Wednesday, May 31, 7:30pm in the Parish Hall
Join us for a talk with long-time JP resident and American Baptist minister Rev. Cody Sanders, Ph.D., about his new book, Corpse Care: Ethics for Tending the Dead (Fortress Press, 2023) co-authored with Mikeal C. Parsons. Brought to you by Rev. EB and Minda, our resident Death Doula.
Book Description
Death and the treatment of the dead body loom large in our collective, cultural consciousness. Corpse Care relates the history of death care in the U.S. to craft robust, constructive, practical ethics for tending the dead. It specifically relates corpse care to economic, environmental, and pastoral concerns. The authors, Cody Sanders and Mikeal Parsons (Baylor University), explore the materiality and meaning of the dead body and the living’s relationship to it. All the biggest questions facing the planetary human community relate in one way or another to the corpse. Surprisingly, Christian communities are largely missing in the discussion of the dead, having abdicated the historic role in care for the dead to the funeral industry. Christianity has stopped its reflection about the body once that body no longer bears life. Corpse Care stakes a claim that the fact of embodiment, this incarnational truth, this process of our bodily becoming, is a practical, ethical, and theological necessity.
Meet the Author
The Rev. Cody J. Sanders, Ph.D., has served for eight years as pastor to Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Harvard Square. He also serves as Advisor for LGBTQ+ Affairs in the Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life at MIT, the American Baptist Chaplain to Harvard University, and President of the Harvard Chaplains. He is the author of several books prior to Corpse Care, including, A Brief Guide to Ministry with LGBTQIA Youth (Westminster, 2017), and Christianity, LGBTQ Suicide, and the Souls of Queer Folk (Lexington, 2020). In June, Cody and his partner (also named Cody) and two dogs, Buddy and Suzie, will be departing Boston and moving to St. Paul, Minnesota, where Cody will join the Faculty of Luther Seminary as Associate Professor of Congregational and Community Care Leadership.