More People Forgo Clergy-Led Funerals

"John Reed Sr., president of the National Funeral Directors Association, says 50% of Americans today say they don't belong to a church and don't see value in a religious funeral. But 'they still want ceremony and celebration at the end of life.' More than one in four U.S. adults (27%) say that when they die, they don't expect to have a religious service, according to a national survey of 6,000 people. It was part of the 2008 American Religious Identification conducted by researchers at Trinity College's Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture in Hartford, Conn."