“Doesn’t have a poing of view,
Knows not where he’s going to,
Isn’t he a bit like you and me?”

Everybody who listens to this song seems to have a different opinion about its meaning. But it does get people thinking. Doesn’t that make for the perfect song?

Another Beatle’s song that might be appropriate is “Eleanor Rigby.” “Look at all the lonely people.”

Its history is inextricable from race and politics. The so-called social aid and pleasure clubs that sponsor the famous second line parades (which) began as a support system that helped blacks who had been redlined out of insurance policies and covered their funeral expenses. The parades acted as both party and fundraiser.

Creation, once viewed as the ultimate desecration of the human body, an insult to God who makes the resurrection happen, will soon surpass burial as American’s preferred way to dispose of a corpse. Already, a third of American are created, not buried, and that trend line is headed straight up. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University and author of the forthcoming “God is Not One,” believes that the rise in cremation is linked to a growing disregard for the doctrine of resurrection. “It seems fantastic and irrational we’re going to have a body in heaven,” he says. Even the Roman Catholic Church has softened its stance on cremation: bodies are better, it said in 1997, but ashes will do in a pinch.

The UFCA was recently in the news protesting the filing charge for a death certificate–something that is not charged funeral homes. For example, if an individual is filing, the Utah County Health Department charges $100. A funeral director is not charged (allegedly because he has access to a paperless procedure).

In 2009, the Utah State Legislature repealed a 2006 law that said only funeral directors could file death certificates. But the county health departments are allowed to assess fees for handling a filing from a family member.

This problem seems to be particularly accute with Native Americans, when they want to bury with a traiditonal Indian ceremony.

“When it comes to practical application, there are church things I’ll gladly do, things I’d rather not do, and thing I won’t do even at gunpoint. Best of all, I don’t feel a bit uncomfortable about making any of them stick.

The parts of church I like have come as a surprise. I absolutely enjoy the sense of community, the feeling of support, the opportunity for service, and even the people themselves–many of whom are very bit as nusts as myself.”

“When religious institutions exclude women from their hierarchies and rituals, the inevitable implication is that females are inferior . . . Religious groups should stand up for a simple ethical principle: any person’s human rights should be sacred, and not depend on something earthly as their genitals.”