25 Years Later/Black Church Realizes AIDS Crisis

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Filed under: “Too Late, Who Cares”

Half (49%) of all new HIV cases are African American, we only make up 13.5% of the US population. Please help me to understand why after 25 Years and hundreds of thousands of deaths later, the black church FINALLY decides it is now time to do something about HIV/AIDS in the black community? Could it beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee MONEY? To a large extent, in my opinion, the black church is a big part of the REASON HIV is so rampant in our community. Remember the campaign “Silence=Death”
“We have a time bomb on our hands,” says Debra Fraser-Howze, the commission’s president. “Um, I’ve never heard of a 25 year old time bomb, have you?” “I think that the black church will openly admit that they have not done enough in regard to HIV and AIDS, and yes, there are still churches and pastors in the black community and white community who refuse to deal with this issue because of homophobia, because it deals with sex and because it deals with drug use. Give them funding and they will change their minds…Yet there are those same churches who have reports of molested choir boys, ministers leading double lives and theft of funded money issues…. NEW YORK — In what organizers call a historic gathering of African-American clergy, dozens of ministers are gathering this week with medical professionals and lawmakers to map a plan to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic sweeping the black community.
The two-day meeting, convened by the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, will bring together some of the nation’s most prominent pastors and representatives of the National Medical Association, Congressional Black Caucus and other organizations.
“Since the movement of the ’60s, we haven’t seen a gathering of African-American clergy persons like this around a specific issue,” says the Rev. Calvin Butts III, senior pastor of Harlem’s historic Abyssinian Baptist Church, who is co-chairing the meeting with Bishop T.D. Jakes of Dallas. “At that time, it was civil rights and human rights. Now it’s a major health crisis which is impacting our community.” ... edoyee, YOU THINK? Some religious leaders and AIDS activists say that many black churches have not done enough to address the crisis.