Fortress Press

Our culture and economy have encouraged and perpetuated many unnatural separations and the handing over of nearly everything to experts. Corpse Care is a gift. The book teaches a history few of us know and allows us to reclaim our own death and the deaths of those we love. In so doing, it draws together the relationship between birth and death--that to die is to give life. This is the practice of resurrection.

What is the revelatory potential of the corpse? Sanders and Parsons boldly confront us with the neglected question of an incarnational theology, and they address it with deep pastoral wisdom and critical historical awareness. Ironically, while Jews and Muslims find ready answers to that question in their own traditions, most Christians have forgotten even how to ask. This book belongs on the teaching agenda for every church.

Sanders and Parsons provide a provocative exploration into practices related to our care for dead bodies. Well-researched and informed by diverse literature, their work notes the complicated history of care for corpses. Going beyond individualism, they name larger political, social, ecological, and theological implications for the way we deal with the dead. The conversations they invite forth are important for every pastor, seminarian, congregation, and community.

From Sophocles's Antigone to the green burials of today, Cody Sanders and Mikeal Parsons provide a stunning and comprehensive description of how human beings tend to the dead. They reveal the wisdom and the humanity at stake in how all of us travel the journey from humus to human to humus once more. This book is a treasure!

Corpse Care is a deep dive into the history and present practices of how we relate to and treat the physical remains of humans. It is fascinating how culture, philosophy, and theology have shaped these practices and how the practices can also affect our relationship with the natural world. The book shows that seeing the corpse as a part of the web of life can help end our destructive assault on that web. I read most of it in one sitting. While I have read death studies for decades, I still found this book revelatory and intensely interesting.

There is a deep fissure in our fundamental death-to-earth connection, brought about by relinquishing care of our dead and embracing practices that separate us from natural processes. This rich account provides a much-needed depth of perspective on how and why healing that disconnect can and should occur. Sanders and Parsons deepen the critical environmental and theological discourse over what to do with our bodies after death as an act toward climate resiliency and spiritual reconciliation by exploring what got us here and what will, hopefully, lead us home.