The British Humanist Association (BHA) newsletter is suggesting its members go to meetings to reclaim dying from the hands of the religious. This is what they say:

The BHA is a member of the ‘Dying Matters Coalition’ – set up by the National Council for Palliative Care. The Dying Matters Coalition is responsible for promoting public debate about death and dying and for assisting the implementation of the Department of Health’s End of Life Care strategy…[local and national meetings are being organised]

The BHA urges all BHA members, if invited or approached about these meetings, to attend them if they can to express humanist perspectives on death, dying and life and to reclaim death and dying from the monopoly of the religious.

As I’ve said before in this blog, humanists seem to think that they have some special philosophy to promote. although most people just find them anti-religious, sometimes rabidly so. I think having a personal and shared philosophy by which to live your life (and therefore also to live your dying) is a good thing for most people.

I’m not clear what a humanist view of dying might be; apparently any member of the BHA can enlighten us. But since humanism generally emphasises the human capacity to manage the world with the rational use of human knowledge and skills, we need to be clear what we can control and what we can’t. Since we all die, we can’t control that. What we can control is how we die, by thinking about and planning for the kind of care and support we might need from our sister and brother human beings in our dying process. Dying is a social thing that we do in relationships, and when we’re dying it’s often too late to build the relationships that will support us.

So building human relationships is a good way of preparing to live our dying., and we don;t build relationships by rejecting other humans’ beliefs quite so aggressively as some secularists seem to believe is appropriate.