wfn.org | White House AIDS summit a 'breakthrough,' African bishop says

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

Dec. 8, 2000 News media contact: Tim Tanton·(615)742-5470·Nashville, Tenn.
10-21-31-71BP{552}

NOTE: A photograph is available with this report.

By Dean Snyder*
 
WASHINGTON (UMNS) -- U.S. officials are looking to religious groups to help
stop the worldwide spread of AIDS and to care for its victims.

The White House and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
brought several dozen world religious leaders to Washington for back-to-back
conferences on the role of faith communities in combating AIDS.

A White House World AIDS Day summit on the theme, "A Consensus from
Conscience: Revealing the Role of Faith in Response to AIDS," was held Nov.
30 through Dec. 1. It was followed by a conference on "Animating Theology:
Turning Faith into Action in Response to AIDS," sponsored by the U.S.
development agency.

The conferences drew Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist leaders,
including two United Methodist bishops, Christopher Jokomo of Zimbabwe and
Felton Edwin May of Washington.

Sandra Thurman, the White House's top AIDS policy official, said the work of
the United Methodist Church in Zimbabwe helped convince U.S. officials they
should invite global religious leaders to Washington to discuss AIDS.

"I went to Zimbabwe and saw the good work United Methodists have been
doing," she said. 
During her September 1999 trip to Zimbabwe, Thurman was introduced by Jokomo
to Willard Tinet, 15, who was single-handedly raising his younger brothers,
Joseph, 14, and Cloud, 12, since their mother's 1994 death from AIDS. The
brothers are supported by the Family AIDS Caring Trust, a program run by a
Mutare-area congregation. The trust, which operates out of Mutare's St.
Augustine United Methodist Church and three others, deploys 137 volunteers
to help care for 4,000 orphans.

"That effort is a good example of how we feel we can partner with
faith-based organizations," Thurman said.

Jokomo called the AIDS conferences, which included a meeting with President
Clinton, a "breakthrough." 

"Meeting with Sandy Thurman (and) meeting with the president of the U.S. is
probably the greatest thing that has happened to the churches relating to
HIV/AIDS programs," Jokomo said. "That's a major realization that the
churches have a major role to play in the whole matter of HIV/AIDS."

Jokomo plans to arrange a meeting between the head of USAID in Zimbabwe and
leaders of the country's Christian denominations to discuss how the agency
and the churches can cooperate to fight AIDS and care for its victims. 

Churches sometimes provide a more effective base for fighting the conditions
that promote the spread of AIDS than large government structures, according
to Jokomo. "If you have a $500 million project, like building a dam, that's
a government project ... but if you are talking about providing funds,
probably $200, to send a child to school in a remote village, you don't need
large bureaucracies," he said. "You need to work with community-based
groups, and the best community-based group is the church. That's the message
we have given to USAID."

Thurman visited United Methodist ministries in Zimbabwe at the suggestion of
Bishop May, who delivered the opening prayer for the White House summit. May
participated in a Thurman-led Presidential Mission to study AIDS in Africa
in March 1999. 

The conferences, held at Howard University and the Mayflower Hotel in
Washington, addressed AIDS holistically, May said. "I was encouraged that
religious leaders from Africa and Asia along with their United States
counterparts could look at the issue of HIV/AIDS theologically and
spiritually," he said. "I was also impressed with the acknowledgment that
AIDS is a pandemic in our world that is related to many systemic issues,
such as poverty, lack of education and lack of health care."

As much as $100 million may be available to support the work of faith groups
globally in combating AIDS, according to May. "This is a new approach to
addressing issues in the global community," he said. "Heretofore, monies
have been funneled through governments, but now they (U.S. leaders) are
seeing the tie between strong faith, good health and good social practices."

Speaking at the summit, President Clinton called upon the global religious
leaders to help end the silence about the causes of AIDS as well as the
stigma that victims of AIDS often suffer.  

"Meeting both these challenges -- overcoming stigma and overcoming silence
-- will be impossible without the moral leadership that in so many places
only religious leaders, like those who are here today, can provide," he
said.

Other speakers at the conferences included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, president
of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, Ambassador Andrew Young, Nhat Hanh, a
Buddhist theologian, and the Most Rev. Njongonkulu Ndungane, archbishop of
Capetown, South Africa.

The Rev. Rebecca Parker, a United Methodist pastor who serves as president
of Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkley, Calif., said the dialogue
with global religious leaders during the conference was a learning
experience for U.S. participants. 

"I think some of the ways we have viewed Africa in the United States tell
more about our racism than they tell us about Africa," she said. "So this is
a very good opportunity for us who are U.S. religious leaders to get beyond
that veil of racism that keeps us from being able to understand what the
crisis in Africa is about."

The conference also helped her appreciate the benefits of being a United
Methodist, Parker said. "The kind of work that the Board of Global
Ministries has done to establish partnerships between U.S. Christians and
Christians around the world is critically important now as the AIDS crisis
becomes more severe in Asia and Africa," she said.

Jokomo said the United Methodist Church in Zimbabwe, where 26 percent of the
population is infected with HIV/AIDS, needs the help of U.S. churches to
respond to the crisis. The first and most difficult need is for prayer, he
said. "I say difficult because you don't pray for a person you don't know,
you don't pray for a person you don't love," he said. "So when I am saying
we need your prayers, I am saying let's find ways to get to know each
other."

The Zimbabwean church also needs help training its clergy, who are facing
new demands because of AIDS, as well as resources to strengthen ministries
with children, and a printing press to produce Sunday school materials for
children and youth, Jokomo said.

Support for a new school of medical sciences at Africa University is also
critical, he said. The United Methodist-related school in Mutare will train
nurses and health workers to serve in the villages where the need for health
education and care is the greatest. 

# # #

*Snyder is director of communications for the Baltimore-Washington Annual
Conference of the United Methodist Church.
 
 
                                                       

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United Methodist News Service
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