The Chicago Tribune - December 5, 1999
Sue Ellen Christian and Steve Kloehn, Tribune Staff Writers

"My son was ill and dying, and I was not able to go talk to my own pastor because of the discrimination against AIDS," recalled Jackson, a 60-something South Side resident who no longer attends that church. "There was such a stigma."

That was nearly 14 years ago. But times are changing in what black church leaders and laypeople say is a matter of life and death for their communities.

Last week, Jackson was honored on World AIDS Day for her efforts to bring HIV and AIDS ministries to African-American churches in Chicago. On Wednesday, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago delivered a sermon broadcast nationwide by satellite, calling attention to the need for HIV and AIDS ministries.

On Saturday, the need for greater church involvement was among the topics at the town hall meeting "AIDS in the Black Community," convened by U.S. Reps. Danny Davis, Jesse Jackson Jr. and Bobby Rush.

Evelyn Jackson now leads an AIDS ministry at her current church, Maple Park United Methodist, and early next year, an idea that began with Jackson and Maple Park will come to fruition: a new housing facility for adults living with AIDS and HIV.

Throughout Chicago, momentum is building to minister to people with a disease that is disproportionately affecting African-Americans in Illinois and nationally.

For years, some black church leaders say they didn't see AIDS as an issue in their communities; it was, after all, initially perceived as a white gay man's disease. For some black churches rooted in conservative theology, it was uncomfortable even to acknowledge homosexuality or drug use in their midst.

The change is coming about mainly because the need is so evident, say pastors such as Rev. Alvin Bridges of South Shore Presbyterian Church. Parishioners know people with HIV and AIDS. Pastors are burying people with AIDS. And the latest statistics are eye-opening, said Bridges, for whom an AIDS ministry was not a priority until this year.

"It was not anything that was uppermost on anybody's mind, opposing or for," Bridges said. "Even though I'd had members that had AIDS and died of AIDS, it still was not an issue in our congregation until the past eight months."

Last spring, Bridges attended a 30-hour training course through the AIDS Pastoral Care Network along with 14 other clergy members, including 10 black pastors.

"Once we were aware of the statistics about HIV and AIDS and what was going on with it, we were just dumbfounded. You know how you hear things and don't hear them? After the training, we made it a priority and got involved," Bridges said.

African-Americans account for about half of all AIDS cases in Chicago, though blacks constitute about 38 percent of the city's population, according to The Balm in Gilead, a New York-based organization working with black churches to mobilize around AIDS.

Last year in Illinois, the number of cases among blacks declined 27 percent from the previous year, while cases among whites dropped by nearly half. Nearly 300 blacks died of AIDS, compared with 212 whites, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.

The higher number of AIDS cases among blacks coincides with an increase in cases in recent years among heterosexuals and injection drug users, and HIV is increasingly associated with poverty, a lack of medical access and substance abuse, say public health officials.

"It's no longer a disease we can associate with homosexuality," said Forrest Harris, director of the Kelly Miller Smith Institute on African-American Church Studies at Vanderbilt University. "The churches must do something. And I'm seeing more evidence of churches collaborating with agencies and coming together among themselves to fight AIDS."

Historically, the nation's predominantly black churches have taken a conservative approach to sexual ethics, especially homosexuality.

A 1992 Hampton University survey of 600 African-American pastors showed that 79 percent were categorically opposed to homosexuality and 34.6 percent regarded HIV/AIDS as a divine curse.

Scholars say those attitudes reflect a traditional theology that also can be found in white evangelical Christian churches, as well as a social and cultural perspective more particular to the black community, including a growing concern for the integrity of the family.

"In the black culture, we have not been openly discussing matters of sexuality; this has been innate in our heritage," said Sylvia Jo Oglesby, coordinator of the Keeping Hope Alive Ministry of the Chicago Black Methodists for Church Renewal, a coalition of 27 churches throughout the metropolitan area that has trained laypeople to be spokespeople on HIV and AIDS.

"But the crisis is such (that) our people are dying and more and more cases are being diagnosed in the black community," Oglesby said. "It's a matter of life and death that the church, because it is an institution that has great influence, impart the importance of getting this knowledge out."

Pastor Darrell L. Jackson of Liberty Baptist Church on South King Drive said one reason for the slow uptake by black churches is because "some did not realize the seriousness of it all."

Now, said Jackson, whose church is the neighborhood sponsor for Vision House, which provides housing for people with HIV and AIDS and their families, "we are trying for an all-out wake-up call."

Gail Howze began the HIV/AIDS support ministry at Trinity United Church of Christ in 1993 after her 33-year-old brother, Jeff, died of AIDS. Howze's program has trained 100 church members in AIDS prevention, counseling and visitation. It also trains members of other churches.

"We'd like more (black churches) to follow in our steps, but they are coming aboard few and far between and slowly--too slowly," said Howze, 52, of Glenwood. "People don't want to look at the disease of AIDS. There are a lot of myths and ignorance revolving around the disease."

One 35-year-old Chicago man has been attending Trinity's AIDS support group for the past year.

"My experience with the church 20 years ago was very good," said the man, who asked that his name not be used because of the stigma surrounding the disease, especially for an African-American male. "But as I got older and realized everything wasn't what it seemed to be and the church wasn't necessarily there for me, it was disheartening.

"It's high time the church got involved," he said. "The church has always been instrumental in our community. It's time to be our brother's keeper."
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