Miami Herald - March 3, 2007
Alexandra Alter, aalter@MiamiHerald.com

More than 20 local black churches are participating in a national week of prayer for the healing of AIDS, said Gloria Scott, the coordinator of Churches United to Stop HIV, a faith-based organization in Broward. Since the organization was launched a decade ago, participation has grown from just four congregations to 60 churches in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, Scott said.

While some Catholic and Episcopal churches launched AIDS ministries in the late 1980s and early 1990s, black and evangelical congregations have been slow to respond to the crisis, pastors say.

For decades many pastors dismissed AIDS as the consequence of promiscuity or drug addiction, said Pansy Rose, administrative director of Care Inc., an AIDS ministry at Pentecostal Tabernacle in Miami Gardens.

But ministers in predominantly black neighborhoods have begun targeting AIDS as a crisis that affects entire communities, she said. Pentecostal Tabernacle, whose congregants are mostly black and Caribbean, sends church volunteers to Opa-locka twice a week to distribute condoms and AIDS prevention brochures, Rose said. The church also has a prayer support group for people diagnosed with HIV and AIDS.

"The churches are seeing now that they really do have to get involved," said Teresa Lyles Holmes, a spokeswoman for The Balm in Gilead, a national nonprofit AIDS education and outreach organization that is leading the week of prayer for the 18th year. "The [AIDS] statistics are continuing to rise in our community."

But AIDS activists say too few black churches have taken up the cause. AIDS continues to disproportionately affect minorities. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of blacks living with AIDS in the United States increased by 33 percent between 2001 and 2005 -- a statistic that reflects both the relentless spread of the disease and the fact that people with AIDS are living longer due to improved treatment.

Blacks make up 12 percent of the population but account for about half of AIDS cases in the United States. In Miami-Dade, which has the second highest number of people living with AIDS among large U.S. metropolitan areas, blacks make up half of AIDS cases but only 19 percent of the population, according to the Florida Department of Health's Bureau of HIV/AIDS. Whites account for 13 percent of AIDS cases and make up 21 percent of the population, while Hispanics make up 36 percent of people living with AIDS and close to 60 percent of the population.

Calvin Walker, a retired Air Force engineer who heads the local AIDS counseling organization To Cure is to Care Outreach, said he felt shunned by most religious groups after he tested HIV positive more than 20 years ago.

"I can remember the times when people were abandoned, when people were treated like they weren't human," he said.

Walker's group is partnering with three local Pentecostal churches -- Mt. Zion Apostolic Temple, Bethel Apostolic Church and Pentecostal Tabernacle -- to promote testing, prevention and counseling in black communities. For the first time, these churches are collaborating on a series of prayer services that began on Feb. 25 and run through Wednesday, timed to the national week of prayer for the healing of AIDS sponsored by Balm in Gilead, a national nonprofit that seeks to get faith-communities involved in the fight against AIDS.

Bishop Henry Hood of Bethel Apostolic Church said he has preached about AIDS prevention from the pulpit for three years, but this is the first time he has joined other pastors in an organized effort to address the epidemic. Not everyone is comfortable with the topic, he said.

"Some maybe feel that it's getting too much into the private business of the people," he said. "But we're talking about it now."

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