c. 2007 Religion News Service

Rick Warren says church `here to stay’ on AIDS issue

WASHINGTON (RNS) California megachurch pastor Rick Warren, speaking Wednesday (Dec. 12) at a White House discussion on HIV/AIDS, said the church has been a latecomer to addressing the pandemic but is now “here to stay.”

“The church was late to the table on this issue and we have repented of that, but we are here to stay,” he said. “This is not flavor of the week for me. This is a long-term battle, the eradication of HIV/AIDS.”

Warren and his wife, Kay, recently co-hosted an AIDS summit at their Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. They traveled to Washington to join more than 130 ambassadors, federal officials and ministry leaders for a roundtable discussion hosted by the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives.

Speakers cited examples of international and national partnerships between faith-based groups, businesses and governments to work on prevention and treatment of AIDS and urged continued efforts to reduce the stigma some attach to the disease.

“This is a problem that demands our attention, and the local church is among the actors making a big difference,” said Jay Hein, director of the White House faith-based office.

Marty McGeein, the executive director of the Presidential Advisory Council on AIDS, said groups like the Salvation Army and Esperanza, a Hispanic faith-based organization, are working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on HIV prevention.

“We need faith leaders to address the stigma that continues to allow HIV to spread,” said McGeein, a deputy assistant secretary at HHS.

Dr. Adnan Hammad, director of the ACCESS Community Health & Research Center in Dearborn, Mich., said leaders have to go through a “journey” with religious officials to help them come to a point where they can address the AIDS crisis. Once, he said, mosques burned fliers about AIDS that were left in their buildings.

“Now we screen for HIV in our local mosques,” he said.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Promoter hopes to find more `Jesus’ in Hollywood

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (RNS) Paul Eshleman, founder of the Jesus Film Project, doesn’t mind reciting the figures for how many people have been touched by perhaps the most widely watched movie of all time.

“Jesus” debuted in U.S. theaters in 1979, and since then has been shown in mass screenings to billions worldwide, usually in their native language. The film, which cost $6 million to make, has been translated to more than 1,000 languages and dialects.

Since the “Jesus” film is almost 30 years old, Eshleman says the original may seem a little dated, and he wishes Hollywood would make more films about Jesus.

“The Passion of the Christ,” which cost $30 million to make and has grossed $611 million since its release in 2004, proved that it can be profitable, he said.

“I say let’s do more,” Eshleman said during a recent talk here. “There’s much more openness in Hollywood today because of Mel Gibson taking a chance and putting up his own money to make that film. Hollywood cares about money. Whatever makes money, that’s the kind of movie that will be produced.”

The original film is perhaps best known for the millions of lives it has touched. Campus Crusade for Christ, which took on worldwide distribution of the film, has compiled reports of 210 million people who say they came to faith after watching the film.

It’s hard to say how many became practicing Christians. “Only God knows,” said Eshleman, now vice president of evangelism strategies at Campus Crusade.

Eshleman said he has watched the stunned response of tens of thousands of viewers in Africa, Asia and South America who were otherwise isolated from movie culture. He’s traveled to some 120 countries, always finding “people looking for God.”

“When you’ve never seen a film in your language, to them, it’s staggering,” he said. On one trip to Kenya in 1983, thousands raised their hands to say they had never seen a movie before. About a third of the crowd raised their hands to say they had never seen a light bulb.

In 1998, the Jesus Video Project of Alabama, led by Dr. Bob Cosby, sent copies of the Jesus film on video to 1.7 million homes in Alabama. Several states, including South Carolina and Texas, had similar efforts, but Alabama probably had the most extensive effort, Eshleman said.

Eshleman said he now focuses on outreach to areas that have never had Christian missionaries.

“There are about 600 million people who have no access to the story of Jesus,” he said.

_ Greg Garrison

Quote of the Day: Family of Colorado gunman Matthew Murray

(RNS) “We loved Matthew with all of our hearts, and we are groping for answers as we try in vain to understand the events of last Sunday.”

_ The family of Matthew Murray, the gunman who shot and killed a total of four people at two Christian sites in Colorado, in a statement reported by the Associated Press.

KRE/LF END RNS