c. 2003 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Evangelical leaders meeting at a global AIDS forum issued a statement of conscience Wednesday (June 11) declaring the disease “may be the greatest humanitarian crisis of all time.”

The statement was released as about 200 leaders gathered to meet with representatives of AIDS ministries and officials from Africa, Congress and the White House to foster discussion on how to address the pandemic.

“The church was not the first to the front lines of this conflagration,” the three-page statement reads. “However, we believe the church is uniquely positioned to serve as the pivotal agent in turning the tide against AIDS through its message of reconciliation, faithfulness, hope and compassionate care.”

The statement urged the promotion of sexual abstinence as a Christian response to HIV/AIDS but also acknowledged “a divergence of opinion regarding the use of condoms as one strategy to slow the spread of the disease.”

The two-day forum, which ended Thursday, was sponsored by the National Association of Evangelicals; its humanitarian arm, World Relief; and two other relief agencies, MAP International and World Vision.

Bishop Joshua Banda, deputy chief bishop of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God in Zambia, said nationwide teamwork is necessary to facilitate efforts to move American churches beyond statements and Web sites about AIDS to partnerships between local U.S. congregations and African churches.

“There has to be a team to move this agenda,” he said.

The Rev. Gideon Byamugisha, who is advising World Vision’s HIV/AIDS Hope Initiative in Uganda, said he was impressed by participants who said they were “repenting” for not addressing AIDS sooner.

Byamugisha, who is HIV-positive, said the compassion and the will to fight the disease that are being expressed by American churches give him so much hope that he wrote in his notes, “I was there when AIDS was defeated.”

World Relief President Clive Calver said he finds that when American church leaders see the effects of AIDS firsthand, they are provoked to take a stand. He took two representatives of a Midwestern megachurch to Rwanda and Kenya last December and when they returned, the church pledged $200,000 for each of the next five years to help fight the disease.

“This is about taking from us, the church in America, and giving to our brothers and sisters in Africa that they may rewrite history,” he said.

World Vision President Richard Stearns said his ministry made Washington the seventh stop in its multicity campaign to increase interest in addressing HIV/AIDS among its donors, local clergy and the media. He said his message is not solely for evangelicals or a wider circle of church leaders.

“I don’t care if you’re an atheist or an evangelical, you need to care about AIDS,” he said.

And while the focus of the gathering was on the crisis in Africa, leaders such as Pernessa Seele, CEO of The Balm in Gilead, urged recognition that the church’s assistance is needed in addressing HIV/AIDS in the United States.

“They talk about loving your neighbor,” said Seele, whose New York-based organization encourages African-American churches to support people with AIDS. “I really feel strongly that, yes, we must go across the water and help our neighbor but we must also help the African-American neighbor right here at home.”

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In a separate but related development, the African Council of Religious Leaders brought together top religious officials from 20 African nations for a meeting in Nigeria _ during the same week as the Washington meeting _ to collaborate on fighting HIV/AIDS, reported Ecumenical News International, a Geneva-based religious news agency.

“The main purpose of the forum is to ensure that the positive resources of respective religious faith and communities are put to maximum benefit for the overall good and service of the continent,” said Roman Catholic Archbishop John Onaiyekan of the Nigerian capital of Abuja on Wednesday.

And in Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell, addressing the Global Business Coalitions on HIV/AIDS, warned AIDS could undo progress in combating poverty in poor nations, the Associated Press reported.

“This is a century of great potential promise, yet these promising trends that the United States and other democratic nations have supported can be be reversed if AIDS is left to rage across the globe,” Powell said.

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