DESCRIPTION:

Interview with Rev. Lahronda Welch Little, Doctoral student in the Graduate Division of Religion, Emory University. 

The Reverend Doctor Melissa Sexton is a post-doctoral fellow in the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine and an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church.  Dr. Sexton is completing a practicum with the Interfaith Health Program as part of her fellowship; as part of that work, she is interviewing those with particular insights into the religious and spiritual dimensions of the COVID-19 outbreak and our responses to it.  

The interview begins with Rev. Welch-Little discussing her doctoral studies, exploring her notion of holistic soteriology.  For Lahronda, a theology of soteriology (salvation) cannot be merely spiritual, but material and corporate.  In light of this outbreak, Lahronda describes the ways that self-care is not only about the self but attends to others.  The dimension of self-care are intrapersonal (care of the body, mind, and spirit), interpersonal (how do we relate others), and communal (how we care for the well-being of the community).  She goes on to describe self-care in the midst of this pandemic as a spiritual practice.  An ethic of self-care as spiritual practice would push our leaders to develop measures for sheltering in place that would be sustainable—that we would provide for our corporate needs in this outbreak while limiting the spread of infection.