---
title: "Secular funerals, Tim Minchin’s mission, and South Africa’s occult economy: our top 5 long-reads"
date: "2014-11-06T10:12:50+00:00"
modified: "2014-11-06T10:12:50+00:00"
url: "https://newhumanist.org.uk/2014/11/06/secular-funerals-tim-minchins-mission-and-south-africas-occult-economy-our-top-5-long-reads/"
post_id: 6307
categories: ["Uncategorised"]
---

# Secular funerals, Tim Minchin’s mission, and South Africa’s occult economy: our top 5 long-reads

1\. [Ways to go: meeting death without religion](/articles/4742/ways-to-go-meeting-death-without-religion)



More than any other rite of passage, death separates the devout from the damned. So what can a secular funeral offer? Sally Feldman, a humanist celebrant, explores.

2\. [Tim Minchin: “It just happens that I’m right”](/articles/4756/tim-minchin-it-just-happens-that-im-right)

In the last few years, Tim Minchin has risen from cult London-based comic singer-songwriter to famous LA-based actor/composer/director/singer-songwriter. Now he’s working on major commercial films and musicals – but, as he tells Ariane Sherine, he’s also a man with a mission.

3\. [What does it mean to remember the Holocaust?](/articles/4760/what-does-it-mean-to-remember-the-holocaust)

The row over a new memorial on Budapest prompts a personal reflection from Toby Lichtig about history, victimhood, remembering the past, and moving on.

4\. [What the Christians did for us](/articles/4765/what-the-christians-did-for-us)



Do modern liberal values have their origins in religious tradition? In this essay, Jonathan Rée reviews Larry Siedentop’s new book on the origins of liberalism.

5\. [Profits and miracles](/articles/4757/profits-and-miracles)



South Africa’s deeply unequal society has led to the rise of the “occult economy”: quack cures sold by mystics to poor urban workers. Sarah Emily Duff reports from Johannesburg.

*For last month’s top 5 long reads, [click here](/articles/4746/what-we-really-know-about-the-universe-the-trojan-horse-scandal-and-the-politics-of-everyday-life-our-top-5-long-reads).*

*For more from our Autumn issue – out now – [click here.](/articles/4729/autumn-2014-new-humanist-is-out-now)*