IT is indeed encouraging to note that the first 18 days of 2008 have seen a flurry of activity on the church-based AIDS front.
It seems that the Christian denominations in general have begun to identify with the need to reach out to AIDS sufferers in their congregations and the broader community.
Two PNG mainline churches have been closely identified with this process and have earned deserved credit accordingly.
They are the Catholic and Anglican denominations.
The Anglicans through their StopAIDS organisation, one of the first church initiatives against the disease in our country, have achieved a great deal both in terms of awareness – in particular with school students – and in their on-going humanitarian efforts to assist victims.
The Catholic church has thrown its weight behind care for sufferers and the urgent need for our people to accept voluntary testing.
They have also been able to at least begin the process of minimising stigma and the occasionally terrible outcomes of community ignorance, and achieve a level of understanding through their extensive rural network.
Now there are signs of many other denominations abandoning their ingrained reluctance to address this subject and to pull their weight in the community.
It has always seemed remarkable to us that a country such as PNG with such a loudly trumpeted network of Christian believers and church organisations should have been so appallingly slow to address this issue.
HIV/AIDS, its spread and its sufferers would seem to be the ideal opportunity for all churches in this country to demonstrate a co-ordinated and proactive approach.
But most churches have proven to be deplorably slow in reacting to the epidemic.
It seems that many church leaders found the subject distasteful, or even in some cases, proof of God’s power to destroy the wickedness in our midst.
The latter belief, although thankfully not widespread, has created a sub-culture of PNG believers who accept that extraordinary notion and image of Christianity.
A workshop ended in the capital last week and in winding up proceedings, the NCD Governor Powes Parkop told the churches to “take ownership of HIV/AIDS”.
We applaud that comment and only hope that the church representatives present, mainly pastors and their wives, absorbed the full impact of his remarks.
He told the delegates that AIDS must be a subject to be preached from the nation’s pulpits.
This echoes a concern often expressed in The National.
The many hundreds of pulpits of this nation would seem to be the ideal source of information and appropriate Christian attitudes towards this illness and its victims.
Instead, many ministers and pastors have flatly ignored the subject, whether through personal embarrassment or fear of a backlash from their congregations, it is impossible to say.
Is that the measure of Christianity?
It is not – and even the most superficial knowledge of the foundations of the Christian faith makes that abundantly clear.
In another context, we have repeatedly pointed out that by downgrading women, trashing their public arena aspirations and treating them as objects and possessions rather than as partners, we savagely limit PNG’s capacity to move forward and claim a place as an honourable and widely admired nation.
And if our churches choose to dismiss or ignore the issue of AIDS in our midst, we deny the very love and healing power of the Christian religion that is supposedly one of the very foundations of this country.
So let there be sermon after sermon thundered from each and every pulpit in the land.
And let that message lead to alerted congregations made suddenly aware of the huge task that lies unattended at their doorsteps.
And may that awakening awareness lead to a new approach to this disease and to those who often, through no moral fault of their own, have fallen victim to its clutches.
It is 20 long years since AIDS claimed its first victim in our country.
An observer exposed to the reactions of some of our people might be forgiven in assuming that the disease had only just struck PNG.
The PNG churches should be leading the fight against AIDS and against community antagonism, stigma and apathy.
Let them show by their actions the true love of God.