Pulse
3 March 2025
About two years ago, The Guardian reported that ‘The Church of England is to consider backing more environmentally-friendly methods of disposing of dead bodies, including water cremation and human composting.’
Water cremation – also known as aquamation and alkaline hydrolysis – is a water-based final disposition process which uses a chemical to reduce the body to ashes. The body of the deceased is treated with a combination of water, pressure, heat, and alkali (potassium hydroxide) to accelerate its decomposition.
The organic matter of the body is reduced to basic elements, leaving behind bone fragments which are subsequently pulverized and placed in an urn. The rest of the liquid is released into the sewerage system as wastewater.
Aquamation is often described as an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional burial and flame-based cremation.
Unlike flame cremation, which releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other pollutants into the atmosphere, aquamation does not produce any direct emissions of greenhouse gases.
Aquamation is also more energy efficient, requiring a temperature of only 200-300 degrees F, compared to the high temperatures (1400 -1800 degrees F) in flame cremation. Unlike traditional burials, which not only take up land space but also involve caskets, vaults, and embalming chemicals that can leach into the ground, aquamation leaves no physical remains apart from bone fragments.
This makes aquamation attractive to people who are concerned about protecting the environment. As Howard Pickard, the managing director of Resomation Ltd., puts it: ‘The public wants more environmentally friendly methods of disposing of a body, and this certainly meets the need.’
This is probably one of the reasons why Desmond Tutu, the late archbishop of Cape Town and antiapartheid activist, requested aquamation for his remains.
There is currently no consensus among Protestant Christians concerning aquamation. Some Christians are open to this new alternative to the disposition of human remains, which is very similar to the now widely accepted flame cremation. However, there are also many Christians who are opposed to it.
For the Orthodox Church, the only appropriate way of treating the body of a deceased person is burial. This is because it believes that the human body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), and therefore it should be allowed to decompose naturally.
The Orthodox Church, therefore, does not consider cremation an option for the proper disposition of the remains of the deceased. While Orthodox Christians are free to choose cremation, the Orthodox Church will not conduct a funeral service for the family of the deceased. Neither will it include the name of the deceased when offering liturgical prayers for the departed.
This means that aquamation is out of the question for the Orthodox Church.
For a long time, the Roman Catholic Church emphasized that burial is the only way the remains of the deceased can be properly treated. However, in 1963, it allowed the practice of cremation as long as it is done in such a way that is respectful of the remains of the deceased.
In a 2016 document, The Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith affirmed the appropriateness of cremation. It states that while burial is still the preferred means, the Church does not oppose cremation because it does not in any way go against its beliefs concerning resurrection and immortality.
The Church raises no doctrinal objections to this practice, since cremation of the deceased’s body does not affect his or her soul, nor does it prevent God, in his omnipotence, from raising up the deceased body to new life. Thus, cremation, in and of itself, objectively negates neither the Christian doctrine of the soul’s immortality nor that of the resurrection of the body.
What about aquamation? If the Roman Catholic Church has found no fundamental problems with fire cremation, does it mean that it has no issues with water cremation either?
The Vatican has not issued an official statement on aquamation. However, in 2011, Donald Cardinal Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington objected to this practice, asserting that it ‘unnecessarily disrespects the human body.’
In 2023, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a statement on ‘the Proper Disposition of Bodily Remains’, that clearly and categorically prohibits aquamation. Based on the fundamental principle that the body of the deceased deserves respect, USCCB states that it
… evaluates the two most prominent newer methods for the disposition of bodily remains that are proposed as alternatives to burial and cremation – alkaline hydrolysis and human composing – and concludes that they fail to satisfy the Church’s requirements for proper respect for the bodies of the dead.
Christians must indeed take very seriously how the bodies of the dead are respected. The human cadaver cannot be treated in the same way as the carcasses of animals because human beings (body and soul) are created in the image and likeness of God.
The importance of this consideration not only relates to the disposition of the body of the deceased. It has a bearing on the procurement of organs when the patient is deemed to be brain dead.
This consideration has also shaped the ethics of archaeology. For example, the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) and the Society of American Archeology (SAA) have developed ethical codes for the retrieval and exhibition of human remains.
However, the question of why flame cremation is allowed while aquamation is prohibited still needs to be addressed.
The reason has to do with the process itself and what happens to the body as a result. The USCCB statement explains:
After the alkaline hydrolysis process, there are about 100 gallons of liquid into which the greater part of the body has been dissolved and this liquid is treated as wastewater.
The fundamental difference between flame cremation and water cremation is that in the case of the latter, a significant portion of the human body is drained into the sewerage system at the end of the process. Only the bone fragments remain. In contrast, in the case of flame cremation, the ashes and the bone fragments are retained and placed respectfully in an urn.
The disposal of a significant portion of the human body into the sewerage system as wastewater indicates to the USCCB that it is not accorded the respect that it deserves.
This is an important consideration that Christians must not quickly dismiss.
The body of a deceased human being must be distinguished from the carcass of an animal. It is be accorded dignity and treated with respect. As the Roman Catholic Order of Christian Funerals (OCF) has put it so eloquently:
This is the body once washed with baptism, anointed with the oil of salvation, and fed with the bread of life. This is the body whose hands clothed the poor and embraced sorrowing. Indeed, the human body is so inextricably associated with the human person that it is hard to think of a human person apart from his or her body. Thus, the Church’s reverence and care for the body grows out of reverence and concern for the person whom the Church now commends to the care of God.
Dr Roland Chia is Chew Hock Hin Professor at Trinity Theological College (Singapore) and Theological and Research Advisor of the Ethos Institute for Public Christianity.