed out of sight of communities. One of the largest of these temporary mortuaries was a refrigerated hanger at the end of the runway at Birmingham airport. Aeroplanes were replaced by ambulances taxying the dead to their final destination.
Every day people were given the instructions for survival – and survive we did, intoxicated by the fear of becoming another statistic in a global pandemic.
In Covid, we learned that funerals accommodating more than a handful of people wasn’t necessary, and that it can be easier to let the dirty business of death be done by other people. We become protected from the contagion of grief which can be so incapacitating and overwhelming – and if we protect ourselves, then we’ve learnt that we are also protecting others.
An unexpected consequence of this clinical, politicised, approach to death has led to the huge rise in Direct Cremations.
The 2025 Sunlife Cost of Dying report revealed that 20% funerals are now Direct Cremations[1] – sold (widely on daytime advertising slots) as being an economic and compassionate alternative to expensive funerals, direct cremations are completely unattended cremations. With the awareness within both the industry and wider society that some sort of death-ritual is a psychological (perhaps even spiritual) necessity, the National Association of Funeral Directors suggest that ‘pure’ direct cremations could be as low as 11%[2], with the difference being influenced by the addition of a reflective space, post-cremation memorial, graveside service at the burial of ashes, or even a wake.
The physical processes of death and dying continue to be clinicalised and professionalised. Palliative care professional Dr Kathryn Mannix, in her book With The End In Mind to note:
‘The death rate remains 100 per cent, and the pattern of the final days, and the way we actually die, are unchanged. What is different is that we have lost the familiarity we once had with that process, and we have lost the vocabulary and etiquette that served us so well in past times, when death was acknowledged to be inevitable. Instead of dying in a dear and familiar room with people we love around us, we now die in ambulances and emergency rooms and intensive care units, our loved ones separated from us by the machinery of life preservation.’[3]
In 2023, 72% of 18-24 year olds had experienced the death of a loved one but only 33% had physically seen a dead body.[4] This lack of lived experience of death and dying continues to lead to a lack of engagement with grief and bereavement – which in turn has an ongoing detrimental impact of the parasympathetic nervous system and the general wellbeing of people across all sectors of society.[5] This had led to Theos producing an animation which explores simply what happens naturally to a body during the death process https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayMhA1pRLeY
As the Sunlife research concludes, ‘Brits still don’t like talking about death.’[6]
If the Theos research about attitudes to death and dying is right, and that:
‘…ours is a society which keeps death at arm’s length and out of sight. Many of us experience bereavement without direct exposure to death, and most do not feel well-prepared for our own deaths… We are increasingly likely to grieve for others behind closed doors too: religious or not, we think a funeral should celebrate the life of the deceased and hold space for mourning together, but less than half of us (47%) now say we want a funeral at all. Financial pressures…made greater room for market forces to shape how we grieve. The result is a significant realignment in British grieving practices…[including] openness to emerging “grief technologies” among the young.’[7]
I want to argue that the Church has a responsibility to begin to understand the missional needs that are now apparent to us. Dying isn’t often a shared experience for families. Funeral services are no longer the purview of the ordained. Death rituals are no longer assumed part of community life. As a consequence, we are all suffering – unable to pay attention to our bodies, our psychology, and our spirituality.
Public health and healthcare professionals continue to grapple with the need to become a bereavement resilient society[8], the church still has much to offer into this space and sector.
[1] ‘Cost of Dying’, Sunlife, https://www.sunlife.co.uk/siteassets/documents/cost-of-dying/sunlife-cost-of-dying-report-2025.pdf
[2] https://www.nafd.org.uk/2024/01/15/nafd-highlights-the-impact-of-inflation-and-importance-of-talking-about-funeral-wishes-in-response-to-cost-of-dying-report/
[3] Kathryn Mannix, With The End In Mind, London: William Collins, 2017, p.2
[4] Love, Grief, and Hope’, Theos, https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/cmsfiles/Love-Grief-and-Hope.-Emotional-responses-to-death-and-dying-in-the-UK.pdf, p.14
[5] https://www.oprah.com/health_wellness/how-your-body-really-processes-grief
[6] Cost of Dying, p.34
[7] Ibid. p.xii
[8] ‘Ambitions for Palliative and End of Life Care: A national framework for local action 2021-2026’, National Palliative and End of Life Care Partnership, https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/ambitions-for-palliative-and-end-of-life-care-a-national-framework-for-local-action-2021-2026/
Theology Everywhere 