I believe that Giles Fraser has misunderstood some secular funerals (At a Christian funeral all are equal before God – Cilla included, Loose canon, 22 August). I can only comment about those conducted by celebrants accredited by the British Humanist Association, of whom I was one for 11 years. Such humanist funerals are based on the belief that all human beings deserve to be commemorated with dignity after their death, and so are equal in some very important ways. Of course, as Fraser says, some are disliked or have done undesirable things, but he is wrong that all secular funerals indiscriminately praise all the deceased people concerned. BHA celebrants try hard to find the positive elements in a person’s life, and if this proves impossible, find wording and readings that are appropriate without telling lies. What they say is strongly guided by what family or other people have told them, interpreted and worded in as sensitive and honest way as possible.

However, as in so many aspects of human interraction, what is not said is often as significant as what is stated, and any people present who knew the deceased in life will be well aware of what is being truly described or referred to, and what is, appropriately for the occasion, being left out.

Sue Willson

Farnham, Surrey

• I am simply astonished at Giles Fraser’s dismissal of secular funerals. Apparently “there is a basic democracy in this aspect of religion that is often absent from the secular funeral”. I don’t know what he means. I understand all those words individually, of course, but not when they are brought together in this church-speak.

I’ve probably heard more religious funerals, over the past 20 years, than most people. If I am conducting a secular-humanist funeral, I am at the crematorium about half an hour before my scheduled time. So I hear what is going on in the preceding ceremony. It’s often token religion. Because there are still people who expect to see a vicar.

There is a desperation about some of the vicars. Most have given up on hymns. Where they have not given up, it is really quite strange to hear a hymn sung out by about three voices. Or a muttered prayer.

Fraser also seems to think also that we secular-humanists see only the good in people. Not true! I’ve had lengthy conversations with families who have made it plain that if I say what a nice person this was, people will laugh. They get the truth from me – not necessarily all of it, but certainly no glazing over. Does a vicar do anything else? I often get people asking me how I know the person, because I seem to know a lot about him or her. That’s because I spend a great deal of time with families to ensure that the ceremony is right. I try to make clear that I am an outsider.

Perhaps the most frequent human failing we encounter is drink leading to early death. Does Fraser really think anybody is going to stand up and say what a nice bloke this was, when he has laid waste to his own and his family life?

Mike Granville

Sheffield

• One of my parents had a secular funeral, the other a C of E service. In the first, my siblings and I had a good deal of freedom to express some of our feelings, and to mark our father’s passing as we wanted. In the other, I expected at least to find some solace in the beauty of the 17th-century English. However, I spent most of the time sitting in my pew feeling overwhelmed by mumbo jumbo.

Andrew Fleming

Clifford, Herefordshire

• How dare Giles Fraser make such facile and offensive assumptions about other people’s grief and mourning. I have been to many funerals, some which helped ease the process of losing a loved one and some which only made it harder. The funeral we arranged in tears and desperation for my beloved was resolutely secular, in line with his and my deeply help beliefs. It was tragic and painful and it brought his and my friends together to make a proper memorial for a life of tragedy and success, for ourselves, in the way we wanted, and to build support for us in the recovery from loss.

The humanist model which acknowledges the humanity of everyone, and understands that death celebrations are done for the survivors makes perfect sense to those of us who know this truth about the finality of death. It is preposterous to suggest that this is more narcissistic than a celebrity-fuelled love-in costing thousands and attended by the ludicrously selfishly wealthy who conveniently forget the injunction to sell all and give the proceeds to the poor.

I was really hurt by this dismissal by a complete stranger of the sincerity of my grief and the way I chose to express my love.

But I was more angered, as my love would have been, by his suggestion that there are some people rendered completely unworthy of love because of the particular crimes we abominate today – this is akin to the long gone religious practice of denying a burial service to those who commit suicide – it names some people as completely outside the bounds of human relations, and assumes that they will leave no mourners, that their deaths create no grief. This is a result of a religious mind set which still, despite the mantras of forgiveness, divides people into the martyrs and the damned, and refuses to see people as the product of their human relations, complete and comprehensible.

Sarah Lambert

London

• I respect anyone’s right to an opinion (even if vastly different to mine) what I cannot stomach is the arrogance of religious zealots whose “holier-than-thou” attitude often manifests itself at funerals as: “It doesn’t matter if X believed in Jesus ... Jesus believes in X.”. Giles Fraser’s comments about secular funerals fall into this category.

Steven Liversedge

Clacton-on-Sea, Essex

• I found the article by Giles Fraser as deeply depressing as many of the Christian funerals he was seeking to applaud. In days gone by, when Christian and atheist alike were given so called Christian funerals, I came out of some services upset by the vicars’ perfunctory words about someone they did not know and did not care about. My own father, an atheist and a good man, had a Christian funeral where the vicar stated that non-believers would go to hell.

The Loose canon asserts that all Christian funerals have a basic democracy as all are valued equally and asserts ‘there is no such thing as a Christian celebrity funeral’ What absolute nonsense. Contrast a celebrity or state funeral with that for an elderly ordinary person. The former often seems to be an ego trip for bishops with little regard for truth.

At secular funerals those who choose to speak do so because they cared deeply about the deceased and if there is not much to say the service is tailored accordingly.

Incidentally had Giles Fraser said the same thing about Muslims or Jews there would be uproar. However, ill informed attacks on secularism are the order of the day. Will the editor provide some balance by having a weekly quarter page loose secularist column? I know many able writers who would contribute!

Dorothy Smith

Welwyn Garden City

Secular funerals can lack the requisite dignity and fail to provide comfort | Letters Read more

• Having organised a secular funeral for my recently departed mother I was appalled by Giles Fraser’s Loose canon piece critical of such events. His opinion is self-serving and based on prejudice as opposed to evidence. Of the 10 family members and friends who agreed to speak at my mother’s funeral, we heard people who had known my mother from a variety of perspectives, offering a picture of this woman that some of her grandchildren only saw as a one dimensional fragile old woman with dementia. Comments made by my cousins, ex-partner and old school friends gave a view of a generous, determined and hardworking woman, who had served with in the forces with distinction during the second world war.

Lee Porter

Bridport, Dorset