26.04.2004
Churches Cautioned against a Moralistic Approach to HIV/AIDS
Justification by Grace through Faith a Basis for Churches to Counter all Kinds of DiscriminationODESSA, Ukraine/GENEVA, 26 April 2004 (LWI) - The director of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for Theology and Studies (DTS), Rev. Dr Karen Bloomquist, has cautioned churches against a moralistic approach to HIV/AIDS. People living with HIV/AIDS were already pervasively stigmatized and often labeled as sinners or, even worse, their affliction was viewed as God’s punishment, she told representatives of LWF European member churches attending a regional consultation in the Ukrainian city of Odessa.
The DTS director noted that in many cases, it was the people affected by HIV/AIDS who had been sinned against as their families and society subjected them to lack of love and injustice. Moralistic approaches, she cautioned, would only drive those affected further away from the churches. In addition, such approaches contradicted what is at the core of the faith Lutherans profess. All human beings are created in the image of God; God-given dignity applies to all regardless of their faith, Bloomquist stressed in her address titled “Theological-ethical Perspectives Evoked by the HIV/AIDS Crisis.”
God’s love, as experienced through Jesus Christ, “impels us to respond with love toward any human being in need, especially those who are suffering,” Bloomquist told the HIV/AIDS consultation attended by church leaders, women and youth leaders, as well staff from international and national non-governmental organizations. The many diaconal initiatives such as care and support toward those living with HIV/AIDS, are important, she said.
Churches, said Bloomquist, are called to act out of the heart of Lutheran theology, out of justification by grace through faith. She noted that many of the writings of the apostle Paul and reformer Martin Luther challenged the moralistic distinctions between those people who are considered to be more sinful than others. “All have sinned and are in need of God’s mercy and forgiveness,” she declared. She underscored justification by grace through faith as the fundamental basis for the churches to oppose and work to counter all kinds of discrimination, ostracism and exclusion which continue to kill people.
The DTS director pointed out that the New Testament repeatedly bears witness that Jesus reached out to [sex workers] and to others whom society viewed as sinners. In the Beatitudes, Jesus declared blessed those who were poor, hungry, sorrowful, meek, hated and persecuted. He also rebuked those who considered themselves justified, she said.
Through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the churches recognized a God who is in solidarity with all who suffer, including those affected by the scourge of HIV/AIDS. The resurrection was the heart of the church’s proclamation and life, also in relation to the challenges of HIV/AIDS, Bloomquist stressed.
Bishop Geza Erniša, Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovenia, pointed out that it was not a sin for someone to be HIV positive, but it was a sin not to help people living with HIV/AIDS. The church must be a witness and seek answers to all issues that concern society, he said.
That the LWF consultation on HIV/AIDS was being held in premises in Odessa where worship normally takes place, was a clear sign that people living with HIV/AIDS were a direct concern for the churches, said Bishop Dr Edmund Ratz, German Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ukraine (DELKU).
Rev. Doris Bazlen, one of the coordinators of the AIDS chaplaincy of the Evangelical Church in Württemberg, Germany, said the churches’ task was to strive to ensure that every person, irrespective of the part of the world in which they lived, had access to anti-retroviral therapy. Every person who died because they had no access to this life-saving treatment was one too many, she noted.
The April 20 to 25 consultation organized by the LWF in cooperation with DELKU, was the last of four regional conferences under the LWF global campaign against HIV/AIDS, launched in 2002. (651 words)
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