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Interview: Peter Jupp, cremations expert

by
07 October 2009

I’m a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow at Durham, where, with Douglas Davies, a Church of England theologian, and some other research fellows, we are writing a history of cremation in Scotland.

I wrote a history of cremation in England, and my publisher phoned to say that they were going to change the “England” to “Britain” — and I thought, well, the history of crema­tion in Scotland wouldn’t be very different, would it? But, as I explored it, I discovered how different it was.

I’m also a minister of the United Reformed Church. My last full-time appointment was at the Westgate Church, Peterborough, which was for five years. Now I’m a part-time pastor at the church in Corby, but my research post is full-time. I preach once or twice a month at most.

From 2001 to 2008, I was chairman of the Cremation Society of Great Britain, a charity which was founded in 1874 to promote the practice of cre­mation. Now, as 74 per cent of people in the UK are cremated, our work is concerned with the environ­ment.

The biggest challenge is the with­drawal of mercury from the pro­cess. Actually, as the percentage of mercury from dental amalgam is going down, it should be less of a problem by 2020.

We have also been involved in pre­para­tion for a pandemic. If large num­bers of people die in short periods, we still want people to have respectful funerals: it’s good for the person who has died, and for the families; so there has been a big collaboration between GPs, hospitals, cemeteries, crematoria, and under­takers.

If, instead of ten funerals a day, you are doing 30, all the social services involved have to be prepared.

The first time I had to take a funeral, I felt the service wasn’t delivering the goods — benefiting the person who had died, and the bereaved family. It was when I was a student pastor at the Congregational Church in Northolt.

As I was chaplain to London Uni­versity, and the LSE was part of my patch, I was doing a Master’s in Soci­ology, and wrote about funerals for my dissertation. No one was writing about why people who had buried their dead for thousands of years were now cremating them. Later, after I finished eight years as minister of the church in Frognal, I was offered the opportunity to study for a Ph.D.

I founded an international confer­ence on death, dying, and disposal, which recently had its ninth meeting in Durham — 170 papers from delegates, largely from Europe and North America.

The motto of the Cremation Society was: “Save the land for the living”. It was certainly seen as more healthy: the provision for the burial of the poor in towns was atrocious. Also, the First World War changed people’s attitudes to death.

For families, cremation was increas­ingly cheaper than burial, and, after 1945, local and national government actively promoted it. In a more geographically mobile society, it was seen as easier — you didn’t have to visit the grave every Sunday.

People are more likely to visit a grave when there has been a burial. There’s a book, The Secret Cemetery, which discusses the reasons. And still more than a quarter of people are buried. We need more research evid­ence to investigate this.

The Church has become distanced from death and disposal, partly because many of the town church­yards were closed by law in the 1850s, and the local-authority cemetery was born. I’d like to see that change. I’d like parishes to be able to open closed churchyards for the burial of ashes.

Bishop Healey gave a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts in 1966, pointing out that burial grounds are “a frame for the church”, which is the custodian of the dead till Judgement Day. They speak of our care for the bereaved, and it is one way to speak more practically of the resurrection of Jesus and of all people.

When I was minister at Frognal, John Tavener’s family were members of the congregation. When his mother’s funeral took place, music pre­dominated, and afterwards, at the Hendon Crematorium, there were choirs singing throughout. I realised that a change in our funeral beha­viour could take place.

I spoke to a funeral director yester­day, and he said the change he would most like to see is a ban on mechan­ical music and a live organ in every chapel. But it’s difficult for local councils to put the disposal of the dead near the top of their budget: it doesn’t get councillors elected.

My advice to all my families is: plan your funeral in advance. Involve your nearest and dearest. They may change their minds, but you have given them control. If clergy could help their congregations do this, good funerals would result.

But most people don’t want to prepare. They don’t want to ask. It’s the one purchase most people don’t want to make. When my father died in 1995, I remember thinking: “I ought to be able to do this more ration­ally, but I can’t.”

I’m not sure the Church has caught up with the theology of the nation. Few people seem to believe in the resurrection of the body any more; and what are we to make of the descent into hell? Judgement? The Last Things? I’m not sure these are taught at theological colleges any more. There’s plenty of good theology of death, but we — and I include myself — have not been teaching our congregations.

For a long time after the Second World War, there was no theology of cremation, but it’s coming. Douglas Davies and John Lampard are working their way towards one.

The Protestant position has changed. It used to think that, at death, everything dies, and, after that, it’s in the hand of Almighty God. Now there’s such a wide range of positions — think of all the films there are about zombies. . . You could say it’s Lambeth and York v. Hollywood.

The way we treat our dead is bound to affect the way we respect our dying and elderly: it’s all of a piece. As long as there’s a body, it should be paid respect, saint or sinner. The pioneering Liverpool Care Pathway has had an enormous effect on how the dying are treated, and hospitals can ensure a better collaboration between bereavement officers, mor­tuaries, and clergy. (I was a hospital chaplain for four years.)

I ought to be cremated, or I’d be let­ting a lot of people down, but I want to have my ashes buried in a churchyard at Duddington, Stamford, where we live.

My children get bored with their parents’ giving them their latest ideas about their funeral over the tea and cake on Christmas Day, which has become a bit of a tradition. But they listen politely. I have told them, if they have “My Way” at my funeral, I will come back and haunt them.

I don’t like the idea of reincarnation. I don’t want to go round again. But it’s very popular. One in seven in a recent survey of Church of England people said they thought they would return — and the same number think death is the end.

My most important choice, having met Elizabeth, was marrying her. She has had her own career as a lawyer, which gave her a different perspective on human nature, and that’s been a great help in my min­istry.

I was one of these clergy who, receiving a vocation at 14 or 15, set about resisting it. My pastor, Idris Evans, lent me The Devil’s Advocate by Morris West, which was his quiet sig­nalling to me that I should be think­ing harder. I gave in when I was 23, finishing a theology degree in London. I trained in Oxford, and was ordained when I was 27.

The first death of which I was conscious was my grandfather’s, when I was eight. He lived with us, and that night, of all nights, I forgot to say goodnight to him. That has always stuck in my mind.

When I was a child, I wanted to be a missionary doctor, preferably of the flying kind — probably owing to the influence of Biggles. Later, I had three months as a reporter on a local paper — and loved it. I tasted the power of the press, even at a local level. I thought I had a call to it.

I recall in particular Martyn Lloyd-Jones preaching at Westminster Chapel on the Sunday following the breaking of the Profumo affair. He was very gracious but highly mem­orable — and he used to preach for 65 minutes.

When we visited Colombia, our hosts pleaded with us: “Don’t just remember us for the cocaine” — not that we were offered any — “but for our emeralds, carnations, and coffee.” So we do, always.

I like the Psalms, St John’s Gospel, Hebrews, St Paul in the New English Bible version.

I took advice on [the question of] when I was last angry. The Jupp family answer is when my wife accused me of not paying attention to her.

I’m happiest when I’m singing, and when I find myself singing, I certainly know I’m happy. I have a whole library of Evangelical tunes from the last century in my head.

I can’t ask his permission, but I’d choose to be stranded in a church with the poet R. S. Thomas.

The Revd Dr Peter Jupp was talking to Terence Handley MacMath.

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