A few fundamentalist ministers have been quoted...

A few fundamentalist ministers have been quoted in years past saying that the AIDS epidemic was God’s judgment on homosexuals because of the relative high incidence of the fatal disease among sexually active gays.

But in surveying 60 religious denominations, many of them small conservative bodies, researcher J. Gordon Melton of Santa Barbara said he found that no church has adopted that view in an official statement.

“There is a surprising unanimity in putting down judgmental theology as bad theology and saying that what is right in this situation is to show compassion,” Melton said in a telephone interview.

Some church resolutions on the AIDS crisis, usually adopted at national conventions, specifically condemn the notion that God is punishing homosexuals with the AIDS virus. The conservative Wesleyan Church was among those taking that stance, he said.

The theologically conservative Evangelical Free Church of America, Melton noted, took an indirect poke at the notion. Its resolution said that all persons are to be judged by God, but that will be in a future life, according to Melton.

“No doubt there is considerable sentiment out in hinterlands that homosexuals suffering from AIDS are feeling God’s wrath,” Melton said, “but church leaders who control the machinery have tried to educate people not to take a judgmental stance.”

His findings are in a book, “The Churches Speak on AIDS,” published this week by Gale Research in Detroit.

DATES

Gabriel Meyer, Jerusalem correspondent for the weekly National Catholic Register, will speak on the dangers facing Christians who live in the Middle East. The 8 p.m. Thursday talk will be at St. Robert Bellarmine Catholic Church in Burbank. The talk is co-sponsored by the Register and Catholic Twin Circle, national publications with editorial offices in Studio City.

Rabbi Tom Meyer, a former Detroit News reporter who now heads the Aish HaTorah’s International College of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, will speak about the upcoming Jewish High Holy Days in a talk at 11 a.m. today at the new Aish HaTorah Center at 9102 W. Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles.

The new Las Vegas Mormon temple--which will serve California church members in Barstow and Blythe as well as Mormons in southern Nevada--will hold a public open house Nov. 16 through Dec. 9, announced officials in Salt Lake City of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After dedication services Dec. 16-18, the temple, located in a residential area east of the city, will admit only qualified Mormons.