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I've concluded that the typical evangelical funeral can go quite a ways to making a person an atheist. I've also concluded that the church needs to reclaim the fundamental truth that Christianity is primarily for dying. Not primarily for living, but for dying; and because it is primarily about preparing to die, it has something profound to offer about living. Funerals need to rediscover death and thus once again have something to say to the living. Before looking at the causes of the death of the funeral, a true confession about a funeral--oops, sorry, a celebration of life--I recently attended....

I celebrate just over 50 funerals a year; about one a week. (People are dying to come to church here). And most of these funerals feature large numbers of fallen away Catholics and unchurched individuals. Most of these people I see ONLY at funerals and sometimes weddings. For this reason, in recent years, I have altered my approach at funerals and direct almost half of the sermon to the unchurched and call them to repent and return home. Surely in the first part I speak of the deceased, offer thanks to God for their life, entrust them to God and...

Wal-Mart Starts Selling Coffins The caskets can be dispatched to buyers within 48 hours The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, now plans to hold on to customers even after they die - by selling coffins. Prices range from a "Mom" or "Dad Remembered" steel coffin for $895 (£540), to a bronze model at $2,899. The retailer is allowing customers to plan ahead by paying for the caskets over 12 months for no interest. They can be dispatched within 48 hours. Catering for cradle-to-grave needs, Wal-Mart already sells everything from baby wear to engagement rings. A spokesman for the supermarket giant, Ravi...

Wal-Mart starts selling caskets, urns online By EMILY FREDRIX, AP Retail Writer Wed Oct 28, 4:03 pm ET MILWAUKEE – The world's largest retailer wants to keep its customers even after they die. Wal-Mart has started selling caskets on its Web site at prices that undercut many funeral homes, long the major seller of caskets. The move follows a similar one by discount rival Costco, which also sells caskets on its site. Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., quietly put up about 15 caskets and dozens of urns on its Web site last week. Prices range from $999 for models like...

The government is seeing dead people everywhere. Which one you want? The Government will Pay for it! Which one you want? The Government will Pay for it! Apparently, because of how prosperous the Obama economy has lifted people up out of their poverty,now kids in the nanny state, want cash for caskets. “People just aren’t in a position to pay $7,000 for a private funeral and burial,” says Lt. David Smith of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office, where the number of people seeking county burial has nearly doubled since last year. Stats from a USA Today article states: The...

Feds: Women staged sham funerals for money Pair allegedly tried to cash-in insurance plans after burials, cremations April 9, 2009 LOS ANGELES - Two women have been charged with staging sham funerals to collect life insurance payments and other money totaling an estimated $1 million. Hawthorne phlebotomist Faye Schilling, 60, and Los Angeles mortuary worker Jean Crump, 66, were arrested Wednesday on a federal grand jury indictment. Prosecutors allege the women bought insurance policies, waited for them to mature, then held bogus burials or cremations and arranged for phony death certificates. "The level of deception is shocking," said Anthony Montero,...

If we hang all “war criminals”, economic recovery will be easy and swift. They will be all dead. The dying industry benefits from it. But it is not the way you think it is. Highest troop surge in Iraq, 163,000. My estimate of some 50,000 more intelligence agents and security homeland security officers committed, together with the soldiers who obeyed the orders of their Commander-In-Chief, “war crimes”, according to the legalese of Obama’s hatchet men. Some 373 more Senators and Congressmen and Congresspersons are said to be Bush conspirators in committing “crimes against humanity” in Iraq. It includes then Sen....

Funerals in America are often elaborate events. There will rarely be hired wailers anymore, as there were in past cultures. A different set of rituals has replaced much of the reality of death, with its sharp interference in the normal lives of relatives and neighbors. The deceased are no longer kept in the family home until burial but are whisked away, disinfected and embellished, and then exposed at a reception in their honor in the parlor of the funeral home. This is called a wake. As mentioned earlier, one advertisement suggested, "You just die, we do the rest." Skillful morticians...

CINCINNATI -- Clarence Glover has a surveillance camera in the chapel of his funeral home. Joseph Garr sometimes carries a revolver in his hearse. Carl Swann Jr. is contemplating leaving the business. The three directors of black funeral parlors here have been assaulted at services and each has had gunshots fired during burials. Concealed-weapons, pre-funeral intelligence briefings, cameras, panic buttons and armed security guards are becoming as much a part of services as the eulogy. "I've been in this business 42 years and I'm jittery now," Mr. Glover says. Across the country, black morticians are changing the way they operate....

A federal appeals court Thursday sided with a Kansas woman who believes that God’s hatred of homosexuality requires her to picket funerals for American soldiers holding signs that read “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “God Blew Up the Troops.” Shirley Phelps-Roper is part of a Topeka, Kan. church that contends God is punishing the United States for permitting homosexuality by killing soldiers. In response to a August 2005 protest by Phelps-Roper and other members of her church at the funeral of Army Spc. Edward Lee Myers in St. Joseph, Mo., the Missouri legislature passed a par of laws that...

BALTIMORE | Shirley Phelps-Roper told jurors that she was an angel assigned to speak the truth to earth dwellers, that God hates their evil. On the witness stand in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, she explained last week that’s why she picketed the funeral of Matthew Snyder, a 20-year-old Marine from Westminster, Md., who was killed in Iraq in March 2006. After 33,000 protests over the last 17 years, the Snyder case is thought to be the first individual lawsuit brought against the Phelps family of Topeka and their Westboro Baptist Church. The Snyder family is seeking unspecified monetary damages...

BALTIMORE, Oct. 25 — Before the March 2006 funeral for Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, a marine who was killed in Iraq, protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church, a tiny fundamentalist splinter group, picketed the service with signs that read “God Hates You” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”Albert Snyder, Corporal Snyder’s father, sued the church in United States District Court here, claiming invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. - - - Mr. Snyder, who said Westboro members turned his son’s funeral in Westminster, Md., into a “media circus,” is seeking unspecified damages in the jury trial,...

It was two years ago this month the Kansas Patriot Guard was born. It started with a group of local bikers showing up at the funeral of local soldiers.But since then, the Patriot Guard has become much more, even sparking similar groups in all 50 states.The Funcheon family looks through a photo album of pictures taken in the days after they learned their son Alex died in Iraq. They say it was a very difficult time, and 200 perfect strangers helped them through it. "The experience of having people you don't know honor one of your children," said Bob Funcheon,...

Hurt was immediate after Fort Lewis, in Washington state, decided to combine memorial services for the dead.

The hearse pulls into the cemetery. Veterans in uniform snap to attention. Near a waiting grave, a soldier's empty boots stand near a solitary rifle. Bayonet stabbed into the ground, it's symbolic of a warrior no longer there. The family of World War II veteran Norland Brevig gathers, and the guard crisply salutes. The men in the guard -- veterans themselves-- have never met Brevig, but they've come to honor a comrade, one final time. "A person's time in the service is a very formative time of their life," said Mike Clark, a Purple Heart Vietnam War veteran who feels...

Heads up! I just spotted a blurb for the WNT on ABC with Charles Gibson. They're going to do a piece on the Patriot Guard Riders and military funerals. Anybody got a ping list??????

A Kansas church has been ordered to pay $3,150 for costs and fees associated with a summons and complaint filed by the father of a Marine whose funeral was picketed by the extremist group. Albert Snyder, of York, Pa., is suing the Rev. Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church after church members demonstrated at the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, of Westminster, and posted pictures of the protest on their Web site.

A Kansas church group that planned to demonstrate at the funerals of five Amish girls killed in an attack on their one-room schoolhouse has dropped the picket plans, a reversal that came hours after Pennsylvania's governor offered the Amish police protection. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church issued a statement today saying a representative will appear on a nationally syndicated radio talk show hosted by Mike Gallagher instead of picketing the funerals. Gallagher's website indicated the group was offered an hour of airtime tomorrow in exchange for dropping the planned demonstration. In preparation for the demonstration, Governor Ed Rendell said...

I can't stand the fact that Westboro baptist church has a website with the name it does. I can't even put it in here, because it is blocked. The church cannot be affiliated with the same God the rest of us worship. Especially when it comes with an agenda. If you want to keep track of it yourself, search for Westboro Baptist Church on google, it's the first webpage with a very vulgar name. I decided I would visit their little website, and see if they were planning anything. Well, guess what? They actually plan their agenda right on their...

Protesters will be kept 500 feet from funerals in Pennsylvania under a bill Gov. Ed Rendell signed Friday. The legislation, sponsored by Sen. John Pippy, R-Allegheny, requires protesters to stay away one hour before, during and one hour after services. Violators would face fines.