All Rev'd Up: Zoom Funerals And Grieving During 'Twindemic'

Election 2020-Voting-Latino Poll Workers — Activists from the COVID Memorial Project mark the deaths of 200,000 lives lost in the U.S. to COVID-19 after placing thousands of small American flags places on the grounds of the National Mall in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2020.

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

October 05, 2020

Updated August 07, 2023

Reverends Irene Monroe and Emmett G. Price III spoke to Boston Public Radio on Monday about grieving during our country's "twindemic."

"Irene came up with this term, 'twindemic,' which talks about the conflation of COVID-19 as well as the racial unrest and injustice going on," Price said. "So we really talked about how as faith leaders, we want to encourage people to actually go through the mourning process, that there's a lot of things that we're grieving."

Monroe has presided over numerous funerals, which have taken place over Zoom, she said. "It's been hard, and I need to say that after I did about the 46th funeral, I went into therapy. But I've done over 70 Zoom funerals, and we need to recognize that with each funeral comes a face, a family, and a community," she said. "The practices and rituals we normally do are truncated because of COVID and the isolation, but we're trying to recognize this very difficult moment."

Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist and the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and a visiting researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University School of Theology.

Price is professor of worship, church & culture and founding executive director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Together they host the All Rev’d Up podcast, produced by GBH.