The bishop opened with a greeting and then said what I knew was coming: “Well, when a duck dies, ducks come to the funeral. When a chicken dies, chickens come to the funeral. And by looking at who has come to this funeral today we all know what Robert was!”
Robert was a gay man who had passed away from AIDS. I have often and still experience much shame as I listen to hate-filled rhetoric (and most times criminally hypocritical) from the black pulpit that polarizes and exploits members of our churches when it comes to the issues of sexuality, sex and HIV/AIDS. I am almost 35 years-old and have been in the church all my life and I have been to as many funerals for men and women under the age of 45 who have died from HIV/AIDS as the number of years I have been alive.
Most, if not all of these deaths were the effect of specific and harmful behaviors that were nurtured in the hetero-self-hating and homophobic society of the black Pentecostal church. In my twenty some odd years of observing and doing care work within the church, my conclusion is that the black church has been complicit in the spreading of HIV/AIDS because of our deafening silence on this issue that has never escaped us.
From day one the issue has been seated in our pews and we have most often looked away. Our conscious sin has been to allow young lives to end because of our phobias, biases and bigotry. The deeper subconscious sin still left unattended to, may be found in the question: Why are we okay with this?
As I have observed in church, there is a certain brand of Pentecostalism that will not ask questions of the Spirit when challenged with circumstances for which there is no easy, comfortable or textbook answer. This brand will not ask the necessary questions due to fear of the answers and the adjustments we would have to make to serve lovingly and caringly those marginalized within our communities. My anger burns white hot when I begin to ponder the waste of human life due to the church’s attitudes and the apathy in which we are enveloped.
Over the next ten years, the face of HIV/AIDS will continue to be black and brown in America and it will continually be disproportionately among the impoverished. Even broader, we must understand that we are global citizens and that we have a responsibility to advocate for all people of the world who are suffering from the virus and yet have no adequate medical care. The church must find the courage to be spirit-filled, free and proactive in engaging the federal government not just for funding for testing, but to advocate for urban communities – especially those that are economically depressed and those that produce citizens with abject social and sexual mores resulting in the spread of the virus.
We must take steps toward a more balanced and practical strategy. In the next ten years, the black church must forward the conversation about sexual orientation, the meaning of harm reduction and humane utilities of disease prevention. If the black church is not passing out condoms with the offering envelopes it will signal that instead of preserving the lives we see, we have foolishly become enamored with the soul only for the afterlife which when I think about it may be the gravest sin of all.