AIDS crisis: a job for churches?

Nothing in Rich Stearns's life had prepared him for the trip to Africa that brought his first close-up encounter with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In the Rikai district of Uganda, he found himself in the homes of orphans living totally alone - child-headed households trying to fend for themselves. They were among 60,000 children in the district who had lost parents to AIDS - and 13 million on the continent.

"This was the greatest tragedy I had ever seen, of a scale that is unimaginable," Mr. Stearns says. "Back in the US, my question was, 'Why is no one talking about this?' " The former corporate executive had just taken the helm of World Vision, a global Christian relief and development agency.

This month World Vision launches a US campaign and 15-city tour to mobilize American support - particularly among evangelical churches - for those affected by the crisis. There's a new awakening within the church community to respond with greater empathy, vigor, and funding to help AIDS-beset African nations halt the still-climbing transmission rates and cope with the resulting humanitarian crisis.

Many Christian churches, particularly mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, have long been advocates for Africa on such issues as poverty, development, and debt relief. Some, too, have pushed for a greater US response to the AIDS crisis. But the response has been slow in coming.

A survey last year for World Vision to gauge US support for children orphaned by AIDS shows the size of the task ahead. Only 5 percent of the US public said they would "definitely" donate money. An analysis of Americans' willingness to help address HIV/AIDS in general showed 11 percent were supportive, 27 percent indifferent, and 40 percent unsupportive.

"Americans' awareness of the HIV/AIDS crisis is a mile wide, but their personal commitment to fixing it is an inch deep," says David Kinnaman of the Barna Research Group, which conducted the survey.

Evangelical Christians were even less likely to contribute to orphans - only 3 percent - and were among the groups least likely to support AIDS causes.

"In the church, the view has been almost judgmental, some even saying it was God's judgment - which is so erroneous - and it continues to paralyze the response," says Horace Smith, pastor of Apostolic Faith Church in Chicago, who is also a pediatrician. "It is wrong to think that to support people in need is to endorse certain lifestyles. Our call is to love people unconditionally."

A prominent minister whose thinking has been transformed is Bruce Wilkinson, author of the bestseller "Prayer of Jabez." "I had positioned the issue of AIDS in a little box to the side and didn't want to deal with it," he says. Now he has moved his family to South Africa, where he is working with local churches and pastors on their efforts to reverse the AIDS trend line. He's also challenging American evangelical pastors to get on a plane to Africa and form partnerships with local churches. He says some 1,600 are in the process of doing so.

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