Volume 3, Issue 5
August 25, 2006

Needed: A God Who Suffers with AIDS Patients

Theological Issues Play Key Role in Spreading Epidemic

By David W. Reid

When the head of the United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS addressed the General Assembly early this summer he gave the ambassadors a concise list of the “fundamental drivers” of the epidemic: “gender equality and the low status of women, homophobia, and AIDS-related discrimination.”

Then, on Aug. 12, when the same Dr. Peter Piot spoke to an interfaith symposium on AIDS in Toronto he asked the religious leaders to get serious about what many in the audience would regard as theological issues surrounding the disease: “homophobia, the inferior position of women and the poor, and the stigma attached to being HIV-positive.”

That’s right. The lists are the same.

Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, never labeled these factors as theological concerns, but many in the church believe they are precisely that.

United Methodist theologian Donald E. Messer has said that a theological revolution must occur if the church is to deal effectively with AIDS. He believes that Christian theology has primarily offered a judgmental perspective when confronting AIDS and that this stance “contradicts the essence of the church.”

The church must talk more honestly and openly about topics such as human sexuality in all its various forms of expression, he told Vital Theology in an interview.

“We have to move beyond the idea that somehow God wants us to punish people,” said Messer. “This kind of thinking goes on not only among Christians but in other religious groups.”

As a result, people are stigmatized and discriminated against. Instead, he said, people need to envision a God who suffers and struggles along with them.

“A lot of thinking (about AIDS) has to be done theologically, which is hard for the church to do,” said Messer, an ordained United Methodist clergyman and Henry White Warren Professor emeritus of practical theology at Iliff School of Theology, Denver.

The AIDS epidemic slowed during 2005 but was still spreading, according to the U.N. In that year alone, AIDS claimed the lives of 2.8 million people and more than 4 million people were infected.

A record $8.3 billion was available to fight AIDS in 2005. This year, about $8.9 billion is available, but that will fall short of the $14.9 billion the U.N. says is needed. Some $20 billion a year will be required in the future, the U.N. estimates.

The epidemic is also measured in human suffering.

“We have 40 million infected today and over 25 million have died. That makes a total of 65 million,” Messer noted.

“Does the church only respond when we’ve reached 100 million?” he asked. “When is enough enough to say this is a super priority and to say I’m going to start taking collections and I’m going to start preaching about it in my church? … At what point does the church actually spring into some kind of meaningful action?”

Messer has succeeded in moving the United Methodist Church to start a fledgling fund to fight HIV/AIDS, but his anger with the slow response is undiminished. He tells fellow pastors that President Bush is further ahead on the issue than the historically liberal United Methodist Church.

Messer’s prescription for greater church involvement starts with a need to read the Bible with an eye toward AIDS and an evaluation of what God is calling the church to do.

“Too often we are like the priest and the Levite walking by. We haven’t applied the Good Samaritan story, for example, to contemporary reality,” he said.

While churches may have their differences in interpreting Scripture, they all agree that widows and orphans deserve the care of Christians, and widows and orphans are among those most affected by the AIDS crisis, said Messer.

Indeed, the U.N. says $1.6 billion in AIDS resources are needed to care for orphans and vulnerable children this year and more will be needed in the future.

Some pastors and churches are doing good work in the AIDS fight, but the liberal Protestant church still lags far behind other nongovernmental organizations in effectiveness, said Messer.

Piot’s message to the interfaith group in Toronto was similar to Messer’s. A news account from the Anglican Archdiocese of Toronto quoted the U.N. leader as saying:

“Early on in the epidemic, religion was part of the problem. There were things we couldn’t discuss. But, I would say that in the last four years, faith-based organizations have contributed much more to the struggle against the virus.”

However, the Anglican report said Piot also pleaded with religious leaders to become serious in combating those factors that are driving the epidemic.

“In the temples, the mosques, the churches all over the world, the stigma needs to be tackled and addressed so that people feel they have access to the treatment and supports they need,” he said.

Piot has a longstanding practice of speaking bluntly to the faith community. In a 2003 speech to an ecumenical group in Germany, he said that churches need to deal openly with questions about sexuality.

“Churches may preach hard-to-live-up-to moral virtues like abstinence and monogamy,” said Piot. “However, they also need to give support to young people for achieving simpler goals, such as postponing sexual activity until they are older or using condoms to protect themselves against infection. Many thousands of lives could thus be saved.”

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Anan was equally blunt when speaking with reporters at the meetings in New York earlier this summer.

To combat AIDS effectively, Anan said, “means we must work closely and constructively with those who have too often been marginalized—sex workers, injecting drug users and men who have sex with men.”

A Reuters report said Anan added, “If we are here to try and end the epidemic and fight the epidemic, we will not succeed by putting our heads in the sand and pretending these people do not exist or do not need help.”

As the report noted, Islamic nations and some predominantly Catholic nations argue that prostitution, drug use and homosexuality are illegal in many countries and that mentioning people who engage in these activities might be seen as an endorsement. So the phrase “vulnerable groups” is substituted.

A declaration adopted by the General Assembly in June that seeks to pressure the world’s nations into doing more in the fight against AIDS does include the politically charged term “condoms.”

Gillian Paterson, whose writing on AIDS has been funded by the U.N., has focused on the church’s response.

She readily accepts the Vatican’s figures that 25 percent of all HIV/AIDS care worldwide is provided by the Catholic Church and has paid tribute to the pioneering role the Catholic Church has played in providing services to people with AIDS.

However, she, too, finds fault in how people with AIDS face discrimination in their own parishes, particularly in Africa.

Paterson appears to take aim at the rhetoric of the late Pope John Paul II in a discussion paper on “Church, AIDS and Stigma” posted on the Web site of the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance, an organization of the World Council of Churches.

“By denying truth, institutional churches have all too often sided with the forces of death that exist within culture,” wrote Paterson. “By reinforcing silence and denial, they often fail to take a stand for the forces of life.”

Donald E. Messer is author of Breaking the Conspiracy of Silence: Christian Churches and the Global AIDS Crisis.

Gillian Paterson is the author of Love in a Time of AIDS: Women, Health, and the Challenge of HIV.