The Rainbow Bridge: Imagining ‘Animal Heaven’
Abstract
The increased integration of animals into family life has raised acute eschatological concerns about what future, if any, awaits pets in the afterlife. With little known about this religious issue, this ethnographic study explores pet communities mitigating bereavement through embracing eschatological innovation and imagining ‘animal heaven’, i.e., the Rainbow Bridge. Although imagination is often considered unreal, this study ruminates on imagination being a supernatural sense, allowing the bereaved to perceive their deceased pets in the afterlife. Key findings show that the Rainbow Bridge has three core functions, including, (1) providing a temporary pet paradise, (2) preparing pets for the real Heaven, and (3) reducing human bereavement. Finally, as an emerging religion, the Rainbow Bridge is a mixture of semi-systematised beliefs, being further imagined each day.
The Journal for the Study of Religious Experience is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal. All journal content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors and the Journal for the Study of Religious Experience. Authors would need to request the reuse of the article in case they want to publish it elsewhere and they should acknowledge the initial publication in JSRE.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) a link to the Journal’s website where the article may be downloaded for free.
Authors are responsible for ensuring copyright clearance for any images, tables, etc. which are supplied from an outside source.
