Non Religious Eulogy Examples for a Humanist Funeral

A non religious eulogy does the same job as any other eulogy: it tells people who this person was, in plain words, with no mention of heaven or God. You keep the stories, the humour and the thanks. You drop the prayer, and specific detail about their life carries the weight instead.

You may be here because the person who died had no religion, and you do not want to say words they would have rolled their eyes at. Or the family is religious and they were not, and you have to hold both of those things inside four minutes.

Either way the problem is the same. Most funeral speech advice assumes a scaffold you do not have. No psalm, no "in a better place", no handing the ending to a prayer. The speech has to stand on the person.

Below are five complete eulogies with no religious content in them at all.

Five non religious eulogy examples you can read aloud

Each of these runs between ninety seconds and four minutes. They are written to be lifted, which means you can take one whole and change the names, or take two paragraphs from one and leave the rest.

1. For someone who had no religion and never made a thing of it

Read this one if your dad or mum simply was not religious, nobody is arguing about it, and you want plain words that sound like a person talking rather than a service.

My dad's name was Ray. He was an electrician for thirty-eight years, mostly on building sites around Leicester, and he could tell you what was wrong with a socket by the smell of it.

He was not a religious man. He never argued about it and he never made a point of it. If you had asked him what he believed in, he would have said something about being on time and not leaving a job half finished, and then he would have changed the subject.

So I am not going to stand here and tell you where he is now. I am going to tell you what he was like, because that is the part I actually know.

He was early for everything. Forty years of being twenty minutes early. When I got married he was in the car park at half past eight for a one o'clock service, reading the paper, because you never know with roadworks.

He was practical in a way that was really love. He never once told me he was proud of me. He turned up at my first flat with a toolbox and rewired the whole kitchen over a weekend, and never mentioned it again. That was the sentence. I understood it.

He had a shed. In the shed there were ninety-one jars of screws, all labelled, a radio that only got Radio 2, and a kettle. Mum used to say she always knew where to find him, and she always knew not to.

Things he liked: strong tea, snooker, the allotment, a bargain, being asked for his opinion on cars. Things he did not like: fuss, mobile phones, and anybody touching his tools.

The last few months were hard and I am not going to pretend they were not. He was tired and he was fed up, and he still asked after everybody else first. The day before he died he asked me whether I had sorted the gutter out. I had not. I have now.

Here is what I keep coming back to. Dad did not believe there was anything after this. He thought you got one go at it and you ought to be useful with it. And then he spent the whole thing being useful. Half the people in this room have something in their house that he fixed and would not take money for.

That is not a small thing. That is an entire life, spent well, in other people's kitchens and lofts and back gardens.

Dad, I did the gutter. You would have done it better and in half the time. Thank you for everything you built and everything you wired and every single time you turned up early.

We are going to miss you very much.

2. For someone who was not religious, at a service that is

This is the hardest version and the most common. The person who died had no faith, the family does, and the service has a vicar in it. You are not there to settle the argument. You are there to be honest about her in a room that needs looking after.

For those who do not know me, I am Helen, and Barbara was my mother.

Thank you all for coming, and thank you to Reverend Price for today. Mum would have wanted me to say that properly, because she was brought up in this church and her own mother is buried forty feet from this door.

Mum herself stopped believing somewhere in her twenties and never took it back up. She was completely at ease about it. She came to christenings, she sang the hymns, she did not pray. When Gran asked her about it, she said, "I just think this is the one we get, Mum, and I am trying to make it a good one." That was the whole of her theology and she never needed any more of it.

So some of you in this room will be thinking of her somewhere, and some of us will not, and I think she would have said that is absolutely fine, and is there any cake.

What all of us can agree on is what she was like.

She was a primary school teacher for twenty-six years, nearly all of it with seven-year-olds, which she said was the last year they tell you the truth. She could remember every child's name. Not the ones from last year. All of them. We tested her in the hospital in March and she got fourteen out of fifteen and was annoyed about the one.

She was funny in a dry way that you had to be quick for. She was a terrible driver and a wonderful cook and she could not be told anything about either.

She kept every letter anybody ever sent her. We found them last week in four shoeboxes, in order, including a note I wrote her when I was eight to complain about a packed lunch. She had kept that for forty-one years.

She looked after Gran for nine years at the end, without complaining about it once in my hearing, and she never once pretended it was easy.

And she was kind in the practical way, which is the only way that counts. If you were ill she arrived with soup. If you were sad she arrived and said nothing and did the washing up.

Mum, I do not know how to finish this, so I will just say the thing I should have said more often. You were a very good mother and a very good teacher and we were extremely lucky to have you.

Thank you for twenty-six years of other people's children, and for all of mine.

If the family has asked for a reading from scripture as well, that does not have to sit inside your speech. Let the celebrant or another relative carry it, and keep your four minutes as yours. Our page of Christian eulogy examples with scripture is worth sending to whoever is doing that part.

3. The very short one, for a tight crematorium slot

Humanist and civil services at a crematorium often run to twenty or twenty-five minutes in total, and your slot inside that can be ninety seconds. This is a complete eulogy at that length. It does not feel thin in the room.

Keith was my brother. There were four years between us and he never let me forget which way round they went.

He was a postman in the same town for thirty-one years. He knew every dog on the round by name and most of the dogs knew him.

He was not religious, so we are not going to do any of that today. He would have wanted it short, and he would have wanted the right music, and we have managed both.

What I want to say is this. Keith was reliable. In a family where not everybody was, he turned up, every time, for forty years, and he never asked for anything back for it.

That is what he was. Reliable, and funny about it.

Thanks, Keith. Say hello to the dogs.

4. For a committed atheist who would have hated a solemn funeral

Some people were not merely non religious, they were loudly and cheerfully against the whole business, and a reverent speech would be a misrepresentation. This one is written by a friend rather than family, which gives it more licence.

I met Dennis in 1994 in a pub argument about whether a tomato is a fruit. I lost. I have been losing to Dennis for thirty-two years and I would like to formally concede now, so that is done.

Dennis was an atheist in the way other people are Welsh. It was not a position he held, it was where he was from. He had the Dawkins on the shelf and he had read it twice and he would still happily spend an hour with a Jehovah's Witness on the doorstep because, as he put it, they had walked all that way.

He gave me very clear instructions about today, twice, both times in a car park. No hymns. Nobody is to say he is looking down on us. And, I quote, "If anyone cries, Alan, I want you to point at them."

So I will be sticking to two of those three.

Dennis was a structural engineer and a genuinely good one. He spent eleven years on bridges and then twenty-two teaching, and there are people in this room who are engineers now because Dennis would not let them give up in second year.

He was the rudest kind man I have ever met. He would tell you your idea was stupid and then spend his Saturday helping you do it anyway.

He drove the same Volvo for nineteen years and talked about it the way other men talk about a dog. It failed its MOT in June and he rang me about it twice, and I would give a great deal to have one of those phone calls back.

He loved: a proper argument, Test cricket on the radio, chilli that was genuinely too hot, his allotment, and Sue, enormously, for forty-one years, which he showed by complaining about her to her face in company.

He hated: queues, hypocrisy, the phrase "everything happens for a reason", and fennel.

And he was not frightened at the end. I want to say that, because people worry about it. I asked him in September, because I am nosy, whether not believing in anything made it worse. He thought about it for a while and he said, "No. It makes it simpler. I had a good run and I am not expecting a second one, so I am not going to waste the last of this one being frightened."

Then he asked me to get him a sandwich.

Dennis, you were right about the tomato and I am not conceding anything else. Thank you for thirty-two years of being told I was wrong by somebody who would then help me anyway.

No hymns. Just this. We all thought the world of you.

5. For a long life, where legacy has to mean something real

When someone dies at ninety-one, the religious version of this speech usually reaches for reward and reunion. Without that, the speech has to find where the life actually continues, and the honest answer is in the room.

My nan, Peggy, was ninety-one. She was born in a house with no bathroom and she died in a room with a television the size of a door, and she thought the whole thing was hilarious.

She was not religious. Her own mother had been, fiercely, and Nan went every Sunday until she was nineteen and then simply stopped and never went again, except for weddings and for this sort of thing. She never explained it and nobody dared ask.

So when people say to me this week that she is with Granddad now, I know exactly what they mean and I know it is kindly meant, and Nan would have smiled and said thank you. But she would not have said it back. So I am not going to either.

What she did believe, as far as I can tell from ninety-one years of evidence, is that you look after your own and you look after the street.

She worked in the glove factory from fifteen to twenty-three, then in the school kitchens for nineteen years, and she fed people for a living and then carried on doing it for free. Four children. Eleven grandchildren. A number of great-grandchildren that she could list and I cannot.

She could not sit still. At eighty-four she was still doing the flowers at the church down the road, which she thought was extremely funny, on the grounds that the vicar had long since given up asking her why she never actually came inside for anything.

She kept a tin. In the tin was money for whoever on the street needed it, and nobody was ever asked to pay it back, and more than one person in this room has been in that tin.

She was not a saint. She had a long memory for a slight and she could be very sharp, and she once did not speak to her sister for two years over a chair.

In the last year she got smaller and she got quieter but she never got vague. In August she told me off for my parking from her bedroom window, which she could not see from.

Here is where she has got to, as far as I am concerned. My mother puts the kettle on the second anybody walks in, and that is Nan. My cousin Dawn cannot let a person leave the house hungry, and that is Nan. I keep a tin. I did not even decide to, I just do.

Ninety-one years, and the whole of it has gone out into about forty people, and it is still moving.

Thank you, Nan. The kettle is on.

What do you say when someone dies and you are not religious?

You say what they were specifically like, and you let that be the whole speech. A non religious eulogy is a funeral speech that remembers a person's life without reference to God, scripture or an afterlife, so the detail has to do the job the religious phrases were doing. Here is what to say instead, in the same place in the speech.

• Instead of "she is in a better place": "She is not here, and this room is full of people who wish she was."
• Instead of "God had a plan": "There is no sense to be made of the timing of this. We are not going to find any today."
• Instead of "he is at peace now": "He is out of pain, and I am grateful for that part of it."
• Instead of "she is watching over us": "She is in how my brother laughs, and in the fact that I check the locks twice."
• Instead of "they are together again now": "She had forty-one years with him, and she said that was plenty for anyone."
• Instead of "gone but not forgotten": "I will be telling the story about the caravan for the rest of my life."
• Instead of "rest in peace": "Goodbye, Dad. Thank you."

How to speak when the family is religious and they were not

Say one honest sentence about where they stood, early, and then do not go back to it. The mistake is either giving them a faith they did not have, or turning four minutes into a position statement. Three lines that do the whole job:

• "Mum was not a believer, and she was completely relaxed about it, and she would have been glad we are in this church today because her own mother is here."
• "Dad did not have a faith. He had a great respect for people who did, including most of you, and he would not want a word of today changed."
• "Some of us here believe we will see him again and some of us do not. He would have found that a very good reason to have a drink together afterwards."

Then go straight into the stories, and tell the celebrant beforehand so the running order holds.

What to say instead of a prayer at the end

End on a direct sentence to the person, said out loud, rather than on a blessing. The prayer at the end of a religious eulogy does a structural job: it tells the room the speech is over. A line addressed to the person who died does the same job and needs nothing behind it. Endings that land with no religious content:

• "Goodbye, Dad. Thank you for all of it."
• "That was my sister. I was very lucky."
• "Night, Mum. The kettle is on."
• "We will keep telling your stories, wrongly, and far too loudly."
• "Thank you for forty years. I would not change one of them."
• "She is finished, and she was not wasted. Not one day of her."
• "So that was Keith. Reliable, and funny about it."

If you would rather close on somebody else's words, a secular poem does the job in one line of introduction. We have twelve full texts, the non religious ones grouped together, in eulogy poems and readings.

How to adapt one of these in twenty minutes

Pick the example closest to your situation, read it aloud once, then change it in this order: the name, the job, two objects, one quote, the last line. It takes about twenty minutes.

1. Name and relationship. Say it aloud to hear whether "my dad" or his first name sounds more like you.
2. The work. Thirty-eight years as an electrician. Twenty-six years of seven-year-olds. One sentence.
3. Two objects. People skip this and it is what makes a eulogy sound like a real person. The jars of screws. The tin. The radio that only got one station.
4. One thing they actually said. Not a wise saying, a sentence in their own words. If you cannot remember one, ask two other people this afternoon.
5. The last line. Write it before the middle, and do not change it on the day.

Four minutes is about five hundred and fifty words, and nobody in a crematorium has ever wished a eulogy longer. Our guide on how long a eulogy should be has the word counts for every slot.

If twenty minutes is twenty more than you have, the eulogy writer asks you a few quiet questions and puts a full draft on the page, with no religious content unless you ask for it, so you are editing instead of starting at nothing. The preview is free.

Questions people ask about non religious eulogies

What is the best opening line for a eulogy?

Your name, your relationship, and one concrete fact about them. "I am Helen, and Barbara was my mother, and she could remember the name of every child she ever taught." It tells the room who is speaking and gives them something specific in eight seconds. Do not open on how hard this is.

What should you not put in a eulogy?

Medical detail about how they died, unresolved family arguments, the contents of the will, and inside jokes only three people understand. In a non religious eulogy, add one: do not borrow religious comfort you do not mean. People who knew them will hear the false note.

What are some examples of non-religious committal words used at a funeral?

The celebrant usually handles the committal, and the common secular forms are plain: "We now commit the body of Raymond Walsh to its natural end, with our love and our thanks." Or: "We let him go, with gratitude for the years we had of him." Keep it under twenty words and say it slowly.

What are some good verses to use at a non-religious funeral?

Short secular verse travels best: Christina Rossetti's "Remember", Mary Elizabeth Frye's "Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep", or four lines of Tennyson. Check who holds the rights before printing anything in an order of service, which is separate from reading it aloud.

What are some beautiful non-religious poems for funerals?

The ones used most often are Frye, Rossetti, Joyce Grenfell's "If I Should Go" and Tolkien's "Roads Go Ever Ever On", because they are short and require belief in nothing. Pick one you can read without your voice going, and rehearse the first two lines at home.

One more thing

You do not need a scaffold. You need four minutes of specific, true things about somebody you knew well, said in your own voice, and that is already in you.

Take whichever of the five sounds most like the room you will be standing in, and start by changing the name. If you would rather have a draft to argue with, you can see one free first.