Life Story As Eulogy, Ritual, and Celebration
by Glenn H. Asquith, Jr., Professor of Pastoral Theology and Director of the MAPC Program

From my first year of teaching as an American Baptist in a Moravian Seminary, I have always been impressed with the very pastoral and communal ways in which Moravians structure the sacraments and rituals of worship. I still remember my first Moravian service of Holy Communion in the Saal of Bahnson Center in the fall of 1978. I had never been so thoroughly involved in body, mind and spirit in a service of communion. In the Baptist tradition, we sit passively in pews while communion trays are passed through the pews by lay deacons in the very same manner as the offering plate. But in the Moravian service, we kneel and confess our sins, we stand and shake hands and sing joyous hymns and, most of all, the officiating clergy actually come to each person in the pew, look us in the eye, and individually hand us the elements! To me, that action is a powerful symbol of God’s grace and love, coming to ME in whatever state of brokenness or need in which I might be.

Likewise, as I was writing a chapter on “Protestantism and Death Rituals” for a three-volume Anthology on Religion, Death and Dying in America to be produced in late 2009 by Praeger Publishers, I realized that the pietistic, communal, fellowship-oriented Moravians have, for several centuries, been leading funerals in a way that personalizes the mourning experience of the bereaved while also allowing them to honor the loved one that has died. Through the worship practice of lebenslauf, the officiating pastor reads a memoir, or spiritual autobiography, of the loved one that has been mostly written by the deceased person and then finished by the pastor or the person’s family.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most Protestant traditions used the funeral as a time to preach about the theological truths of hope and resurrection, without attention to the particular experiences of mourners, or to scare the living into salvation before the time of their own death. However, newer funeral practices, seen in what Lucy Bregman calls the “death awareness movement” that followed the 1960s, seek to tell the story of the deceased in ritual and worshipful fashion in such a way that does not “whitewash” the life of the person but instead names the real life and legacy of the loved one. The Moravian practice of lebenslauf is way “ahead of the curve” in providing a personalized memoir that is a true celebration of life in the presence of God.