Black churches unite to raise HIV/AIDS awareness

When Madeline Brooks learned 15 years ago that she had HIV, she went to church. She got the cold shoulder, she said.

After his diagnosis, the Rev. Reginald Diggs felt isolated as well — in "a little stigma prison," he said.

Brooks and Diggs both spoke at a small gathering led by a group of black churches Sunday to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS in the African-American community. More than 25 pastors have signed a covenant promising to address the issue in their churches.

"The significant piece of all this is that we have pastors who are now talking about this as part of their Sunday morning sermons," said the Rev. Mary Diggs-Hobson, Reginald Diggs' mother and executive director of the African Americans Reach and Teach Health (AARTH) Ministry, a sponsor of the Sunday event.

That's a huge step in the African-American community, where HIV/AIDS has remained a secret disease, Diggs-Hobson said. A disproportionate number of people diagnosed with HIV are black, according to AARTH.

She helped organize Sunday's Celebration of Life, in the basement of the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center in the Central Area.

She and her son formed AARTH in 2002 after Diggs, an associate minister at Faith Deliverance Assembly, was diagnosed with HIV.

At the Sunday gathering, several panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which commemorates the people who died of the disease, were on display. There were songs and speeches by local black religious leaders. Then the group watched a film about AIDS and discussed the disease with a panel of experts.

The first HIV/AIDS cases in the U.S. were primarily among gay white men, and many African Americans still don't know that the disease is so prevalent in their own community, event leaders said. In churches, especially, the disease continues to carry a stigma.

Churches approached HIV/AIDS at first "with a flawed theology" that it was God's retribution for sin, said the Rev. Carey Anderson of Seattle's First AME Church. Now, churches must show compassion, he said, and pastors should take responsibility for educating church members about the disease and how it's spread.

Anderson said that black churches had been at the forefront in the abolition of slavery and in the civil-rights movement.

"The church must continue in that same vein. This is a discussion where the church can lead people from the shackles of ignorance to liberty ... and empowerment to stop the spread of this disease."

Emily Heffter: 206-464-8246 or eheffter@seattletimes.com