Thoughtful Reflections Around Death
A Review of
Lay Me in God’s Good Earth: A Christian Approach to Death and Burial
Kent Burreson & Beth Hoeltke
Paperback: IVP, 2024
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Reviewed by Pete Ford
In light of the recent books The Lost Art of Dying by L.S. Dugdale (on the medical way of death) and Accompany Them with Singing by Thomas Long (on funeral practices), we need more clear-eyed Christian alternatives to prevailing ways of thinking about death. Because navigating the hospital and funeral industries can be difficult, especially in days of sorrow, we need practical ways to connect historic Christian tradition with the regulations of a particular place.
Lay Me in God’s Good Earth: A Christian Approach to Death and Burial continues the necessary conversation about thinking Christianly about death and points to many resources on green burial. Kent Burreson and Beth Hoeltke make a compelling case that the modern funeral industry is dehumanizing, from its silencing of the discussion about death—to outsourcing the details of death to depersonalized funeral homes via a financial transaction—to “celebrations of life” without the body present—to “lifelike” embalming and burial inside caskets or vaults in landscaped cemeteries. They lean heavily on The American Way of Death Revisited by Jessica Mitford and The Good Funeral by Thomas Long and Thomas Lynch.
Burreson and Hoeltke’s argument in Lay Me in God’s Good Earth is that Christian theology requires us to respect the body—and the environment—through the way we approach death and burial. They offer green burial as a better way to proclaim the gospel story of hope in the face of death– hope that God will resurrect both our bodies and all of creation.
The book includes many fascinating practical notes, including explaining the difference between a coffin and a casket, a link to patterns for building a pine bookshelf that can be converted into a coffin, and the placement of dry ice to preserve the body before the funeral—not to mention the extensive planning guide and the lists of further resources offered in the appendices. Because of the variety of local regulations, the authors frequently cite The Green Burial Guidebook and Final Rights as resources for finding specifics related to your locality.
Throughout the book, the authors were clear about their recommendations. For example, they explained the specifics of “donating your body to science” and implied that this would not be a respectful way to treat a human body. In their chapter on preparing the body of a loved one, they explained the variety of options for washing and preserving, then gently encouraged the reader to try as many as they are able. I was particularly interested in their opinions on cremation: after a careful explanation of the process, they concluded that cremation may be better for the environment than a casket in a vault, but it is not as good as green burial due to the fossil fuel required; they also argued that nature’s unaided decomposition is more humanizing than the mechanical process of cremation.
I had hoped that this book would bridge the gap between theology and practice, but I found it lacked a clear connection between the two. After the first chapter of theological orientation, the authors kept circling back between the theology and the practical as if they had to keep convincing the reader of the theological importance of this topic.
Both authors teach at Concordia Seminary and have previously co-written Death, Heaven, Resurrection, and the New Creation. However, I wished for more about their personal connections with the topic—what drew them each to consider green burial. The most we got was a disclaimer that neither author is a registered death doula. Ironically, though they argued for the value of respecting the particularity of each human life, they didn’t share much of their own contexts.
Similarly, when discussing funeral services, they assumed a singularity within the Christian tradition. By acknowledging their denominational context, they could have clarified that there is not a singular “Christian” funeral. (I assume their denominational context is Lutheran based on their connection with Concordia and the liturgical examples they cited in the endnotes.) If they had situated themselves within both denominational and personal contexts, they could have made the connection between the why and the what more concrete.
Most confusingly, it felt like the authors spent the whole book backing into their argument. After the first theological chapter, the remaining chapters were about (2) green burial, (3) funeral practices—with (4) an excursus on the “journey” metaphor for dying—(5) preparation of the body, (6) the dying process, and (7) normalizing talking about death. A chronological order—the exact reverse chapter order—would have made much more sense as a guide to think through and plan for your own death. In fact, because the conclusion did a good job of clarifying their argument, I wished that had come much earlier in the book.
This reversed order would have guided readers first to be willing to approach the subject, then to navigate hospice options for dying, then their wishes for preparing their body, next the funeral service itself, and finally burial options. After all, this book’s strengths are its willingness to discuss planning for death and the abundance of resources it offers in making a plan to push against the funeral industry. I wished those strengths would have been better organized to connect our theology with practice.
Pete Ford
Pete Ford is a stay-at-home dad as well as a digital marketer for Christian publishers and nonprofits. By night, he is a reader, focusing on topics including nonviolence, time, the built environment, and spiritual practices like Sabbath.
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