Politics, religions, and grief: the cases of American spiritualism and the Deuteronomic reform in Israel

Abstract

The article is a contribution to the task of developing a cross-cultural model of grief. It shows that grief narratives can be complexly interwoven with the religious and political narratives of the culture. Two political reforms in which religious narratives figured prominently are given as case examples: 19th-century Spiritualism in North America and the Deuteronomic reform in 7th-century BCE Israel. Similarities and differences between the two are discussed. The article concludes that an adequate cross-cultural model of grief must be capable of explaining how a particular grief narrative relates to the politics and religious narratives in which it is set.