Contribution short abstract:

In funeral culture religion is often associated with various interpretations of postmortal existence. Does a binary (secular/religious) perspective do justice to the complex funeral events? I approach non-church funerals focusing on positionalities of funeral experts between divergent normativities.

Contribution long abstract:

Common knowledge about funerary services and mourning rituals which take place outside of the Christian-church context often assume these customs to be counter-religious or non-denominational, in the least, ideologically unbound. This can lead to (aspects of) such ceremonial observances – what I refer to collectively as ‘non-church funeral culture’ – as being alluded to as secular or non-religious.

In the context of funeral culture, however, religion is prominently associated with the question of existential interpretations, ideas and expectations of a post-mortal existence, however it may be conceived. In my contribution, I explore the question of whether these presuppositions do justice to the complex events of the funeral context. Furthermore, I subsume that the funerary actions of the non-church speakers and celebrants (including various references to religion, here conceptualized as ’Non*Religion’) can be explored through an ethnographic focus on the specific positionality of these funeral experts between divergent normativities.

In my doctoral project (University of Freiburg), I do not, however, definitively position non-church funeral culture as opposed to religion as described above, but rather, I propose the terminology of ‘Non*Religion’ as a working concept in order to better grasp the complexities contained within non-church funeral culture; interacting with, and adjacent to, broader discourses on nonreligion and secularity, but not in direct opposition to religion. Thus, I use a relational approach to discuss the non-church funeral culture context as a religion-related field where issues of ’Non*Religion’ are continually being (re-)negotiated.