The Break
Traditional Ideology
God was the only entity present in heaven and a soul was not tied to corporeal bonds created in life and would be solely within the company of God.
The Change
The drastic shift in the perception of heaven is understood to emphasize the enormity of the grieving situation after the Civil War.
What Is New?
Families wished to see their loved ones again, but with the body buried or lost the only way to feasibly conceive seeing their face again was in heaven
Protestant Afterlife
Origin
In medieval Catholicism it was expected for many souls to enter into purgatory and await the prayers of friends and families to usher them higher to heaven.
Reasons
Reformers believed that salvation should be dependent on the soul’s deeds in life, not from gradual begging of the living. By changing this perception, Protestants placed fate of an immortal soul in the hands of the individual, not the community as traditional belief once held.
Change
Emphasis was placed on anthropomorphic facets in the grieving process (perceiving soul with human features), a concept that did not exist in Protestantism nor Catholicism, in order to help mourners understand the afterlife by creating a tangible image.