In the early days of our global quarantine due to COVID 19, I used this platform to step out in support of churches offering Holy Communion as part of online worship. That initial post has been viewed over 15,000 times and has ushered me into many wide-ranging conversations about what it means to be the church in this time. The most recent of these took place via Zoom with three great conversation partners: Dr. Diana Butler Bass who writes and speaks widely on American religion and culture, Rev. Joshua Case, an Episcopal priest in North Carolina, and the Very Rev. Kelvin Holdsworth, an Episcopal Provost and Rector from Glasgow, Scotland.

In this video we talk candidly about the personal commitments that lead us to support the practice, as well as some of the biblical and theological warrants we find in our traditions that animate our commitments. I hope this conversation will contribute to our ongoing discernment about how the church lives out its calling to be the body of Christ for a hurting world.

Deanna

Dr. Thompson holds the Martin E. Marty Regents Chair in Religion and the Academy at St. Olaf, and speaks and writes widely on the virtual body of Christ, Martin Luther, and faith in the midst of illness. She is the author of several books, including The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World (Abingdon, 2016).