Scott F. McClure is marketing and communications director for the International Order of the Golden Rule, an association of more than 1,000 independently owned funeral homes.

Jessica Koth is public relations manager for the National Funeral Directors Association, an organization of mostly independent funeral home operators, based in Brookfield, Wis. She can discuss the influence that the needs of different ethnic and religious groups have had on funeral directors and their services.

Thomas G. Long is a professor of preaching at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. He frequently speaks and writes about Christian funeral practices and wrote Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral (2009) and, with Thomas Lynch,  The Good Funeral: Death, Grief and the Community of Care (2013).  He is also […]

Stephen Prothero is former professor of Religion in America in the Department of Religion at Boston University. He is the author of numerous books including Religion Matters: An Introduction to the World’s Religions (W.W. Norton 2020), Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (HarperOne, 2016), God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter (HarperOne, 2010), and […]

Gary Laderman is associate professor of religion at Emory University in Atlanta and author of Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America.

Read a Nov. 8, 2011, article from Bloomberg Businessweek about eco-friendly burials and cemeteries.

Read a July 12, 2009, New York Times debate about whether highway memorials should be banned.

Read a Nov. 30, 2011, article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about the growth of the in-home funeral movement.

Imam Johari Abul-Malik is outreach director for Dar Al-Hijrah in Falls Church, Va., one of the largest Islamic centers in the country. He is also treasurer of the Coordinating Council of Muslim Organizations. He is active with the Muslim American Society, based in Washington, D.C.