In Act 3 of Our Town, formal religion is presented primarily through the Christian funeral that the living characters attend. There is no indication that people of other faiths live or died in the town. Bodies are buried individually in a cemetery. Thornton Wilder dramatically creates a kind of afterlife that has many qualities of Christian heaven. In this place, the deceased continue to be identifiable as the people they were in life, retaining their individual characteristics. They seem to be have been preserved at the age they were when they died.

However, the deceased are not completely static; they do not experience a sudden revelation or epiphany at the moment of death. Rather, they learn gradually what it means to be dead—as the Stage Manager phrases it, they are “weaned away” from life. This learning process is conveyed through Emily’s return to her twelfth birthday, despite the others’ advice that she not return. A possible difference from a Christian heaven is that those who died by suicide are not excluded, as indicated by the presence of Simon Stimson: many Christians believe that those who commit suicide do not go to heaven.

The Stage Manager refers to deeply held qualities or beliefs inside everyone, saying that there is “something way down deep that's eternal about every human being.” He considers such beliefs to be universal, saying that “we all know” them. The “eternal” quality in human beings can be understood as meaning a soul.