wfn.org | Religious Leaders on AIDS: Complacency in the Crisis?

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24-November-1998 
98384 
 
    Religious Leaders on AIDS: Complacency in the Crisis? 
 
    by Chris Glaser 
 
ATLANTA-Religious leaders in the AIDS crisis warn that Americans are 
enjoying a false sense of complacency regarding HIV and AIDS, a complacency 
engendered by promising new treatments heralded in the media. 
 
    This was the message of the AIDS and Religion in America gathering at 
the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta, Nov. 8-11.  Sponsored 
principally by the AIDS National Interfaith Network and funded largely by 
corporations and foundations, the conference brought together a wide 
spectrum of religious leaders working in AIDS ministries and care 
organizations and representatives of the religious and secular media. 
 
    Exciting reports of a "drug cocktail" for AIDS belie the difficult 
regimen required to administer the new medicines effectively, as well as 
the enormous expense of the drugs that make them generally inaccessible to 
the poor in this country and only a dream for developing nations. Not only 
that, conference participants were reminded, but protease inhibitors, the 
last line of defense for PWAs (persons with AIDS), prove ineffective in as 
many as a third of those who try them. 
 
    The media frenzy of optimistic reports is a likely reason that many 
American cities experienced a drop in contributions in fund-raising events 
such as AIDS Walks, this year a primary means of raising money for AIDS 
service organizations. Worse, it is feared that prevention efforts might 
wane - from the individual who mistakenly believes there is a "cure" to 
organizations that might relax their educational efforts. 
 
    This is what brought Mary Stephan to the conference from Clearwater, 
Fla. A Presbyterian layperson, she became active in AIDS-care organizations 
when her son Fred was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 1988. She wanted to be 
prepared to care for him when needed. After his death in 1993, she 
continued to work in AIDS ministries, calling it "My memorial to my son." 
At the time she made a covenant with God "to get the church involved" in 
the AIDS pandemic. She now works with AIDS Partnership, an all-volunteer 
organization offering services to PWAs. 
 
    Organizers of the conference feared religious and governmental 
institutions might get a false signal that financial and volunteer support 
are less needed in the AIDS pandemic now, when in fact they are becoming 
more necessary as more PWAs live longer and the virus that causes AIDS 
follows the path of least resistance among the poor, the uneducated, the 
uninformed and the vulnerable. This includes racial minorities, developing 
nations, women, newborn infants, youth and the homeless. 
 
    That's why Mary Stephan has shifted her focus to reaching out to 
African-American churches in her community through the Balm in Gilead 
program, headquartered in New York City. A Black Church Week of Prayer for 
the Healing of AIDS is being organized for the week of March 7-13, 1999. 
The purpose is to encourage African-American pastors and congregations to 
discuss openly the issue of AIDS, too long a silent killer in their 
communities. 
 
    During the opening dinner of the conference, those who attended a 
similar gathering at the Carter Center ten years earlier were invited to 
stand. As I stood with a minority of others, I felt no pride, but rather a 
profound sadness that here we were, still struggling with AIDS after all 
these years. At that time, I had been sent by Pacific Presbytery in the 
Synod of Southern California and Hawaii, a presbytery that was soon to 
launch an ambitious AIDS ministry jointly with West Hollywood Presbyterian 
Church. 
 
    Earl E. Shelp and Ronald H. Sunderland spoke briefly at the dinner, 
just arrived from a White House ceremony honoring contributors to the 
nation's welfare. The two authors of "AIDS and the Church" pioneered the 
concept of Care Teams, which have brought many in the religious community 
into service with PWAs. 
 
    The opening community-wide Interfaith Service of Hope and Healing, 
sponsored by the Atlanta Interfaith AIDS Network and led by its executive 
director, the Rev. Jeff  Peterson-Davis, a Presbyterian, included Buddhist, 
Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim traditions. Set in the Carter Center's 
Cecil B. Day Chapel, the service also reflected the cultural diversity of 
both Atlanta and the conference itself: racially diverse, male and female, 
gay and straight. The backdrop of the worship area was panels of the AIDS 
Quilt that, especially in the light of day, served as stained-glass windows 
commemorating the fallen in the struggle with AIDS. The gathering was 
dedicated to the memory of Jonathan Mann and Mary Lou Clements-Mann, 
pioneers in AIDS research who were killed in the recent Swissair crash. 
 
    The next morning the sobering statistics of AIDS were presented by 
three medical scientists from the offices of epidemiology of the Centers 
for Disease Control, the Health Resources and Services Administration and 
Yale University: 50 million people infected worldwide, with a potential of 
100 million infected by the year 2005; 40 million children anticipated 
orphaned by AIDS in Africa alone, where 25-30 percent of the adult 
population will die of AIDS; rates of infection found highest in countries 
with the lowest gross national products; China, India and Russia now just 
seeing the tip of the iceberg of destruction headed their way. In this 
country, the vast majority of new HIV infections are found among racial 
minorities, women, and youth. The research community is at least 15 years 
away from a vaccine. 
 
    The good news? Condoms work at limiting exposure to HIV. Abstinence 
also works. Sex education among youth works, but those programs that only 
teach abstinence fail to prevent HIV infection, experts say. Indeed, 
studies reveal that youth only taught abstinence without safer sex 
precautions were as likely to have sexual relations as their counterparts 
and more likely to engage in unsafe sex. Youths given sex education tend to 
delay becoming sexually active longer than those who do not receive such 
information, are no more sexually active and incur less HIV infection. 
Education by peers of those in a given category works. 
 
    Twenty-two studies conclude that needle-exchange programs also work in 
reducing HIV infection and do not increase intravenous drug abuse. The 
squeamishness in the U.S. around drug abuse has prevented such programs 
from receiving federal funding, leading to HIV infections and AIDS deaths 
not only among IV drug users, but among their spouses, children and sexual 
partners. Countries that have used needle-exchange programs  - Australia, 
for example - report greater success at keeping new infections at bay. 
 
    For people of faith, however, the best news of the conference was that 
religious communities still have a vital role to play in the ultimate 
"healing" of PWAs when there is no medical cure. Religious institutions may 
provide education about HIV/AIDS, especially reducing the stigma still 
associated with those affected by the disease. Congregations may play a 
role in HIV prevention, especially among youth and the poor. They could 
encourage people to get tested and treated and continue under medical 
supervision. 
 
    Most important, people of faith may offer social and spiritual care for 
PWAs and their loved ones, and such care - good in and of itself - has an 
impact on the health not only of the receiver, but of the provider as well. 
New studies reveal there are not just mental and emotional influences on 
immunity, but that prayer itself has an objective effect on the rapidity of 
recovery, even among patients unaware they were the subjects of prayer. In 
addition, a review of the "placebo effect" used widely in 1950s medicine 
has indicated that people may experience the health they anticipate or 
expect to receive, whether it be from medicine or faith. 
 
    Theologian Mary Hunt, asked to offer theological reflections each 
morning of the conference, spoke of  "being struck ... by the fact that 
while I had been relying on science to solve the HIV/AIDS problem, science 
was now relying on me, and on you, the people whose work it is to define 
problems and shape attitudes. ... Society shapers like religious leaders 
 ... will be just as important to its eradication as the scientists." 
 
    She added, "When I thought about [the fact] that we are still at the 
early stage of the pandemic in many parts of the world, I began to compare 
the magnitude of the problem with the theological output to date. I 
realized that we are also ... in the very earliest stages of theological 
reflection on HIV/AIDS too." 
 
    Much of the rest of the conference was devoted to theological 
reflection. Hunt quoted Catholic ethicist Daniel C. Maguire in reminding 
participants that beyond religion offering spiritual comfort and healing, 
was also the "renewable moral energy of religions."  That is, according to 
Hunt, faith offered "deep values that cannot be bought on the world 
market." 
 
    Theological reflection on AIDS largely has been done on the margins of 
society and religious institutions because those most deeply affected are 
frequently found on those margins - modern - day outcasts. Christians know 
that the most vibrant theology arises among the disfranchised - witness, as 
examples, that our own Bible and church traditions offer theological 
perspectives often formulated by the outsiders and the oppressed and, in 
the case of Jesus and his followers, "those who turned the world upside 
down" (Acts 17). 
 
    Mary Stephan finds herself on the margins these days, confessing, "I'm 
not sure I'm Presbyterian anymore." She dropped off her presbytery's AIDS 
Committee when the denomination changed the "Book of Order" to exclude 
unrepentant homosexuals from ordained service. "You see, my son was gay," 
she told me. His partner-in-life had preceded him in death by one year. 
 
    Part of her covenant with God at the time of his death was not only to 
get the church involved, but to get therapeutic touch, a technique Mary 
learned to soothe her son in his pain, to persons with AIDS. Central to the 
message of the conference was a challenge to the church, as the Body of 
Christ, to offer a healing touch to those on the margins as Jesus did, 
without judgment, sharing his belief that the faith of the outcast will 
make all of us whole. 
 
    The AIDS National Interfaith Network has produced a book entitled 
"Faith & AIDS," which is available, along with papers from the conference 
(if desired), from their office at 1400 I Street, NW #1220, Washington, DC 
20005. The Presbyterian AIDS Network may be contacted c/o the Rev. Phil 
Jamison, 105 Monitor Ave. #1, Pittsburgh, PA 15202. 
 
(Chris Glaser is the author of the just-released "Coming Out as Sacrament" 
(Westminster John Knox Press) and the editor of "Open Hands," a quarterly 
journal for inclusive congregations in seven denominations.) 

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