Religious Studies

End-of-life issues are currently receiving major attention from researchers and practitioners in the diverse fields of medicine, psychology, sociology, ethics, law, and religion. The Encyclopedia of Death and Dying is a complete guide to death, how it is viewed, and the social and medical issues related to the process. More than 500 entries cover medicine, religion, ethics, psychology, and legal, social, and cultural topics. Extensive appendixes provide further information on preparing for and coping with death, as well as additional resources and references. Examining both the practical and the spiritual aspects of death and dying, this one-stop resource provides a comprehensive survey of this emotional issue.

From police jargon to medical terminology, from the coarse language of death row to literary euphemisms, over 5,550 words and terms associated directly with death and dying are defined in this unique dictionary. The entries have been collected from 65 cultures, nine religions and 20 fields of study.

The Handbook of Death and Dying takes stock of the vast literature in the field of thanatology , bringing together what has previoulsy been an unwieldy body of knowledge into a concise, yet comprehensive reference work. This two-volume handbook will provide direction and momentum to the study of death-related behaviour for many years to come.

In this state-of-the-art volume, leading international scholars and clinicians provide a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary overview of how rigorous research on bereavement translates into practice. They identify new developments and controversies in the field, relating new theories to concepts from attachment and emotion theory. The effects of societal change and of national and international events on personal and public mourning are examined, along with other areas of interest to practitioners, such as cultural competence in helping diverse clients cope with grief and bereavement. New analyses employ longitudinal data sets to more clearly trace patterns of adjustment, trajectories of grieving over time, and the use of coping resources. Other chapters explore the current controversy over including complicated grief in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

This book provides both the theoretical background and the practical treatment interventions necessary for working with those who are bereaved or dying. Important topics such as anticipatory grief, postdeath mourning, and the stress of grief are described in detail. Grief reactions, both normal and abnormal, as well as their causes are analyzed. Special attention is given to grief caused by the death of a child or spouse, death by suicide, and children's grief. Numerous exercises and case examples are included.

A clinically-oriented examination of bereavement, focusing on practical aspects of caregiving to those suffering from grief and loss. Presents the ``Integrative Theory of Bereavement,'' which describes the phases of grief after the death of a loved one and serves as a basis for interventions appropriate to various situations during the course of bereavement. Discusses social factors such as age, sex, religiosity, suicide, stigmatic death, concurrent crises and other factors that can complicate bereavement. Also reviews other theories of bereavement, beginning with the early psychodynamic analytic approaches and moving up to the current understanding of grief as a psychobiological process.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

What happens after death to Jesus and to those who follow him? Jesus and the Demise of Death offers a constructive theology that seeks to answer that very question, carefully considering both Jesus' descent into hell and eventual resurrection as integral parts of a robust vision of the Christian bodily resurrection. Taking on the claims of N.T. Wright and Richard B. Hays, Matthew Levering draws strongly upon the work of Thomas Aquinas to propose a radical reconstruction of Christian eschatological theology--one that takes seriously the profound ways in which Christianity and its beatific vision have been enriched by Platonic thought and emphasizes the role of the Church community in the passage from life to death. In so doing, Levering underscores the hope in eternal life for Jesus' followers and gives readers firm and fruitful soil upon which to base conversations about the Christian's future.

Otherworld Journeys is the most comprehensive treatment to date of the evidence surrounding near-death experiences. Zaleski looks at researchers' findings, first-person accounts of survivors, and possible medical or psychological explanations.

She explores the "plethora of ideas about resurrection in patristic and medieval literature--the metaphors, tropes, and arguments in which the ideas were garbed, their context and their consequences," in order to understand human life after death.

Prominent critic, poet, and memoirist Sandra M. Gilbert explores our relationship to death though literature, history, poetry, and societal practices.

What is it really like to die? Though our understanding about the biology of dying is complex and incomplete, greater complexity and diversity can be found in the study of what human beings encounter socially, psychologically and spiritually during the experience.

This comprehensive study of the intersection of death and religion offers a unique look at how religious people approach death in the twenty-first century. Previous scholarship has largely focused on traditional beliefs and paid little attention to how religious traditions evolve in relation to their changing social context. Employing a sociological approach, "Death and Religion in a Changing World" describes how people from a wide variety of faiths draw on and adapt traditional beliefs and practices as they deal with death in modern societies. The book includes coverage of newly emerging social and religious phenomena that are only just beginning to be analyzed by religion scholars, such as public shrines, the role of the media, spiritual bereavement groups, and the use of the Internet in death practices.

Reflecting the field's complex interdisciplinary character, the chapters cover such diverse areas as psychology, nursing, medicine, AIDS, family studies, sociology, education, philosophy, law, religion, the humanities and political science, whilst highlighting thanatology's core psychological and therapeutic caregiving dimensions.

Explores death from a sociological perspective.

If you love, you will grieve--and nothing is more mysteriously central to becoming fully human.

In this extensively revised edition, Dr. Kastenbaum examines and expands upon issues of dying and the ways in which conceptions of death are shaped and reshaped.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The five stages of grief, first formulated in this hugely influential work forty years ago, are now part of our common understanding of bereavement. The five stages were first identified by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her work with dying patients at the University of Chicago and were considered phases that all or most people went through, when faced with the prospect of their own death. They are now often accepted as a response to any major life change. However, in spite of these terms being in general use, the subject of death is still surrounded by conventional attitudes and reticence that offer only fragile comfort because they evade the real issues. This groundbreaking book is still relevant - giving a voice to dying people and exploring what impending death means to them, often in their own words.

Encourages active coping, and guides those who help bereaved persons. He argues that grieving is not a clinical problem to be solved or managed by others.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

This comprehensive study of the intersection of death and religion offers a unique look at how religious people approach death in the twenty-first century. Previous scholarship has largely focused on traditional beliefs and paid little attention to how religious traditions evolve in relation to their changing social context. Employing a sociological approach, "Death and Religion in a Changing World" describes how people from a wide variety of faiths draw on and adapt traditional beliefs and practices as they deal with death in modern societies.

The act of death itself and the rituals surrounding it vary enormously and shed a fascinating light on the cultures of which they are a part.

The first part of the book is grounded in biblical issues and in historical and philosophical theology. It seeks to establish several schemes of death theology related, for example, to early Christianity's Jewish cultural milieu, to belief in Christ's resurrection and to Christology, to issues of millennial belief and to an emergent liturgical practice. The rise of notions of the soul in relation to medieval thought and practice and the place of death in reformation theology are both covered, as is the role of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Finally the rise of biblical theology is considered, especially in the twentieth century. The second part of the book takes up several contemporary models of the theology of death. The first pursues a traditional acceptance of an other-worldly afterlife, the second explores worldly analysis of eternal life as a quality of contemporary existence devoid of any future state. The third develops the worldly model and considers a wider sense of self as a part of an ecological view of the world as a divine creation and explores the meaning of birth-life and death amidst a divine environment. The Theology of Death aims to offer some sharply defined schemes to focus thought in a Christian environment in which death, hell and heaven have almost lost their place. The topic of hope is a key element and the book explores the birth and fostering of hope within Christian traditions.

In this erudite book, Mutie shows how Christians engaged with the views of death in late antiquity, coming up with their own characteristic belief in life after death.

A key tenet of Christian faith is that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is a unique death by which the powers of death in the world have been conquered, so that Christian life in the Spirit is marked by the promise and hope of 'new life' already anticipated in the community of baptized believers. Notwithstanding this basic tenet regarding the Christian life as a participation in the redemptive death of Jesus Christ, theology in the past, as well as much contemporary theology, tends to assign no salvific significance to the event of our own death, focusing instead on death in negative terms as the wages of sin. This work is a significant retort to theological neglect, both Catholic and Protestant, of the positive and transformative aspect of our death when conceived as a dying into the redemptive death of Jesus Christ.

The academic study of death rose to prominence during the 1960s. Courses on some aspect of death and dying can now be found at most institutions of higher learning. These courses tend to stress the psycho-social aspects of grief and bereavement, however, ignoring the religious elements inherent to the subject. This collection is the first to address the teaching of courses on death and dying from a religious-studies perspective. The book is divided into seven sections. The hope is that this volume will not only assist teachers in religious studies departments to prepare to teach unfamiliar and emotionally charged material, but also help to unify a field that is now widely scattered across several disciplines.

For millennia, the rituals of death and remembrance have been fixed by time and location, but in the twenty-first century, grieving has become a virtual phenomenon. Today, the dead live on through social media profiles, memorial websites, and saved voicemails that can be accessed at any time. This dramatic cultural shift has made the physical presence of death secondary to the psychological experience of mourning. Virtual Afterlives investigates emerging popular bereavement traditions. Author Candi K. Cann examines new forms of grieving and evaluates how religion and the funeral industry have both contributed to mourning rituals despite their limited ability to remedy grief. As grieving traditions and locations shift, people are discovering new ways to memorialize their loved ones. Bodiless and spontaneous memorials like those at the sites of the shootings in Aurora and Newtown and the Boston Marathon bombing, as well as roadside memorials, car decals, and tattoos are contributing to a new bereavement language that crosses national boundaries and culture-specific perceptions of death. Examining mourning practices in the United States in comparison to the broader background of practices in Asia and Latin America, Virtual Afterlives seeks to resituate death as a part of life and mourning as a unifying process that helps to create identities and narratives for communities. As technology changes the ways in which we experience death, this engaging study explores the culture of bereavement and the ways in which it, too, is being significantly transformed.

Postmortem existence in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament was rooted in mortuary practices and conceptualized through the embodiment of the dead. But this idea of the afterlife was not hopeless or fatalistic, consigned to the dreariness of the tomb. The dead were cherished and remembered, their bones were cared for, and their names lived on as ancestors. This book examines the concept of the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible by studying the treatment of the dead, as revealed both in biblical literature and in the material remains of the southern Levant.