Raised In Glory: Orthodox Understandings of Death, Resurrection, and Immortality

"No one fully understands the mystery of death. People of all faiths wrestle with its meaning, striving to answer fundamental questions. Does death make irrelevant all we have experienced? Does God await us after death? What happens to us after we die? In this book Dr. Chirban explains how Orthodox Christians turn to the reality of their Easter faith - faith in a risen Lord Jesus Christ - to understand answers to these and other questions regarding their mortality, the power of the resurrection, and the immortality of the soul. Dr. John Chirban's Raised in Glory is one of the finest booklets that I have seen addressing the integration of religious views about death and bereavement and contemporary thanatology. Dr. Chirban has combined his extensive knowledge of the Greek Orthodox view of dying and afterlife with what the death awareness movement has learned about the needs of the dying and bereaved. He provides many beautiful examples of music and liturgical practice so that the reader is kept interested at all times. I recommend this both for its content and as a model of what other religious traditions might aspire to. [John D. Morgan, Ph.D.]"