Some of the ideas and passages that follow come from a chapter of mine
entitled "You Never Have to Die: On Mormons, NDEs, Cryonics, and the American
Immortalist Ethos," in Kathy Charmaz, Glennys Howarth and Allan
Kellehear (eds.), The Unknown Country: Experiences of Death in Australia,
Britain and the USA (London:Macmillan, 1997).
YOU
NEVER HAVE TO DIE!
Do you believe in life after death? Ivory Tower theorists would likely surmise that
with
socio-cultural evolution there is decreasing belief in and concern with personal
immortality, that--like the concerns with witches and demons--the notion is collectively
"grown out of." The reasons for this evaporation of the hereafter could be seen to be due
to:
-
The changing nature of death. With modernization, death is
increasingly confined to the old. In 1940, only 54% of American men and 61% of women
could expect to celebrate their 65th birthdays; after they did, the men could expect to live
13 more years, the women 15. Fifty years later, 72% of men and 84% of women could
count on reaching the age of 65--and those were percentages of a much larger population.
Further, death increasingly arrives with advance warning, as the old typically die
slow-motion deaths from chronic ailments. With lives no longer ending "prematurely" to
those unprepared, there no longer is the need (neither psychologically nor sociologically)
for the traditional cultural consolations for when lives typically were cut short.
In fact, research suggests that death-related fears have shifted from anxieties
over postmortem judgment to fears of the dying process.
- Secularization. Supposedly implicit within secularization is the rise
of scientific rationality in everyday thought, featuring skepticism and critical thinking.
Such mindsets only value those beliefs supported by direct observation and/or empirical
verification. Thus postlife beliefs should dissolve with increasing education, decreasing
religion, and increasing orientations toward the here-and-now as fostered by materialism.
- Cultural Evolution. As humans' personal understandings of death
are determined by a developmental agenda culminating in an understanding of death's
inevitability and finality, so cultural perspectives "mature" over the course of human
history.
Following this line of reasoning, it would seem logical to conclude that the death
ethos of the United States--one of the most economically advanced and materialistic of
nations--should resemble those of other highly developed Western cultures. However,
such is not the case. In fact, developed here is the proposition that American culture can
best be understood in terms of its core salvific goal of death control and its embracement
of the hereafter: its immortalist ethos. To
doubt the existence of an afterlife, as renowned botanist Luther Burbank
discovered, is to risk broad public condemnation. Consider the following late twentieth
century images of death in America:
-
During a week preceding one Easter, the cover story of Time
magazine was "Does Heaven Exist?" and that of U.S. News and World Report
was "Life After Death: Science's Search for Meaning in Near-Death Experiences." The
week after Easter, The New York Times reported a survey by Professor Edward
Larson of American scientists showing that four out of ten believed in God (Natalie
Angier, "Survey of Scientists Finds Stability of Faith in God," April 3). The
Time story included the results of a March 1997 Yankelovich Partners survey
(n=1,018 adults) showing that:
- 81% of Americans agreed with the question "Do you believe in the existence
of heaven, where people live forever with God after they die?"
- 67% of believers in heaven responded "yes" to the question "Do you think of
heaven as something that is up there?"
- among believers in heaven, to the question "Immediately after death, which of
the following do you think will happen to you?" 61% said "Go directly to heaven," 15%
"Go to purgatory," 5% "Be reincarnated," 4% saying "End of existence," and 1% believing
that they would go to hell.
- when believers in heaven were asked "Does only a person's soul live in
heaven, or does a person have both a soul and body?" two-thirds thought only a soul and
one-quarter thought both.
- among believers in heaven, to the question "Which of the following do you
believe are in heaven?" 93% expect angels, 79% St. Peter, 43% harps, and 36% believe
there are halos.
- Since 1967, more than two score of Americans have been
cryonically suspended at the moment of death, for possible resurrection in
the distant future when the cure has been found for their demise. For those
who cannot afford full body freezing, discount cryonic centers like Alcor Life
Extension Foundation have come into existence to just have heads
preserved.
- Belief in near-death experiences is on the rise. Best-selling
books include Raymond Moody's Life After Life (1975) and Betty Eadie's
Embraced By the Light (1992).
- In 1995, the Mormon Church was pressured by various Jewish
groups to stop its posthumous baptisms of Holocaust victims.
- As Americans were spending hundreds of dollars per hour to
psychics to "channeling" advice from alleged spiritual entities, Psychic
Networks appeared on cable television.
- Years after his 1977 death, reported sightings of rock-icon Elvis
Presley continue to be "news"--so numerous, in fact, that they became the source of
parody.
- The spiritual genre of popular movies grossed hundreds of
millions of dollars, with such blockbusters as the "Star Wars" trilogy, "Ghost,"
and "Sixth Sense."
- In March of 2000, a Columbus, Ohio judge turned down the request
of a man to change his name to Santa Robert Claus as his obituary
would cause small children to be heartbroken.
- Believing physical immortality is a possibility through
megavitamins and minerals, the best-selling product of Florida-based Life
Extension Foundation was its "Life Extension Mix."
- Appearing here in cyberspace in 1995 were the likes of
Miracle Network's "Human Understood Reincarnation or Resurrecting the
Dead Project" and Bruce Moen's "Afterlife
Knowledge" page
What lessons are to be drawn from this montage of cultural images? Indeed, in our
"factoid"-based postmodernist times, it seems there no longer exists collectively-shared
frameworks by which the flood of images and beliefs can be simplified and made
meaningful. Nevertheless, let's see if there might be some organizing gestalt.
THE AMERICAN DEATH ETHOS IN INTERNATIONAL
PERSPECTIVE
To compare the American death ethos with those of other cultures, let us consider
results from the 1991 international religion survey (n=22,767) conducted by the
International Social Survey Program (ISSP, 1994). This module includes data (n, % of
total) from: the United States (1359, 6.0%), Great Britain (1257, 5.5%), Ireland (1005,
4.3%), Northern Ireland (838, 3.7%), Norway (1506, 6.6%), the Netherlands (1635, 7.2%),
Italy (983, 4.3%), Israel (991, 4.4%), West Germany (1346, 5.9%), East Germany (1486,
6.5%), Hungary (1000, 4.4%), Austria (984, 4.3%), Poland (1063, 4.7%), Slovenia (2080,
9.1%), Russia (2964, 13.0%), the Philippines (1200, 5.3%), and New Zealand (1070,
4.7%). These seventeen national samples were derived from multistage stratified
random/probability samplings of individuals generally 18 years of age and older.
Click here to see Figure 1: International
rates in belief in life after death
In Figure 1 our seventeen nations are arranged in order of the degree of their
members' belief in life after death. With 55% definitely believing in an afterlife and an
additional 23% considering it probable, Americans are the least likely to harbor any
doubts about a post-mortem existence, even with several strongly Catholic nations in the
comparison. In Russia, the remnant of the first major society to proclaim death's finality,
39% of those interviewed believed that life after death probably or definitely existed.
Communism's dampening effect appears greatest among East Germans, only 6% of whom
were completely convinced and an additional 8% tending to believe in an afterlife.
Not surprisingly, the same pattern of relationships generally holds toward beliefs in
the existence of heaven and of hell. Americans, for instance, are over twenty-five
percentage points more likely than the British and New Zealanders to believe in heaven
and more than twice as likely to believe in hell. The percentage of the national
populations definitely believing in the existence of the devil ranges from a high of 45% in
the United to less than 4% in East Germany, with a total mean percentage for all nations
of 16%.
Certainly these findings reflect in part the highly religious character of Americans.
Next to Filipinos, Americans are most likely to describe themselves as being either
extremely or very religious (26% vs. 12% for the entire sample). In general, this
relationship holds regardless of education or age. For instance, whereas there is a
negative relationship between education and religiosity (with those in the lowest third
educationally [standardized by country] being a quarter more likely to be at least
somewhat religious than those in the top third) within our total sample, nationally this
correlation is weakest in the Philippines, New Zealand, and the United States.
Click here to see Figure 2: International
rates in belief in miracles and ability to talk to the dead
In Figure 2 we see that of those from the seventeen nations of our sample,
Americans are most likely to definitely believe in religious miracles and most likely to
report having experienced idionecrophany (there's a good Scrabble word for you), or
contact with the dead. In fact, 40% of Americans claimed to have had such an experience
at least once, roughly twice the percentage of Germans, Italians, Hungarians, and
Northern Irish, and nearly three times the percentage of Russians. Hence
it should come as no surprise that the After
Death Communication Research Foundation is located in the U.S.
AN UPDATE
The ISSP replicated its 1991 survey in 1998. In this study over 39,000
individuals from the following 32 countries were surveyed (with their sample
size): Australia (1310), Austria (1002), Bulgaria (1102), Canada (974), Chile
(1503), Cyprus (1000), Czech Republic (1223), Denmark (1114), France (1133),
East Germany (1006), West Germany (1000), Great Britain (812), Hungary (1000),
Ireland (1010), Israel (1208), Italy (1009), Japan (1368), Latvia (1200),
Northern Ireland (817), Netherlands (2020), New Zealand (998), Norway (1532),
Philippines (1200), Poland (1147), Portugal (1200), Russia (1703), Slovakian
Republic (1284), Slovenia (1006), Spain (2488), Sweden (1189), Switzerland
(1204), United States (1284).
Examining the
international
rates of afterlife beliefs
(countries ordered in terms of certainty there is
life after death), Americans are second only to Filipinos in faith that there is
a post-death existence. In fact, the percent of Americans definitely
believing this increased 18% since 1991.
The ISSP again replicated its religion survey in 2008. The most recent international rates of afterlife beliefs can be found here.
-
FOCUSING ON AMERICANS' BELIEFS IN THE
HEREAFTER
To analyze trends and correlates of Americans' postlife beliefs, the results of twelve
years (from 1977 to 1994) of the National Opinion Research Center's (NORC) General
Social Surveys were analyzed (n=16,455). Each of these surveys is an independently
drawn, full probability sampling of non-institutionalized, English-speaking individuals 18
years of age or older who live within the continental United States.
Individuals' belief in an afterlife were determined on the basis of responses to the
question (POSTLIFE): Do you believe there is a life after death?
Over the 17 years covered by the NORC surveys, the proportion of Americans believing in
life after death has increased slightly to roughly three in four. Further, their beliefs are basically
independent of age and education, with remarkably little change over time within birth
cohorts.
Click here to see Figure 3: Religiosity of
American cohorts and relationship with afterlife beliefs
Postlife beliefs are, not surprisingly, strongly related to religiosity, however the
relationship weakens the more recent the birth cohort. This is interesting given the
positive relationship between age of cohort and religiosity. As can be seen in the left-most
graph in Figure 3, those born during the 1960s on are half as likely to be strongly religious
as those born during the first decade of the century. (There is, of course, the age-factor in
religiosity. Over the two decades analyzed, all cohorts became increasingly religious with
age, with the increase in the percentage claiming to be strongly religious between 1973-76
and 1991-94 ranging from 3.6% for those born between 1900 and 1909 to 10.6% for those
born during the 1940s). Nevertheless, as can be seen in the right-hand graph, there is a
significant increase in postlife beliefs by cohort recency, most notably among those with no
religious affiliation and those claiming to be "not very" religious.
Click here to see Figure 4: The
relationship between religious faith, religiosity, and education on Americans' beliefs in an
afterlife
And what about the supposedly dampening effect of education on the immortalist
outlooks of religious Americans? As can be seen in Figure 4, it is the general case for
those of the four categories of Christian faiths that postlife beliefs consistently increase not
only with religiosity but with education as well.
SO WHAT'S THE AFTERLIFE LIKE?
In four of its General Social Surveys (1986-89), NORC posed the following questions to
random samples of Americans:
People picture life after death in many ways. We'd
like to know how you think of life after death. Here is a card with sets of contrasting
images. On a scale of 1-7 where would you place your image of life after
death?
- If you think that life after death is "A life like the one here on earth only
better," you would place yourself at 1. If you think it is "A life without many
things which make our present life enjoyable" you would place yourself at 7. If you
think it is somewhere between these two you would place yourself at 2,3,4,5, or 6. Mean of
this variable LIKEDIFF=2.8; 43% of 4,150 Americans placed themselves at 1.
- "A spiritual life, involving our mind but not our body"=1, "A
paradise
of pleasure and delights"=7. Mean of this variable MINDBODY=3.03; 38% of
4,173 Americans placed themselves at 1.
- "A pale, shadowy form of life, hardly a life at all"=1, "A life of
complete fulfillment, spiritual and physical"=7. Mean of this variable
PALEFULL=5.76; 50% of 4,181 Americans placed themselves at 7.
Click here to see
YOUR TURN
OK. You have seen the data. Arnold Toynbee appears to be correct when he
wrote in
1969 that "Death is un-American." For what reasons do you believe that postlife beliefs
are greater in the United States than in other European countries, from where many of its
ideas originated? For insight into the legacies of the nineteenth century you may want to check
out
N.L. Rice's Immortality of the Soul and Destiny of the
Wicked (1871) and
Balfour Stewart's The Unseen Universe
(1875).
Upon seeing what your input is here we will move on and speculate on some of
the
personal and social consequences of believing in life after death. For instance, to what
extent does the "you never have to die" ethos underlie the rise of the American
military-industrial and medical-industrial complexes, demands for risk-free
life, cultural
gerontophobia, and immortalist themes in popular culture. What other nation employs
immortal (albeit flawed) creatures for its children's breakfast cereals and even its postage
stamps?
Return to Kearl's Death Index
