Faith in the Time of AIDS

Faith in the Time of AIDS PDF

Author: Marian Burchardt

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1137477776

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This book describes how Christian communities in South Africa have responded to HIV/AIDS and how these responses have affected the lives HIV-positive people, youth and broader communities. Drawing on Foucault and the sociology of knowledge, it explains how religion became influential in reshaping ideas about sexuality, medicine and modernity.

Religion and AIDS in Africa

Religion and AIDS in Africa PDF

Author: Jenny Trinitapoli

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-07-09

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0199714606

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The first comprehensive empirical account of how religion affects the interpretation, prevention, and mitigation of AIDS in Africa, the world's most religious continent.

The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States

The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1993-02-01

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0309046289

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Europe's "Black Death" contributed to the rise of nation states, mercantile economies, and even the Reformation. Will the AIDS epidemic have similar dramatic effects on the social and political landscape of the twenty-first century? This readable volume looks at the impact of AIDS since its emergence and suggests its effects in the next decade, when a million or more Americans will likely die of the disease. The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States addresses some of the most sensitive and controversial issues in the public debate over AIDS. This landmark book explores how AIDS has affected fundamental policies and practices in our major institutions, examining: How America's major religious organizations have dealt with sometimes conflicting values: the imperative of care for the sick versus traditional views of homosexuality and drug use. Hotly debated public health measures, such as HIV antibody testing and screening, tracing of sexual contacts, and quarantine. The potential risk of HIV infection to and from health care workers. How AIDS activists have brought about major change in the way new drugs are brought to the marketplace. The impact of AIDS on community-based organizations, from volunteers caring for individuals to the highly political ACT-UP organization. Coping with HIV infection in prisons. Two case studies shed light on HIV and the family relationship. One reports on some efforts to gain legal recognition for nonmarital relationships, and the other examines foster care programs for newborns with the HIV virus. A case study of New York City details how selected institutions interact to give what may be a picture of AIDS in the future. This clear and comprehensive presentation will be of interest to anyone concerned about AIDS and its impact on the country: health professionals, sociologists, psychologists, advocates for at-risk populations, and interested individuals.

After the Wrath of God

After the Wrath of God PDF

Author: Anthony M. Petro

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-06-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0199391297

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On a cold February morning in 1987, amidst freezing rain and driving winds, a group of protesters stood outside of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Amherst, Massachusetts. The target of their protest was the minister inside, who was handing out condoms to his congregation while delivering a sermon about AIDS, dramatizing the need for the church to confront the seemingly ever-expanding crisis. The minister's words and actions were met with a standing ovation from the overflowing audience, but he could not linger to enjoy their applause. Having received threats in advance of the service, he dashed out of the sanctuary immediately upon finishing his sermon. Such was the climate for religious AIDS activism in the 1980s. In After the Wrath of God, Anthony Petro vividly narrates the religious history of AIDS in America. Delving into the culture wars over sex, morality, and the future of the American nation, he demonstrates how religious leaders and AIDS activists have shaped debates over sexual morality and public health from the 1980s to the present day. While most attention to religion and AIDS foregrounds the role of the Religious Right, Petro takes a much broader view, encompassing the range of mainline Protestant, evangelical, and Catholic groups--alongside AIDS activist organizations--that shaped public discussions of AIDS prevention and care in the U.S. Petro analyzes how the AIDS crisis prompted American Christians across denominations and political persuasions to speak publicly about sexuality--especially homosexuality--and to foster a moral discourse on sex that spoke not only to personal concerns but to anxieties about the health of the nation. He reveals how the epidemic increased efforts to advance a moral agenda regarding the health benefits of abstinence and monogamy, a legacy glimpsed as much in the traction gained by abstinence education campaigns as in the more recent cultural purchase of gay marriage. The first book to detail the history of religion and the AIDS epidemic in the U.S., After the Wrath of God is essential reading for anyone concerned with the intersection of religion and public health.

When God Stood Up

When God Stood Up PDF

Author: James Cantelon

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2010-01-20

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 0470739185

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THE VICTIMS OF THE AIDS PANDEMIC IN AFRICA ARE FAR MORE NUMEROUS THAN THE DEAD AND DYING. MILLIONS OF ORPHANS AND WIDOWS ARE TRYING TO SURVIVE IN EXTREME POVERTY AND SOCIAL OPRESSION. JAMES CANTELON, A CANADIAN PASTOR, HAS CHALLENGED CHURCHES IN AFRICA-AND IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES-TO UNITE IN A COMMON CAUSE TO BRING RELIEF TO SUFFERING OF INTOLERABLE MAGNITUDE. When God Stood Up is the story of a remarkable journey that affirms God's presence in the most ravaged places on Earth. Millions of our fellow human beings are depending on just to be "God's hand extended." Read about their stories and be humbled. "The book puts HIV/AIDS into terrifying perspective. Jim and Kathy Cantelon are the face of God's love to so many who are so desperate." --Deborah Grey, MP (ret'd). "As Jim narrates his accelerated response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, it reminds one of the image G.K. Chesterton captured of St. Francis: always running.' Within a matter of weeks, the author catapults out of Vancouver to the Durban colloquium, to hospitals and church events across the sub-Sahara-you sometimes look for a page to catch your breath! Come to think of it, with the awesome destruction of human life described here, what could be mode appropriate? When God Stood Up carries a sense of that which it issues a call for: breathless haste." --John & Ruth Kerr, Trans-Africa Theological College, Kitwe, Zambia "Posturing God as standing up sends readers a signal: beware. Coddled for years by an image of a benign and permissive deity, Cantelon gives a yank on our leash of grace. Human tragedy, he reminds us, isn't just unfortunate-it's the stuff of life that strikes at the very heart of faith, a fait he asserts that should neither be smug nor comfortable. This God of justice makes it clear that those who call themselves by his name are to do no less than embrace justice." --Brian Stiller, President, Tyndale University & Seminary, Toronto "This is more than the story of the calling of a man to a god-sized mission. It is an informative, unfolding drama of perhaps the most critical issue of our time-AIDS in Africa. As Jim has cast and recast his vision, people all over the world have been caught and reeled in to unexpected roles, in response to the pandemic. My husband and I are in that number. Be warned as you read, you too may be stirred to action!" --Moira Brown, Co-host, 100 Huntley Street, CTS-TV

Hidden Mercy

Hidden Mercy PDF

Author: Michael J. O'Loughlin

Publisher: Broadleaf Books

Published: 2021-11-30

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1506467717

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The 1980s and 1990s, the height of the AIDS crisis in the United States, was decades ago now, and many of the stories from this time remain hidden: A Catholic nun from a small Midwestern town packs up her life to move to New York City, where she throws herself into a community under assault from HIV and AIDS. A young priest sees himself in the many gay men dying from AIDS and grapples with how best to respond, eventually coming out as gay and putting his own career on the line. A gay Catholic with HIV loses his partner to AIDS and then flees the church, focusing his energy on his own health rather than fight an institution seemingly rejecting him. Set against the backdrop of the HIV and AIDS epidemic of the late twentieth century and the Catholic Church's crackdown on gay and lesbian activists, journalist Michael O'Loughlin searches out the untold stories of those who didn't look away, who at great personal cost chose compassion--even as he seeks insight for LGBTQ people of faith struggling to find a home in religious communities today. This is one journalist's--gay and Catholic himself--compelling picture of those quiet heroes who responded to human suffering when so much of society--and so much of the church--told them to look away. These pure acts of compassion and mercy offer us hope and inspiration as we continue to confront existential questions about what it means to be Americans, Christians, and human beings responding to those most in need.

Death in a Church of Life

Death in a Church of Life PDF

Author: Frederick Klaits

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2010-02-08

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0520945840

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This deeply insightful ethnography explores the healing power of caring and intimacy in a small, closely bonded Apostolic congregation during Botswana’s HIV/AIDS pandemic. Death in a Church of Life paints a vivid picture of how members of the Baitshepi Church make strenuous efforts to sustain loving relationships amid widespread illness and death. Over the course of long-term fieldwork, Frederick Klaits discovered Baitshepi’s distinctly maternal ethos and the "spiritual" kinship embodied in the church’s nurturing fellowship practice. Klaits shows that for Baitshepi members, Christian faith is a form of moral passion that counters practices of divination and witchcraft with redemptive hymn singing, prayer, and the use of therapeutic substances. An online audio annex makes available examples of the church members’ preaching and song.