When Rev. Blaise Sedney began working full-time at Bel Air's St. Matthew Lutheran Church 11 years ago, roughly seven of the church's 10 funerals each year involved caskets and traditional burials. Only three were cremations.
"Now it's flipped, and about seven are cremations and three are caskets, so it's been a significant change," said Sedney, whose church recently dedicated its new, 96-niche columbarium, a permanent home for cremated remains.
"When I go out and I visit people in their homes and they say, 'Well, there's Henry,' either on the mantle, on the floor, wherever, and then eventually he moves to the closet and people don't know what to do with the ashes or where to put them or what is the appropriate thing," Sedney said about the church's rationale for the simple, round columbarium now in its courtyard.
"We wanted to make that a particular space, so then people know where the ashes are, we can have the memorial service and have them right here at the church, and it attaches the family to the church more permanently as well," he said.
Cremation has soared in popularity in recent decades, as religious beliefs, economic conditions and personal lifestyles keep changing.
In 1975, just 6.55 percent of deceased in the U.S. were cremated; in 2013, it was 45.1 percent, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.
While burning the deceased is especially common in the western states, it continues to rise in Maryland as well. In 2011, 36.5 percent of Maryland deaths involved cremation, up from 29.5 percent in 2007, according to the Cremation Association of North America.
Interest in cremation seems traceable to many different factors. It remains far less expensive than a traditional funeral. Americans move more often and are less attached to a specific place, making burial in a cemetery less practical. People are less interested in traditional beliefs and want more personalized funerals.
"If you go back 100 years, the [Lutheran] church would be against cremation," Sedney said, explaining doctrines have changed and some people are even taking advantage of their proximity to major medical institutions.
"Today, cremation isn't that unusual at all. It's very acceptable, and you find many people even giving their bodies to science and then once they're used, then they're cremated," he said. "With the amount of medical institutions we have in Baltimore, there's a need."
Bob Groves, funeral director at Evans Funeral Chapel and Cremation Services, agreed that beliefs have changed. The Forest Hill facility opened in 1993 as Harford's first funeral home with an in-house crematory. The company added a 250-seat chapel and a second crematory in 2011.
"The Catholic church has eased their stance on cremation. Years ago, they were not in favor of cremation," Groves said. "Now if you're going to bury the ashes, it's acceptable. Some pastors of Catholic churches are allowing the ashes to come in for a memorial Mass, so that has changed."
Religious perspectives on funerals vary widely. Islam bans cremation, as does Jewish tradition, where it is especially taboo since the Holocaust.
Hindu customs and some Buddhist traditions, meanwhile, require cremation.
"They'll have a viewing with the body present, but then the body is cremated and they participate in that cremation, and so with having our own crematory, that helps facilitate their participation in the cremation," Groves said, adding he has seen more funerary religious diversity in Harford County.
What people do with the "cremains" – the ashes of the deceased – varies widely, too.
"Maybe someone in the family has made their own urn," Groves said. "We've seen people come in where they did a lot of canning; they would use a canning jar because that's what their loved one [did]. Maybe they're in pottery; they made their own."
"One that's very popular with motorcyclists is an urn that's like a replica of a Harley-Davidson fuel tank. That, again, speaks of what that person loved in life," he said. "There's companies that will make glass jewelry that will have some of the ash in it. We have jewelry that will hold the cremated remains, so [there's] a lot of options, because it is all about personalization."
Highview Memorial Gardens, off Fallston's Route 152, is one cemetery hoping to capture customers who choose cremation and may assume they have no use for a cemetery. The 40-acre Highview just got a zoning exception to build a funeral home with a crematory. The cemetery, which also has a mausoleum, previously received county approval for a pet crematory.
"For the last 38 years, we've had a human and pet cemetery here," general manager Tammie Phillips said. "We feel that adding the funeral home will give our customers [a venue where] they can come to one spot for everything, whether it would be a full-body burial or cremation."
"Cremation is definitely rising," Phillips said. "We find that a lot of times people go to a funeral home or a facility and they're cremated, and then they take those remains home, and we have developed some other options so they can come to the cemetery and actually memorialize the cremains, such as a columbarium or a butterfly garden where the cremains are actually interred."
Sedney, of St. Matthew Church, said many churches have added columbariums or are planning to add similar structures.
Along with changing the end-of-life experience, cremation is definitely changing the focus of many traditional Christian services.
"You would have times when you were burying a casket in the graveyard and you could talk about the end of time and the Second Coming of Christ, the bodies would be raised up and they would become new. So you could talk about that in a cemetery, whereas when you have niches and you have ashes, it's kind of a different thought," Sedney said.
"But ultimately, we believe that everyone will have a new body, but it's not the old one being redone, it's actually a brand new body," he said. "We assume that it would be something where people could identify each other with that new body, but it's OK that you're not burying the bones and the body, though many people still like to have that available as well, so I think there will always be both."
Sedney said the key is the respect shown to the individual, regardless of burial or cremation.
"The most important thing, I think, the church wants to still [have] you know is that these ashes have dignity," he said. "You wouldn't want to just throw them in the garbage or something like that."
He pointed out many Americans have European backgrounds.
"In Germany, cemeteries are only good for 75 years or two generations, and they're re-sold and the bodies are burned," he said of the concept of cremation. "So in reality, it's been happening; people just don't realize it."
Groves, of Evans Funeral Home, said funeral facilities are just starting to catch on to the idea that families who choose cremation still need services or some type of closure.
"The tradition in funeral service was, it was a cookie cutter. You were going to have a casket, you were going to have a day or two days of viewing, you were going to a church and you were going to a cemetery. Sometimes people would go to a funeral service and [the deceased person's] name would never be mentioned because of the tradition," Groves said.
"When cremation was just starting to get to the East Coast, so to speak, the only thing that someone thought about cremation was, 'There's not going to be a service,'" he said. "I like to tell people, 'If you don't have one funeral service or one memorial service, you may end up with 100,' and by that I mean, you may be standing in line at the ShopRite and someone says to you, 'I'm sorry about your mom or dad.' That's your first one. You're having funeral services, but a continual funeral service."
"You want to have cremation? Fine. Just have some type of service, and that is really the message we're trying to get across to people," Groves said.