MEMPHIS, Tenn. (ABP) — Motorists in Memphis are getting a prominent reminder of the AIDS pandemic's human toll — and the grace that God offers — from two Baptist churches situated on one of the city's busiest corners.
For the fifth year in a row, the corner of Poplar Avenue and East Parkway was covered with thousands of white stakes with red ribbons attached. Members of Memphis' First Baptist Church marked World AIDS Day by erecting the markers on the stately church's lawn after morning worship Nov. 28. The markers represent the approximately 3,000 Shelby County residents who have died of AIDS since 1983, when county officials first began tracking its statistics.
And, for the third year, the members of the predominantly white church were joined in the marker project by hundreds of African-Americans from Greater Lewis Street Missionary Baptist Church, their neighbors across the street in Memphis' Midtown neighborhood.
The project — marking World AIDS Day Dec. 1 — “allows us to bring a heightened awareness to a disease that disproportionately affects the African-American community,” said Myron Donald, pastor of Greater Lewis Street Baptist, “while at the same time working hand in hand with our brothers and sisters in Christ across racial lines.”
The project began unexpectedly for its coordinator, Butch Valentine, who has AIDS and is gay. Valentine works for Friends for Life, which describes itself as the “oldest and most comprehensive AIDS service organization in the Mid-South.”
In 2000, Valentine was considering using the large median strips on East Parkway to create the marker memorial. He asked First Baptist pastor Ken Corr — with whom Valentine had worked previously on an ecumenical AIDS healing service — if he would write a letter to the city endorsing the idea.
“I thought, 'To have a Southern Baptist church in support? They'd love that!'” Valentine said.
To his surprise, Corr suggested Valentine use the church's lawn instead. After getting unanimous approval from First Baptist's deacons, the project moved forward.
At the time, Valentine recalls now, “I had nothing but bad faith and animosity in my heart toward Southern Baptists,” who have consistently opposed homosexuality and gay rights.
But after bringing Friends for Life volunteers to work with a group from the church to prepare for the observance, Valentine said, he realized the Baptists were just “normal people” — and they realized the same.
On the Sunday that the markers first went up in 2000, Valentine was invited to speak briefly in First Baptist's worship service. He said he was afraid but honest. “I came to them when I spoke as a gay man with AIDS, and I told them that,” Valentine said.
Holding a hammer he would soon use to drive the markers into the church's lawn, he told the congregation, “we are going to take these hammers and we're going to break down barriers in Memphis, Tennessee.” To Valentine's surprise, the normally staid, formal congregation responded with enthusiastic applause.
“I found out it wasn't your typical Baptist church,” he said.
Valentine started attending worship at First Baptist “as a show of gratitude for putting the markers up, because I had never been to church as an adult. I had never felt like I belonged,” he said.
“But I sucked it up and I went to the church. And I just loved the sermons. Love and inclusion, not hell and brimstone,” were what he heard from Corr, Valentine said.
Shortly afterward, his health took a sudden turn for the worse. Valentine spent more than a week at the beginning of 2001 on a ventilator, and nearly succumbed to the flu. During that time, Corr and other First Baptist members came to visit him.
When he was visiting with one woman, Valentine said, he told her he had realized that he couldn't take credit for any of the good things that had happened to him in his life. “She said that was the day I turned my life over to the Lord. But I didn't know it at the time,” he said.
After he recovered, Valentine was baptized and joined First Baptist.
He says the publicity the project has garnered — including stories and columns in Memphis' daily newspaper and on local television — has attracted many other people to the congregation who otherwise would have avoided Baptists like the plague.
“They realize that this is a tolerant, loving church,” he said.
The partnership with Greater Lewis Street Baptist was initiated by Corr, the pastor of First Baptist. Valentine said the partnership was unexpected too, because both AIDS and homosexuality are topics that tend to be taboo in the African-American Christian community.
While improved drugs for treating the disease have meant that people can live with AIDS for much longer periods of time, the AIDS activist said, infection rates of the HIV virus are rising rapidly in the African-American community.
“We probably can reach out more to the African-American communities through the churches. Their ignoring it is killing them,” Valentine said.
Kim Moss, executive director of Friends for Life, said the partnership between the racially diverse churches and her organization is providing a powerful example to the community. “The issue of AIDS provides a real challenge for churches to experience the meaning of unconditional love,” she said.
The churches' effort, Moss continued, is an example of “the healing that can take place when people set aside prejudices and focus on the message of hope, love, understanding, and compassion for all.”
The partnership even inspired other local churches. Preaching an Advent sermon in 2003, pastor Stephen Montgomery of nearby Idlewild Presbyterian Church noted the juxtaposition of the AIDS marker display with First Baptist's Christmas lawn display. It was an outline of the Nativity scene in lights, set among the AIDS markers.
“Now, why would anyone do that?” he asked in his sermon. “Surely they could have found a better place for the baby Jesus!
“Probably because they were able to grasp something we have a hard time grasping,” he continued. “This one who comes is one who comes in unlikely places, even right smack dab in the middle of despair and death.”