Action Call to Faith Leaders

posted: 08/04/2011

Religious leaders around the world are urged to really think about how faith communities help or hinder support for people living with HIV, in a new report.

The report, Prayer alone is not enough – people’s stories of HIV and Faith was published on World Health Day, 7 April. It gives first-hand accounts of people living with HIV, and of people working to support people with HIV, in poor and marginalised communities in Zimbabwe, Yemen, and El Salvador.

"The stories are deeply personal, often brutally honest and challenging, and share emotions that range from grief to encouragement, from despair to hope," said Christine Allen, Progressio's executive director.

Wide range of people

Interviewees, including Christian and Muslim faith leaders, child heads of household, sex workers, former gang members, and development workers, reflect movingly on their own personal experiences of faith in the light of HIV.

• Jane, a married woman living with HIV in Zimbabwe, said: "People living with HIV don't want church members to know because they will be stigmatised."
• Abdulla Mohammed El Qadesi, an imam in Yemen recalls: "I used to think HIV was a punishment from God… I changed my mind about it".
• Ana Deysi in El Salvador said: "As a person of faith working in the HIV community, I consider the HIV community to be my community."

Human Face for the Future
The report gives a human face to a diverse group of people living with HIV in difficult circumstances - all of whom have shared their experiences in the hope of building understanding.

Faith matters with HIV
Their personal accounts demonstrate that the attitudes and behaviours of faith communities really do matter and can make the difference between people living with HIV being able to access care, support and treatment or not.

"Mobilising faith communities to break the silence, confront stigma and condemn discrimination surrounding HIV is essential if we are to overcome this barrier" the report concludes.

Prayer alone is not enough is an invaluable insight to anyone willing to examine their own attitudes and reflect on how we, and faith communities especially, can play a positive part in an effective response to HIV.

Faith and Religion Connections

posted: 09/12/2010

A new UK HIV and Faiths Directory, called HIV Connecting with Faith is now out. This directory, from African Health Policy Network, highlights Muslim and Christian organisations that provide support and - or services for people living with HIV.

The directory is useful and is for health-care professionals, faith communities, community based organisations, formal and informal support groups, statutory and voluntary sector organisations, funders and people living with/affected by HIV.

Eunice Sinyemu, Head of Policy and Deputy CEO at AHPN said

“This directory is an invaluable resource and easy to use. Because faith is an integral part of many people living with and affected by HIV, faith leaders can contribute significantly to the reduction of HIV related stigma and discrimination by providing support to people living with and affected by HIV”.

Faith in NW England 

The only entry in the Directory from NW England is 

Holy Innocents, Fallowfield, Manchester
Church of England (catholic)
Bill Raines, Rector
Wilbraham Road, Fallowfield
Manchester
M14 6JZ
0161 224 1310 / 0161 224 0535
This church provides Counselling / Advice, promotes HIV testing, offers 1:1 emotional support and has information and resources on HIV


The HIV Connecting with Faith directory can be downloaded from AHPN here.

The faith directory is part of AHPN’s faith Changing Perspectives’ campaign.

Catholics and World AIDS Day

posted: 19/11/2009

‘Can you drink the cup that I will drink? - HIV/AIDS: meeting the challenges, exploring the questions’ was a lecture given earlier this year to Catholics for AIDS Prevention and Support (CAPS) at Westminster Cathedral Hall, London.

Professor Margaret Farley's (Yale University divinity school, USA) lecture was followed later by a conference on HIV/AIDS, at Roehampton University, London. Her lecture and the response are here.
 

She spoke about the All-Africa Conference: Sister to Sister (AACSS) organisation in sub-Saharan Africa, about the situation in sub-Saharan regions and countries, about the guiding principles that have shaped the work of Sister to Sister, and about the sources of hope that sustain the women in African with whom they work.

‘Can you drink the cup that I will drink? - HIV/AIDS: meeting the challenges, exploring the questions’ lecture

All-Africa Conference: Sister to Sister (AACSS)

Catholic HIV and other worship materials

World AIDS Day Resources: Positive Rites is a 90+ page booklet of worship resources, many of which deal particularly with previous World AIDS Day themes. It also contains some of the services used in past years at Southwark Anglican Cathedral, CAFOD/Caritas events throughout the world.
£3.00 each, or £5.00 (for two, incl. p/p) from Catholics for AIDS Prevention & Support (CAPS), PO Box 24632, London E9 6XF - 020 8986 0807 - e-mail  

These websites have HIV and worship materials you can download:

Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) -
Christian Aid
Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance 
The Balm in Gilead 
The African American Lectionary 

This website, Catholic Relief Services College, has academic resources for Catholics and others interested in HIV and the church's response, including a series of 7 videos. 

Positive Catholics is a peer support network of men and women, who are living with HIV and have a catholic faith.        email
 

Prayer or Medicine? leaflet

posted: 16/11/2009

Mildmay, the international HIV charity based in London, have a leaflet that may be useful for some Christians with HIV concerned about treatment.

It deals with prayer, HIV treatments, and praying for healing. It quotes from the bible to show that using HIV treatments fits with Christian belief.

'It doesn't show lack of faith when we use medicines. Medicines are not different from everything else in creation: God gave them to us to use.'

"For everything that God created was good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer."

1 Timothy 4 v4. New International Bible

Prayer or Medicines for HIV  leaflet

Mildmay

Compulsory Sex / HIV Education

posted: 06/11/2009

The government has announced that sex education will become compulsory for all schools, including lessons on gay relationships, and sexually transmitted infections such as HIV. But this will only be compulsory from age 15. Before that age, parents can stop their child attending any sex education lessons.

From September 2011, the law will change to make it compulsory for all young people in England to learn about sex between the ages of 15 and 16, even if their parents object. In religious schools the sex education the state requires to be taught to all can be contradicted by the religious teaching.

Learn from 5

Sex education will start from the age of five. Primary school children will learn about their bodies and puberty, along with marriages, divorces and civil partnerships. Pupils in secondary schools will learn about contraception, gay and lesbian relationships and HIV, as well as the emotional implications of having sex. Faith schools, like other schools, will be forced to teach about homosexuality, civil partnerships, divorce and abortion.

Religious spin and opt outs

However, faith schools, mainly Roman Catholic and Church of England, can teach this sex education in line with their beliefs and teachings. They are required to educate pupils about issues such as abortion and the tolerance of homosexuality, but may present them in congruity with religious teachings. Teachers in religious schools will still be free to tell pupils that sex outside marriage, homosexuality or using contraception are 'wrong', because the legislation will include a clause allowing schools to apply their "context" "values" and "ethos" to lessons.
 

One-third of schools in England are faith schools and this means pupils could be taught about same-sex relationships, while learning that they are against their religion. About 0.04% of pupils are withdrawn from sex education classes, usually on religious grounds.

Opt-out until 15
Currently, parents are allowed to withdraw children from sex education lesson up to the age of 19. This will now change to 15 to ensure that pupils have at least one year of sex education before they reach the age of consent.
 

Ed Balls, the schools secretary, said: “You can teach the promotion of marriage, you can teach that you shouldn't have sex outside of marriage, what you can't do is deny young people information about contraception outside of marriage. The same arises in homosexuality. Some faiths have a view about what in religious terms is right and wrong – what they can’t do though is not teach the importance of tolerance.”

HIV - welcome and disappointment

The National AIDS Trust welcomed the plans, saying that all young people have a right to information about sexual issues.
Chief executive Deborah Jack said: "We are pleased that discussion of same sex relationships and HIV is included in the PSHE education programme of study. HIV is a serious long-term condition and young gay men remain the group of young people most at risk. In the past young gay men have often been ignored in sex and relationships lessons in schools and the result has been a rise in young gay men being diagnosed with HIV.”

George House Trust is very disappointed that all young people will not have an equal right to high quality accurate sex education. Some young people will have two-faced lessons (the national sex education curriculum, and their church’s teachings against this), and a minority will get nothing until they are 15, if their parents withdraw them from sex education. By that age much of the damage caused by ignorance and misinformation will have already been done.

The changes, due in autumn 2011, are better than patchwork mess we have now. The state believes sex education is serious enough to be a compulsory part of the national curriculum, but has allowed religious schools to contradict points being taught and pupils to be kept away until they are 15. This isn't an evidence-based sex education policy.

As a result of this half-hearted change, young people with religious backgrounds, especially teenage males, will continue to be far more vulnerable to HIV, STIs, and females will also face unwanted pregnancies.

Catholics respond

A spokesman from the the Catholic Education Service for England and Wales said PSHE was "vital". He said: "It enables factual information from reliable sources to be communicated and misinformation from peers or street culture or exploitation to be avoided. While disappointed that legal encumbrances mean that a blanket right of withdrawal can no longer apply, we are pleased that the government has recognised that the right of withdrawal in formative years is most critical and is therefore providing for the ability of parents to opt out of SRE up to the age of 15. We will continue to firmly uphold the position that parental rights remain vital, particularly but not exclusively in those most formative and critical years up until the age of 15. As age and growing independence brings young people ever closer to pressures, advertising and coercion to behaviour that can undermine the healthy life of young people, we are comforted in the knowledge that our schools and colleges will do an exceptional job in providing sex and relationships education, set within the teachings of the Catholic Church."

Poll backed compulsion

The review was followed by a government-commissioned poll of 1,791 adults and 1,661 parents into whether all pupils should be taught about sex, and consultations with faith groups. A fifth of the parents said parents should never be able to withdraw their children from sex education lessons, whatever age the children were. A third said parents should be allowed to exclude their children from sex education classes if they were aged 11 or under. As part of the legislation, children will also be taught about drugs and alcohol, how to tackle cyber-bullying, resist pressure to join gangs and manage their bank accounts.

The new sex education lessons will not begin for another TWO years.

Source 2
 

Joe Galliano, a gay man, talks about how these new sex education rules will help all children feel comfortable with their sexuality – except gay lads and lasses in faith schools.