Aids Sexuality And The Black Church

A revealing account of AIDS activism within Black churches in New York City. (Back cover).

The Church Has AIDS explores the social issues and stigmas that fuel the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the African American community. Minister Palmer looks at religious based heterosexism and religiosity and it's impact over such issues as sexuality and sexual orientation in an upfront and in your face manner.

Examining the black church’s response to AIDS, Somebody’s Knocking at Your Door: AIDS and the African-American Church analyzes sexual ethics and homophobia in the black church to provide pastors, social workers, and health professionals with intervention strategies for parishioners or members of the community who have AIDS. By discussing the church’s historic and successful activism and its relationship to the community, along with AIDS statistics, relevant theologies, and other AIDS ministries, this book suggests the benefits of increased church involvement versus other agencies or organizations. Somebody’s Knocking at Your Door will help you develop prevention education and pastoral care programs that will alert individuals to the risks of AIDS and will offer people with AIDS the comfort and assistance they need in coping with the disease. Through the voices of leading clergy, AIDS advocates, and people living with AIDS (PLWAs), this book calls on the African-American church to become more involved in helping communities deal with the disease. Somebody’s Knocking at Your Door offers you ideas on how to improve the lives of individuals with AIDS through the church, including: welcoming PLWAs into the church through announcements by local media, church newsletters, and Sunday bulletins offering AIDS support groups at the church or loaning office space, equipment, or clerical assistance to AIDS organizations recognizing the power of intercessory prayer for PLWAs caring for PLWAs by delivering meals to their homes, preparing meals at the church, and developing a transportation network that will take parishioners to doctor appointments, church, or on recreational outings preparing meals, running errands, housekeeping, handling paperwork, negotiating legal issues, and offering friendship-- possible components of volunteer “buddy programs” for homebound PLWAs training pastors, clergy, and Sunday school teachers to educate ministries on AIDS in the African- American community, sexual intimacy, intravenous drug use and needle sharing, monogamy, community resources, and condom use Since some clergy still believe that AIDS is a “gay” disease, Somebody’s Knocking at Your Door discusses the issue of homosexuality within the church. By analyzing passages from the Bible, the authors refute the belief that homosexuals were neglected by God and undeserving of care and love. This belief, according to the authors, inhibits some churches and individuals from discussing HIV/AIDS because of fear they would also be acknowledging homosexuality. Highlighting AIDS ministries throughout the United States, Somebody’s Knocking at Your Door encourages the African-American church to confront the issue of AIDS and understand that the disease can affect anyone. This book will give you the necessary strategies for starting and implementing AIDS ministries and intervention programs that will educate and support your community.

In the decades since it was identified in 1981, HIV/AIDS has devastated African American communities. Members of those communities mobilized to fight the epidemic and its consequences from the beginning of the AIDS activist movement. They struggled not only to overcome the stigma and denial surrounding a "white gay disease" in Black America, but also to bring resources to struggling communities that were often dismissed as too "hard to reach." To Make the Wounded Whole offers the first history of African American AIDS activism in all of its depth and breadth. Dan Royles introduces a diverse constellation of activists, including medical professionals, Black gay intellectuals, church pastors, Nation of Islam leaders, recovering drug users, and Black feminists who pursued a wide array of grassroots approaches to slow the epidemic's spread and address its impacts. Through interlinked stories from Philadelphia and Atlanta to South Africa and back again, Royles documents the diverse, creative, and global work of African American activists in the decades-long battle against HIV/AIDS.

This book presents a portrait of a congregation that blends therapy and religion, producing a “therapeutic religion” in which: the role and meaning of religion are open to interpretation; religious identities are shaped by life experiences; and healing of the person is underscored. The book also highlights some of the tensions this produces.

On a cold February morning in 1987, amidst freezing rain and driving winds, a group of protesters stood outside of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Amherst, Massachusetts. The target of their protest was the minister inside, who was handing out condoms to his congregation while delivering a sermon about AIDS, dramatizing the need for the church to confront the seemingly ever-expanding crisis. The minister's words and actions were met with a standing ovation from the overflowing audience, but he could not linger to enjoy their applause. Having received threats in advance of the service, he dashed out of the sanctuary immediately upon finishing his sermon. Such was the climate for religious AIDS activism in the 1980s. In After the Wrath of God, Anthony Petro vividly narrates the religious history of AIDS in America. Delving into the culture wars over sex, morality, and the future of the American nation, he demonstrates how religious leaders and AIDS activists have shaped debates over sexual morality and public health from the 1980s to the present day. While most attention to religion and AIDS foregrounds the role of the Religious Right, Petro takes a much broader view, encompassing the range of mainline Protestant, evangelical, and Catholic groups--alongside AIDS activist organizations--that shaped public discussions of AIDS prevention and care in the U.S. Petro analyzes how the AIDS crisis prompted American Christians across denominations and political persuasions to speak publicly about sexuality--especially homosexuality--and to foster a moral discourse on sex that spoke not only to personal concerns but to anxieties about the health of the nation. He reveals how the epidemic increased efforts to advance a moral agenda regarding the health benefits of abstinence and monogamy, a legacy glimpsed as much in the traction gained by abstinence education campaigns as in the more recent cultural purchase of gay marriage. The first book to detail the history of religion and the AIDS epidemic in the U.S., After the Wrath of God is essential reading for anyone concerned with the intersection of religion and public health.

Winner, 2022-2023 Virginia Ramey Mollenkott Award for chapter 5 "Everybody Knew He Was 'That Way': Chicago’s Clarence H. Cobbs, American Religion, and Sexuality during the Post-World War II Period" by Wallace Best This book brings together an interdisciplinary roster of scholars and practitioners to analyze the politics of sexuality within Black churches and the communities they serve. In essays and conversations, leading writers reflect on how Black churches have participated in recent discussions about issues such as marriage equality, reproductive justice, and transgender visibility in American society. They consider the varied ways that Black people and groups negotiate the intersections of religion, race, gender, and sexuality across historical and contemporary settings. Individually and collectively, the pieces included in this book shed light on the relationship between the cultural politics of Black churches and the broader cultural and political terrain of the United States. Contributors examine how churches and their members participate in the formal processes of electoral politics as well as how they engage in other processes of social and cultural change. They highlight how contemporary debates around marriage, gender, and sexuality are deeply informed by religious beliefs and practices. Through a critically engaged interdisciplinary investigation, The Sexual Politics of Black Churches develops an array of new perspectives on religion, race, and sexuality in American culture.