When I visited a secular funeral service not so long ago, I realised just how poorly secular societies, humanists, have been able to provide a context for life and death, for the big questions in life.
The function, the venue, the atmosphere, it all has a resoundingly religious symbolism attached to almost everything that goes on.
- The hall, in which the funeral takes place, has a church-like quality to it. It’s design has obviously been inspired by modern church design.
- After the visitation, the coffin is taken into the ceremonial hall in a processions, where flowers and pictures of the deceased take the place of religious symbols, and the coffin that of a religious icon.
- The layout of the room is similar to that of a church. The coffin takes the place of the altar. A lectern is placed to the left and the front of the coffin, similar to a pulpit in churches.
- The coffin is covered with pictures of the deceased and it’s close relatives, all very reminiscent of religious symbols. The ‘altar’ is decorated with flowers and candles are lit around the coffin.
- The ceremony itself resembles mass, where the life of the deceased is remembered through particular episodes, lessons are learned through it, and there are musical intermissions.
- At or near the end there is an opportunity to take a private moment with the deceased. Friends and family step forward to ‘have communion with the dead’, similar to taking communion in church.
Why have seculars never been able to provide answers for questions arising from life and death? Or maybe the question should put differently. Why are the answers that secularity provides, on issues of life and death, insufficient when people are confronted with such questions in real-life?
Does secularity not ‘provide’ in such circumstances? Does it not have the answers? Does it revert to religious symbolism because it’s a worldview that, almost by its own definition, refuses to acknowledge the validity of –asking– such questions?