HIV/AIDS Ministry gets new name, broadens commitment

The Board of World Mission’s global AIDS ministry program has a new name, Likewise Ministries.

“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do Likewise.” Luke 10:36-37

The Priest and the Levite had busy lives and important jobs to tend to and chose to pass by a victim of random violence. How are we Christians with work, family, and church obligations to respond to our “neighbors” who live not only with HIV/AIDS, but also with injustice, poverty, stigmatization, and gender inequality resulting from AIDS? The AIDS pandemic can be daunting and lead one to question, “What can one person do?” The solutions are not simple, nor will they come soon enough to save the lives of many children and adults already affected by AIDS. Yet Jesus’ response to us is very clear. We as Christians living in a global community are called to act now to a neighbor in need, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37); to show mercy to our brothers and sisters living with HIV/AIDS.

Likewise Ministries is faithfully pursuing Christ’s call to act now in HIV/AIDS ministry with the Honduran Moravian Church and exploring ways to be active partners in AIDS ministry with our sister provinces of Guyana, Nicaragua, and South Africa. Parts of Western Tanzania are already supported by the Tanzanian AIDS and Tanzanian Orphans programs. Now, all four provinces in Tanzania have requested the BWM as a further initiative of Likewise Ministries to partner with them in their efforts to confront AIDS. Likewise Ministries is committed to helping all Moravian congregations find ways to be active participants in local and global AIDS ministry. Please contact <a href="mailto:kim@mcnp.org" target="new">Kim Bartholomew</a> at the BWM for more information or needed resources.

A Time For Celebration

For Moravians worldwide, this is a year of celebration as we remember our Church’s witness and service through 550 years. Not just on one Saturday afternoon in Coventry, but in different ways throughout the year, we can find strength and encouragement in remembering the past so that we may respond in faith to the challenge of the future.

Another cause for celebration this year is the 200th Anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. It is interesting that the two anniversaries should come in the same year. It was a concern for the slaves in the Caribbean that brought the early missionaries to St. Thomas and the other islands. Some even said they were ready to become slaves themselves in order to reach the people with the Gospel. Later, Moravians in Britain played a quiet but useful part in the movement for the abolition of the slave trade. Ignatius La Trobe was a personal friend of William Wilberforce and provided an important paper to the 1788 Enquiry into the Slave Trade which helped to bring about abolition.

Along with these positive contributions, however, there is a darker side. For a period, the Church accepted the institution of slavery and in one or two places, the missionaries themselves became slave owners. If we look carefully at the history, we can begin to understand why this happened and it does seem as if the missionaries treated their slaves with compassion and kindness, quite differently from the way the big estate owners and overseers treated their slaves. None the less, it is a disturbing part of our history that we need to recognize and learn from. Perhaps John Buchner, missionary to Jamaica, writing very critically in 1854 about the Church’s role, can still speak for us: “The name of the Brethren’s Church stands now cleared of the evil of slavery; and confessing our past sin as a sin of ignorance, we believe the Lord has pardoned our transgression, and feel comforted by the fact that we have abandoned it for ever.”

How easy it is or us to be led by the “spirit of the age;” to allow attitudes and actions to be determined by the world around us rather than by the spirit of Christ. How will future generations see our ready acceptance of war with all its horror and destruction, our failure to good stewards of creation, attitudes towards immigrants, economic and social injustice? Can this time of celebration raise us to a new awareness of what needs to be done if we are to be people who “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God”?

(A well-researched account of the Moravian Church and the slave trade can be found in John Mason’s “The Moravian Church and the Missionary Awakening in England.”)

By Fred Linyard, Editor. Reprinted from “A Word From the Editor” from The Moravian Messenger, the Official Journal of the Moravian Church in the British Province, March 2007 Issue.