[Dialogue] 12/08/2022, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Irene Monroe: World AIDS Day 2022; Spong revisited

Thu Dec 8 07:50:39 PST 2022

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screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv1077299068 #yiv1077299068templateBody .yiv1077299068mcnTextContent, #yiv1077299068 #yiv1077299068templateBody .yiv1077299068mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv1077299068 #yiv1077299068templateFooter .yiv1077299068mcnTextContent, #yiv1077299068 #yiv1077299068templateFooter .yiv1077299068mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} By Rev. Irene Monroe  
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World AIDS Day 2022 
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|  Essay by Rev. Irene Monroe
December 8, 2022
"For God shows no partiality."
Romans 2:11 ESV

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
March 25, 1966 
Medical Committee for Human Rights 

December 1st is World AIDS Day! With the COVID pandemic foremost on the minds of many, HIV/ AIDS seems like a distant problem. A POZ Poll asked its readers, "Are you participating in any World AIDS Day 2022 events?" On 11/28, when I responded to the poll questions, the results were 20 percent said "yes," 20 percent said "I don't know," and 60 percent said "no." 

In 1988, the World Health Organization designated the day to pause and reflect on the magnitude of the devastating effect this disease continues to have on domestic and global communities. Much of the focus still is on developing countries. However, African Americans are still disproportionately affected by the HIV epidemic. And the epidemic is heavily concentrated in urban enclaves like Boston, Detroit, New York, Newark, Washington, D.C., and the Deep South.

In February, on National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day 2022, "POZ" reported that according to AIDSVu.org, African Americans in 2019 made up 43 percent of new HIV cases and comprised roughly 12- 13 percent of the U.S. population. This means that African Americans were 8.4 times more likely to contract the HIV infection than whites, according to The Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

Massachusetts, where I reside, is a world-renowned medical hub known for its HIV/AIDS research and support systems, but the outcomes are equally grim. In 2019, according to a UMass Chan Medical School report titled "Burden of HIV & AIDS amongst the Black Community in Massachusetts…." African Americans comprise 7.3 percent of the population but represent 32 percent of people newly diagnosed with HIV. This means that the rate of African American males living with HIV is 5.2 times of Whites males, and the rate of African American females living with HIV is 22.7 times that of white females. African Americans who contract HIV are more likely to die from it than members of other racial groups.

But this data doesn't reflect the wave of recent African diasporic immigrants of the last decade coming from the Caribbean Islands and the Motherland. This demographic group is overwhelmingly underreported and underserved—for fear of not only deportation but also of homophobic insults and assaults from their communities.

In 2022, why is HIV/AIDS still an overwhelmingly Black disease in the United States? 

There are many persistent social and economic determinants contributing to the high rates of the epidemic in the African American community—poverty, homelessness, health care disparity, industrial prison complex, and violence, to name a few. And while we know that the epidemic moves along the fault lines of race, class, gender and sexual orientation, homophobia, stigma, and the Black Church continue to be barriers to ending the AIDS epidemic. However, the most significant obstacle is systemic racism. 

"I would not expect anything other than the data quoted. No matter what is being measured in America, you already know who will fare worse.  Systems in America are designed to have this outcome, "said Dr. Thea James of Boston Medical Center, my spouse. 

Racism contributes to the high rate of AIDS among young African-American men. While gay healthcare centers open their doors to all gay men, these traditionally white organizations have failed to tailor their messages and outreach services to men of color. And while white gay men may feel the AIDS crisis in the African- American community is solely a black concern, white gay men must also be reminded that the AIDS crisis in the African-American community is their concern because they, too, have sex with black men.

Poverty also helps HIV spread throughout the black community. With the high cost of life-saving drugs often coupled with the problem of homelessness, mere survival for these young men takes precedence over quality of life. Also, selling their bodies for drugs, a hot meal, temporary lodging, or a quick illusion of love lures many young gay black men to engage in risky and unprotected sex.

In 2004, the now deceased Gwen Ifill, an African-American female journalist with PBS' "Washington Week" and moderator of the vice presidential debate, brought the issue of AIDS in the U.S. front and center when she asked the men-vice presidential candidates Dick Cheney and John Edwards-to comment on its devastating impact on African-American women.

"I want to talk to you about AIDS, and not about AIDS in China or Africa, but AIDS right here in this country, where black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts. What should the government's role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?" Ifill asked.

When the color of the epidemic shifted from white to Black, the inherent gender bias focused only on the needs of African-American men and rendered women invisible. And when gender became a new lens to track the epidemic, white women were the focus. The invisibility of African-American women in this epidemic has much to do with how the absence of a gendered race analysis makes African-American women invisible to the larger society.

The feminization of this disease made many of us AIDS activists and scholars wonder if the same amount of money, concern, communication, and moral outrage invested in white gay men with the disease would be invested into curbing its spread among black women. 

In 2021, The CDC declared racism a serious public health threat and its impact on health outcomes. World Aids Day 2021, the  National HIV/AIDS Strategy (2022–2025) was released, bringing shockwaves to people of color with its goal to center people living with HIV and address racism.

"The Strategy recognizes racism as a public health threat that directly affects the well-being of millions of Americans," the strategy states. "Over generations, these structural inequities have resulted in racial and ethnic health disparities that are severe, far-reaching, and unacceptable."
The UNAIDS 2022 theme is "Putting Ourselves to the Test: Achieving Equity to End HIV."

America has a problem confronting its racism, even among marginalized whites, like LGBTQIA+ communities. I hope the POZ Poll is incorrect and that many will participate in a World Aids Day event. But I feel assured that no matter who does or doesn't participate on that day, Black Lives living with HIV/AIDS are beginning to matter.  

"We can end AIDS – if we end the inequalities which perpetuate it. This World AIDS Day, we need everyone to get involved in sharing the message that we will all benefit when we tackle inequalities," says UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima. "To keep everyone safe, to protect everyone's health, we need to Equalize."~ Rev. Irene Monroe
Read online here

About the Author
Rev.  Irene Monroe does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on NPR's WGBH (89.7 FM). She is a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS. Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists. A Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist; her columns appear the Boston LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. Monroe states that her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As a religion columnist I try to inform the public of the role religion plays in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By J. Edward

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an Atheist.

Why is it that most Christians insist that the Gospels were essentially dictated to (inspired) by God to write his unerring Word? Given the number of inconsistencies and that the narratives were clearly written by different authors who couldn’t even get the story straight, why is the Bible the go-to source for the answer to everything?

A: By Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers
 Dear J. Edward,In the interest of full disclosure, I too am an atheist, although I prefer the term non-theist because it’s not a conversation stopper. 

As for the irreconcilably different accounts of the gospels, you are already far ahead of most church folk, who have been sold the lie that a harmonized view of the gospels is possible.  It’s not.  Serious biblical study reveals that each gospel takes liberties with the narrative in order to address the needs of the communities for which they were written.  They were also written decades after the death of Jesus and depend on a remembered oral tradition that was as unreliable then as it is now.  As to why the claim of divine authorship and biblical inerrancy is so important, human beings are always searching for a source of authority outside of ourselves.  A pope for Catholics, a paper pope for Protestants.  As to why the Bible is a go to source, it remains a formative story for Jews and Christians, and a collection of literature that is foundational in the history of ideas.  But let’s face it.  It contains both the sublime and the ridiculous.  It never was, nor should it ever be considered infallible.  It can be taken seriously without being taken literally, like most of the sacred and secular literature on earth.    ~ Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers
Read and share online here

About the Author
Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers is pastor of First Congregational Church UCC, Norman, Oklahoma, and retired senior minister of Mayflower Congregational UCC church, Oklahoma City.  He is currently a Professor of Public Speaking and Distinguished Professor of Social Justice Emeritus in the Philosophy Department at Oklahoma City University.  He is a fellow of the Westar Institute and the author of eight books on religion and American culture, the most recent of which is, Saving God from Religion:  A Minister’s Search for Faith in a Skeptical Age.  A feature-length documentary chronicles his work on behalf of Progressive Christianity in Oklahoma (americanhereticsthefilm.com) and more information is at RobinMeyers.com  |

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

The Birth of Jesus, Part XV
 The Journey to Bethlehem

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
June 13, 2013The creators of the birth narratives, Matthew and Luke, used two motifs in interpreting the life of Jesus of Nazareth. First, each was historically aware that Jesus hailed from Galilee, indeed from the village of Nazareth. Too often the gospels report that there was debate about his origins for this not to be true. Galilee was the rustic, poor, non-cultural part of the Jewish nation. Nazareth was an insignificant town in a looked-down-upon region. Yet, they could never escape the fact that Jesus was called “Jesus of Nazareth” and referred to as a Galilean. The claim of Jesus’ disciples that he was the messiah was thus ridiculed because of these historical facts of his origin. “Search the scriptures,” his critics invited the crowds to do, “and nowhere will you find the suggestion that the messiah will come out of Galilee.” It was thought even more impossible for the messiah to grow up in Nazareth. “Nothing good can come out of Nazareth,” they declared. History is sometimes quite inconvenient when myth-making is going on. This was the first motif of the birth narratives.

The place of Jesus’ origins seems not to have been an issue for Paul. Mark, the first gospel writer, assumes that Jesus was born in Nazareth and that he grew up there. When his place of origin began to be a problem for those eager to assert the messianic claim, the pressure began to build to locate his place of birth in a more noble setting. That was when the second motif around his birth appeared and had to be served.

There were many messianic images in Jewish history, but a major and consistent one was that the messiah had to restore the throne of King David. In time this meant that the messiah himself had to have a claim to be a descendent and thus an heir to the royal line of King David. That throne had been lost to the Jews since 586 BCE. In that year the Babylonian conquerors had destroyed Judah in warfare. In that war’s aftermath the Babylonians rounded up and murdered all the heirs to the final Davidic king, a man named Zedekiah, and they imprisoned him after putting out his eyes. When Zedekiah finally died in prison, the royal throne of the House of David was thus thought to be vacant. That was when the idea of messiah began to grow both in Jewish thought and in Jewish mythology. Messiah was part of the national dream of restoration. The royal line of King David was an important symbol in all the hopes expressed for “the coming kingdom.” One aspect of that hope was that the messiah would reflect his Davidic roots by being born in Bethlehem, the city of David. This hope was read into a text in the prophet Micah that extolled the little town of Bethlehem as the birthplace of Judah’s kings. Slowly, this town with its royal connections and its location in the land of Judah about six miles from Jerusalem, began to rise in the messianic dreams. Messiah must be of the house of David and he must be born in Bethlehem.

Matthew was the first to make this claim, but it was easy for him. He assumed that both Mary and Joseph lived in a house in Bethlehem. For this baby to be born there seemed quite natural. Matthew’s problem was that he then had to find a way to deal with history and with the fact that this baby, though born in Bethlehem, would grow up in Nazareth of Galilee.

Luke, who accepts Mark’s frame of reference involving Jesus’ Galilean roots, had the opposite problem. How could it be arranged for a couple who lived in Galilee actually to be in Bethlehem when the child was born? Luke hit upon a scheme that probably has some semblance of history to it and he used it to tell his magnificent story that is familiar to most of us today. There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world was to be enrolled. Was this a census? Was it for the purpose of taxation? Periodically we learn from the Old Testament that the Jews wanted to count their citizens. There are historical hints of a census ordered within a decade after the death of King Herod or around 6 to 7 CE. The idea that an empire-wide census, however, was ever undertaken stretches credibility to the breaking point. There were no records, no birth certificates, no marriage certificates, no death certificates. Travel was hard and slow. Records were stored nowhere. Luke, however, needed to have a hook on which to create his story of the Bethlehem birth of a child whose parents were citizens of Nazareth. So he used the presumed census to account for the fact that Joseph and Mary had to go to Bethlehem.

This enrollment, Luke said, occurred when Quirinius was governor of Syria. That was an interesting addition. Luke has already related that the births of John the Baptist and Jesus had occurred when “Herod was the King of Judea.” We know from secular records, however, that Herod died in the year 4 BCE. On the other hand, we know that Quirinius did not become governor of Syria until the winter in which the year 6 CE turned into the year 7 CE. So, if Jesus was born when Herod was king, he would have been ten to eleven years old when this enrollment was ordered. The presumed history behind this birth narrative begins to wobble perceptibly.

Next we learn that Joseph, because he was of the house and lineage of David, must, as a pre-requisite of this census, return to his ancestral home to be enrolled. This, Luke asserted, was the key that resulted in a Bethlehem birthplace for Jesus.. Does this mean that all the direct heirs of King David had to make the journey to Bethlehem? David, who according to the Bible had many wives and many concubines, reigned in Judah from the year 1000 to 960 BCE. If we count a generation at 20 years, a rather generous number in a world where life expectancy was only in the thirties, there would be about 48 generations between David and Jesus. If David had only 50 children, a rather small number for a king with a large harem, his direct descendants in 48 generations would be well over a billion people! Suppose it was a fact, as Luke asserts, that all of David’s direct heirs had to return to Bethlehem to be enrolled? It is no wonder there was no room at the inn! Historicity is shattered.

One final note, Luke tells us that Joseph had to take Mary with him for this enrollment. Why this was necessary is not stated. In that patriarchal era, women were not enrolled, counted or taxed. They were thought of as property, part of the male’s wealth upon which taxes were paid. If this baby is to be born in Bethlehem, however, Mary, Jesus’ mother, must be in Bethlehem. So Luke tells us that Joseph took her with him even though she “was great with child,” to use the beautiful language of King James’ English. “Great with child” surely means near to term so we can assume that she was in her last month of pregnancy.

How many of us have ever stopped to realize that Bethlehem was 94 miles from Nazareth? Do we embrace that the two options for transportation open to them in the first century were walking or riding on a donkey? Do we understand that this was a seven to ten day journey that would have to average nine to twelve miles a day? Are we aware that in this era there were no restaurants or hotels along the way? Now ask yourself, what man in his right mind would take his nine-months pregnant wife on a 94 mile journey on a donkey or actually walking, when the literal reason for taking her does not hold any credibility? It was a Roman Catholic lay theologian, Rosemary Ruether, who after reading this birth narrative in Luke, remarked that “only a man who had never had a baby could have written this story.”

Religious art portrays this journey to Bethlehem with Mary riding side saddle on a donkey led by a walking Joseph. That is little more than romantic imagination. In the text there is no donkey. That should not surprise us. In Matthew’s story of the Wise Men, there are no camels. In Luke’s story, there is no stable. There are no animals around the Christ Child in the stable because there is no stable. There is only a feeding trough, called a manger. That feeding trough could be out in the fields as easily as it could be inside a structure. Be aware that pageants and human imagination have created images for us that are in fact not biblical.

Luke’s story, however, has achieved its agenda. The Nazareth-based family has managed to be located physically in Bethlehem when the child is born. The messianic connection has been established. Mythology has been enhanced.
Luke does two more things that I have mentioned earlier in this series. I repeat them here, because we can see them now in context. He takes a text from the Wisdom of Solomon where the richest of all the Jewish kings says: “When I was born I was carefully swaddled, for there is no other way for a king to come to his people.” So Luke says that they wrapped the babe in swaddling cloths and this clue was given to the shepherds to help them find him. Second, he was placed into a manger, an image Luke borrowed from Isaiah 1. This one faithful Jew, unlike the history of his people in the time of Isaiah, would know from the moment of his birth who was his father and what largesse he received from the God he represented. There are many levels on which the stories of the birth of Jesus can be read. Literalism is not one of them.

So we will bring this study of the birth narratives to a conclusion next week. This is rich material, but it is not history and our analysis reveals that it was never understood by the authors of both Matthew and Luke to be history. It is a pity that the Gentiles who became both the majority and the dominant strain in the Christian Church after about 150 CE did not know the Jewish Scriptures well enough to understand what the original stories meant. Literalism is not only an expression of biblical ignorance, but it is a distortion of the gospel so dangerous as to be destructive of Christianity itself.~  John Shelby Spong  |

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