wfn.org | Inter-Anglican commission discovers life in the midst of HIV/AIDS

[ENS@ecunet.org]

2001-161

Inter-Anglican commission discovers life in the midst of HIV/AIDS

by Ian T. Douglas 

     (ENS) "I came to tears when I witnessed the suffering, yet saw the love and 
compassion of Jesus in persons living with and dying from HIV/AIDS and in the 
women who attended them," said Sister Chandrani Peiris of the Society of St. 
Margaret in Sri Lanka, as she visited Katorus, a township 80 kilometers outside 
of Johannesburg, South Africa. Sister Chandrani was in South Africa attending the 
first meeting of the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism 
May 7-18.

     Twenty members of the commission from every corner of the Anglican Communion 
gathered at the Kempton Park Conference Center in the Church of the Province of 
Southern Africa for 10 days of prayer and deliberation on the communion's 
engagement with mission and evangelism. The commission's work was grounded in the 
context of post-apartheid South Africa, where 4.5 million, or one out of every 10 
people, are HIV positive. 

     In a presentation to the commission, Lynn Coull, of the Diocese of the 
Highveld's AIDS Coordinating Committee, pointed out that last year 250,000 South 
Africans died from AIDS. That number will double in six years. Children and young 
adults are especially hard hit by the pandemic, and it is estimated that 50%of 
those currently 15 years old in South Africa will succumb to the disease. Those 
statistics were given a human face when the commissioners accompanied local home-
based caregivers as they ministered to persons living with AIDS in the sprawling 
townships that ring Johannesburg.

     The mandate of the commission, given by the Anglican Consultative Council, 
is to oversee and support mission and evangelism across the Anglican Communion. 
As this was the first meeting of the commission, significant time was set aside 
for sharing of stories about the regions each commissioner represented. 
Additional in-depth discussions centered on theological education, justice and 
peace imperatives, religious pluralism, affirming life, new church/transformed 
Anglicanism, and money, power, and corruption. 

     Committed to the grass-roots of the church, the commission issued a call to 
parishes around the communion to initiate self-studies on local initiatives in 
mission and evangelism. In discussion, sharing, and worship, the commission began 
to envision how, over the next five years, it will challenge the Anglican 
Communion to respond to and participate in God's mission. 

     Mauricio Andrade from Brazil commented: "When we leave we will continue to 
remember that even though each other's story, context, and realities are 
different, we are the same family and body in Jesus Christ."

     Sister Chandrani concluded: "Having considered mission and evangelism in the 
midst of HIV/AIDS, I am prepared to go home and challenge my community as to how 
we will reach out to those with HIV/AIDS, strengthened by the love and life we 
have found here in South Africa." 

     The next meeting of the commission will be in Scotland in June 2002.  

--The Rev. Ian T. Douglas is a member of IASCOME and associate professor of world 
mission and global Christianity at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts.