The Associated Press - 1 Oct 1995

One by one, adults and children said their farewells. To the music "The Circle of Life" from the movie "The Lion King," the children paraded around Matt, surrounding him with music, banners and love.

Looking on at the celebration of his grandson's life, the Rev. Jimmy Allen, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, could only marvel at how the spirit of Christ was present in this place: Lakewood Elementary School.

And he could only reflect with sadness on how the church he loved had turned its back on his grandson and his family. Even in this prominent Southern Baptist family, when AIDS struck, churches in Colorado and Texas turned their backs.

"I'm not angry at God," Allen said in a telephone interview from Big Canoe, Ga., where he is chaplain at a mountain resort community. "I'm sad because the family of faith is dysfunctional and needs serious change."

For years, Allen and his family suffered in silence.

Now, in a book due out next month entitled "Burden of a Secret: A Story of Truth and Mercy in the Face of AIDS," the prominent Southern Baptist minister reveals his painful journey of faith.

Allen entered what he calls his decade of Gethsemane -- the place Jesus spent the night before his crucifixion -- in 1985 when he found out his daughter-in-law Lydia had contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion during her first pregnancy. Lydia, Matthew and Bryan, a second son born before the bad blood was discovered, were infected with the virus.

Matthew's father, Scott Allen, was the minister of education at First Christian Church in Colorado Springs, Colo. When he found out about the disaster that had struck his family, he informed the senior pastor.

Scott had hoped for a measure of concern, counsel and compassion, his father said. The pastor's response: You're fired. Shortly after, Allen said, Matthew was kicked out of the church's day care center and the entire family was told to find another church.

When the family moved to Dallas and moved in with Allen and his wife, church after church refused to enroll Matthew in Sunday school.

"Good churches. Great churches. Wonderful people. Chuches pastored by fine men of God, many of whom I had mentored. Nobody had room for a boy with AIDS," Allen writes.

The answer was the same even when Allen personally approached pastors at two churches, and they raised the issue within their communities.

"They were afraid that by accepting an AIDS child, they would scare off other prospects to their church," Allen said. "They were certain that once the word got out that they were `an AIDS church,' nobody would come."

At the funeral service for his daughter-in-law, no one even mentioned the word AIDS. Before her death, Lydia had written an anonymous letter to a Baptist newspaper explaining her family did not attend church anymore. "The rejection runs too deep," she said.

The pain would not end there for Jimmy Allen and his family. Another son, Skip, told his father that he was gay and also infected with the virus.

The church's response to AIDS would make indelible impressions on each family member.

For Skip, judgmentalism and rejection have driven him away from organized religion, his father said. Scott has left the Christian ministry, and is exploring Eastern religions.

Matt -- who has survived far longer than expected, and hopes to see his 13th birthday next month -- believes in eternal life in a "Peaceful Place" with his mother and brother, but he has little use for the church.

"He just says, `They kicked me out,' " Allen says.

Even though he said he never expected the church he loved to become his family's greatest source of pain, Jimmy Allen says he is still hopeful the church will allow God's compassion to flow through it.

More churches are dealing with AIDS, he said, and many of the churches that initially rejected Matthew for their Sunday schools have tackled the issue, he said.

Through this book, Allen said he hopes to help churches along in their process of repentance.

"In his day, Jesus was accused of the ultimate social faux pas -- he ate with outcasts and sinners," Allen said.

"After all these centuries, we still have difficulty breaking the mindset that we should associate only with `our kind of people.' Yet if we are going to help raise the dead, we must go to the graveyards."

Copyright 1995/The Associated Press. Reproduced with permission. Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal reference) must be cleared through the Permissions Desk, The Associated Press, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020.

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Copyright © 1995 - Associated Press. Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal reference) must be cleared through the AP Permissions Desk.

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