Purpose Driven Life' Author Takes on AIDS Fight
I would like to believe Rick Warren's newfound compassion for people living with HIV/AIDS represented the vanguard of some major shift taking place within America's evangelical movement. If you visit the Saddleback Church's web-site the message appears to be encouraging:
God grabbed my heart two years ago. I knew nothing about HIV/AIDS and harbored the same fears and misconceptions that are commonly held in our culture. As I became aware of the number of children orphaned by AIDS, I began to sob and confess that I did not love and care for the people in this horrific crisis the way our God does. I became convinced that the local church was not responding to this Global giant in a meaningful way. Genuine heart-change and genuine reaching to others in the love of Christ can only be done effectively in and through the church. With a biblical mandate and a softened heart, I personally invite you to join in the adventure of reaching every person with the love of God.
But then read the following from the ABC News article linked above, and you see that leopards, perhaps, do not so rapidly change their spots:
Warren said ministering to people with AIDS isn't about their behavior. "The issue is not, how did you get it? The issue is — what now?" he said.This does not mean evangelicals have changed their views on gays and lesbians.
"People ask me, is homosexuality evil? I say, it's just not natural," Warren said.
As I dug deeper and looked at the agenda for Saddleback's just completed AIDS conference, I discovered that the so-called AIDS experts leading many of the workshops were mostly ultraconservative biblical fundamentalists who advocate discredited and dangerous approaches including 'reparative' (ex-gay) ministry and abstinence-only sex education. For example:
- Chad Thompson - Author of 'Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would', a 'moderate' ex-gay conservative who believes that Christians should 'love the homosexual' while at the same time maintaining an anti-gay theology and psychology that casts homosexual orientation as a sin to be overcome and GLBT rights as something to be defeated at the ballot box.
- Bruce Sonnenberg - of He Intends Victory, another moderate evangelical AIDS ministry which also maintains a biblical fundamentalist view of sexuality along with the false claim that 'according to condom manufacturers and a United Nations study [condoms] are 4% to 13.9% ineffective' in preventing HIV transmission.
- Dick Day - another fundamentalist advocate of abstinence education who downplays the importance of condom use in preventing the spread of HIV and believes that a 'bliblical worldview' is the only thing that will save Africa from AIDS.
I could go on but the roster is becoming quite familiar. Every speaker at the conference has been carefully vetted to ensure consistency with the overarching themes of fundamentalist biblical interpretation, heterosexual normativity, 'ex-gay' evangelism and abstinence activism. Somewhere in there I'm sure you'll also find the message that gays shouldn't be allowed to marry because that would only encourage the further spread of AIDS.
Sadly, the more I read the more I get the sense that this AIDS activism is not ultimately about loving and serving people where they are (although that is the impression that they are wanting to cast). Rather, it is about redirecting and transforming the growing climate of compassion and understanding back into the movement's primary mission, which is to convert the entire world (including people with HIV/AIDS) to its conservative theological-political worldview. A case of 'if you can't beat them, join them'.
Does this mark the onset of a new wave of clever conservative repackaging and repositioning of the same tired old positions on sexuality and mission -- old wine in new wineskins, so to speak? Part of a strategy to deflect criticism from the movement's well-funded and escalating worldwide campaign to roll back GLBT rights?
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