Black Ministers Break Silence, Discuss AIDS

Black ministers, long criticized for their reluctance to talk frankly about AIDS and its devastating impact on black communities, broke their relative silence Sunday in the wake of Earvin (Magic) Johnson’s stunning revelation that he has contracted the AIDS virus.

In churches across the nation, they searched the scriptures for the right words to discuss such morally sensitive issues as black sexuality, homosexuality and drug abuse that must be addressed in any discussion of AIDS.

For black preachers--many of whom have been unwilling to bring talk of sex into their sanctuaries and perhaps had never mentioned AIDS from their pulpits--Johnson’s announcement heightened a dilemma: How to help educate and protect their congregations against AIDS without seeming to condone such risky behavior as drug use and promiscuous sex.

“This is something we don’t talk about in church,” the Rev. Philip R. Cousin Jr. of Campbell African Methodist Episcopal Church here told about 150 parishioners gathered for an early morning service. “This is so difficult. I suppose it takes a national figure to make us deal with AIDS.”

Indeed, Sunday was the first opportunity for black preachers to address the subject since Johnson, widely known and admired for his basketball talents and charitable deeds, took the nation’s breath away when he announced Thursday that he would retire from the Los Angeles Lakers because of his infection with the AIDS virus. Later, on the Arsenio Hall television show, which is popular among young blacks, Johnson said that he had acquired the human immunodeficiency virus through heterosexual contact.

“I don’t see how any minister could preach on Sunday without in some way referring to that event,” said the Rev. Zan Holmes of the St. Luke Community Methodist Church in Houston, referring to Johnson’s announcement. “This could be the spark that will bring unity among the African-American churches and wake people up to the dangers of AIDS.”

In Detroit, the Rev. Jesse Jackson told 350 churchgoers at the Hartford Memorial Baptist Church that word of Johnson’s affliction “was like a hole had been shot through our souls.”

“Magic Johnson has gone from saving games to saving lives,” he said of Johnson’s decision to talk publicly about his infection and to help educate others about the deadly disease.

Activists involved with AIDS support and education programs have long been critical of the silence from black pulpits, contending that black religious leaders have been too slow to offer comfort to black AIDS sufferers. Moreover, they have said, black clergy fear frank discussions of homosexuality, premarital sex and other forms of promiscuous behavior associated with AIDS, even as the disease spreads rapidly through minority communities--and through their own congregations.

Although black people make up 12% of the population, 28% of diagnosed cases of AIDS occur among blacks, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

In their disparate ways of handling Johnson’s announcement Sunday, some ministers offered silent and spoken prayers for Johnson and his family. Many suggested that faith in God would produce a cure in time to save the star from the deadly disease. Others used the occasion to reaffirm that adherence to the Bible’s teachings is the safest protection against AIDS.

Still others continued to ignore Johnson’s affliction.

Nowhere was the contrast more evident than in Los Angeles.

At the West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Southwest Los Angeles, there was no mention of the basketball star’s name, even though his wife had been a member of the church for two years and Johnson himself joined a week ago.

Just before the sermon, titled “The Benefits of Being Saved,” a church aide announced that an AIDS specialist would speak with members of the congregation later that week. The AIDS discussion had been scheduled long before Johnson’s announcement.

A month earlier, West Angeles Church officials had declined to participate in an AIDS-awareness program that included the distribution of condoms and lubricants.

On Sunday, Assistant Pastor Marion Green said that he was uncertain what changes Johnson’s announcement will bring. “How far out we are going from this point is hard to say,” he said. “We will have to wait and see what is going to happen.”

But less than half a mile away at First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the noon service was dedicated to Johnson.

First AME officials initiated the Oct. 1 AIDS-awareness program and purchased the 12,500 AIDS-awareness kits that included condoms, lubricants and instructions for their use. The kits were offered to 10 area churches for distribution. Six churches refused to participate.

The Rev. Cecil Murray praised Johnson and asked the congregation to pray for him. “He is a symbol and we lift Magic to you,” Murray said as he lifted his hands to the sky. “We ask you for his health. It is possible in the power of God that the sick be healed.”

In his sermon in Washington, Cousin called AIDS the “leprosy of our time” and prayed for a “miracle” that would cure Johnson and other people with AIDS. “There’s something about the word ‘incurable’ that cuts across the grain of every Christian,” he said. “It means there’s nothing you can do about it. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing God can do about it.”

Rather than attacking Johnson’s affliction as devine retribution for immoral behavior, he argued that, “when we look to God, help will come--no matter what your condition is.”

The Rev. Emanuel Cleaver, mayor of Kansas City and pastor at St. James-Paseo United Methodist Church, compared Magic Johnson to King David, a biblical figure who built a splendid temple to God even though he knew that he would never see it completed. “The great people of the world are those who plant shade trees that they will never sit under,” Cleaver said.

By dedicating his life to educating young people about AIDS, he said, Johnson is planting trees that he will never see but that will shelter future generations of children.

“He is teaching us that AIDS can strike anyone and that it is not something that affects only bad people,” Cleaver said to thunderous applause. “He is teaching us that AIDS can knock anyone down. And if we continue to treat it like a plague that strikes only sinners, then death is on the agenda for the next generation and the next generation.”

At Atlanta’s Cascade United Methodist Church, the Rev. Joseph Lowery said that too many black Americans have downplayed AIDS because they did not want to confront homosexuality in the black community and because they were already struggling against other issues, including “unemployment, high rent and low-income crime.”

“We didn’t want another problem,” he said. “We thought that maybe if we ignored it, it would go away. But it didn’t go away.”

Lowery, who is president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, one of the few black civil rights groups with an active AIDS education and outreach program, urged abstinence as the “safest sex.” But for those who fail to heed such advice, he openly suggested that they use condoms. “Anyone who wades out into the turbulent waters of multi-sex partners ought to at least wear a life jacket and, even then, they may drown,” he said.

Such language was the exception in many churches, however.

The Rev. Samuel Atchison at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church in Miami, did not mention Johnson in his prayers or sermon, saying that it was too soon to talk about the infected basketball star from his pulpit. “So much is being carried about it in the news on radio and TV and the press that it would not be very effective,” he said. “Everybody is talking and nobody is listening at the moment.”

The Rev. Clyde W. Judson Sr., pastor of the Good News Little River Baptist Church in Miami, offered a prayer for Johnson, whom he described as “not disciplined” in the teachings of the Bible. He then warned his church: “I don’t like too well some of the remedies that have been given to people to prevent AIDS.” He said that, if everyone follows the Bible, “then I know you will not be a prospect for AIDS.”

The Rev. Holsey Hickman, an assistant pastor at the St. John Missionary Baptist Church in Dallas, devoted his sermon--”A Hero Who Never Fails”--to Johnson’s announcement. Suggesting that Johnson was a media-created hero who, unlike Jesus, let his followers down by falling to earthly pleasures.

“Jesus is the one who has never failed those who put their trust in him,” Hickman said. “Only through trusting Him will we see that he does not fail.”

In contrast, he argued that popular heroes are manufactured by the media. “Before TV, (black heroes) were upright men in the neighborhood--fathers, grandfathers, uncles,” Hickman told the 2,500 congregants. “The church needs to lift up and affirm purity and model that for them. Somehow we must restore that sense of purity and help our young men and women know that it’s OK to be a virgin when you get married.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writer Hugo Martin in Los Angeles, researchers Patricia Gaston in Dallas, Lianne Hart in Houston, Ann Rovin in Denver, Doug Conner in Seattle and Anna M. Virtue in Miami and special correspondents Duncan Moore in Kansas City, Sheila Poole in Atlanta, Renee Turner in Chicago and Ruby Anderson in Jackson, Miss.