COVID-19 and the Logic of Downturn, Part 1, with Joerg Rieger

Front Row

Theologian Joerg Rieger talks about why oppressed people have been hit hardest with COVID-19 and why people of faith and theologians should care. Joerg’s theory of the logic of downturn in regard to the broken system in the United States asks, "What if we thought about God from this perspective from the bottom up, or the perspective of an essential worker? How are we going to get out of this?"

This situation becomes an opportunity to improve how we think about who has the power, and we’re realizing there’s a lot more power at the bottom with essential workers. If we think about God as a working person, then we give working class people more power and find hope.

Joerg Rieger is a distinguished professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair in Wesleyan Studies, and Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt University.

The Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice engages religion and matters of economic and ecological justice. As part of theological and religious reflection, its fellows study and support matters of economic and ecological justice and its implications for religious communities and the wider public.