How can a preacher best address suicide from the pulpit?Pastors face many challenges. Suicide in a congregation is amongst the most heart-rending and intimidating. However, the preacher has a unique ...capacity to engender gospel hope for preparing the congregation and comforting the bereaved. To do so, preachers need help understanding the challenges and opportunities presented by addressing suicide from the pulpit.In Preaching Hope in Darkness, two practitioners in fields that do not typically interact--homiletics (Scott M. Gibson) and psychology (Karen Mason)--work together to support the preacher in this difficult task. Gibson and Mason offer wise advice on a range of topics such as suicide prevention, post-crisis care, and funeral sermon preparation. With an appendix of sample sermons and a sample funeral liturgy, Preaching Hope in Darkness is an essential go-to guide for this difficult topic.
Clothing, jewelry, animal remains, ceramics, coins, and weaponry are among the artifacts that have been discovered in graves in Gaul dating from the fifth to eighth century. Those who have unearthed ...them, from the middle ages to the present, have speculated widely on their meaning. This authoritative book makes a major contribution to the study of death and burial in late antique and early medieval society with its long overdue systematic discussion of this mortuary evidence. Tracing the history of Merovingian archaeology within its cultural and intellectual context for the first time, Effros exposes biases and prejudices that have colored previous interpretations of these burial sites and assesses what contemporary archaeology can tell us about the Frankish kingdoms. Working at the intersection of history and archaeology, and drawing from anthropology and art history, Effros emphasizes in particular the effects of historical events and intellectual movements on French and German antiquarian and archaeological studies of these grave goods. Her discussion traces the evolution of concepts of nationhood, race, and culture and shows how these concepts helped shape an understanding of the past. Effros then turns to contemporary multidisciplinary methodologies and finds that we are still limited by the types of information that can be readily gleaned from physical and written sources of Merovingian graves. For example, since material evidence found in the graves of elite families and particularly elite men is more plentiful and noteworthy, mortuary goods do not speak as directly to the conditions in which women and the poor lived. The clarity and sophistication with which Effros discusses the methods and results of European archaeology is a compelling demonstration of the impact of nationalist ideologies on a single discipline and of the struggle toward the more pluralistic vision that has developed in the post-war years.
In the first centuries of the Common Era, an eclectic collection of plain and embellished underground and aboveground tombs filled the cemeteries of the Roman province of Syria. Its inhabitants used ...rituals of commemoration to express messages about their local identity, family, and social position, while simultaneously ensuring that the deceased was given proper burial rites. In this book, Lidewijde de Jong investigates these customs and the belief systems that governed the choices made in the commemoration of Syrian men, women and children. Presenting the first all-inclusive overview of the archaeology of death in Roman Syria, this book combines spatial analysis of cemeteries with the study of funerary architecture, decoration, and grave goods, as well as information about the deceased provided by sculptural, epigraphic, and osteological sources. It sheds a new light on life and death in Syria and offers a novel way of understanding provincial culture in the Roman Empire.
Abstract Previous research suggests that sharing emotionally intense experiences with others, for example by undergoing dysphoric collective rituals together, can lead to “identity fusion,” a ...visceral feeling of oneness that predicts group cohesion and self-sacrifice for the group. In this pre-registered research, we provide the first quantitative investigation of identity fusion following participation in a national funeral, surveying 1632 members of the British public. As predicted, individuals reporting intense sadness during Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral exhibited higher levels of identity fusion and pro-group commitment, as evidenced by generosity pledges to a British Monarchist charity. Also consistent with our hypotheses, feelings of unity in grief and emotional sharedness during the event mediated the relationship between sadness intensity and pro-group commitment. These findings shed light on importance of collective rituals in fostering group cohesion, cooperation, and the dynamics of shared emotional experiences within communities.
How were the dead remembered in early medieval Britain? Originally published in 2006, this innovative study demonstrates how perceptions of the past and the dead, and hence social identities, were ...constructed through mortuary practices and commemoration between c. 400–1100 AD. Drawing on archaeological evidence from across Britain, including archaeological discoveries, Howard Williams presents a fresh interpretation of the significance of portable artefacts, the body, structures, monuments and landscapes in early medieval mortuary practices. He argues that materials and spaces were used in ritual performances that served as 'technologies of remembrance', practices that created shared 'social' memories intended to link past, present and future. Through the deployment of material culture, early medieval societies were therefore selectively remembering and forgetting their ancestors and their history. Throwing light on an important aspect of medieval society, this book is essential reading for archaeologists and historians with an interest in the early medieval period.
On May 9, 1990, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a ring with letter, a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, a baseball, a photo album, an ace of spades, and a pie were some of the objects left at the Vietnam ...Veterans War Memorial. For Kristin Hass, this eclectic sampling represents an attempt by ordinary Americans to come to terms with a multitude of unnamed losses as well as to take part in the ongoing debate of how this war should be remembered. Hass explores the restless memory of the Vietnam War and an American public still grappling with its commemoration. In doing so it considers the ways Americans have struggled to renegotiate the meanings of national identity, patriotism, community, and the place of the soldier, in the aftermath of a war that ruptured the ways in which all of these things have been traditionally defined. Hass contextualizes her study of this phenomenon within the history of American funerary traditions (in particular non-Anglo traditions in which material offerings are common), the history of war memorials, and the changing symbolic meaning of war. Her evocative analysis of the site itself illustrates and enriches her larger theses regarding the creation of public memory and the problem of remembering war and the resulting causalities—in this case not only 58,000 soldiers, but also conceptions of masculinity, patriotism, and working-class pride and idealism.
In the “lowland” environment, within the territory of present-day Serbian Vojvodina, remarkable literary texts associated with the contemporary funeral culture emerged in the 19th century. The first ...example is the mourning poem by Juraj Rohoň (1773 – 1831), which he wrote during his time in Hložany and delivered at the funeral of Senior Ondrej Stehla in February 1818. This manuscript composition is evidence of an elegiac genre adapted to the church environment, characterized by classicist elevation and imagery. The first collection of funeral speeches composed by Slovak Evangelical preacher Ján Kutlík senior (1806 – 1890), published as Pohřebník aneb Kázně a řečí pohřební (The mourner or Funeral sermons and speeches, 1852), was also written in Vojvodina. Kutlík worked as a teacher and later a preacher in Stara Pazova, where he likely began conceptualising his first funeral speeches, which became the basis for the collection he published in Sarvaš. In his model speeches addressed to young preachers, he emphasises spiritual counselling and consolation for the bereaved. Through presented insights into education, enlightenment, patriotism, and the composition of sermons, Kutlík’s preaching shares many commonalities with the preaching of Ján Kollár.
This volume collects seven of Guy Halsall's most important essays on the social interpretation Merovingian cemetery archaeology, alongside two rewritten pieces and two wholly new articles. These are ...accompanied by five 'commentaries' on the debates to which these chapters contributed.
Periods of transition are often symbolically associated with death, making the latter the paradigm of liminality. Yet, many volumes on death in the social sciences and humanities do not specifically ...address liminality. This book investigates these "ultimate ambiguities, " assuming they can pose a threat to social relationships because of the disintegrating forces of death, but they are also crucial periods of creativity, change, and emergent aspects of social and religious life. Contributors explore death and liminality from an interdisciplinary perspective and present a global range of historical and contemporary case studies outlining emotional, cognitive, artistic, social, and political implications.
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