What's Church got to do with it?
Faith communities play an important role in nurturing or undermining stigma and discrimination around HIV and AIDS. We can also play an important role in prevention, education, and pastoral care.
The Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance's HIV and AIDS Campaign has several free resources to assist you in educational efforts in your church community.
How to get your church and community involved in effective HIV prevention:
http://www.e-alliance.ch/hiv_prevention_church.jsp
What the religious community needs to do:
1. Educate its pastors and its congregations that the reality of HIV/AIDS is a biological problem, not a theological problem. It is a medical issue, not a moral issue.
2. The religious community needs to hold workshops and teach-ins with its members of all ages, even its seniors about sexually transmitted diseases and how HIV/AIDS is spread.
3. Congregations need to form HIV/AIDS ministries to serve families of people who are infected.
4. The religious community needs to lobby the political realm just as it did back in the civil rights movement. It needs to lobby politicians to get the laws changed so that the poor and the needy can have access to anti-retroviral drugs at generic prices.
Nobody Should Have to Die This Way by Jeremiah Wright
commentary for the Black AIDS Institute
AIDS Awareness Days
Your entire faith community will benefit from observing AIDS Awareness Days.
- World AIDS Sunday is usually observed on the Sunday closest to World AIDS Day , December 1.
- Balm in Gilead sponsors an annual Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS in March, which supports education, prevention, and advocacy around issues of HIV and AIDS.
- National HIV Testing Day and other HIV and AIDS Awareness days will also provide great opportunities to do education around prevention.
More Faith-based HIV and AIDS resources
How to Talk about HIV Prevention in the Church:
http://www.e-alliance.ch/hivaids_exploringsolutions.jsp
Combating Stigma and Discrimination:
http://www.e-alliance.ch/stigmacd/index.html
Keep the Promise (PDF teaching resource):
http://www.e-alliance.ch/media/media-6297.pdf
The United Church of Christ AIDS Curriculum is also available for free.
Affirming Persons--Saving Lives: http://www.ucc.org/health/hivaids/apsl/
The National Catholic AIDS Network provides its Many Threads, One Weave resource kit for free download on-line:
http://www.ncan.org/resources/index.cfm
The Lutheran AIDS network offers a free youth AIDS curriculum called, Brokenness to Wholeness:
http://www.lutheranaids.net/?q=node/12
Also from the Lutheran AIDS Network, we have, "Stop, Think AIDS and Go!" HIV/AIDS Awareness Game:
http://www.lutheranaids.net/?q=aids_game
The National Episcopal AIDS Coalition provides their Youth ministry curriculum, Being Christian in the Age of AIDS, for free:
www.neac.org/articles/000137.html
More HIV and AIDS Ministries
United Church of Christ HIV and AIDS Network
http://www.ucc.org/ucan/
Metropolitan Community Church HIV and AIDS Ministry
www.mccgham.org
National Catholic AIDS Network
http://www.ncan.org
Presbyterian AIDS Network
http://www.pcusa.org/phewa/pan.htm
Lutheran AIDS Network
http://www.lutheranaids.net/
Balm in Gilead
http://www.balmingilead.org/
National Episcopal AIDS Coalition
http://www.neac.org/
What's Chuch got to do with it?
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