Miami Herald; Sunday, November 24, 1991
Tananarive Due, Herald Staff Writer

But until last summer, AIDS was not his business. As far as he could tell, it was a problem for gay white men.

Then a chaplain at Jackson Memorial Hospital invited McRae to visit the AIDS floor. From one room to the next, he was startled by what he saw: black faces. Men, women and teen-agers.

The realization hit him squarely in his soul: AIDS is killing black people. Fast. And the Bible says Jesus helped the sick. From that moment on, his new mission was clear.

"I felt total devastation. It's the same type of devastation today as it was that first day. It never ceases to amaze me," says McRae, who has visited the Jackson AIDS patients nearly every day since July.

With prodding from health care workers and educators, a growing number of black church leaders, like McRae, are beginning to look past the stigma of AIDS -- sex and drugs -- and confront the human devastation close to home.

Blacks make up 46 percent of the more than 6,000 AIDS cases in Dade County, according to the health department. Far more are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. In Broward, 32.7 percent of AIDS patients are black, still disproportionately higher than the black population. Blacks make up 20.5 percent of Dade's population and 15.4 percent of Broward.

Each day now, McRae checks off the names of black AIDS patients on the roster at Jackson. Each day, blacks account for more than half of the AIDS patient population.

But churches' recognition of AIDS as a black community problem has been slow. When Miami AIDS counselor and activist Sonia Singleton learned a few years ago she was infected with HIV, she and her husband were turned away from black churches the way Joseph and Mary were turned away from the inns.

"There's still this fear of what people think. Perhaps it's a fear of losing the rest of the congregation," says Betty Bigby Young, director of Florida Memorial College's AIDS and Drug Abuse Leadership Project, which has sought to teach black ministers about AIDS.

"The minute some of the other members know there's someone in that congregation with AIDS, because they're not educated, they'll walk away."

Singleton says the reception she got at various churches was even more blunt. "It was something they were not willing to deal with, and it was 'a punishment from God,' " says Singleton, who at "thirtysomething" is wheelchair-bound because of AIDS- related cytomegalovirus.

But time has made the problem too close, too big to ignore. And little by little, the black church is taking up the fight, whether by distributing condoms to the congregation or starting outreach ministries for AIDS patients and their families. During slavery, blacks formed churches for freedom of the soul. When blacks needed a place to map out strategies during the civil rights movement, churches were the meeting halls. But when black mothers, wives, husbands and children began losing loved ones to a dreaded disease that, to most people, implies that its victims are homosexual, bisexual or drug users, the church was no longer a sanctuary.

The Rev. Arthur Jackson, of New Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in North Central Dade, recalls that his church committee panicked three years ago when he told them an AIDS patient would be baptized in a communal pool. They agreed to do it, but only with extraordinary disinfecting precautions.

Two years ago, says the Rev. Victor Curry, a workshop on AIDS at his church fell flat.

"No one showed up but the nurses and the facilitators," says Curry, who was pastor at Mt. Carmel Baptist Church at the time. "You can't stand up and say to your congregation the Sunday before, 'Next Sunday, I'm going to preach on AIDS.' You want an empty church?"

Jimmie Brown, pastor of Kerr Memorial United Methodist Church in South Dade, says he's presided at numerous funerals where families too ashamed to talk about AIDS said their loved ones died of unknown causes. Many congregation members have died guarding their secret. Those who did come forward weren't always treated with compassion.

Singleton says her anger at the church helped launch her activism. "People think all they have to do is sing in the choir and go to church and talk about each other, and that makes them a Christian. But Christianity is just what it says, being Christ-like; helping your brother no matter what's wrong," Singleton says. "They quote from the Bible about Sodom and Gomorrah. If this was a disease of sin, everybody in the church would have it."

To fight the stigma, social organizations like the Belafonte-Tacolcy Center have made churches the focal point of AIDS awareness campaigns. Last June, the social service agency sponsored its first Church AIDS Awareness Day Concert. Another one is planned for Dec. 14. Tacolcy has been a driving force in AIDS awareness. A year and a half ago, with grant money from the Centers for Disease Control, Tacolcy field workers began visiting nearby churches to teach a five-hour AIDS course. When pastors are willing, educators even pass out condoms and discuss masturbation, says program manager Brian Browne.

"We would like to hit them all, but initially, when we started this some of the pastors were a little apprehensive about how their congregations would respond." Now, he says, "as word gets around, some pastors are actually calling us."

Some pastors are going even farther. Through the Family Health Center in North Central Dade, ministers like the Rev. Michael T. Symonette of Covenant Missionary Baptist Church in Florida City have taken to the streets to distribute condoms. At Curry's newly formed church, New Birth Baptist, which has been meeting at Northwestern High School, members are planning a program called Healing Hands, where they will visit patients' homes and hospital rooms to show compassion.

Florida Memorial College's AIDS and Drug Abuse Leadership Education Project has targeted black ministers with two forums on how to face the AIDS crisis.

Finally, say activists, the message is reaching a broad audience among black clergy. In May, 200 black churches hosted an AIDS conference at the Joseph Caleb Center featuring a speech by Martin Luther King III. One participant was the Rev. Jimmie Brown, pastor of Kerr Memorial United Methodist Church in South Dade and a Metro-Dade police major. Last Sunday, he dedicated his Hot 105 public affairs radio show to the topic of AIDS.

"There's so much we don't know about it," says Brown. "And the little bit we do know, people are afraid of hearing. But knowledge is power, and we've got a serious epidemic on our hands. So I'm hungry for information and sharing that information."

While some ministers, often younger ones, are pushing AIDS awareness on all fronts, more traditional church leaders still see preaching safe sex as contrary to religious doctrine that prohibits premarital sex -- period.

Rev. James Walthour, of New Providence Missionary Baptist Church, offers weekly AIDS seminars with health care workers at the church. But he doesn't believe in discussing issues such as safe sex during his sermon.

"It's worship time then. It's time to hear the word of God, it's not time to elaborate on that," he says.

Symonette, on the other hand, chooses to be more explicit.

"Even though we preach a message of high strict morals and abstinence, we do know there are people in our congregation who are not abstinent and not married. What do we do? Nothing? We can't just preach abstinence and then say receive the wrath of God."

The Rev. Clarence Clem, leader of the independent Body of Christian Believers church in South Dade, has welcomed AIDS patients to his congregation. Still, he takes an orthodox biblical position on preaching prevention. "Our job as pastors and teachers is to teach them about the Word. Once they know the Word, they make their own decisions, about whether they want to follow the Word or follow something else. . . .

"Even though AIDS is a problem, there is a cure for AIDS. The cure for AIDS is Jesus."

Few pastors, however, have made as personal a commitment as McRae, who is pastor of Mt. Tabor Baptist Church. In his daily visits to patients at Jackson, he speaks in gentle, matter-of-fact tones, an unobtrusive presence in hospital rooms often filled with a pained silence. Because the turnover is so high -- patients come and go for tests or short-term treatment -- he's often meeting each one for the first time.

Instead of putting on disposable surgical gloves as he enters each room, McRae methodically washes his hands so patients can see he won't bring in germs. He calls each patient by name. His eyes search the room for tell-tale signs of caring like flowers or get-well cards. If the patient has visitors, McRae doesn't stay long.

Not all patients are receptive. On this day, one glassy- eyed woman in curlers never takes her eyes off the TV set while McRae is there. She answers his questions in clipped phrases. No, she doesn't have family. No, no one is looking out for her.

Another woman insists she is in the hospital because she was overcome by gas fumes while mowing the lawn. She doesn't want anyone praying for her, she tells McRae. She's sick of that.

McRae understands. "It's not just their fault, it's society, too," he says. "We've made this thing almost impossible to deal with."

But one man on the fifth floor has a Bible open on a table before him, and he eagerly shakes McRae's hand. The man is a prisoner, chained to his bed. He found out he has AIDS three weeks ago.

His name is James Johnson, and he has spent 17 of his 32 years in jail on charges ranging from robbery to drug possession. He began shooting heroin when he was 13. He tells McRae he cried when he heard about Magic Johnson testing HIV- positive. That opened people's eyes, he says.

"You are just as important to this thing as Magic is," McRae tells him. "The people you can reach, Magic can't deal with. I want you to understand that. Magic has never been to prison, so Magic knows absolutely nothing about that."

James Johnson likes McRae. When he is released from jail in a few months and moves in with his sister in Carol City, he hopes to take McRae up on his invitation to visit his church.

"I felt the spirit, and he is a good man and a fair man. And when you read a lot, the Lord blesses you with people," Johnson says.

He hopes to one day speak to schoolchildren about AIDS. He also has a message for other ministers: "Reach out and try to help us."

Not just anyone can. Last week, McRae met a bearded AIDS patient who bemoaned his disease as a punishment from God. He spoke as he fed himself soup, the only food he can eat.

"Some (ministers) would have just jumped on that punishment kick and rode it to the ground," McRae says. Some might have offered false hope by offering to pray that the disease would go away.

But McRae plans to go back to visit the man again. He hopes the man will be there long enough to hear what McRae has to say. You're not being punished, McRae would tell him. You're only sick.

JEFFERY A. SALTER/Miami Herald Staff

REJECTED BY CHURCH: 'It was something they were not willing to deal with, and it was "a punishment from God," ' says Sonia Singleton, at right with a co-worker.

JON KRAL/Miami Herald Staff

REACHING OUT: Rev. George McRae, pastor of Mt. Tabor Baptist Church, talks to James Johnson, 32, at Jackson Hospital.

CAPTION: PHOTO Rev. George McRae talk with James Johnson at Jackson Memorial Hospital, Sonia Singleton wit a co-worker (AIDS)

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