What is the Death Positive Movement?

​What is the Death Positive Movement? How will a Christian Death Doula training program use the platform to proclaim the gospel message and serve Christian communities with end-of-life care?

In America, there is an emerging movement called Death Positive. This movement first began in 2011 through The Order of the Good Death, a feminist society founded by mortician Caitlin Doughty.  The Order’s website (https://www.orderofthegooddeath.com) succinctly defines what it means to be death positive:  “People who are death positive believe that it is not morbid or taboo to speak openly about death. They see honest conversations about death & dying as the cornerstone of a healthy society.” The tenets of the movement also include measures of sustainability and equity.  To be sure, to be death positive does not mean we must positively accept death.  Rather, it aims to form a culture that provides society with the means to experience death with the necessary resources for care and grief support.  Such an initiative requires that “we push back and engage with the systems and conditions that lead to ‘unacceptable’ deaths resulting from violence, a lack of access to care, etc.” (12/14/22, https://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/death-positive-movement).

It is important to separate the potential for the movement from the conception of Doughty’s Death Positive ideology. According to her, this idea of death positivity was forged from her interest in sex positivity, which is a fascination with human sexuality and the personal relationship to sex.  In 2013, Doughty tweeted, “Why are there a zillion websites and references to being sex positive and nothing to being death positive?”  Doughty notes, “In the years since, death positive has become an international Movement that includes everyone from high level practitioners to members of the public” (12/14/22, https://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/death-positive-movement). Two examples of these community efforts are Death over Dinner and Death Cafes, which are organized gatherings where people come together to eat and share creative conversations regarding mortality. The conversation has sparked new ideas for body disposition. Traditional burial and cremation options are expanding to environmentally sustainable options such as green or natural burials, mushroom suits, and water cremation.  Beneath these methods is the desire for a virtuous death.  It is a giving back to nature to "be of use” as a personal act of salvation. According to Dr. Hannah Rumble, “Natural burial presents an opportunity for gift-giving and salvation in the context of death” (12/14/22, https://drhannahrumble.com/academic-research/). The movement has also produced the role of the Death Doula, a professional non-medical end-of-life care advocate for individuals and families.

The appeal of a Death Doula is to help individuals and their families and communities create a personalized ritual for the death bed and a ceremony following death. Personal choice is the capstone of the Postmodern death. The modern death was already moving in a more individualized direction with the Funeral Director replacing the traditional role of the Clergy, but the role of the funeral home as a one-stop-shop for every detail of the American funeral is now finding itself more of a helpful resource for navigating the bureaucratic process surrounding death as people look to retrieve more authentic and personalized rituals.  Authority in death has progressively moved from the Clergy to the Funeral Director to the individual. The Rev. Thomas G. Long suggests the emphasis on personalization appears like a healthy trend, but in reality, such an emphasis on the life of the deceased “may, in fact, be a desperate attempt to fill the aching void left by the collapse of a creed we once believed” (Thomas G. Long, “The American Funeral Today: Trends and Issues,” Director 69, no. 10 (October 1997: 10 -16.  Quoted in Kathleen Garces-Foley and Justin Holcomb, “Contemporary American Funerals,” in Death and Religion in a Changing World, ed. Kathleen Garces Foley (Armonk:  M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2006), 224.). As a Death Doula who is immersed in the Death Positive movement by default, I have a legitimate concern.  Doulas are trained to be the ones accelerating this shift.  

Death Doulas are also trained to assist individuals and families with future preparations including advance directives, and financial and legal planning. Implementing these plans before a person gets a terminal diagnosis is imperative. Not only can it provide peace of mind, but it is a way to take care of the future generations of a family.  If death arrives and no preparations have been made, the survivors of a dying person experience higher levels of trauma and grief. All of these tasks are much more palatable if undertaken prior to sickness or old age. While the ethos of today’s wellness initiative surrounding death is noble and practical, the secular rejection of God as the sovereign Being over humankind and death has created an aching void, which is lucidly pronounced not only in the denial of death but also in the efforts being made to reconnect to it.

This secular movement aims to redefine death and promotes spiritual teachings and the worship of death apart from God. There are significant differentiating factors between a Christian Death Doula and a non-Christian one. Christians believe God has come to us in Jesus Christ to rescue us from sin and death, and it is imperative that a Death Doula training program provides the essential theological training to support individuals, families, and communities in the face of death. Ultimately, death cannot be redefined outside of what is written in the Scriptures. The secular encouragement to embrace death as “natural” is not the Biblical view of death. I put quotes on the word natural because this is accurate from a medical standpoint of human mortality — all human beings will experience aging and death — but from a Biblical standpoint, death is not natural; it is a condition related to Original Sin. Sin and death entered the world through Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God.

When I trained as a Doula, the program consisted of a New Age spiritualization of death: when death grows near, the physical body decreases, and the spiritual body increases.  As this change in energy occurs, the dying understand things differently; they see and feel connected to another realm with others where there is no judgment, and the experiences of the world make sense. This idea of “gnosis” is undoubtedly contradictory to the teachings of Christianity. In his work titled Against Heresies, the second-century Church Father, Irenaeus of Lyon, battled against the Gnostic subversion of the Christian gospel.  Irenaeus is considered to be the first systematic theologian for the Church, and his theology is themed on Christ, the new head of the human race, who recapitulates all of human history through his incarnation, death, and resurrection.  Christ existed from eternity, and therefore, Adam was created “in the image” of Christ, who is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Col 1:15).  As only a “type,” the original formation of Adam is brought to completion in Christ, which is the life he is to grow into “by learning through experience” (John Behr, “Irenaeus of Lyons,” In Christian Theologies of Salvation, ed. Justin Holcomb (New York: New York University Press, 2017), 43-44.). It is only by following Christ unto death that we fully recover the likeness of God and are truly made human.
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Irenaeus recovers the meaning of death in an era that has forgotten the meaning of salvation. I believe this budding movement is the platform for reviving Irenaeus’ recapitulation model in ministering to the dying and in a contemporary charismatic healing ministry for the Church and the world. Irenaeus’ recapitulation theology is ready for the secular movement, Death Positive.  Emphasizing the cross as the transformational experience of death and resurrection in the Christian life must be the future work of the Church and her theologians as death, the shared experience of every person, comes back into focus and conversation.  It is the theological foundation for a Christian healing ministry where a personal encounter with the Spirit of God through the action of the cross causes life-altering effects. Spiritual healing ministries abound in this age, but there is a need for a ministry that brings together the Sovereignty of God, the Passion of Jesus Christ, and the renewing work of the Holy Spirit. Here faith is deepened in the Kingdom message proclaimed by Christ: God has come to make you new (Rev. 21:5).