Last year, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock took an HIV/AIDS test in front of his congregation at historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. The senior pastor took the test as part of the National Week of Prayer for Healing of AIDS. The results came minutes later: negative.
Sure it was a publicity stunt, but it also served a purpose, a particularly poignant one given the general perception that the issue of AIDS — along with the dicey issues of sexuality, gays and morality that it encompasses — doesn’t register as it should within black churches.
AIDS plagues society in general and black people in particular. While blacks comprise 14 percent of the U.S. population, they account for almost half of the people living and dying from HIV and AIDS.
When Warnock took that AIDS test, he told the media that “silence, shame and stigma” kept people from being tested. He acknowledged that the black faith community — its leaders — should work to change that. When we talked this week, he used those same words and called the black churches’ response a “mixed bag” as it concerns addressing the disease. It’s not that churches ignore the problem. I know for a fact that many a black church has mounted campaigns, offered HIV prevention classes and provided free testing on their grounds; some ministers have even addressed the issue from the pulpit.
Is it enough?
“It could certainly be much better and much more courageous,” said Warnock, who heads the Atlanta chapter of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS Inc., a nonprofit that focuses on the epidemic. “The passion has always been there. What I haven’t seen enough of is courage, the kind of courage that would lead ministers to talk about sex in a frank, honest way from the pulpit. The kind of courage that would lead parishioners and encourage them to get tested. The kind of courage to address the thorny issues of sexuality and homosexuality. The unholy trinity of silence, shame and stigma prevent that.”
The leadership commission has proposed legislation called the National Black Clergy for Elimination of AIDS Act. Among other things, it calls for the president to declare AIDS an epidemic in the black community; voluntary, routine HIV testing for all health exams, from emergency rooms to clinics and private physician offices; and grants so public health agencies and faith-based groups can conduct outreach programs for testing and prevention. Warnock supports it.
“We’re 25 to 30 years into the epidemic, and the United States has not had a national strategy,” he told me. “The Obama administration has put forth a national strategy for HIV-AIDS, and that’s an important step in the right direction.”
One wonders what kind of reaction Warnock received when he took that AIDS test one Sunday morning at Ebenezer, where the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached. Talk about risk.
“I knew it was,” he told me. “I didn’t get the kind of resistance you’d think from the church.”
Talk about courage.
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