Raising $8 million means asking each US member to give just 25 cents a year, or $1 over the quadrennium.

A grandmother near Durbin, South Africa, struggles to find enough food and energy to care for her six grandchildren, all orphaned because of HIV/AIDS. Now she is faced with an additional dilemma. Should she accept two more orphaned children who have nowhere else to go?

 

A young father in Chennai, South India, faces an impossible decision. He has enough money on a regular basis to purchase life-sustaining antiretroviral AIDS drugs for one person. But both his parents need them. Should he buy them for his father or his mother?

 

A man lies alone in a Costa Rican AIDS hospice. Afraid of the stigma and discrimination associated with the disease, does he dare tell his parents?                

Tragically, these and many other stories of heartbreak, pain, and suffering are being replicated each day. Increasingly, the cry of the stricken is “Where is God?” or “Is there no one to help me and my family?”

 

Has the Church Spread HIV/AIDS?

The global AIDS pandemic daily presses similar life-and-death ethical dilemmas upon people around the globe. For them, the world's worst health crisis in 700 years is not simply a matter of reciting statistics about how more than 40 million persons are infected, nearly 50 percent of them women, and more than  23 million are dead, but a question of how to sustain life in the face of an overwhelming personal crisis.

 

It is evident that certain theological taboos have contributed to the escalating HIV/AIDS crisis. The religious roots of this disease must be examined to determine how our theological thinking sometimes causes widespread harm to many.

 

These theological taboos include avoiding open discussion about sex, which hinders people from understanding how to prevent the disease. Moralistic judgments toward infected persons and their families have added to their stigmatization. Religious prejudice toward sex workers, injection-drug users, gay men, and others has contributed to discrimination. Silence, stigma, and discrimination keep people from getting tested and treated.

 

Patriarchal religious assumptions have made women especially vulnerable. Endless controversies over the efficacy of condoms have helped deny people the least expensive “weapon of mass protection” available. In many countries, married women and young girls are endangered because they lack education and control of their own sex lives.

 

The Global AIDS Fund

Individuals and churches can designate contributions to the United Methodist Global AIDS Fund (Advance #982345) by sending their gifts directly through their church treasurer, who will forward the funds to the conference treasurer.

Does the Body of Christ Have AIDS?
A new HIV/AIDS poster produced by the Mission Education office of the Methodist Church in Great Britain boldly declares, “The Body of Christ Has AIDS.” Citing I Corinthians 12:27, 26 (NIV), it reminds Christians, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it . . . . If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.

 

A chasm exists between this theological assertion and the general response of Methodists around the world. Increasingly, however, Methodist churches in the “two-thirds world” are discovering this reality in their life, work, and witness.                           

We live in a world in which five people die of AIDS every minute and nine people more are infected by HIV. Yet, the Christian community in general and The United Methodist Church in particular have not yet mobilized effectively to respond to God's call for mission and ministry. For more than 20 years, United Methodists have officially endorsed pages and pages of excellent resolutions on global AIDS. But we have neither “walked our talk” or “put our money where our mouth is.” If we examine the budgets of our general church and conference apportionments, or most local church budgets, we will discover that funding to fight global AIDS is nearly nonexistent.

 

While a few local churches and the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries have done some pioneering work in the battle against HIV and AIDS, their service has often been obscured by those voicing a twisted theology claiming that “AIDS is the punishment of God.” This has prompted people to embrace a theology of condemnation rather than compassion, indifference rather than involvement, discrimination rather than liberation.

 

Is the World “Our Parish” in an Age of AIDS?

Reflecting on the global AIDS crisis, conservative Newsweekcolumnist George F. Will asserted several years ago that what the world desperately needs is a new John Wesley, actually “a lot of Wesleys.” The image that Wesley and his followers portray to the George Willses of this world is one of compassionate, evangelical folk who care about the bodies and souls of human beings, especially the poor, the sick, and the marginalized.

 

Wesley's understanding of Christian faith and life was embedded in the real-life issues of health and illness, life and death. Wesley was so moved by widespread illness and suffering among the poor people of England that, by 1746, he even decided to practice medicine himself. He opened dispensaries where he diagnosed and treated patients once a week.

 

The heritage and hope of John Wesley challenge United Methodists to move to the forefront of the battle for an AIDS-free world. The precedent of Wesley, following the pattern of Jesus and going everywhere to preach, teach, and heal the sick has been a powerful motif for Methodists over the centuries. Why hasn't our slogan, “The World Is My Parish,” been translated into an aggressive and compassionate program against global AIDS?

 

Will Global AIDS Become a United Methodist Priority?

The United Methodist Church now has an opportunity to respond to God's call by developing a unified strategy and funding source for addressing the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. Heeding the biblical commands to “care for the widow and the orphan” and “visit the sick,” the 2004 General Conference delegates, by an 818 to 68 vote, established the United Methodist Global AIDS Fund, with a goal of raising at least $8 million from 2005 to 2008.

 

The plan received its first support from the fervent cries and hopes of delegates from Nigeria, Congo, Uganda, Philippines, Russia, Hungary, and Bulgaria in a subcommittee with only two US delegates. They spoke about how HIV/AIDS is seriously impacting their countries and their desperate need for help. Initially, the plan was for $3 million to be apportioned and the remainder raised through voluntary “second-mile” giving. But, at the very last moment, problematic parliamentary maneuvers stripped the fund of any form of “guaranteed” giving, and all of it must now be raised through special gifts.

 

I will never forget the tears of an African woman when she learned that apportioned funds had been cut, making the funding a vague promise. We prayed that the Holy Spirit would yet find a way to move United Methodism from indifference to involvement, from words about money to works of mercy.

 

Raising $8 million through an Advance Special will require a total effort by every segment of the denomination. This mission leaves no room for continued theological squabbling between “evangelicals” and “liberals.” The bishops of the church will need to demonstrate bold leadership in every conference. The general agencies will all have to contribute personnel and resources. United Methodist seminaries, colleges, and universities will need to get involved. Seed money to help raise these dollars will have to be provided by the General Council on Finance and Administration. Otherwise, a cruel hoax will have been perpetuated upon the members of General Conference, especially the nearly 200 delegates from outside the United States.

 

Raising $8 million means asking each of the more than 8 million US members to give, on the average, just 25 cents a year, or $1 over the four years of the quadrennium. A recent 2004 poll of a group of Christians, commissioned by World Vision, however, reminds us that considerable education must occur before this is likely to happen. The shocking results of the survey showed that only 14 percent of Christians would contribute to AIDS education and

prevention efforts in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the world. Only 17 percent would contribute to support AIDS orphans. United Methodists have an opportunity to disprove this poll. Instead of opting for the minimum dollar level, may we follow the spirit of the first known donor to the fund—a United Methodist woman who contributed $10,000 in 2004 to get the fund moving ahead of schedule.

 

What Good Can United Methodists Do?

Certainly $8 million will not solve the global AIDS crisis. But it will make a difference to the people it touches. And it will transform United Methodists spiritually as we once again become a “mission movement” intent on bringing health, hope, and help to the “least of these” in God's family.

 

Mother Teresa often said she could not solve the world's problems, but “one by one by one” she made a difference in the lives of countless people. She said if she had never brought home the first man off the street and cared for him, she never would have cared for another. She had to start somewhere. When I visited her first home in Calcutta, patient number 75,642 was registered that day.

 

Likewise, United Methodists have the potential for increasing awareness about AIDS and providing education for prevention. We can assist in training personnel to combat the disease. We can be in the “foxholes” where care and compassion are given to those who are sick and dying. We could develop a new missionary AIDS corps of volunteers. By leveraging our money, we may be able to multiply our efforts with government and foundation grants. All that hampers us now is a lack of vision, commitment, and resources.

 

Around the world, children are dying from HIV/AIDS. In Africa, I visited a hospice within an orphanage and heard the excruciating cries of a mother who had just lost a child to AIDS. In India, I have held many HIV-infected babies in a rural maternity clinic and have sought to offer comfort in wards of children dying of AIDS. In every case, these children‘s lives could have been saved if modern medical treatment had been available. Even a minimal amount of money can make a difference—for example, $5000 provided by Rocky Mountain United Methodists for medicine at one clinic stopped the transmission of HIV from mother to child for over 500 children.

 

The new United Methodist Global AIDS Fund does not overlook the crisis in the United States. About one million people are infected in the United States, and the numbers are escalating, especially within neglected communities of color. The plan specifies that 25 percent of what each annual conference raises should be used in that conference for AIDS work, either locally or in global projects.

 

Can We Hear God Speaking?

Years ago the Irish playwright Sean O'Casey suggested that God may be “a shout in the street.“ Therefore, let us hear the voice of a United Methodist African woman theologian. Speaking from the context of her country Botswana, where HIV infects 40 percent of all adults, Dr. Musa W. Dube offers this paraphrase of Matthew 25: “I was sick with AIDS and you did not visit me. You did not wash my wounds, nor did you give me medicine. . . . I was stigmatized, isolated, and rejected because of HIV/AIDS and you did not welcome me. . . . I was a dispossessed widow and an orphan and you did not meet my needs . . . . The Lord will say to us, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did not do it to me.”

 

May we not only be a people who love to sing the popular hymn “Here I Am, Lord” (from the words of Isaiah), but also a people who respond: “I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.”

 

 

* Donald E. Messer is the Henry White Warren Professor of Practical Theology and President Emeritus of the Iliff School of Theology, Denver, Colorado. He can be contacted at the Center for the Church and Global AIDS (dmesser@iliff.edu).