Okay, that was the weirdest funeral I've ever attended

[underpants]

Last edited Fri May 3, 2019, 10:55 PM - Edit history (2)

Funeral for a family member who died quite unexpectedly last week. I'll refer to him as Brian.
Where it happened doesn't matter but the fact this was in front of a family of Presbyterians and Catholics made it stranger. My uncle attended his small Presbyterian Church so I figured it would be his minister.

This was at a funeral home not a church.

Two short stories about the deceased and then it was full fire and brimstone. No yelling but it was constant and unrelenting. "There are two places..." I'm thinking OH NO "....heaven and hell". He went on to paint a beautiful picture of heaven and then the horrors of hell. "If you ever want to see Brian again you must be born again"

We already bowed our heads in prayer once but then this "Bow your heads and close your eyes" Me: Whaaaat? "If you have not been born again please raise your hand. Don't worry I won't mention names" we stayed like this for at least 2 minutes "Okay. Now if you haven't raised your hand but you aren't born again I want you to think about this and what awaits you". He just kept going. I'm looking at my watch thinking please this can't go on much longer. BTW - no I didn't peak to see who had their hand up.

A while after we returned to the light I saw my cousin say something to his mother. They were sitting in the row in front of us. I found out later he said, "I stopped listening 10 minutes ago". They are Catholic.

On the way to the cemetery my Mom, in her Mom way, asked, "So what did you think of the ceremony?"
Me (as deftly as I could say it): "Well I wasn't expecting that"
My stepfather: "I wanted to hear more about Brian"
Me: "Yeah"

After we went to the cemetery and everyone else left there were 6 of us left.

My cousin (Presbyterian) starts with "What the hell was that Baptist crap?!?!" Granted my cousin can be quite an a-hole.
I said, "That wasn't Baptist. (My wife) is Baptist and I've never seen anything like THAT. Mom tells me he's non-denominational - my cousin's eyes start rolling - and self ordained"
My cousin "Oh. My. God. No wonder." Then this "Look you can invite me. And you can invite me again..but I don't need to be invited EIGHT TIMES". I think that was a low count.

My aunt (Catholic - see "10 minutes ago" above) says, "he was talking about Jesus and he quoted Isiah, that's the OLD TESTAMENT! I almost stood up and said 'That's enough!" My aunt is normally a super sweet demure type.

Like I said this wasn't Brian's regular minister. It Brian's nephew from his side of the family. Someone thought it would be a good idea to have him officiate the ceremony.

[jberryhill]

1. Quite a while back...

I decided that whenever someone else asks me to close my eyes, and they are not a medical professional performing a diagnosis, I don’t do it.

The best thing is that if you don’t close your eyes during group prayer, you get to find out who else doesn’t.

My condolences to you and yours.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

7. I was at a high school baccalaureate some years back.

Small school. The graduates were up on stage, I was quite close in the audience.

I never close my eyes or bow my head when requested. The best thing was that one of the students also didn't do so and he smiled at me rather conspiratorially. I'd always liked that kid and now I liked him a whole lot better.

[lagomorph777]

18. "Mediums" at seances used to ask the marks to close their eyes.

Same principle here.

[Karadeniz]

2. I went to a funeral conducted by a selftaught minister. He hit on every means of salvation

in the book. We heard the deceased would be saved by faith, then grace, then she'd stay here until the rapture. I hope my face conveyed my distrust that he knew anything he was talking about.

About being born again, Jesus taught reincarnation...

[Ohiogal]

3. Wow, man.

Sorry you had to endure that!

[MrScorpio]

4. Evangelicals... Yeah, they're something

[Thomas Hurt]

5. Fundie evangelicals have no shame...

When it comes to proselytizing.

[3Hotdogs]

6. I had to listen to that horseshit at my uncles funeral in Tennessee. n/t

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. When my mother died some 20 years ago,

my older sister who wound up in charge of the funeral arrangements, had a Catholic priest (the family is originally all Irish Catholic, although by 1999 not a single one of us had been inside a church in years) officiate at the service at the funeral home. (She'd willed her body to the cadaver lab at the local medical school so there wasn't going to be a burial.)

Well, the priest not only knew nothing about the family, despite my sister's writing out some information for him, but hilariously mispronounced my younger brother's name.

I'm certainly not faulting my sister. She thought that Mom would have preferred a Catholic priest to a Protestant minister, which was certainly true, but I'm sorry it didn't occur to us to simply have a secular service.

In your situation someone should have thought through what Brian's actual beliefs were and where this nephew stood.

Maybe more of us should let family or friends who are likely to survive us to know what kind of funeral we might want. Me? I've put a clause in my will setting aside money for an Irish wake. There are family members who have copies of my will and who could access the money to pay for this.

[TlalocW]

9. Sorry for your loss and the weirdness.

I'm always amazed at how religion really hijacks everything. I can understand if that's what the deceased wanted, and even if there were no specific requests having a ceremony done by what a minister of whatever denomination they were, but making attempts at getting people to be born again instead of remembering the deceased... I think that's kind of abuse of the pulpit.

With some of my family, it's more they put on religious airs. When my grandma passed in her mid-90s, her son (my uncle) eulogized her and made sure everyone knew she made some sort of statement of faith (to him) before she passed. He gave us a date, which was a mistake, because then those of us closest (whether relationship-wise or by distance) to Grandma knew she was physically incapable of doing so at that point.

Years later at my mother's funeral, that uncle's wife (he had since passed) told a story where she had visited Mom when she was on her downward spiral health-wise and asked if she were "prepared," and Mom said something like she was too wicked and didn't think she was going to get there, and my aunt asked if she had accepted Jesus, and Mom said she had, and my aunt explained to her then she was going, and that cheered her right up. I think all the siblings and I looked askance at each other at that story. First, I don't think Mom ever considered herself wicked, and second, she wasn't an idiot. She knew how Christianity worked. I could tell my aunt was fishing for people to ask to be saved - she just wasn't very good at it.

As for me, I'm an atheist, and while I know I won't care when I'm dead what people say, I'm enough of a control freak that I want to make it known anyone trying to shoehorn religion into my life is full of it. Also, I want to come up with a playlist of all the songs that are played. Ending with this...

TlalocW

[3Hotdogs]

10. Then I remember when my father died. Mom was kinda Catholic. Dad didn't give a shit.

So the funeral mass was at an R.C. church which still held the Latin mass (1998).

Anyway, sermon became about Jesus not liking no abortion instead of final rest in peace or whatever.

[csziggy]

11. Yeah - even the Presbyterians are going fire & brimstone

When my Dad died, the Presbyterian minister gave a long sermon full of it, both at the funeral home and at the graveside.

When Mom died last fall, we opted to not have a service at the funeral home, but only at graveside. The minister - who had not visited Mom once in the five years since Dad died (even though both she and Dad were very generous to that church for decades) - was ill so my sister asked the chaplain at the local military institute to officiate since he'd been friends with Mom & Dad for years.

Not only did the chaplain go one worse than the Presbyterian minister, he doubled down AND basically gave two sermons. We all regretted asking him to do it.

Those will probably be the last funerals with religious ceremonies I will ever attend. My sister and her husband are not religious and neither are my husband and I. In my final wishes I have specified that I want no ceremony at all. I need to check with my husband what he specified, but since he is only a little less agnostic than I am, I suspect he didn't ask for any either.

[jberryhill]

19. There are a couple of flavors of Presbyterian

"Presbyterian" refers to the type of church governance structure, but there are several "Presbyterian" denominations.

[csziggy]

21. Theirs is a Southern Presbyterian congregation

From their website: "First Presbyterian Church of Bartow is a member of ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians." http://fpcbartowfl.org/who-we-are/

I know back in the 1960s the church they attended had a big deal about which faction they would stay with. My parents thought about changing which Presbyterian church in town they would attend, but Dad had been a member since his parents moved to the area in 1925 when he was two years old and he simply was not going to change churches.

They stopped attending regularly a couple of decades ago but still contributed a lot of money. Back in the 1980s Mom wrote the history of the church so they had a lot of attachment to the idea of the original church even if it had changed beyond recognition.

I know that by the time I graduated from high school in 1970 I was ready to be done with that church and with religion. Between the evangelism that had enveloped it and the style that my Baptist evangelical minister uncle showed, I was not going to be a Christian any more. I explored other religions as I got my undergraduate degree in anthropology and by the time I was out of college I was out of religion altogether.

[shadowmayor]

12. As they say in Texas

Jesus loves you, and you're still going to burn in hell forever!

[czarjak]

13. Presbyterian is Evangelical? Ha...

Not even close.

[underpants]

14. No he wasn't Presbyterian

He was on his own thing

[hatrack]

15. "Non-Demonminational" - iow, I hung out a shingle and now I preach Teh Crazeee!

And who will tell me otherwise? You, SINNER???

[underpants]

16. Hey!

How did you know I was a sinner?!?!

[hatrack]

17. "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God - even Underpants."

[jberryhill]

20. About how often do your underpants fall?

[jberryhill]

23. I prefer larger denominations, like Benjamins

But I'm accepting of the smaller denominations as well.

[csziggy]

22. Yes, they can be - see my post above with a link to the church I attended as a child

It changed when I was in high school and now their philosophy is not recognizable as what I was taught there in Sunday school.