Episcopal Press and News

AIDS Conference Says Church Faces Challenge of Complacency

Episcopal News Service. April 13, 2000 [2000-074]

Dennis Delman

(ENS) Approximately 200 members of the National Episcopal AIDS Coalition, (NEAC) meeting in San Francisco March 23-25, were reminded that, although support for ministries and groups fighting the disease and its effects is declining, "the Church still has AIDS." Three guest speakers each warned of complacency in the church caused by what the Rev. William Frampton, NEAC co-chair, described as the feeling that the AIDS epidemic is over.

In three days of workshops, presenters emphasized repeatedly the growing global HIV/AIDS pandemic in which the mode of transmission, according to Frederick Lyagoba, a Ugandan now at the University of Washington, "is either sexual (mostly heterosexual), from mother to child, or by blood transfusion."

AIDS-related deaths, at 2.3 million worldwide in 1998, have replaced tuberculosis as the leading cause of death, according to the World Health Organization. Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control indicate a 22-percent jump in new AIDS cases among Americans age 50 or older. Yet, according to Frampton, philanthropic support of AIDS-related causes is declining, and in the Episcopal Church some diocesan HIV commissions and parish ministries no longer exist.

Invited to help present awards at NEAC's closing luncheon, Pamela Chinnis, president of the House of Deputies, was caught by surprise when guest speaker Jesse Milan, director of the National Prevention Information Network and former NEAC president, called her to the podium to honor her own active AIDS work and participation in NEAC.

After prolonged applause, Chinnis, clearly touched at being honored, said that among the most moving experiences of her nine-year presidency was seeing the entire AIDS quilt, with then-Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning, in Washington D.C., where it stretched from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. "To see the number of people we lost and how talented they were, and so very young, is something I will remember and treasure," she said, "even though it was a very sad moment."

Chinnis recalled preaching to a gathering of Integrity, the gay and lesbian organization in the Episcopal Church, in San Diego, and disclosing that her son is gay. Referring to a journalist's request that she not preside over any legislation in Denver "having to do with sexuality issues, because I'm too biased," Chinnis responded, "I suppose if I had cancer, he would suggest that I not preside over any issues having to do with health."

To cheers and applause, Chinnis said, "I do not intend to recuse myself from presiding," and "I want to assure you, until I go out of office -- and even long after -- I will be an ardent supporter of AIDS ministry, and of people who are homosexual, because I believe that's what God wants all of us to do." As she concluded, Frampton announced that NEAC had made a contribution to the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief to honor Chinnis' support of NEAC.

Milan then paid tribute to Sandra Thurman, director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, recalling that Thurman was told when she was appointed that she would have to resign from "everything and anything that smelled like a conflict of interest." He said Thurman replied that she would not resign from the NEAC board, saying it was her ministry and there was no conflict of interest. Milan also related how Thurman brokered $100 million in federal funds for HIV/AIDS work in Africa, "our largest commitment ever."

Milan, an attorney who has lived with HIV for 18 years, said of the NEAC conference, "This party is the best family reunion I go to other than my own." He added that, for all the closeness, however, the NEAC neighborhood has changed.

First, there are fewer diocesan HIV commissions than three years ago, and while there are new, energized people fighting the epidemic, many parish ministries have closed down. "One member of the NEAC neighborhood is completely gone," he said, noting that the AIDS National Interfaith Network closed in December, the result of "complacency and lack of funding (that) plague all of us.

"Who didn't come?" asked Milan, "Who's dead? Who's been born?" Responding to the last question, about half of the people in the room indicated they were at a NEAC conference for the first time. "NEAC's the future," said Milan, "This reunion is helping us recharge ourselves." Milan also said that the Union of Black Episcopalians is now re-energized around AIDS.

Milan paid tribute to Ken Williams, a project officer at the Centers for Disease Control, who had died of cancer the preceding Saturday. Williams identified the loophole in federal law that allowed churches to get CDC funds because they are not-for-profit organizations. "Because of his leadership," recalled Milan, "he found a way to fund NEAC and NEAC-related ministries across the country."

Who else was absent? "About 33 million people: 22 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa," Milan answered, reminding his audience "these are not our distant cousins, these are our brothers and sisters." Also absent are "10 million orphans of people who died." Milan recounted a visit to a Soweto orphanage: "Twenty by twenty feet with a tent roof and a cement floor." Permanently tacked to the door was a phone number: "Not the phone number of the pediatrician. It was the number of the funeral director."

Gwen Hall, founder of Sojourner Truth Unity Fellowship Church in Seattle, said in her keynote presentation that the Unity movement was the direct result of the impact of HIV/AIDS -- and corresponding silence -- in the African-American communities. She said that there is a tendency in America to make black people invisible, and she asked pointedly if "everyone here would want to see us survive."

"Why," she asked, "are the numbers for gay white males going down (while) our numbers come up?" Pressing her point, Hall said HIV/AIDS is the number one killer of African-Americans between the ages of 25 and 44. "It has replaced the bullet.

"Racism is the unspoken word," said Hall, and until it is addressed, "we will not solve our problems." Observing her mostly white audience, Hall asked, "Do you see us as children of God, just as you see yourselves?"

No church in America has avoided the impact of HIV/AIDS. "We need to remove the stigma," Hall stated, "the hurt and pain exacerbated by the secret: the so-called 'shame.' There is no shame in getting the disease; there is a shame in treating those people as less than children of God." "If you want to see me survive," she said, "I want you to feel it down to your core...feel at your core: this is a person of God who bears saving; bears loving."

Christian de la Huerte, founder of Q Spirit, which he described as "an international network of gays and lesbians and spirituality," and author of Coming Out Spiritually, told a luncheon audience that a sense of community was the most important connection between spirituality and health and healing.

To emphasize the connection between spirituality and the homosexual community, de la Huerte recounted his experience at a global summit of the United Religions Initiative two years ago. Aware of its purpose to bring religions and spiritual movements together to work for world peace, he was even more aware that neither sexuality nor homosexuality had been mentioned (they had been issues at pre-summit regional meetings).

Identifying himself as "an unofficial ambassador from a tribe of people who belong to every culture in the world," de la Huerte told the summit that gays and lesbians had been universally repudiated, excluded, condemned, excommunicated and "even eliminated by some of the religions of the world."

Reading from his written statement to the summit, de la Huerte said, the tragic irony was "that before patriarchal times...before we got the mistaken idea there was only one name for the creator...one way to worship the divine...gays and sexually ambiguous people were often spiritual leaders: the shamans, healers and visionaries;" and that he was at the summit to reclaim "our natural, sacred...God-given role of spiritual leadership."

Receiving what he described as "a most heartfelt" standing ovation, de la Huerte said he left the meeting with a feeling of hope, and that was what he wanted to share with NEAC. "What we're doing," he said, "is taking a stand on fundamental, universal human issues: issues of love, inclusion, fairness, justice and family."

NEAC "stars" for outstanding service were presented to Sue Kuebler of Erie, in the Diocese of Northwest Pennsylvania; Mary Alice Burse of the Diocese of Chicago, and St. George's parish of Brooklyn, New York, in the Diocese of Long Island.

Kuebler began her HIV/AIDS work in 1989, does 25 educational presentations each year and was instrumental in making St. Paul's in Erie the first cathedral in the Episcopal Church to sponsor the Names Project. Burse created "Mothers to Sons" and "Teens for a Better Future," programs that focus on education and intervention. Her ministry is "simply to inspire survival by providing spiritual insight that gives my clients hope to live another day."

Mavis Thompson Blaze and Cynthia Wilson accepted the NEAC award for St. George's parish in Brooklyn. They were joined by former NEAC president, the Rev. Richard Younge, who was the first curate at St. George's. Women in the parish, who became aware of the AIDS crisis in Brooklyn, developed education programs to bring that awareness home to their congregation. The parish began networking with public agencies and presented several public seminars in Brooklyn.