Abstract
There are several commercials on daytime TV in the UK that advertise the benefits of fuss-free funerals, shorn of all rites and rituals. They claim to be easier for the deceased-to-be and for their bereaved families and they are shown at a time when the viewing demographic is probably largely retired people. They might seem to be a product of increasingly secularizing Western societies, but Charlie Bell, in Light to Those in Darkness, writes that, during the Covid pandemic, ‘the Churches, too, appeared to have little to say about death and dying’ (p. 3). In contrast to the funeral service of the Book of Common Prayer, the contemporary liturgies of the Church of England found in Common Worship ‘makes provision for a wide range of different theological perspectives and practices (and in doing so may not necessarily present such a clear and coherent theological narrative at first glance as the Book of Common Prayer does)’ (p. 11). Bell’s challenge to the Church(es) here is that thinking theologically with the ‘communion of saints’ means recognizing that ‘total pain’ is a collective as well as an individual experience and condition. The term ‘total pain’ was conceived by Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the hospice movement in the UK, and this concept has influenced the practice of palliative care as a holistic approach to the care of the ill and disabled, primarily the terminally ill. This approach goes beyond the biomedical construct of pain to consider how the concept of ‘total pain’ affects the individual in body, mind and spirit, and, beyond them, the whole Body of Christ represented not only by the churches on earth but by the existence of the ‘communion of saints’ professed in the Apostles Creed: a ‘cloud of witnesses’ that encompasses both the living and the dead (pp. 53–60).
The Revd Dr Bell’s own experience as priest and doctor enables him to explore that concept of ‘total pain’ in conversation with the doctrine of the ‘communion of saints’ as it has been variously understood by biblical writers and by later theologians, and there are sections in this book on how this communion has been construed variously by the Church. But Bell’s overarching concern is with developing a theological anthropology that is both missional and firmly practical in its desire to ameliorate the pain and dread of those in despair and to situate that experience and remedy in the communal as well as the individual.
Light to Those in Darkness is divided into two parts: Part 1 is a theological exploration of the meaning of total pain, the doctrine of the ‘communion of saints’ and how pain can be experienced as participation in Christ. An important disclaimer here is that nowhere does Bell make the problematic claim that pain is or can be redemptive. Part 2 deals with the more pastoral outworkings of this theology: how might these understandings of pain in communion, disease in the Body of Christ, influence practice? Bell’s own experience can be heard in the theological reflections on and grappling with the reality of pain and despair and with the existence of communion as fellowship and companionship, as the necessary participation in Christ. Communion is both gift and lived reality; it is both sacramental and salvational. In a Christian worldview, therefore, ‘total pain’ is a ‘social phenomenon’ that ‘disrupts our human narrative of “success” and speaks of fear and loss to a culture that would prefer to keep these things far from view’ (p. 95). Those who suffer should be affirmed as image bearers and as participants in the life of Christ because of, not despite, their pain. This holistic, participatory, sacramental approach to pain and despair and to the exclusion that those affected suffer in both the Church and the world is a prophetic challenge to the inexorability of individualism and the goods of atomized lives.