Congregations’ Response to AIDS Accented : L.A. Video Encourages ‘Education . . . Across Denominational Bounds’

A new documentary video designed to help churches and synagogues across the nation to respond to the challenges of the spread of AIDS has been produced in Los Angeles, where it was released Thursday at a premiere showing.

The 42-minute video, “AIDS and the Church’s Role,” has broad ecumenical backing and tells the story of people and congregations facing the problems of ignorance, prejudice and fear surrounding acquired immune deficiency syndrome and the steps they have taken to meet them with faith, hope and love.

“The purpose of the film,” said producer-director Keith Wintermute, “is to encourage education and response across denominational bounds. . . . The church needs and deserves to be involved in this work.”

The video was produced by CARD Inc., a private company that provides churches, schools and community organizations with films on AIDS, substance abuse and sex education.

The film features support groups for AIDS patients at St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church in West Hollywood, St. Athanasius and St. Paul Episcopal Church in the Echo Park area and Casa Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles, an AIDS hospice established by the six Roman Catholic hospitals of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Overcoming Confusion

People appearing in the film include Rabbi Allen Freehling, spiritual leader of a Reform Jewish congregation and founding chairman of the Los Angeles County Commission on AIDS; Tom Houston, former president of World Vision International, the Monrovia-based Christian relief organization; Dr. Joel Weisman, chairman of the board of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, and John Howlett, manager of public relations for the Los Angeles Opera and an AIDS patient.

Freehling notes in the film that AIDS patients have often been referred to as “modern-day lepers.” He speaks about overcoming the confusion, anxieties and stereotypes that he says all too often paralyze even well-meaning religious groups from ministering positively to those with the devastating virus.

Freehling also took a crusading role in lobbying the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to pass a law to ban discrimination against AIDS carriers.

On a divided vote, the supervisors this week approved a wide-ranging measure that allows people to sue if they believe they have been discriminated against in businesses, schools or health facilities because they are infected--or suspected of being infected--with the AIDS virus.

The video’s producers are seeking to distribute it free of charge to 200,000 congregations throughout the nation through a corporate sponsorship program.

‘Frightening Curiosity’

The film points out that most medical experts agree that the immunodeficiency virus linked to the AIDS epidemic is not spread through casual contact. The script does not moralize about the ways AIDS is transmitted through promiscuous sex and contaminated needles used by intravenous drug addicts.

In 1981, AIDS was “a frightening curiosity to most of us,” Gene Webster, the video’s narrator and a former editorial director for KABC-TV News, says in the film. Noting that an estimated 1.5 million individuals are infected and that every congregation of any size will be affected, Webster says the challenge is how churches and synagogues can show AIDS patients “love and compassion” rather than “lock them outside the church’s walls. . . . That responsibility has often been overlooked.”

The Rev. Jon Bruno, rector of St. Athanasius Church, said in an interview that his congregation’s AIDS support group had helped the 270-member parish grow in size and commitment as “we focus on the issue and our diversity.” Six members of the parish have died of AIDS in the last three years.

‘Need My Love’

“I’ve cried a lot more in the last three years than I’ve ever cried before in my life, because I’ve watched people waste away in my arms as I’ve held them. . . . They have become more than a pastoral experience for me, for they have become people who live and breathe and need my love,” Bruno said.

He added that the AIDS video “will help the larger community because it demonstrates that family-oriented churches can take a stand and not be hurt in the process.”

Producer Wintermute said that CARD Inc., which stands for Community Alcohol Related Diseases and is based in Channel Islands Harbor near Oxnard, is selling “AIDS and the Church’s Role” for $39.95 through mail orders. It is the organization’s third video on AIDS.