LAKE FOREST, Calif. (ABP) — When 5,500 people die of AIDS every day, the need is not for charity but for justice, says Bono, and the church must do something about it.
“That's a lot of our brothers and sisters to be losing for no good reason,” the activist and front man for megaband U2 told the crowd at the 2006 Global Summit on AIDS and the Church.
“One thing we can probably agree on is that God is where the poor live,” he said via video. “God is in the slums and the cardboard boxes. … God is in the cries heard under the rumble of war. God is with us if we are with them, which is to say God expects us to treat everyone as equal. Equal in the eyes of God — that's really what these issues are about.”
Virtually every speaker at the two-day event at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., spoke to the enormous potential Christians have in confronting HIV/AIDS. Their message? The global church has both an opportunity and an obligation not only to reduce HIV/AIDS but to eradicate it.
The second-annual Saddleback event is the loudest voice yet in rallying evangelicals against the ravages of AIDS. While some conservatives objected to the open attitude Saddleback pastor Rick Warren, a Southern Baptist, demonstrated in selecting speakers, especially his choice to invite pro-choice Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), for many the summit brought a refreshing break from the usual starched, homogenous events many other Southern Baptists are known for hosting.
For their part, Rick and Kay Warren assured reporters the AIDS cause isn't the “trend of the week” for them. Their obvious ease and knowledge with the topic of AIDS complemented the racially mixed and age-diverse crowd, not to mention the ample Hawaiian shirts and body piercings also present.
All told, more than 2,000 people from 39 states and 18 countries attended the event, which included speeches from Episcopalians, Catholics, government officials, U.N. leaders, medical doctors and social activists.
Eugene Rivers, the fiery orator from Azusa Christian Community in Boston, told listeners the Christian church is on the “cutting edge” of a revolutionary movement to proclaim the love of God by ending AIDS.
“Throughout the course of history, tragedy has served as an opportunity for the church to serve as a resource,” he said. “God has offered to various generations the privilege to be a source of light…. We must stand in the gap. We must be the watchmen on the wall. We can speak prophetically to the secular world, and we must have the courage and the boldness to declare the truth of God.”
Warren himself addressed the global church's AIDS-fighting potential in each of his six sermons during the event. Nothing comes close to the resources, history, tradition or scope of the church, he said.
“The church is the largest network in the world,” he said. “The church is bigger than China. The church is bigger than India. The church is bigger than China and India put together. That is an army of compassion you cannot ignore.”
Indeed, while the number of people infected with HIV is growing at the rate of 14,000 infections a day, he said the global church is growing in the world at the rate of 60,000 converts a day.
If Christians leave the AIDS work to medical and government professionals, “the job won't get done,” Warren said. Every church has an “enormous, untapped pool of talent and brains and energy and relationships. We cannot do it without mobilizing this group. It's going to have to be done by ordinary people.”
When the church has “stood tall and spoken the truth,” despots and tyrants have fallen, agreed Mary Davis Fisher of the United Nations program on HIV/AIDS. As evidence, she cited Poland and South Africa, where congregations became “freedom-speaking crowds” against agression.
“While governments divide, the church could unify,” she said. “While politics are being debated, churches could speak the truth to power. While nations are debating the price of a barrel of oil, the church could point out the price of a human life.”
And while government organizations and businesses have done much good work in the prevention and treatment of AIDS, speakers said, it hasn't been nearly enough to radically affect the disease.
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) recognized that void. He said the HIV/AIDS crisis should not be a political issue but one that requires love, growth and understanding. He said that “to whom much is given, much is required. We've been given much, and we've got to meet that task. No single branch will do this alone.”
Along with Obama, Brownback publicly took an HIV/AIDS test Dec. 1 to demonstrate the ease of the test and set an example for others. Both tests returned negative for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The church also administered 162 free screenings for summit registrants over the two days.
Besides government and business, the third element in treatment and prevention of HIV is the church, Warren said. And the church is crucial because it has the highest motivation possible: Love.
“Governments can't love,” Warren said. “I've heard our president say that many times. The Bible says love can endure anything. Love never gives up; it's persistent. If you don't have the motivation of love, you're going to get tired. You're going to get burned out. The love of God in your heart lasts forever. Love lasts.”
Kent Hill, director of the Bureau for Global Health, said he thinks Christians have missed their calling as of yet, or at least lacked in their application of it. Christian love can be expressed in a positive message about sex and abstinence, he said. It was a theme repeated throughout the conference.
“The religious perspective sees that sex is … not just biological. It is part of who we are as spiritual human beings made in the image of God,” he said. “I'm not saying that's the only argument that should be used for sexual prevention, but these are certainly arguments that should be heard.”
Hill also presented some “incontrovertible” facts about the disease: The rate of people getting treatment is by far outstripped by the number of people getting infected. The main way HIV spreads is through sexual transmission. Concurrent multiple-partner sexual relationships drive the disease. And “the use of condoms will not be nearly enough to address this disease.”
From those findings, Hill, and others like him, agreed that changes in sexual behavior must also occur.
“There are those who claim sexual-behavior change is simply not possible … but when [AIDS rates] go down, they go down because there has been significant behavior change,” he said, citing Zimbabwe, Uganda and New Guinea as examples.
That claim contrasted the view taken by Obama, who told listeners he “respectfully but unequivocally” disagrees with those who oppose condom distribution.
“I also believe that we cannot ignore that abstinence and fidelity may too often be the ideal and not the reality — that we are dealing with flesh and blood men and women and not abstractions…,” Obama said.
Still, many of the speakers at the summit emphasized what they called the positive message of Christian sexuality. Hill, for instance, called on Christians to “give people a higher view of what it means to engage sexuality.” Negative views alone will not work, he said.
Warren emphasized that message. Risk-reduction methods for fighting AIDS only slow the process, he said, by supporting condoms for everyone, limiting the number of sexual partners; offering needle exchanges; and waiting for their “sexual debut.”
Stopping the scourge, he continued, takes something radically different: saving sex for marriage, teaching men to respect women and children, offering HIV treatment through churches; and pledging to one partner for life.
“I can tell you from logic that if those four things happened, it would stop the pandemic,” Warren said.
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