These views resonate with those expressed by Christian leaders elsewhere in Africa. At a Bishops’ conference in 1987, AIDS was characterized as God’s punishment for the sins of human beings. A Christian pastor blamed youth’s ‘moral laxity’ for the spread of AIDS, and their attraction to video shows, music, loose dressing and urban life in general. Christian leaders use Biblical quotations to support their arguments, such as Deuteronomy 25, which carries prophecies of the plagues and calamities to befall sinners who break God’s law. Manifestations are common in a world where AIDS exists.
In Kenya, for example, a Catholic priest announced that he would refuse to conduct funeral services for people who died of AIDS, saying that if he were to do so, “The church might be seen to be encouraging the spread of the disease. ” In modern-day Kenya, even with the levels of knowledge of science and virology that society now has, there are still those who would equate the HIV epidemic with divine punishment, as was seen when the Reverend Billy Graham stated in 1993 his belief that the AIDS epidemic might be a judgment of God, a statement he recanted afterwards.
But especially because AIDS is transmitted by means of sexual intercourse, and in Kenya, most often by homosexual intercourse, a practice deemed outside of morality by many, the equation of sex to punishment will stand. A bitter, mean-spirited and punitive ideology has thus been constructed by some church leaders and lay persons to cope with AIDS. By linking AIDS with transgression, it abjects from decent human society the rebellious young, the modernized and those resistant to church (and elderly) authority.
These views resonate with Serwadda’s (1992) discussion of AIDS as spectacle or pageant, ‘a purgative ritual in which we see the evildoers punished, while the national family unit—understood as the locus of the ‘the social’—is cleansed and restored’. Whilst highlighting the divide between mainstream heterosexual hegemony vis-a-vis homosexuality, Serwadda’s analysis is also relevant to the abjection process taking place in Tanzanian communities and national institutions—though here, the values and aspirations of young people for all things modern and ‘global’ are part of a mainstream discourse, not that of a marginalized minority.
The World Council of Churches started a program to support the member Churches in their AIDS work in 1986, when the First International Consultation was held in Kenya. The consultation called on the member Churches to be involved in pastoral care, social ministry and education to alleviate the consequences of the new disease. A hearing was held in 1987 to bring the issue to the Churches. The top leadership of the church in Kenya deplored the use of condoms, and denounced them as vehicles of Western decadence, encouraging an indiscriminate sexual freedom neither traditional nor consistent with Christian morality.
A ‘nationalistic’ discourse was thus used to delegitimise not only condoms, but young people with education who dared to challenge the authority of the church and its leaders. Some church leaders pitted the church and its congregation of believers against the state. For example, a Lutheran Bishop argued that, ‘the government encourages people to commit adultery by encouraging them to use condoms, and uses educated people for this end’. He also denounced sex education for encouraging children into sexual intercourse, a common view among many church members.
Mbugua-Murithi (1997) seminary argued that the task of educating young people about ‘responsible sexual practices’ should be left in the hands of the church and the family, and was not the business of government. In focus group discussions among male and female students at Kipoke secondary school, the church’s banning of condoms was mentioned as one of the major reasons for the continued spread of AIDS. It is unlikely that young boys, and especially girls, will be able to access condoms and information about their use, until the present domination of church leaders over people’s minds and behavior is challenged.
Even grown men explained that it was impossible to acquire condoms in more remote rural villages, due to the ‘surveillance’ of church leaders, church elders and ordinary members. The dogmatic stand of the Christian church denies its members the right to make their own choices and to protect their lives. Not all religious leaders, staff and lay members shared the dominant view—or at least they entertained doubts. In Kenya, some Lutheran leaders and counselors took a more ambiguous, if not positive, stand on HIV prevention. These local church leaders might not openly promote condoms, but they did not denounce their use.
It is noteworthy that Lutheran hospitals distribute condoms free. For Catholics there were similarly mixed messages. Such ambiguity offers a space in which discussion around condoms can focus more on safety than on sin. Such discussions expose gender and generational tensions. Traditional educators, sometimes called traditional marriage counselors or Bana Fimbusa, are found throughout Kenya. The group had emerged in the early 1970s, prior to the AIDS epidemic, out of concern about the marital difficulties experienced by members of their church congregations.
On the basis of some initial instruction from a pastor’s wife, they set themselves up as Christian educators. In the mid 1990s there were 23 women in this group, representing a range of ethnic groups and churches, and linked with Zambia’s Christian Council of Churches. Individual members of the group had acquired different specializations. Some offered advice to girls at puberty about how to manage their periods, instructed them on the dangers of STDs and the undesirability of pre-marital pregnancies and counseled them to respect their elders.
Others offered instruction just prior to a wedding, touching on sexual behavior and potential domestic problems. In the context of AIDS, their teaching had extended to include advice to young girls on how to ‘say no to sex’, instruction on HIV as well as STDs, advocacy of HIV testing for those intending to marry, advice on dealing with a husband who had other partners and training in the care of those with HIV or AIDS and the upbringing of orphans. The work of this group of church-based traditional educators is but one example of AIDS-related activity in Kenya.
Over the middle years of the decade there were a number of interventions, some specifically concerned with AIDS and others having an AIDS component. The most significant were a peer education program supported by UNICEF and NORAD, a home based care program operating under the auspices of the Catholic church and a set of projects run by CARE International, some of which were supported by the then ODA. In addition, several churches ran AIDS support program for their members. The best known among AIDS activists were the peer educators. This was a program modeled on a similar initiative, which targeted vulnerable women, including sex workers.
Peer educators wore distinctive T-shirts, worked in small, close-knit groups and moved around the area performing mini-dramas about AIDS, facilitating general discussion, and distributing condoms. In 1995, they numbered twelve women and one man and worked closely with the health centre. The home based care program under the Catholic church largely supplanted an earlier program, which had operated under the auspices of the Kenya clinic, but which by the mid 1990s had essentially ceased to exist. The new initiative began in 1994 around a group of eight women who received training in counseling and care of those with HIV.
Members visited homes throughout Kenya, providing counseling on care and assistance, when possible, with transport. The program subsequently expanded with members organized in small teams so as to be responsible for particular sections of the community. Food received via the World Food Program, the EU and some private benefactors was provided where possible and care and education activities were undertaken. Of sixty volunteers in the summer of 1998, all but fifteen were women. While receiving no pay, they were issued with boots and umbrellas and were enrolled in a medical scheme.
Along with crises of suffering in places like Central America, South Africa, the Philippines, and the Middle East is the crisis of AIDS. All over the world people’s lives and communities are being plunged into darkness and despair by this death-dealing illness called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Although no group is spared this disease, like so many other sources of suffering, it falls disproportionately on the disadvantaged and marginal of society. AIDS brings to our society a health crisis of global proportions. It brings fear to every community.
It brings that same crisis to every one of our churches, challenging us to live up to our faith. We are all part of the one body of Christ. Whether we have AIDS now, we are all part of a body that includes many persons with AIDS and countless more partners, lovers, parents, children, friends, and fellow workers and worshipers who are sharing in the struggle against fear, rejection, illness, poverty, and death. The affirmation we are the church with AIDS states our solidarity with PWAs as the beginning place for us to share in theological reflection on what it means to be the church in the midst of crisis.
Recognizing that God often speaks the good news most powerfully through communities of faith and struggle, we listen, work, and pray that we all may be truly threatened with resurrection as the church with AIDS. The high incidence of AIDS among gay men has drawn them into a second terrifying reality: that of death, and the fear of death, judgment, and condemnation. Working through how to live with AIDS and affirm life here and now as well as after death has been a major contribution made by the gay and lesbian community to all those in the church.
In such communities that are by definition other in a homophobic society and church, a new reality of community and healing has been discovered that is offered to all who are willing to share. The unique contribution of this discussion is that it moves from such experiences of the church with AIDS to reflection on what this particular experience of faith and struggle can teach us about the unity of the church as it responds to Christ’s call to share in the renewal of the human community.
Growing from five years of ecumenical discussion among members of the Faith and Order Commission of the National Council of Churches, these reflections on the nature of the church and clues to renewal in the midst of crisis are themselves an invitation to persons of many confessions to join at an ecumenical roundtable of action and reflection. The persons engaged in the struggle with AIDS help the community understand what it means to live with AIDS.
This work analyzes the experience of those struggling with AIDS and what this means for those reflecting on this experience. This in turn leads the group to explore new questions that are raised about traditional understandings of the nature of the church. If we can use the impetus of AIDS to expand and apply knowledge cooperatively and humanely, we may also learn to control the dangers of the arms race and of world hunger and environmental degradation, for the imagination of AIDS is the imagination of human unity, intimately held in the interdependent web of life.
Bibliography
Baur, John. The Catholic Church in Kenya: A Centenary History. Nairobi: St. Paul Publication—Africa, 1990. Barker, Gary Knaul, and Susan Rich. “Influences on Adolescent Sexuality in Nigeria and Kenya: Findings from Recent Focus-Group Discussions. ” Studies in Family Planning 23, no. 3 (1992). Durkin, B. J. “Church gets involved in AIDS education. ” Newsday, March 12, 2000. Isabel Apawo Phiri. “HIV/AIDS: An African Theological Response in Mission”.
“The Ecumenical Review. ” Vol. : 56 (4), 2004. Mbugua-Murithi, T. “Strategies for survival in Kenya: Women, education and self-help groups. ” International Journal of Educational Reform, 6(4), 1997. Serwadda, D. “Church of Uganda AIDS KAP Survey” (draft). Kampala: Makerere Medical School, November 1992. United Nations Development Program. (2003). Human development reports: Kenya human development indicators. New York: Author.