When Kenneth Kistner, 85, died in February, his wife, Carmen, didn’t call any clergy.
At the Detroit memorial service for the Marine veteran and retired educator, Kistner’s family read a eulogy — one that Kistner himself approved years earlier, when it was drafted by a secular “celebrant” near their retirement home in Largo, Fla.
A growing number of people want to celebrate a loved one’s life at a funeral or memorial service without clergy — sometimes even without God.
And that’s giving rise to the new specialty of pastoral-style secular celebrants who deliver unique personalized eulogies without the rituals of institutional religion.