Churches Seen ‘Waking Up’ to AIDS Issues

A few weeks ago, the Rev. Fred Plummer got a desperate phone call from a man whose longtime companion had just died of AIDS.

A local pastor had refused to perform the funeral sermon after learning that the dead man had been a practicing homosexual. Would Plummer step in?

Plummer, one of 30 clergy members in Orange County on call to provide spiritual counseling to people with AIDS, says it was not the first time he had been asked to perform a funeral under those circumstances. Pastors all too often balk at doing the service, particularly when the person who dies is gay, Plummer said.

“In one case, the pastor said he had to pray about it, then called back and said he couldn’t do it,” recounted Plummer, senior pastor at the Irvine United Church of Christ.

That wariness offers just one glimpse into the touchy theological issues that have arisen as church leaders struggle with a health crisis that some have compared to the bubonic plague. Because of AIDS’s early links to homosexuality and drug abuse, many religious leaders have remained conspicuously silent about AIDS-related issues and, some argue, have turned their backs on the hundreds of thousands who are dying of the disease.

But some say that is changing, if ever so slowly.

In many Orange County and San Diego congregations, AIDS has become a lay ministry unto itself--one in which scores of volunteers provide free food, clothing and counseling to those affected by the disease. Recently, a handful of churches in Los Angeles went so far as to pass out condom kits to church members with instructions on how to use them. Seminaries where ministers receive their religious education have begun to include specialized training on the spiritual needs of people living with HIV.

“We’re waking up, but it’s slow, way too slow for me,” Plummer said. “I’ve seen the pain.”

At last count, more than 1 million Americans were believed to be infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, according to the national Centers for Disease Control. More than 200,000 Americans had contracted full-blown AIDS--about 40,000 in California alone.

There is no way to gauge how many of the afflicted are churchgoers. However, religious leaders assert that they do not need statistics to tell them what has already become painfully clear: AIDS has invaded the most sacred of religious sanctuaries, and its victims include members of church and synagogue congregations from coast to coast.

“When it was drug addicts, gays and prostitutes it wasn’t as important to some who call themselves Christians,” said Randy Kimmler, a member of All Saints Church in Beverly Hills. “But the biggest agent for change in people has been when someone they know dies.”

With choir members, Sunday-school teachers and priests succumbing to the deadly virus--certainly not all from blood transfusions--clergy members are being forced to wrestle with issues of sexuality that have long been considered taboo subjects in religious circles.

“AIDS is becoming so prevalent that there are no longer churches that are untouched by it,” said the Rev. Ron Jesser, pastor at Metropolitan Community Church Christ Chapel, a predominantly gay congregation in Santa Ana. “I know of one big church that had never made an issue about it until the son of one of the church leaders died of AIDS.”

Jesser’s 100-member flock has been hit harder than most. Funerals for church members who die of AIDS have become almost as commonplace as baptisms.

“In 1991, I did 17 memorial services for people with AIDS,” Jesser said. “We have five people who have AIDS now and are in the hospital, and I could get a phone call any time.”

Not surprisingly, Metropolitan Community Church and other congregations with large gay memberships--those most severely impacted during the early stages of the AIDS epidemic--have launched the most active AIDS ministries.

However, in many mainstream churches, fear and ignorance about AIDS remain widespread. Some churchgoers have even raised concerns about whether HIV could be transmitted via the Communion cup.

But most significant are the theological considerations based upon biblical passages denouncing homosexuality. A literal reading of the Bible--which many devout Christians believe represents the word of God--offers little in the way of tolerance.

Take the 20th Chapter of Leviticus, in which God tells Moses: “If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death.”

Another passage from Leviticus refers to homosexuality simply as “abomination.”

Consequently, some fundamentalists see AIDS as a kind of fulfillment of divine prophecy.

“Anybody who takes the Bible literally is going to have this conflict,” said Gerald LaRue, a professor of religion and ethics at the University of Southern California. “But others argue that a gospel of love and caring moves beyond this.

“Some go so far as to say there is no reference to homosexuality in the Bible, but they’re way off. It’s there. The question is: ‘How are you going to deal with it?’ ”

Some denominations--Metropolitan Community Church, Episcopalians, United Church of Christ and some Reform Jewish congregations, among others--have taken a liberal approach. They compare today’s AIDS sufferers to the lepers of biblical times. Some Christian denominations urge their adherents to follow Jesus’ example of ministering to the downtrodden.

“The law at that time required that lepers be shunned, which is how some people want to treat the AIDS patient,” said the Rev. Cecil F. Murray, senior pastor at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles. “But Jesus embraced the leper. He healed the leper. So we have to be very careful about the connection we make between sickness and God’s visitation of wrath.”

Convinced that AIDS should be treated as an illness, Murray and his 7,500-member church waged a novel campaign, and in the process touched off a fury in the black clergy. The church used a $10,000 grant from the AIDS Services Foundation to hand out safe sex kits after services, and the kits included condoms, lubricants and instructions for their use.

Murray said the packets also featured a mini-sermon urging abstinence as the best possible alternative. That did not, however, satisfy the half-dozen churches that refused to take part.

“They felt it was an abomination and that the giving out of condoms would entice people to have sex,” Murray said. “The church’s historic stance has been abstinence, and they were not comfortable with discussing sex and condoms.”

Murray, however, defends the program, arguing that if people are going to have sex, they should at least engage in “safer” sex.

“Sexual sin is condemned by the Bible. And yet there is forgiveness for sinners with the admonition that you sin no more,” Murray said. “If you contract AIDS, it is not possible to sin any more. And not only are you victimized, but so are other innocent persons.”

Other churches are more comfortable providing less controversial assistance.

On a recent morning, for instance, it was standing room only in the stuffy waiting room of 5P21--the AIDS clinic at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

Weary and disheveled men and women, already weakened by the deadly virus, had been waiting in line for hours to see their doctors. Suddenly, Mike Sirota and a handful of volunteers from Beth Shir Sholom Temple burst through the lobby doors, carting loads of tuna fish sandwiches, potato chips and fruit juices--free lunch for more than 100 needy patients.

About a dozen synagogues and Episcopal churches take turns providing those free meals.

“To consider AIDS from a religious standpoint because of homosexuality is almost passe at this point,” said Sirota, chairperson of the AIDS brunch committee at the Santa Monica temple and a member of Nechama, a Jewish AIDS advocacy organization. “The important thing is that people are ill. They have a disease, and they need the religious community because in many ways that’s the only place where they can turn for support.”

That’s especially true with AIDS, he and others say, because many people with the disease find themselves estranged from their families and alone, particularly if they are gay.

“People in the ministry can be very helpful in this regard since the family’s religious beliefs are often the source of the conflict,” said Father John D. Golinski, a Jesuit priest who teaches religion at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. “But the clergy member has to be able to express a forgiving, welcoming face. If he or she sees the illness as an expression of God’s vengeance, he can make matters worse.”

In fact, many people who are found to have the HIV already have a hard time not believing that is the case.

“Some people feel God is punishing them, but it’s important to help families understand that it is not God’s will to cause people to die from AIDS,” said Father Nick Christiana, a Roman Catholic priest who coordinates the AIDS Chaplaincy program in San Diego, an interfaith network that provides spiritual counseling to people affected by the AIDS virus. “Basically what we do is listen. It’s a ministry of presence.”

Every Thursday night, 22 people meet for an AIDS support group at St. Clements by the Sea Episcopal Church in San Clemente. They are parents of children who are infected with HIV, children of parents who have died of AIDS, friends and lovers of people with AIDS.

Every third meeting, the rector “lays hands” on the afflicted, anointing their heads with holy oil.

“One man who used to come would always schedule his doctor’s appointment to have his T cells (white blood cells that are depleted by the AIDS virus) counted the next day because he knew they would be higher after the healing,” said Joan Turner, one of the group leaders. “He had seen the effect of his faith on his T-cell count. But most people are using their faith not to overcome but to learn to live with AIDS.”

Still, for every church that has welcomed AIDS patients, there are others that remain wary. And as long as there are, some pastors and others pledge to keep their program of education and acceptance alive.

“Many people are still of the firm opinion that anyone with HIV or AIDS has to be gay,” said J.J. Thompson, a Seventh-day Adventist who coordinates the AIDS Ministry Ecumenical Network in Orange County. “It’s difficult to prove otherwise because they don’t want to believe that their teen-agers are also coming down with the virus.”