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Ending the black church's silence on HIV/AIDS
By Patrick D. Shaffer
Pastor, City of Faith Chicago
As congregations around the country prepare to commemorate "National Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS," I am reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s words: "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."
Theology, while in essence is suggestive, must be at its core life-giving. Every generation is called to meet the moral challenges of its time; the spreading of HIV/AIDS is ours. However, by and large the Black Church has chosen by our silence not to respond in compassionate and merciful ways to our brothers and sisters who are suffering from the virus.
I am 34 years old and have been in the church all my life (I have yet to decide whether that's good or bad). I have been to as many funerals for men and women under the age of 45 who have died from HIV/AIDS as the number years I have been alive. The Church was not prepared on any level to deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic that raced uninhibited through our congregations in the 80's or 90's. The saving grace has been organic movements within local congregations to help combat this disease.
Sylvia J. Oglesby, a native of Chicago, started in the early1990's a mission to spread information about the virus and help inform any clergy who would listen. This "urban missionary" fought through rejection and with little support started to bring attention to this cause one congregation at a time. I think she is Chicago's "Mother Teresa" and has been unwavering in helping those who had no help and being an honest voice to a collective conscious that did not always want to hear what she had to say. In 2004 she founded the Clergy Leadership Summit on HIV/AIDS, which was hosted by McCormick Theological Seminary. The summit served as a meeting place for clergy and laity alike to discuss to how to stem the tide of new infections and to give care to members of congregations who mostly go underserved.
Nationally, Sister Pernessa C. Seele felt the call to make lives the issue instead of ideological arguments over class and orientation. The Balm in Gilead, Inc., was born out of Pernessa's vision that faith communities had a major role to play in addressing HIV/AIDS nationally as well as globally. Pernessa's desire to involve the faith community began with The Harlem Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS in 1989. Pernessa went from door to door through the community until she brought together over 50 faith leaders to join her in prayer and education. Now in its 21st year, The Balm in Gilead has provided capacity development and technical support to over 20,000 faith institutions regarding the implementation of health education and service programs.
I am a progressive Pentecostal, and I submit that the church has been complicit in spreading the disease because of our deafening silence. As I have observed in church, there is a certain brand of Pentecostalism that will not ask questions of the Spirit when challenged with circumstances for which there is no easy, comfortable, textbook answer. This brand of Pentecostalism will not ask the necessary questions due to fear of the answers and the adjustments we would have to make to our theology, and the practice thereof to serve the least and the marginalized within our communities.
HIV/AIDS is preventable. Our conscious sin from the pulpit has been to allow young lives to end because of our phobias, biases and bigotry. The deeper subconscious sin still left unattended to may be found in two questions: Why don't we care? And what value do we ascribe to human worth in all shades of divine expression?
I am personally still grieving my friends lost to HIV/AIDS. Most of them never made it to 30 years of age and only a hand full saw 40. I am haunted by their friendships. It moves me to help and to fight against the disease that robbed me of their nearness. At the same time their immune systems were ravaged as the virus coursed through their bodies, I began to redefine healing and on a deeper level to understand that if Christ had not conquered death, then death would run from those who needed it as passageway into a greater more mystical consciousness of healing. Death yielded to Christ's cross causing death and resurrection to become an instrument of God's grace.
The streets of heaven are crowded with angels who have found healing from HIV/AIDS through death. They number more than ten thousand for each one reading this essay right now. Our brothers and sisters finally rest in the warm embrace of the Creator of us all, a healing embrace that cools their fevers and clears their blemished skin and allows their dimmed eyes to see the face of Love. Love that sent them to us and Love that by faithful hands has drawn them again by glorious power for them to be healed and to love and to be loved eternally again and again.
Patrick D. Shaffer founded the City of Faith Christian Church of Chicago in 2005. He also is the founder of Urban Advantage, which seeks to provide life coaching and mentoring to inner-city youth. His book, "Love Again: A Spiritual Memoir," is scheduled to be published this summer.
By Patrick D. Shaffer |
February 25, 2010; 3:55 PM ET
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Posted by: porchdrl | February 28, 2010 7:35 PM
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Patrick Shaffer is right on in his observation that black churches have largely been silent on HIV/AIDS. With rare exceptions, churches in black communities and other black organizations and insitutions have simply not stepped up. As a journalist at Ebony Magazine, it was difficult even at the nation's leading black publication to sustain interest in stories about HIV/AIDS. I did two stories shortly after joining the staff in late 2006. One was for the magazine. The other online. The magazine piece about how 4 black women from different generations are coping with HIV/AIDS was buried in the back of the magazine because no advertisers wanted to be anywhere near it. To my knowledge, I can think of only one other major HIV/AIDS feature in the magzine since that time. Such silence on such a serious issue in African American communities is a shame.
Posted by: smonroe1 | February 26, 2010 11:00 AM
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I found this article to be extremely insightful and educational, and at the same time terribly tragic!
Unfortunately, after having attended both Lutheran and Catholic Churchs, I have found this shameful attitude of silence, or "don't ask, don't tell" coupled with fear of the unknown, ignorance and mis-information to be prevalent in every church I have attended.
Perhaps, if there were more "young guns" like Pastor Shaffer leading this important charge in everyday life and especially from the pulpit to intellgently and fully educate people about what the dangers of HIV/AIDS really are and how we as Christians can be more accommodating and accepting of others, we as a people will become more Christ-like.
Thank you, Pastor Shaffer, for bringing this horrible and preventable scourge back to the forefront of the African-American community where it should be.
I wish you continued luck and much success with your arduous endeavor...