Undertaken With Love
A Home Funeral Guide for Congregations and Communities
About the Guide
Ever since the Civil War, when affluent families began paying embalming surgeons to find their fallen sons on the battlefield and embalm them with enough arsenic to sustain the trip home by train, the etiquette of funeral care has largely been prescribed by the commercial funeral industry. Now that interest in natural and home-based funerals is surging, faith communities have an opportunity to reclaim the role of the community in supporting less institutional forms of death care.
Undertaken With Love is a manual and study guide written by a group of home funeral advocates across America for:
- Congregational committees that form to support home funerals for their members
- Pastors and other spiritual leaders contemplating a home funeral ministry
- Death education and counseling practitioners
- Secular social groups that form to support home funerals for their members
- Families themselves
In most of the U.S., a family may care for its own dead until burial or cremation without involving licensed funeral professionals. It does require a willingness to be something of a pioneer in today’s handsoff society, but those who have chosen to reclaim this historical tradition confirm that the process is enormously healing and meaningful.
While a motivated family can independently acquire the legal knowledge and practical skills to arrange a home funeral, the process is eased considerably when a group assists. That is why we created Undertaken With Love: to help faith-based and secular groups support families that want to continue caring for their loved ones all the way to the grave or crematory.
Presented in a study guide format for six weekly or monthly self-training sessions, Undertaken With Love will teach your congregational bereavement care committee or other social group:
* how to start a home funeral committee;
* how to research and identify your legal rights, options and responsibilities;
* how to handle, bathe and transport the body; and
* how to sustain an effective home funeral committee.
Now we are looking for a few congregations or community groups such as hospice support groups that would consider piloting Undertaken With Love as a means of organizing a committee to support home funerals among their members. Please contact us if you are interested in joining this venture!