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Funeral Rites in the British DeafChurch: A Case of DisenfranchisedGrief?Gillian MellerPublished online: 30 Apr 2010.

To cite this article: Gillian Meller (2010) Funeral Rites in the British Deaf Church: ACase of Disenfranchised Grief?, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 25:2, 267-280, DOI:10.1080/13537901003750951

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Journal of Contemporary Religion,Vol. 25, No. 2, May 2010, 267–280

Funeral Rites in the British Deaf Church: A Case ofDisenfranchised Grief?*

GILLIAN MELLER

ABSTRACT This article is based on material collected as part of a PhD thesis, undertakenat the Centre for Deaf Studies at the University of Bristol, which focuses on funeralcustoms in the British Deaf Community. A particular custom related to mourning inthe Deaf church is holding a religious memorial service for community members who havedied, usually about a month after the funeral. This article explores why the memorialservice has developed and why it continues to hold such an important place in the livesof this group of Deaf people. It examines this religious ritual in relation to KennethDoka’s concept of ‘disenfranchised grief’ and suggests that the main reason for theimportance of the memorial service to the Deaf Community is the frequent exclusion ofDeaf mourners from full participation in funeral services.

The Deaf Community in Britain

The British Deaf Community is a minority group with its own language, BritishSign Language (BSL), and its own culture. It is therefore not readily accessible tooutsiders. It is difficult to be exact about the size of the British Deaf Community.Any official figures tend to be based on audiological criteria of degree of hearingloss. The estimate most generally used of the number of people for whom BSL istheir first or preferred language is 50–70,000 (Ladd 33).

It is customary to use the term ‘Deaf’ to refer to those who are culturally Deaf,that is people whose first or preferred language is sign language and forwhom Deaf communities are their main focus of experience, activities, andloyalty. The term ‘deaf’ (initial letter lowercase) is used for the medicalmeaning of any impairment of hearing. Many culturally Deaf people reject thenotion of being disabled, but instead ‘‘perceive their experience as essentiallyakin to other language minorities’’ (Ladd xvii).

One essential difference from other language minorities is in the transmissionof language between generations. Only about 10% of deaf children are born toDeaf parents. The barriers to communication mean that many Deaf people havethe experience of feeling isolated within their families. This is compoundedby the educational system of residential schools for the Deaf. However, theopportunity to communicate with other ‘signers’ is liberating for many andresults in strong peer-group friendships lasting throughout life. (Becker 30)

*This article was the winning entry for the Taylor & Francis Sociology ofReligion Post-Graduate Essay Competition in 2009.

ISSN 1353-7903 print/ISSN 1469-9419 online/10/020267–14 � 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13537901003750951

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Upon leaving school, most become involved in the local Deaf club and itsreligious and social activities. In the days before interpreting developed as adistinct profession, access to communication with hearing people outside thecommunity depended upon the ‘Missioner’ at the local Deaf club. The rate ofintermarriage within the community is high. (Kyle and Woll 10)

The Study of Death

The academic study of death has experienced something of a renewal in recentyears. While the study of rituals surrounding death has long been significantin archaeology and anthropology, Jupp suggests that ‘‘British sociologists mightseem to have discovered death only in the 1990s’’ (xi). Walter (‘‘Sociologists’’)offers a useful overview of major studies of death in sociology and argues that therecent renewal of interest in death mirrors a recognition that, contrary to theoriesof secularisation, religion continues to exert a significant influence in modernsociety. Many still turn to the established church for their funeral rites,although the Church of England has tended to be less well researched thannewer or more exotic sects (274).

Very little is known about attitudes, beliefs, and customs relating to deathin the Deaf Community. Ladd notes that belief in the existence of a distinctDeaf culture ‘‘has greatly outstripped research into it’’ (xvii). Deaf Studies hasonly become established as an academic discipline in Britain during the last30 years to carry out research and disseminate accounts of Deaf people as adistinct cultural and linguistic group, in opposition to ‘‘a perception ofdeafness that members of the community felt was inappropriate at best,certainly ignorant and—as has been argued by the National Union of the Deafin the 1970s—positively genocidal at worst’’ (Turner 3).

Turner argues that the establishment of a space for the academic study ofDeaf community life has undoubtedly helped amass evidence and this hascontributed to major changes in the public perception of Deaf people and theservices available to them. However, now that some major battles have beenwon, for example, the legal recognition of the British Sign Language as aminority language in the United Kingdom, perhaps the time is right to reviewthe progress of Deaf Studies and acknowledge the need to engage with the wideracademic community, so that the theoretical frameworks of other disciplinescan be drawn upon and Deaf Studies can contribute its own distinctivefindings. This article attempts to do this by relating research on funeral ritualsin the Deaf church to Doka’s concept of ‘disenfranchised grief’. It investigates theexperiences of funeral and memorial services among Deaf Anglicans and drawson material collected as part of a PhD project undertaken at the Centre for DeafStudies at the University of Bristol.

Methodology

This research project records the experiences of members of Deaf churches ina diocese of the Church of England in the Midlands. The importance of theresidential Deaf schools in the transmission of language and cultural valueshas been noted above. With policies in Britain increasingly favouring

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integration in education, those who went to residential school tend to be inthe older age brackets. It is also likely that older people may have moredirect experience of bereavement and of organising or attending funerals.These factors were considered in selecting key informants for the research: theywere all over 60 and had attended residential schools for the Deaf.

The data presented in this article derive from interviews with core membersof one particular congregation and with leaders of the diocesan Deaf church towhich they belong. I conducted the interviews in British Sign Languageand recorded them on video; I then translated and transcribed them. I alsointerviewed the chaplains and the Deaf leaders from the national organisation‘Deaf Anglicans Together’. Sections of text are taken from interviews, fieldnotesof participant observation in Deaf church services, funerals involving Deafmourners, and social activities by the Deaf club.

A major obstacle to research with minority groups is access. Establishing trustis even more of an issue when the research concerns a potentially sensitive topic,such as death, which requires considerable commitment of time on theresearcher’s part. Consequently, the project was based in a Deaf church towhich I already had access. I have been involved with this Deaf church forabout 15 years, first as a student of sign language, then as a church member,and later as a community and church interpreter.

The Deaf Church

During the nineteenth century, many Deaf community buildings were establishedin the main centres of population in Britain, either by the efforts of Deaf peoplethemselves or by others concerned with the physical and spiritual welfare of theDeaf. Enabling the Deaf to receive the word of God was often the main motivation.A publication celebrating the centenary of the founding of one society for the Deafin the Midlands describes the church and centre as originating with one of the fewdeaf children lucky enough to have received an education:

One of these deaf and dumb children was Charles Davis, who became a cobblerafter leaving school. He had come into contact with many deaf and dumb adultswho were poor, jobless and completely illiterate, and in the words of aStaffordshire Sentinel report of that day he asked himself: ‘‘How many inthese towns are there afflicted as I am, and is there no provision made forus? After leaving school does not man care for the souls and wellbeing of thepoor mute; are we to be left to ourselves after leaving school?’’ He began to seekout and gather together his afflicted brethren, arranging meetings with them inhis own home on Sunday evenings, teaching them signs and finger spelling andleading them in prayer to a knowledge of Christ . . . That the Society wasfounded on a strong religious basis is clear from our records of the ensuingfew years. (North Staffordshire Deaf and Dumb Society 4)

Many Deaf clubs have retained an affiliation to their Christian roots. The groupof elderly Deaf in this study meets for worship in a purpose-built chapel in theDeaf centre, which is under the leadership of an ordained chaplain from theAnglican diocese in which the centre is situated. The chaplain is alsoresponsible for five other Deaf churches in the Diocese and thus only leadsservices for this group once a month. The services are conducted in British

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Sign Language, but with text and rubrics modified to match the needs of the Deafculture and the visual mode of sign language.

Only one of the Deaf church members also attends another place of worship.When attending the residential school for the Deaf as children, members weretaken to a neighbouring parish church for Sunday worship. One of the groupdescribes the frustration and incomprehension she experienced in churchwithout sign language:

We would all sit in pews along with the local hearing congregation. Thepriest would preach from the pulpit and I would watch his mouth open andshut and open again just like a goldfish. Then I would become restlessand bored, but our teacher would tell us Deaf to keep still. To this day I havenever understood why we had to go to the hearing church just to sit there, withno interpreters at all. There were church services at school every Sundayevening, which was a little better than being at hearing church. The teachersled the worship.

[At the school] Sign language was not allowed. The Head would spank my handsif I tried to sign to him. So I had to put my hands behind my back whenever hespoke to me. I picked up signs from other Deaf girls after school hours, behindlocked doors when the teachers were off duty.

Clearly, these negative emotions are still strongly felt 60 years later and beginto explain some of the difficulties which Deaf people experienced whenworshipping as members of predominantly hearing congregations.

Disenfranchised Grief

The concept of disenfranchised grief emphasises the social dimension of theprocess: the need for one’s grief to be acknowledged by others and the need toparticipate in the public rites of mourning. Disenfranchised grief is what ‘‘is notopenly acknowledged, socially validated, or publicly observed’’ (Doka 5).

The reasons why this might happen are:

. The relationship with the deceased is not recognised, particularly non-kinrelationships.

. That the loss itself is not acknowledged; for example, the death of an unbornchild or a pet.

. Exclusion of the griever, especially where the person is socially defined asnot capable of grief.

. The circumstances of the death might cause anxiety or embarrassment.

. The ways in which people grieve may not match social and cultural norms.

The funeral is a focal point for acknowledging the grief of the bereaved andoffering them support. Doka claims that those whose grief is disenfranchisedare excluded from such rituals, either explicitly, in their not being present, orimplicitly, when they are present at the funeral, but their role and importancein the life of the deceased are not publicly acknowledged. This theory has beenused to describe the experience of particular groups as well as of individuals;for example, Read has related it to her work with people who have learningdisabilities.

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One way in which such disenfranchisement is addressed is through whatDoka describes as alternative rituals:

Alternative rituals can provide opportunities for mourners to transcend time orspace and to express their own relationship, affirm an aspect of the deceased’sidentity, or meet their own spiritual and cultural needs. (141)

This article offers examples of a variety of ways in which the grief of Deafmourners is disenfranchised during funerals and argues that the Deaf churchmemorial service is an alternative ritual. The memorial service allows theDeaf to reaffirm the deceased’s identity as a member of the Deaf communityand to celebrate that person’s life according to their own spiritual and culturaltraditions. The analysis is grouped into three of Doka’s categories ofdisenfranchisement which appear to be at work in the Deaf Community.

How Deaf Grief is Disenfranchised

The Relationship is Not Recognised—Kin Versus Community

In less complex societies, deaths are marked communally, providing theopportunity for all members to express and experience grief. In morecomplex societies, funeral rituals are no longer communal but familial, and,as a result, the right to express grief is limited to those in recognized kinroles. The grief of others is disenfranchised. (Doka xiii)

This research reveals frequent examples when funerals become a source oftension between the biological family and the Deaf community, which many ofits members describe as ‘like family’. Deaf communities are generally consideredto prioritise communal values and to be examples of culture which emphasisesthe primacy of the collective over the individual. Mindess describes the AmericanDeaf community as follows:

American Deaf culture clearly qualifies as a collectivist culture with itsemphasis on pooling resources, the duty to share information, the boundarybetween insiders and outsiders, and loyalty to and strong identification with thegroup. (40)

This contrasts with the often difficult relationships which the elderly Deaf churchmembers had with their families. In their youth, sign language was discouragedby medical and educational experts, therefore many parents did not use it tocommunicate with their children, as the following extracts illustrate:

Harry said he received 6 strokes of the cane across his hands for signing becausehe was told ‘‘you can speak’’. His father came to visit him at school everyThursday. When Harry told his father what had happened, his father said‘‘serves you right’’ and clipped him round the ear.

Maureen said her family was different. She was made to use lip-readingat school, but her mother felt this was wrong and told her ‘‘You are Deaf.Use fingers!’’.

Lucy said her parents were shocked and upset when they realised she used signlanguage; they insisted she used lip-reading and speech instead. When she

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explained to them that the latter methods were for mixing with hearing peopleand that she only signed with Deaf people, they accepted this.

Deaf children in residential schools were separated from their families for longperiods:

The pupils were allowed home on holidays only four times a year: Easter,Whitsuntide, Summer and Christmas. I kept in touch with my parentsby letter and they wrote to me, but all my mail was read by the teacher.Parents did visit their children at school. Mother visited me every Thursdayfor an hour.

The strong bonds which developed between peers and the ease ofcommunication with other sign language users meant that many preferredschool to the isolation they felt at home, despite the harshness of the treatmentthey received there. Ladd (298) states that his informants often used the imageof family to describe relationships in the Deaf residential schools.

The rise of feminist and cross-cultural studies has challenged traditionalanthropological notions of kinship and especially notions of the nuclear family.Weeks, Heaphy and Donovan note that

There are many historic echoes of the usage of family language, often bycommunities of marginalised or embattled people. (49)

Their concept of ‘families of choice’ and Stack’s work on ‘fictive kin’ describenetworks which are not restricted to groups sharing ties of blood or marriage.Those who behave as family are treated as family and given the same rights andresponsibilities. The notion of kin as those sharing ties of reciprocity and mutualassistance has resonances with the values which are often attributed to Deafculture in the literature.

When a Deaf person dies, hearing family members may ignore the closerelationships within the Deaf community and try to make the funeral anexclusive family affair. This extract is taken from interview notes with ahearing woman whose parents were Deaf:

She described the resistance of her younger sister to any inclusion of theDeaf community at their mother’s funeral. The sister felt that the funeral wasa family affair and would not accept that hearing people were only part of hermother’s world. My interviewee said she could not imagine her mother’sfuneral without sign language and she later organised a memorial service forthe Deaf community who, she said, had also been ‘‘like family’’ to her mother.This family closeness she uses to characterise the Deaf Community contrastssharply with her descriptions of her relationship with her mother, ‘‘I was stilla hearing person, not to be trusted’’, and the relationship of her mother withher own family where she was ‘‘. . . the only Deaf person in her family and feltshe was always ‘put on one side’ as different, a problem, a bit of a nuisance,during family events’’.

On some occasions, the family is unwilling to allow an interpreter or chaplainto be present with Deaf people. Whether this indicates a wish to preservethe funeral as an exclusive family affair rather than include Deaf ‘outsiders’ orwhether this is an attempt to hide the existence of deafness in the family, whichthey perceive as something negative, is difficult to establish. The followingprovides an example.

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Funeral for Jimmy, a regular church member, who was over 90. There had beena dispute about having an interpreter. The family had not wanted one present.The Deaf society explained to the funeral director that a lot of Deaf peoplewould be coming to the funeral and the funeral director was able to resolve itwith the family.

Even if an interpreter is present and the participation of Deaf mourners is notexplicitly excluded, when hearing family members organise the funeral, theymay be unaware of the dead person’s connections to the Deaf world, thenames of their friends or the role they played at the club. If these ties are notacknowledged within the funeral, the Deaf memorial service could rectify suchomissions.

Exclusion of the Griever

Those considered incapable of comprehending death are frequently excludedfrom funeral rituals, for example, the very young or people with learningdisabilities. Chaplains with Deaf people report examples of Deaf people beingtreated in a similar way. Behenna relates the account of a Deaf person who wasnot told that her father had died:

My father had died, but I didn’t know. People looked sad and kept sayingthings I didn’t understand. In the end I had to ask ‘‘is my father dead?’’.I realised from their faces that he was, but had to ask to be sure. (3)

Two of the chaplains I interviewed knew of family members trying to preventadult Deaf from attending funerals. There is also exclusion from participatingin the funeral arrangements. One Deaf lady reported that her family had alwaystreated her as somehow frail or vulnerable and took over all the arrangementsfor her mother’s funeral.

Ways of Grieving—Cultural Norms

The main obstacle for Deaf mourners at funerals is the language in which theservice is conducted. The question whether an interpreter will be provided can bea major factor in the exclusion of Deaf from funeral services. The problem ofhearing family members being unwilling to include the Deaf community throughan interpreter or chaplain has been discussed above. However, this is not the onlyissue. Some, particularly older Deaf people, do not know that interpreters areavailable or how to book one for a funeral:

Pat said that on Tuesday she had attended a funeral for ‘‘a friend in my flats’’and that she was the only Deaf person there. Vera signed ‘‘Shame’’, but Lindatried to reassure her friend. Pat said she just looked at the service book andwatched what was happening. Linda said it did not matter, what was importantwas how a person felt inside, not the words.

One unresolved problem is the question who pays for the interpreter. Funeraldirectors may have some legal responsibility to make their services accessible,but in practice such costs, one suspects, are simply passed on to the family.In the diocese under study, the Church of England has an agreement tomeet interpreting costs for any Deaf person who requests this service at achurch funeral. However, the local authority will not fund interpreting for

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crematorium funerals. They claim that funerals are not covered by the DisabilityDiscrimination Act, as, unlike for weddings, there is no legal requirement for anywords to be used.

Even if an interpreter is present, an interpreted service is still a translationfrom another culture. There is usually a time lag in the interpretation, makingit impossible for Deaf people to join in with responses at the same time as thehearing congregation (Lewis 158). Apart from the issues related to the languageitself, there can also be problems with customary behaviour at funerals, whichis linked to the visual mode of sign language. When the service is conductedby a chaplain for the Deaf, it can be made to match more closely the norms of aDeaf church service.

It is usual to stand for certain parts of hearing funeral services, for example,when hymns are sung or during the final commendation. This can make itdifficult to see the person leading a service in sign language and thusinformation is missed. In Deaf church services, the congregation sitsthroughout. At funerals, verses from the scripture are often read or a hymn issung as the mourners process in behind the coffin. A Deaf service would notbegin until everyone was seated. Behenna (7) notes that this visual aspect of thelanguage also needs to be taken into account in planning the length of the service:

I also like to leave a few minutes in case there is a need to stop the service forany reason. (Hearing people can cry copiously and still listen, but Deaf peoplecannot do both and it may be more important to cry than to watch.)

Vera Hunt describes this experience from the Deaf perspective:

Funeral services for Deaf people are different from hearing services. My overallimpression is how important the role of the person taking the funeral is.Whereas hearing people can bow their heads with grief whilst listening to thewords of the service Deaf people are not able to do this as they are not given anytime to grieve because their eyes have to be attentively on the chaplain orinterpreter. Therefore their grief is hidden in the same way as their ‘deafness’.I myself experienced this at the funeral of my beloved mother—my grief camelater when my eyes were at rest from communicating and I was able to let mygrief come to the fore.

A significant cultural difference between Deaf and hearing funeral services seemsto be in attitudes towards what belongs in public ritual and what belongs to moreprivate or informal situations:

After the church service, everyone went to C [name of place] for the committal.Two more Deaf, non-church people, arrived. I did not know whether theyintended only to come to this part or if they had arrived late or got lost.While we were waiting to go into the chapel, Janet went round the grouptalking about Jimmy, trying to gain agreement about his character, ‘‘he wasa real gentleman’’, etc. It become obvious during the service that she wasexpecting to have the opportunity to make this speech. Janet saidafter[wards] that there had been nothing in the service about Jimmy, thattalking about him would make it ‘‘more personal’’.

In this incident, the cultural norms of hearing funerals, with their emphasis onstructure and formality, meant that the Deaf person was unable to rememberher friend in the way she felt was proper. She did not have the opportunity

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to talk about his place in the Deaf community and how they felt about him.When the Deaf church holds a memorial service after a funeral, the sharingof memories is a major feature. One informant said that memorial serviceswere ‘‘to remember the dead, say something about their life’’. The opportunityfor everyone to share their stories about the deceased person seems to be centralto the Deaf view of how the dead should be remembered. While this is importantfor hearing people, too, the formal eulogy at a hearing funeral is in sharp contrastto the way things are done at a Deaf church memorial service. Informal storytelling tends not to be incorporated into church services, but to be left for thewake or reception after the funeral. This may be a clue to different codes offormality between the two cultures, or to cultural values about which typesof information are considered important, and could be an interesting directionfor future research.

The Deaf Church Memorial Service

Deaf always ask about the memorial, even before the funeral. They want toknow when the memorial will be and it is amazing, they all come . . . but anyother time they don’t come, some never come to church. But they remember thatboy or that girl, their everyday life, not linked with church, and they go. I thinkit is an inner feeling between the Deaf, ‘‘I have got to go and pay respect to thatperson.’’

It is customary in the Deaf Church to hold a memorial service for communitymembers who have died, about a month after the funeral has taken place.The memorial service usually begins in the same way as any other Deaf churchservice: a welcome from the chaplain, an explanation of how the service willproceed, and an opening hymn (that is the signing of words from the hymnbook without music). Then the main feature of the memorial service follows.Anyone who wishes to do so can come to the front and sign about thedeceased person. This is not done in the style of a formal eulogy and does notfollow any chronological order. Each person shares his/her memories, usuallyaround the person’s role in the community and the activities s/he had beeninvolved in. This continues until everyone has had the chance to contribute,if they wish. The service then reverts to some standard liturgical form, usuallyconcluding with a shortened version of the communion service and a final hymn.

The sharing of memories at the service is in sharp contrast to formal eulogies athearing funerals. There is no attempt to give a complete picture of the person’slife. Family members or place names are rarely mentioned. The contributionsusually describe the contribution of the person to the Deaf community andtheir involvement in social activities, for example:

George was a good carpenter. He helped to make the club bar downstairs.

I was in the Deaf cycling club with Harry.

Years ago, we all went to Eastbourne . . .

The signing of these memories is done in an informal style. In sign language, asin any other language, there are markers of formality. Signing in formal situationstends to incorporate influences from English and to use more finger spelling.

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It also uses more two-handed forms and fewer non-manual features and it tendsto occupy a smaller signing space (Sutton-Spence and Woll 31). Formal signingis the type of language use seen most during the traditional Deaf Churchservices. While few, if any of the church members in this group wouldconsciously say that English is better than BSL, they seem to have strong viewsthat the forms dominated by English, as described above, are more appropriatefor church use. Any use of the informal style, especially by interpreters,is severely criticised by this group—it is even dismissively called ‘pub sign’.However, when telling stories at memorial services, an informal style with BSLstructure appears to be acceptable.

The importance in Deaf religious ritual of having members of the congregationexchanging information cannot be over-emphasised. The notion of ‘silent’prayer, however defined, seems to be absent from Deaf services. Any breaksin the progression of the service, for example, the chaplain purifying thevessels after communion, become opportunities for communication—it isfrequently necessary to attract the congregation’s attention again so that theservice can continue. When praying for those who are sick or who havedied, it is never suggested that they are recalled privately in people’s heartsor minds. The Deaf church members mention them all by name, adding thecircumstances that require prayer, frequently in great detail. Lewis (167)elaborates:

This process is never one person signing, and the rest watching. Almost always,someone will interrupt and the prayer will turn into a conversation: ‘‘I didn’tknow John was ill, I saw him last week.’’ ‘‘No, not that John, John with the redhair, he’s been ill for ages.’’

Lewis also describes the length of time taken to share the peace in Deafservices, as everyone must be greeted in turn. This also becomes a chanceto share news and opinions on the service. Lewis relates this to the importanceof greetings and farewells in Deaf culture generally: the proper formalitieshave to be observed and ‘‘contact with other Deaf people is so precious that itcannot be rushed’’ (168).

An additional reason for the significance of the memorial service to this groupmay be its location. Deaf memorial services are always held in the chapel at theDeaf centre. Although this is the only place of worship for almost all thegroup, funerals for deceased members are rarely held there. The chapel is onthe upper floor of the building, not convenient for carrying a coffin, but not aninsurmountable problem. The elderly members did recall one funeral being heldthere. In other Deaf chapels around the region where there are no issues of access,very few funerals are ever held there. This appears to be another example ofdisenfranchisement, with hearing family members choosing locations whichhave more significance to them or where they themselves will not be excludedby unfamiliar language and cultural norms.

The Deaf church members are passionately attached to their chapel, refusing allsuggestions that they might relocate as they become increasingly frail and unableto climb the stairs. It is their space, created and cared for by the hands ofgenerations of Deaf people, full of reminders of past members of thecommunity. Many of the fittings and decorations were made by communitymembers or other Deaf craftsmen. The Deaf church members may feel it most

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appropriate to remember the dead in this place which has such significancefor them.

Parkes notes that many religions seem to have a need for a second ritual aftera funeral:

Second rituals help to signal the passage of time and allow for the idea that thebereaved may have fulfilled any obligation to mourn and are now free to moveon to the next chapter of their lives. (237)

However, Deaf explanations of the role of the Deaf church memorial servicedo not seem to involve a sense of closure and moving on. In fact, even thosemost closely affected by death, for example, by the loss of a partner, will be fullyreintegrated into the social activities of the Deaf community only a week or twoafter the bereavement and before a memorial service is held. It seems that thenotion of reintegration does not adequately explain the role of the churchmemorial service in Deaf culture.

The Deaf Memorial Service as an Alternative Ritual

In this particular group of elderly Deaf people, and in interviews with leadersof the Deaf church nationally, the idea that the memorial service has greatsignificance in Deaf Church culture was strongly expressed. There were manyexamples of the Deaf asking about a memorial service as soon as someone haddied. However, when the funeral was ‘deaf-centred’, they did not always pursuethe idea of a memorial service as an additional event.

When asked ‘‘Why do you think memorial services are so important to Deafpeople?’’, a Deaf man with considerable experience as a chaplain in the Deafchurch on a national level responded that he thought it was really becausehearing people control the funeral. When the Deaf had what they wantedat a funeral, a memorial was not necessary. He gave the example of hisown mother’s funeral which had been conducted by another Deaf person.A memorial was then unnecessary, because everything required had beendone. In this case, the funeral had been planned according to Deaf culturalnorms and people had the chance at the funeral to come forward and sharetheir memories. Therefore, nothing further was needed.

This appears to substantiate the theory that Deaf memorial services havedeveloped and remain important, because the Deaf community is oftendisenfranchised by funerals arrangements. The extent to which this happensmay depend on the composition of a particular family:

If the Deaf person had lots of hearing family, they would take over the funeral,maybe exclude the Deaf, so the memorial service was for the Deaf communitywho had also been like family to that person.

Given the relatively small number of inter-generational Deaf families, thescenario of the hearing ‘taking over’ the funerals seems likely and appears tobe happen frequently.

However, even the Deaf church memorial service can involve another levelof disenfranchisement, which creates an additional layer of complexity to theanalysis. Although memorial services are held in the Deaf church, in sign

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language and according to Deaf ways, in some cases, they seem dependent on theagreement of the hearing family members:

Some Deaf do not have a memorial service, their families do not want it. I do notknow why.

Recently we had one like that, a woman who always came to church. TheDeaf would have loved to have a memorial service for her, but her familysaid no.

I think Joan wanted a memorial service for her husband, but her family did notwant it. I feel that is not right, it is her husband, nothing to do with the family.

The notion that a memorial service can only be held, if the family agree, ratherthan purely for the benefit of friends in the Deaf community appears to be heldby both the Deaf church members and many of the chaplains. The churchmembers seem to blame the family of the deceased for not wanting a memorialrather than criticise the chaplains’ policy that a memorial will only be held, if thefamily requests it. One chaplain I interviewed suggested that a major problemwas cuts in the chaplaincy service itself: now that he visited churches only oncea month it was difficult to arrange a memorial service at the customary time soonafter the funeral. However, he claimed that there had been no service in the casescited above, because the Deaf church members had not requested one:

Until they request it, I don’t know they want it. If I assumed that they wanted it,that would be Deaf oppression because I would be saying ‘‘You will havea memorial service’’. Not if they don’t want it. It might be very painful forthem to resurrect the funeral for instance.

Thus the question of who has the authority to request a memorial service ordecide whether one will be held requires further investigation.

However, whether a memorial service happens or not, I feel that the desireof the Deaf to hold one is linked to the need to remember the person in their ownplace of worship, among their own people. The importance of community tieshas already been noted. The memorial service may have an important functionin reaffirming that sense of community identity and group solidarity. Walterreinforces this:

‘‘When someone dies, the group to which he belongs feels itself lessened and, toreact against this loss, it assembles. Collective sentiments are renewed whichthen lead men to seek one another and to assemble together’’ (Durkheim 1915,339) . . . It is precisely when groups—from families to nations—are depleted bydeath that they reconstitute themselves, symbolically and practically.(‘‘Sociology’’ 317)

As mentioned, the Deaf church members are all over 60, with their numbersdeclining year by year. This pattern of decline is repeated in the wider clubmembership. The future of the traditional Deaf clubs is uncertain. Deafchildren are increasingly attending mainstream schools and do notautomatically join the Deaf club when they leave school. There are moreleisure opportunities outside the club: sub-titled television and cinema,interpreted theatre performances, communication technology which does notrely upon speech and hearing. The church members are distressed thatthe Deaf way of life is not being passed on to the younger generation.

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The memorial services may also be an affirmation of the Deaf way of life and theshared experiences. An individual has died, but the group goes on.

Conclusion

The theory of disenfranchised grief seems to offer a useful way of analysingand explaining the Deaf experience of funerals and the importance of thecustom of holding religious memorial services in the Deaf church. Deaf peopleare disenfranchised by the language, culture, and location of funerals, by kinrelationships being prioritised over community ties, and in some cases byphysical exclusion as those socially defined as incapable of taking part infuneral arrangements and rituals. The Deaf church memorial services act asalternative rituals, allowing Deaf to reaffirm the deceased’s identity as amember of the Deaf community and to celebrate that person’s life according totheir own spiritual and cultural traditions.

However, further research is needed to understand cases where no memorialservices are held, even when there seems to be a need among the churchmembers to have such a service. One direction for future research, which thisstudy suggests, is to gain a deeper understanding of culturally appropriateworship in general and of funerals in particular. Another avenue forexploration is the nature of relationships within the Deaf community. Thefrequent use of the metaphor of family among the Deaf community mightopen the way for connections to theories about the nature and understandingof kinship in other academic disciplines, particular among minority groups.It would be interesting to see whether similar conflicts between biologicalfamily and the wider community within other minority groups produce similarcultural strategies, especially within minorities for which organised religion isan important aspect of community life.

Gillian Meller is a PhD candidate in the Centre for Deaf Studies at the University ofBristol, under the supervision of Dr Paddy Ladd. She completed her MSc in Deaf Studiesat Bristol in 2007. She is a member of the Association of Sign Language Interpreters(England and Wales) and has worked as a community interpreter since 1998.CORRESPONDENCE: Centre for Deaf Studies, University of Bristol, 8 WoodlandRoad, Bristol BS8 ITN, UK.

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