The Dead are Not Gone. They are simply further ahead on the journey than you are.

In Episode 21 of Canterbury Trails, C. Jay Engel and Jared Lovell discuss Jared’s new article in The North American Anglican: “Because I Could Not Stop for Death: A Study of the Evangelical Decline of the Burial Rites in the English and American Prayer Books”.

Scripture speaks of the Great Cloud of Witnesses; Chesterton of the Democracy of the Dead; Burke of the Contract with the Living, Dead, and Unborn. We need to be reminded that Society consists of more than just our generation: those behind us and before us are connected to us in real and important ways.

And how we say goodbye to those who precede us in death matters profoundly.

Some superstition had crept into the burial rites of the Church by the late Middle Ages, and the theological changes brought about by the English Reformation had a significant effect on how such services would be performed in England from that point. Purgatory undermined the assurance and joy of the Church’s hope, but the earliestsurviving church liturgies contain prayers for the dead. What are we to make of this? And what did the language of “commending the soul to God” at burial services really mean?

A difficult but necessary conversation, our hosts tackle many important issues and questions on this vital but neglected subject. Join us and let us know what you think in the comments below.

Jared’s article in the North American Anglican: https://northamanglican.com/because-i-could-not-stop-for-death/

Image of Anglo-Saxon map by Hel-hama - Own work using:InkscapeSource: England and Wales at the time of the Treaty of Chippenham (AD 878). From the Atlas of European History, Earle W Dowe (d. 1946), G Bell and Sons, London, 1910 (see: File:England-878ad.jpg), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19885072