'TIS THE SEASON: RELIGION AND DEATH ANXIETY

Season’s Greetings to our EBF friends,

As our readers know, a key way that people structure their value system is through religious belief. Ernest Becker talked about religion being a type of “immortality project,” in the sense that life continues on after death. Some people interpret this as a criticism of religion, and while Becker was certainly critical of the abuse of religion, he was far from disparaging of religion itself. He often notes that religion is one of the few successful ways humans have to transcend oneself and find greater meaning.

In this newsletter, we interview religious scholars who have used Ernest Becker’s work to complement their own religious understanding and worldview. We hope you enjoy this often-overlooked application of Beckerian thought.

If you have enjoyed our content over the past year, please help us continue by supporting our work with a donation. This year, we debuted the Mortality Awareness Preparedness (MAP) Project, in which we offer workshops to individuals and organizations who want to better understand how death anxiety operates individually and culturally. We currently offer two workshops: Introduction to Death Anxiety and Cause-Based Advocacy. It’s our hope that these workshops will provide an introduction to death anxiety and how terror management functions, so that they might carry this lens into their lives and work. The intro workshop covers the ways in which we individually and culturally cope with the knowledge of our mortality. Some of the organizations we have worked with are the Giffords organization for gun safety, Restore Justice, and the National Association for the Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement.