Gary Laderman – författare

Though it has often been passionately criticized--as fraudulent, exploitative, even pagan--the American funeral home has become nearly as inevitable as death itself, an institution firmly embedded in our culture. But how did the funeral home come to hold such a position? What is its history? And is it guilty of the charges sometimes leveled against it? In Rest in Peace, Gary Laderman traces the origins of American funeral rituals, from the evolution of embalming techniques during and after the Civil War and the shift from home funerals to funeral homes at the turn of the century, to the increasing subordination of priests, ministers, and other religious figures to the funeral director throughout the twentieth century. In doing so he shows that far from manipulating vulnerable mourners, as Jessica Mitford claimed in her best-selling The American Way of Death (1963), funeral directors are highly respected figures whose services reflect the community's deepest needs and wishes. Indeed, Laderman shows that funeral directors generally give the people what they want when it is time to bury our dead. He reveals, for example, that the open casket, often criticized as barbaric, provides a deeply meaningful moment for friends and family who must say goodbye to their loved one. But he also shows how the dead often come back to life in the popular imagination to disturb the peace of the living.Drawing upon interviews with funeral directors, major historical events like the funerals of John F. Kennedy and Rudolf Valentino, films, television, newspaper reports, proposals for funeral reform, and other primary sources, Rest in Peace cuts through the rhetoric to show us the reality--and the real cultural value--of the American funeral.

When George Washington died in 1799, towns throughout the country commemorated the event with solemn processions featuring empty coffins. In contrast, after Abraham Lincoln's death in 1865, his body was transported around the North and displayed for more than two weeks, for by then corpses could be autopsied, drained of their blood, and beautified for the benefit of mourners. This absorbing book explores the changing attitudes toward death and the dead in northern Protestant communities during the nineteenth century. Gary Laderman offers insights into the construction of an "American way of death," illuminating the central role of the Civil War and tracing the birth of the funeral industry in the decades following the war.Drawing on medical histories, religious documents, personal diaries and letters, literature, painting, and photography, Laderman examines the cultural transformations that led to nationally organized death specialists, the practice of embalming, and the commodification of the corpse. These cultural changes included the development of liberal theology, which provided more spiritual views of heaven and the afterlife; the concern for health, which turned those who managed death toward more scientific treatment of bodies; and growing sentimentalism, which produced an increased desire to gaze upon the corpse or to take and keep death photographs. In particular Laderman focuses on the transforming effect of the Civil War, which presented so many Americans with dead relatives who needed to be recovered, viewed, and given a "proper burial."

This unique encyclopedia explores the historical and contemporary controversies between science and religion. It is designed to offer multicultural and multi-religious views, and provide wide-ranging perspectives. "Science, Religion, and Society" covers all aspects of the religion and science dichotomy, from humanities to social sciences to natural sciences, and includes articles by theologians, religion scholars, physicians, scientists, historians, and psychologists, among others. The first section, General Overviews, contains essays that provide a road map for exploring the major challenges and questions in science and religion. Following this, the Historical Perspectives section grounds these major questions in the past, and demonstrates how they have developed into the six broad areas of contemporary research and discussion that follow. These sections - Creation, the Cosmos, and Origins of the Universe; Ecology, Evolution, and the Natural World; Consciousness, Mind, and the Brain; Healers and Healing; Dying and Death; and Genetics and Religion - organize the questions and research that are the foundation of the enormous interest, and controversy, in science and religion today.

Sacred Drugs explores the numerous ways in which psychoactive substances, from alcohol to psilocybin, cannabis to pharmaceuticals, and coffee to tobacco, intersect with religious life. This cutting-edge volume acknowledges the ubiquity of drug use in American society and that, in fact, being drugged with an altered state of consciousness is a common feature of American life today, as it has been throughout human history and across global ancient cultures. Its focus is on the undeniable and pervasive evidence that drugs are often consumed for religious purposes.Sacred Drugs touches on the presence of drugs in a number of religious traditions, including Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. It also delves into the religious textures, sensibilities, and histories of psychoactive agents, sometimes intersecting with these traditions, sometimes with Indigenous cultures around the world, and sometimes not directly related to any particular religion, but instead related to more basic existential religious concerns: a mortal body that suffers, ages, and dies, but also yearns for transcendence, healing, and ecstasy; or the desire to uncover and live true to one's identity, as well as to find energizing communities that bind individuals together; or how to counter chaos, meaninglessness, and disorder. This controversial book will be the go-to volume for readers interested in the complex relationship between religious life and psychoactive substances.

Sacred Drugs explores the numerous ways in which psychoactive substances, from alcohol to psilocybin, cannabis to pharmaceuticals, and coffee to tobacco, intersect with religious life. This cutting-edge volume acknowledges the ubiquity of drug use in American society and that, in fact, being drugged with an altered state of consciousness is a common feature of American life today, as it has been throughout human history and across global ancient cultures. Its focus is on the undeniable and pervasive evidence that drugs are often consumed for religious purposes.Sacred Drugs touches on the presence of drugs in a number of religious traditions, including Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. It also delves into the religious textures, sensibilities, and histories of psychoactive agents, sometimes intersecting with these traditions, sometimes with Indigenous cultures around the world, and sometimes not directly related to any particular religion, but instead related to more basic existential religious concerns: a mortal body that suffers, ages, and dies, but also yearns for transcendence, healing, and ecstasy; or the desire to uncover and live true to one's identity, as well as to find energizing communities that bind individuals together; or how to counter chaos, meaninglessness, and disorder. This controversial book will be the go-to volume for readers interested in the complex relationship between religious life and psychoactive substances.

A powerful case to embrace a broad view of religion as genuinely religious practices can be found in the unlikeliest of places - science labs, sports games, cinemas and concerts. Religion scholar Laderman shows readers how pilgrimages to Graceland, for example, don't just seem religious, they are religious - enacting traditional, ritualistic patterns of Christianity. In a dramatic reframing of the sacred and the secular, an American landscape blooming with devotions and mythologies is exposed.