WCC FEATURE: Building AIDS-competent churches in Southern Africa

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World Council of Churches - Feature

BUILDING AIDS-COMPETENT CHURCHES IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

For immediate release: 23 June 2011

Dr Susan Parry has turned her vision of the “AIDS-competent church”
into a reality that has helped thousands of people across southern Africa
and the rest of the world whose lives are affected by HIV.

Parry explains the need to move beyond the “AIDS-friendly church” to
the “AIDS-competent church”, noting that, while the first denotes
tolerance, acceptance, and a welcoming attitude, the AIDS-competent church
goes many steps further.

“An HIV and AIDS-competent church denotes a well-informed, inclusive,
proactively responsive and accompanying church. To achieve this involves
strong leadership, accurate up-to-date knowledge, appropriate resources
and networks, transforming theology and compassionate solidarity that
restores dignity and hope.”

Parry, with a medical background in hematology and pediatrics, is
well-positioned to define and communicate the best practices among
churches in their response to AIDS. Author of “Beacons of Hope:
HIV-Competent Churches,” Parry is a regional coordinator for the
Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiative in Africa (EHAIA). Her region comprises
12 countries and some additional islands.

Parry's thoughtful research, combined with her passion regarding stronger
church response to HIV and AIDS, helped lead to the establishment of EHAIA
in 2001.

In 1999, when representing the World Council of Churches (WCC) at a
conference on community-based care in Paris, she heard vehement
condemnation of faith-based organizational response to AIDS, particularly
with regard to prevention.

She then realized the critical need for faith-based organizations to be
visible throughout the world, both as participants for learning and as
contributors for sharing the extensive amount of care work that churches
are doing in response to HIV and AIDS.


A pioneer of faith-based AIDS advocacy

In 2000 and 2001, Parry undertook a number of country mapping studies for
the WCC, looking at HIV and AIDS in the countries, national responses,
United Nations and non-governmental organizational response, and church
response. She asked: “What are the gaps and where are the
opportunities?”

She also took part in consultations with church leaders in Africa, where
AIDS was raised as an emerging critical issue.

In 2003, at a Global Partners Forum organized by UNICEF and UNAIDS, she
presented “Responses of Faith Based Organizations to HIV /AIDS in Sub
Saharan Africa,” a report which covered 52 countries. This report sought
to highlight the credibility and the contributions of faith-based
organizations to HIV and AIDS, as well as the potential.

It also challenged the inequity of funding and the mistaken belief that, by
funding a faith-based organization, one was funding a denomination rather
than non-partisan service delivery.

Since then, Parry's expertise has continued to reach beyond southern
Africa, with grassroots education and support in eastern, western, and
central Africa, as well as, for the first time, in Portuguese-speaking
countries in Africa and elsewhere around the world.

An illustration of Parry's personal influence as well as EHAIA's
organizational strength took place in Madagascar, a huge island and
independent nation off Africa's east coast. After discovering no
“imported” solution would be effective, Parry and other EHAIA leaders
visited with a large group of Madagascar's church leaders from different
denominations.

They listened to a representative from the country's Ministry of Health,
who stated: “There is a great need for the churches to work together,
and together with government, to address HIV.” In a telling aside, the
translator whispered: “Churches working together! That will never happen
in Madagascar!”

Over the next few years, that translator was proved wrong, and EHAIA still
continues its complex and challenging work, hosting workshops for church
leaders, youth, lay people, theological institutions and others in
different parts of the island.

Meanwhile, Parry resolves to continue her work as HIV remains a challenge
to individuals, family members, churches, communities and the wider world.
“It challenges us to rethink who we are, our responsibilities one to the
other and who we are called to be,” she says. “A virus that is
ever-dynamic requires ever-dynamic responses. It can never be ‘business
as usual.’ ”

[640 words]

This article is the first in a portrait series presenting the work that
EHAIA is doing through its regional coordinators and theological
consultants. The series is published ahead of EHAIA’s 10th anniversary
coming up in April 2012.

More information on EHAIA (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=e19ffd5fb5dfb14e4934 )

EHAIA regional coordinators and theological consultants (Link:
http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?RDCT=83613a0a2d710e900884 )


The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness 
and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of 
churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 349 Protestant, 
Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 560 million 
Christians in over 110 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman 
Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, 
from the [Lutheran] Church of Norway. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.



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