Burial Plots
Christian Tradition Is a Subversive Witness Against Modern Funeral Practices
What we do with the dead means something. And until relatively recently, the Church’s burial practices and their accompanying rationale made that clear. Theologian and historian Alvin Schmidt explains in Cremation, Embalmment, or Neither? (2015) that “Christians from their earliest years in Rome opposed and rejected cremation and continued to do so throughout the Western world for nearly two thousand years.” Not only that, they “consistently buried their dead without embalming them.” Francis Schaeffer was quicker to the punch in his classic How Should We Then Live? (1976): “the Romans burned their dead, the Christians buried theirs.” Burial was a distinctive marker of the Christian hope, and one that is deeply needed in our day.
However, in place of this meaningful church practice rooted in biblical revelation, which provides us with rituals and structures for processing death faithfully, we find ourselves grasping for meaning as such practices are increasingly jettisoned. Both inside and outside the Church, cemeteries are dead. Traditional burials are on the decline—Christian practices are what get buried now, while bodies are burned.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Joshua Pauling taught high-school history for thirteen years and is now a classical educator. He is head elder at All Saints Lutheran Church (LCMS) in North Carolina, has studied at Messiah College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Winthrop University, and has written for Areo, FORMA, Front Porch Republic, Mere Orthodoxy, Modern Reformation, Public Discourse, Salvo, Quillette, and The Imaginative Conservative.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on Culture from the online archives
20.7—September 2007
Paul Didn’t Build Bridges to Popular Culture by Russell D. Moore
35.2—Mar/Apr 2022
on Fatigued Christians Deciding to Engage the Culture by Keith Lowery
34.1—January/February 2021
Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents by Rod Dreher by Hans Boersma
more from the online archives
37.5—Sept/Oct 2024
Why Law Schools Can't Teach Law
A sidebar to How Law Lost Its Way by Adam MacLeod
23.5—September/October 2010
The Loss of a Christian Understanding of Virginity Is Pure Tragedy by Eleanor Bourg Donlon
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
