The celebration of Easter challenges human beings to accept death without delusion, but it also seeks to challenge our acceptance that death is without hope and the end to all meaning, says the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Today's world "lives with death and resurrection in many ways and in many places", says the president of the Methodist Conference in Britain. The duty of the church is to be with them in this and to point to the hope of the gospel.

"Know that you are dust and to dust you shall return", the church says in its liturgy. Where else do we speak of such things in public? asks Giles Fraser, reflecting on our cultural habit of shrinking from the reality of death.

There is a strong link between positive psychological adjustment to a death and one’s ability to deal with of the loss through one’s faith and religious practices, says Andrew J Weaver, a United Methodist minister and professional research psychologist.

Christian faith is about sustaining faith in face of the knowledge and reality of death, says Simon Barrow. The feasts of All Saints and All Souls put us in solidarity with a host of people who have struggled to see right prevail.

A leading Hindu organisation has suggested that calls for open funeral pyres at British crematoria are primarily cultural rather than religious, but sensitivity to different funeral sensistivities is needed.

Following the execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein earlier this morning(30 December 2006), the general secretary of the World Council of Churches issued a statement asking God to grant the nation of Iraq "the mercy, justice and compassion that it has long been denied" and "an end to fear and death that marked Saddam Hussein's rule and that continue now".