Thanatophobia in Christianity

Paper Summary:

The cognitive and social functions of Christianity relieve death anxiety among Christians by establishing an inclusive group that functions to depreciate the significance of physical death, while simultaneously attaining a high degree of comfort in its unity. This paper points out that dependence placed by congregants upon the Church, and symbolically, God, allows Christians to deny their own mortality, and thus relieves them of paralyzing death thoughts. It states that, while superficially solving the universal tragedy of death, the denial of individual autonomy and the implications of religious claims to absolute truth that are inherent in religious practice are detrimental to the ego and fail to fully alleviate thanatophobic convictions among Christians.

From the Paper:

"Throughout human history, the mystery of death has fascinated and frightened the human mind. From its first encounter with death, usually through the loss of a loved one, the mind struggles either consciously or unconsciously to escape the inevitability of its end. It generally attempts to alleviate death anxiety through the creation or adoption of a myth system or through commitment to a social support group. Modern religion, particularly Christianity, provides both a mythical system of explanation and a social system that together serve to dissolve, ignore or suppress thoughts of death through a repression of the individual and his ego."

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