Most of the funeral service I attended yesterday took place in a church, but the final part, the committal, took place inside a little chapel at the local crematorium. During that portion, my mind turned to N.T. Wright's discussion of cremation in his excellent book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. Wright says:

A word about the implicit theology held by many who opt for cremation rather than burial. Reasons of hygiene and overcrowding led reformers toward the end of the last century to propose this step, which, as not all Western Christians know, is still firmly opposed by the Eastern Orthodox (despite the shortage of land in Greece at least) as well as by Orthodox Jews and Muslims. But cremation tends, classically, to belong with a Hindu or Buddhist theology, and at a low-grade and popular level...that is the direction toward which our culture is rapidly moving. When people ask for their ashes to be scattered on a favourite hillside or in a well-loved river or along a shoreline, we can sympathize with the feeling (though not, perhaps, with denying the bereaved a specific spot to visit in their grief). But the underlying implication, of a desire simply to be merged back into the created world, without any affirmation of a future life of new embodiment, flies in the face of classic Christian theology.

I am not of course saying that cremation is heretical... I am merely noting that the huge swing toward it in the last century reflects at least in part some of the confusions, both in the church and in the world, [about death and resurrection].

Given our aversion to speaking about death – and that includes Christians – I have not ever heard or been involved in a serious conversation about the theological implications of what we do with the bodies of our dead. What do you think of Wright's assertions? Is this something Christians need to think about more carefully?