Can Religion Act with a Common Vision to End AIDS?

In last week’s blog, I asked whether religion could speak with a common voice about AIDS.  My answer was “Yes” although a little tentative.  But during the next decade of the global AIDS response, actions will be more important than words.  So this week’s question is:  “Can Religion Act with a Common Vision to End AIDS?”

The term “Common Vision” is borrowed from a report distributed at an interfaith prayer breakfast in New York on September 26.  The report was a summary of the work of the PEPFAR/UNAIDS Faith-Based Organization initiative from 2015 through 2019, highlighting six aspects of a common vision:  Evidence, Pediatric and Adolescent Treatment, Capacity-Building, Gender Justice, Stigma Reduction, and Advocacy.  The report described a wide range of actions taken by a wide range of faith-based institutions, and is itself good evidence that the answer to the question is “Yes.”

The topic of coordinated interreligious action also came up at a recent symposium, Two Possible Futures: Faith Action to End AIDS, held on September 5 at the Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.  One example involved sharing some training materials between Christian and Muslim leaders.  In the mid 2000s, World Vision and the Christian AIDS Bureau of Southern Africa developed a program called “Channels of Hope” to help Christian leaders deal with the AIDS crisis in their communities. During discussions about making the materials available to Muslim leaders, there were some initial misgivings on both sides:  Is this a subtle attempt to convert Muslims to Christianity?  Are we going to water down our Christian beliefs?  Ultimately, the materials were shared and have evolved into effective training materials for a range of religious traditions.  Another example was the response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.  Coordinated action by leaders of Christian and Muslim communities was key to successfully containing the outbreak.

Speakers at the Berkley Center Symposium also described some of the pragmatic challenges.  One is that full cooperation requires mutual trust, which can take a long time to develop.  Another challenge involves working with partners from other sectors:  “Who speaks for the faith community?”  There aren’t enough seats at the table for every religious tradition to be represented at every discussion, so coordination and organization are needed, which again requires trust.

The key to overcoming the challenges is to focus on the goal – to end the AIDS epidemic.  Just as focusing on the goal enables diverse religious groups to speak with a Common Voice, focusing on the goal enables diverse religious groups to act with a Common Vision.