A Church of England vicar has said that he is fed up with officiating at cremations where Tina Turner is played as the bodies of people with no hope of resurrection are “popped in the oven”.

The Rev Ed Tomlinson, 35, said he wondered why he bothered as mourners listen to ear-splitting songs and bad poetry during cremations. He feared that his presence at funerals was “pointless” and said he had a hundred better things to do with his time.

Father Tomlinson is vicar of St Barnabas’s Church in Tunbridge Wells, a “Forward in Faith” parish that rejects the ministry of women priests.

Writing on his blog in a post titled “death of death” he said: “In the last few years it has become painfully obvious that many families I have conducted funerals for have absolutely no desire for any Christian content whatsoever.

“I have then stood at the crem like a lemon, wondering why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the tunes of Tina Turner, summed up in pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with I Did it my Way blaring out across the speakers!”

This year Co-operative Funeralcare found that nearly six in ten people in England and Wales chose pop music over traditional hymns for funerals, with My Way sung by Frank Sinatra or Shirley Bassey the favourite.

“Once upon a time the beautiful Requiem Mass would have been the norm and not the exception in my parish,” Mr Tomlinson wrote. “Once upon a time even funerals at the crem would have been sincerely Christian in character. But that was another England, a time when Christianity was worshipped on these shores. We must accept that, for now, such days are past and that this has inevitable consequences.”

Mourners who chose a non-religious ceremony were conned by “humanists” making money from death. “I am not the one who suffers,” he said. “Along with my fellow Christians, I will still have the gorgeous liturgy of the Requiem Mass to look forward to. Whereas the best our secularist friends (and those they dupe) can hope for is a poem from nan combined with a saccharine message from a pop star before being popped in the oven with no hope of resurrection.”

Father Tomlinson, who is married to Hayley, a painting restorer, with whom he has a two-year-old daughter, Jemima, added: “As Britain delights in grabbing hold of its new-found secular identity it seems totally oblivious to the fact that so much meaning, beauty and ultimately life is, in fact, slipping through their fingers.”

Priests were no longer in demand, he said. “Christian funerals are offered only if explicitly requested. Today the norm is to place the liturgy in the hands of a humanist provider or ancient, crumbling cleric who will do as told — in short those who will not trouble undertakers with unavailability. This is a fact that leaves me with rather mixed emotions.

“On the one hand I am saddened to discover yet another arena of life in which the Church is moved from the centre to the margins. I am equally troubled that pastoral care is being left in the hands of those whose main aim is to make money. And I am further concerned that an opportunity for evangelism is slipping through our fingers. Atheists and secularists might delight in this fact but is it really the victory they imagine?”

One parishioner, Amy Griggs, 34, said she was appalled by Father Tomlinson’s opinion. “That means he stands at funerals pitying and effectively mocking people who have poems read or put on their loved one’s favourite song,” she said. “He is there to try to help people through, and if that means listening to Tina Turner or James Blunt then so be it. We’re not living in the past. If he doesn’t move on how can the Church be expected to survive?”

Denise Kantor-Kaydor, of the bereavement charity Cruse, said: “If a Tina Turner song helps people to get over their grief, it is fine by us. This is not a religious issue. It is about what helps people to move on.”

Final scores

Winston Churchill “Hymns in the service will be: Who would true valour see, Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, Fight the good fight with all thy might, and God, our help in ages past” (The Times, January 28, 1965)

Edward Elgar At St George’s, Worcester, where the composer had once been organist . . . Pie Jesu Domine, composed by Sir Edward Elgar for this church, was sung by the choir” (The Times, February 27, 1934)

Charles Dickens “There was no anthem, no chanted psalm, no hymn, not even an intoned response or ‘Amen’, but the organ was played at intervals during the mournful ceremony” (The Times, June 15, 1870)