Christian Inertia Borders On Moral Malfeasance

As a theological educator and pastor, I deplore the general malaise, bordering on moral malfeasance, evident among religious teachers, scholars and church leaders in the United States. Addressing global HIV/AIDS is simply not a priority in most churches and theological schools. Unfortunately this pattern also persists among Christians in many other places in the world.

More than 25 years into this global pandemic, the deafening silence of Christian ecclesial and academic communities has contributed to over 25 million people dead and more than 40 million infected. In general, theological educators have not become seriously involved in mobilizing the church of Jesus Christ to be on the forefront of HIV/AIDS education, prevention, care and treatment. Throughout the world for far too long a conspiracy of silence has persisted about how HIV/AIDS is changing the world and destroying God’s family on earth.

No one has articulated this silent inertia more clearly than Musa W. Dube, New Testament scholar from Botswana. With a Vanderbilt Ph.D. and teaching credentials in the USA as well as her home country, she has noted the total failure of professors of religion in the West to include the topic in their teaching, their specialized academic conferences, their publications, and their preaching.

I concur with Dube when she laments that “wonderful liberation theories and methods” in American institutions are “meaningless” when “confined to the academic halls and divorced from social realities.” She is absolutely right when she notes that despite the great human suffering and death, most academic and church conferences, research books, and course outlines remain “silent towards the most outstanding issue of our time.”[i]

Instead of preparing new pastors and priests, and re-training current lay and clerical leadership, in positive ways of HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and treatment, the church and theological seminaries have been reluctant to become involved. A genocide of indifference has prevailed. Dube declares that:

". . . the disaster of the HIV/AIDS global crisis does not lie in the huge statistical numbers which inform us about the 40 million people who are living with HIV; the 22 million people who have died of AIDS; the 15 million children who have been orphaned, and the stigmatization of the infected and the affected. For me, the disaster lies in the billions who have not responded--the billions who have not made it their business to be part of the solution in working for a healed and a healing world; namely a world that takes full responsibility for HIV/AIDS prevention, provision of quality care, provision of affordable treatment, eradication of stigma, the reduction of the impact of HIV/AIDS and addressing the social injustice that promotes the epidemic. It is one of those moments that make me better understand the statement of Jesus, when he said:'Don't cry for me, cry for yourselves.'"[ii]

The moral question that should most trouble conscientious Christians is why have we failed to respond to our sisters and brothers in need.

[i] Musa W. Dube, “The Conspiracy of Hope: Yea Still We Rise!” in Rethinking Mission, Vol. 2, No. 3, Autumn, 2004.
[ii] Ibid.