Interview with Sue Richardson

Wendland-Cook is proud to feature the next in a series of responses to our current public health, political, ecological, and economic crisis of COVID-19. 

In this interview, theologian Sue Richardson reflects on the multilayered reality of living in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic. With penetrating and theologically apt insight, Richardson notes that the health impact of COVID-19 expands beyond those who are infected: we are all changed because of this situation. Facing this crisis, Richardson explores the matter of Jesus’ acts of healing in the New Testament.

“And I was reading Mark, and I found that passage where Jesus heals the blind man. And yes heals him and presumably it’s a new life for him, and he doesn’t have to beg any more, and all of that. But, Jesus then says to him, ‘Do not go back into the village.’ I don’t think he says that to everyone he heals. But the fact that he said it to this man struck home with me because we must not go back to the old ways. We must not go back into that village that has shaped us, and driven us forward as though that was the only way we could go as a community. We need to move on and see new places and new ways of being.”

Watch the entire interview below!

Joerg Rieger, Founder and Director of the Wendland-Cook Program started off the series with his article, “The Ugly Truth of a Pandemic and the Logic of Downturn.” Read Joerg’s blog here: www.religionandjustice.com/blog/the-ugly-truth-of-a-pandemic-and-the-logic-of-downturn