An Honest Death: Life's End and Humanist Funerals

A fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at non-religious funerals in contemporary LondonAn Honest Death 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, 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. Written 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