The Secular Send-off
When a Snohomish family rejected the fire-and-brimstone dogmas of the 1880s, they hired a friend instead of a priest to speak at a funeral, sparking a radical discourse on death, reason, and kindness.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The following address was prepared to be delivered at the funeral of our late sister. It contains a reflection, and is in reply to the funeral address in the Snohomish paper. I am in sympathy with the relatives of the deceased, who did not believe in the popular religion of the day. The relatives, not being in sympathy with these dogmas, handed down to us from long ages of comparative ignorance and barbarism, decided to ignore them, and advance to a higher and more rational plane of thought and action. Death has no terrors to the rationalist; he welcomes it as his best friend to relieve him from the weariness of life. It is true that our deceased sister clung to the popular religion of the day from the force of infantile teachings and prejudices, but we are glad to say that her life was better than her religion. She served her God by feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and ministering to the sick, and scattering little comforts among her neighbors; she did not pray and wait for God to do this, that or the other, but proceeded at once to do it herself, as far as in her power. She was a practical moral philanthropist; her practice was better than her theory.
“She did not pray and wait for God to do this, that or the other, but proceeded at once to do it herself, as far as in her power.”
In the 1880s, rejecting a religious funeral was a bold, counter-cultural act of intellectual rebellion. Today, secular humanism and 'celebrations of life' are standard, but the tension between dogmatic tradition and personal morality remains a cornerstone of the American cultural experience.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.