Corpses and the Protestant cult of the dead

Authors

  • Erik R Seeman University at Buffalo

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.18103

Keywords:

Death, Corpses, Protestantism, Women, Cemeteries, Material Culture

Abstract

Scholars of the body and religion readily acknowledge that corpses have agency. ‘The work of the dead,’ as Thomas Laqueur puts it, includes everything from sacralizing the landscape to creating imagined communities. Scholars have been less successful, however, in documenting the continuing relations between ordinary Protestants and their departed loved ones. In their focus on cemetery designers and political leaders, historians have overlooked the spiritual journals – mostly by women – that document relations between the living and dead. This article argues that corpses were central to such relations, even for mainstream Protestants whose ministers insisted otherwise. This argument challenges the way most scholars think of Protestantism. Rather than considering it as a religion of internal beliefs and creeds, I emphasize the material and tactile foundations of Protestant belief. And rather than seeing a religion dedicated to maintaining the Reformation’s divide between the living and dead, I put relations with the dead at the heart of lived Protestantism.

Author Biography

  • Erik R Seeman, University at Buffalo

    Erik R. Seeman is Professor of History at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). A specialist in the history of religion and death practices in colonial North America, he is the author of four books and numerous articles. His current book project is Boston’s Pox of 1721: A People’s History.

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Published

2021-12-23

How to Cite

Seeman, E. R. (2021). Corpses and the Protestant cult of the dead. Body and Religion, 4(2), 151-172. https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.18103