DESCRIPTION:

An Interview with Rev. Iyabo Onipede, Co-Director of Compassionate Atlanta. 

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 Reverend Onipede discussing her experience of attending the funeral of the mother of her friend—in Nigeria.  Iyabo discusses the spiritual challenges presented by this virus to long-standing and deeply meaningful spiritual rituals—rituals her friend could not carry out according to tradition because she was unable to travel to Nigeria for the funeral in the midst of this outbreak.  Despite these challenge Iyabo discusses the beauty and power of the online service and the ways in which it offered her hope.  Iyabo reflects on the ways in which Nigerians’ experiences in living through the Ebola outbreak (2014-2016) have made those in her home country better equipped to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak.

 The interview turns to the challenges faced these days by some here in the United States, focusing on Iyabo’s own practices to deal with her own depression in the midst of this outbreak.  The interview ends with Iyabo discussing the power of hope in the midst of social-structural forces that must be addressed through a strong, lasting commitment to social justice.  The connection between the two is key for Iyabo because hope is the friend of justice.