AIDS advocates urged to demand timeline for cure Written by Alice Foltz June 25, 2007
The Rev. Cally Rogers-Witte, along with other Collegium members, received an HIV test on Monday. They also encouraged other Synod attendees to do the same.
"Don't be the victim of myopic thinking. Go for healing, not handouts," urged the Rev. Kenneth Samuels of Victory UCC in Stone Mountain, Ga., challenging members of the United Church AIDS Network (UCAN) to stop reaching for the little goals, when real healing is within reach.
At the UCAN gathering on Monday evening, the Rev. Yvette Flunder of City of Refuge UCC in San Francisco, introduced Samuels. Together, their two churches, along with Community of Hope UCC in Tulsa, Okla.; Riverside Church (UCC/ABC) in New York; and Trinity UCC in Chicago were named by the Rev. Mike Schuenemeyer, the UCC's minister for HIV/AIDS concerns, as models for providing excellent church-based HIV/AIDS education and support systems.
Samuels challenged UCAN supporters to think beyond old models and demand a timeline for a cure.
"In our society, people will pay you to be dependent," he said. "Pass out some HIV tests, some education, some counseling?.but don't talk about the end of AIDS."
He said any nation that can set a timeline for getting a man on the moon, and meet it, can find a cure for AIDS.
Samuels took his text from Acts 3, the healing of the man outside the temple gates. The man didn't ask for much, only some coins, but Peter and John said they had no gold or silver, but gave the unexpected ? real healing.
Samuels called on the network community to come together, where in faith "all things are possible?..In Christ Jesus, everyone is healed."