{"product_id":"honest-death-1","title":"Honest Death","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at non-religious funerals in contemporary London\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAn Honest Death\u003c\/i\u003e is an intimate and moving ethnographic account of funerals for people who don’t believe in God or an afterlife. Focusing on secular funeral celebrants of the British Humanist Association (now called Humanists UK), the book examines how their ritual work is geared toward helping realize a secular world. There is a strong ethical commitment behind this effort, which is to face death with honesty based on the belief that this life is all we have. For the humanist celebrants and those they serve, this is what allows for a life with meaning and purpose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWritten in a vivid style, the book centers on the lives and the funerals of particular people, from a three-year-old child to a man in his nineties. Anthropologist Matthew Engelke, who trained as a humanist celebrant as part of his research, describes how these officiants try to craft “sincere” funerals, avoiding language and music that might suggest that the person who died had any religious beliefs. The book also captures the highs and lows for humanist celebrants of working in the funeral business—a business that is, for many of them, a kind of vocational calling.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAbove all, \u003ci\u003eAn Honest Death\u003c\/i\u003e draws out the tensions in secular humanist thought and practice between reason and the body, rationalism and materialism. Nothing matters more to the humanists than “daring to know” in the Enlightenment tradition, but nothing is so certainly known as the fact that we are finite and embodied creatures.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56766687707480,"sku":"9780691280097","price":27.5,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780691280097.jpg?v=1778783430","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/honest-death-1","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}