thanatolatry en · NOUN
Etymology
From thanato- + -latry.
Meanings
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(uncountable) The worship of death.
They confuse Christianity with a thanatolatry and a dolorolatry, a worship of death and suffering.
2000, William F. May, The Physician's Covenant: Images of the Healer in Medical Ethics (Medical), Westminster John Knox Press:This is thanatolatry, martyropathology or nihilism: when an entire society orients itself in this direction, that society is becoming suicidal.
2006, Laurent Murawiec, “Deterring Those Who Are Already Dead?”, in Hudson Institute:Following Leo Alexander, Ernest Becker recognized the importance of the Nazi “philosophy of blood and soil which contained the belief that death nourishes life”. In effect, this ancient pagan belief converts death-anxiety into “thanatolatry”, a belief in “death potlatch” by means of which death is thought to mystically replenish life.
2012, Kirby Farrell, “Eschatological Landscape”, in Research Gate, Brill:What is going on here? Has not thanatolatry won the day—and the life? We must make an implied distinction between death as extermination, the stinging death of sin claiming worship dominative, demonic death, and death as, in McGill's words, “communicating expediture.”
2013, Arthur C. McGill, Dying Unto Life: Arthur C. McGill on New God, New Death, New Life (Religion), Wipf and Stock Publishers:There is the negative thanatolatry of resisting death at all cost and so bowing before death's domination, before death as extermination.
1984, David Cain, “Cambridge University Press”, in Cambridge:
Translations (5)
cs uctívání smrti (worship of death) · el θανατολατρία (worship of death) · ru танатола́трия (worship of death) · la thanatolatria (worship of death) · cs thanatolatrie (worship of death)