At Moody Church in Chicago, an AIDS policy was on the way. But it arrived too late to protect the church’s image.
It could happen anywhere. It happened at Chicago’s Moody Church. Since late last year, officials at the church had been developing—though not aggressively—a policy on AIDS. But before that process could be completed, a theoretical problem had become a real one.
After some in the church registered their concern that a five-year-old boy known to be carrying the AIDS virus (human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV) was attending Sunday-school classes, the church responded by temporarily banning the child until a policy could be finalized. Church officials admit the negative media coverage expedited the decision to welcome the child back to church. The church’s new policy called for the prominent placement of written notices informing parents of Sunday school-age children that there might be HIV-positive children attending. But the public-relations damage to Moody Church had been done.
Caution Or Ignorance?
Did the church take reasonable, responsible precautions in the interest of medical safety? Or does banning a child with the AIDS virus—even for a day—reflect irrational fear and inexcusable ignorance?
Part of the problem, said the church’s senior pastor, Erwin Lutzer, is that “AIDS has become so politicized it’s not possible to look at it purely medically.” But Lutzer said that is exactly what Moody tried to do: treat the problem as a medical issue. He lamented that if the church were to decide to take similar action to address a problem with measles or chicken pox, “you couldn’t pay television cameras to come and photograph the event.”
“AIDS is something mysterious and frightening to people,” said Lutzer. “Some have told us, ‘You folks did right; you should take children with AIDS because there’s no danger. But I don’t want that for my children.’ The bottom line is, it’s okay if it’s somebody else’s kids.”
Lutzer believes such fears are understandable. “What if one medical expert says there is nothing to fear and another says it is theoretically possible [for AIDS to spread in a given situation]? The natural reaction as a parent is to err on the side of caution.”
Walt and Terry Rucker, foster parents of the five-year-old with AIDS, are less inclined to tolerate ignorance as to how AIDS spreads. Terry, a hospice nurse, has worked in an AIDS unit for six years. “When I first started working with AIDS patients, it was more a matter of faith,” she said. “It was something I wanted to do and felt I was meant to do.”
According to early research on AIDS, the disease was not easily transmitted. And, said Rucker, “as the years have gone by, that research has only mounted on the positive side. There’s still a lot to know about AIDS. But in terms of transmission, nothing has changed.”
Rucker said her commitment to her church remains strong, even though she is disappointed with how Moody has handled the matter. Since the church decided to welcome the boy back, it has added the stipulation that the child be observed at all times by an adult other than the teacher.
Rucker said she believes the church is heading in the right direction by seeking the medical counsel of qualified AIDS experts. She said the church got its initial advice from an “unreliable source,” adding, “What you learn first sticks with you.”
The Sunday-school class attended by the young boy has dwindled from about 15 to about 5, according to Rucker. “Some of the same people who said [the child] was welcome are pulling their kids,” she said, adding, “The fear level is so high, I don’t think any amount of education will reach them.”
Rucker observed that Moody Church is regularly frequented by visitors, some of whose children could be considered at high risk for the AIDS virus. “If you take to heart the statistics as to how many people are walking around with the virus and are not even aware of it, it’s very likely there are others who are HIV positive who have been in these Sunday-school classes or who will be.”
Do We Know Enough?
“We know more about the AIDS virus in a shorter span of time than about almost any disease that has ever come along,” said William O. Harrison, associate clinical professor of medicine at the School of Medicine at the University of California in San Diego.
From 1985–88, Harrison directed the U.S. Navy HIV (AIDS virus) evaluation unit in San Diego. He is a consultant epidemiologist for California’s Department of Health Services and he frequently speaks to churches about AIDS. He discussed several aspects of the AIDS crisis with CT, including:
• The unity of the medical community: Harrison acknowledged that some in the medical community have garnered headlines over misstatements on AIDS at the expense of the general knowledge of the public. But among specialists in infectious diseases, he said, there is virtual unanimity on the basics of AIDS, including on how it spreads. Despite the perception that experts have revised their thinking on how the disease spreads, Harrison said this did not happen among the highest authorities. From the beginning, he said, experts warned that health workers were at some risk of acquiring AIDS, especially through accidental jabbing with contaminated needles.
• How AIDS spreads: Harrison confirmed that AIDS, as has been widely reported, spreads in essentially three ways: through intimate sexual contact, contaminated hypodermic needles, and blood transfusions. “No one in the medical profession would say that HIV can be spread by casual contact, through contamination of food, for example, through coughing or sneezing, through contaminated doorknobs or toilet seats.” Harrison added it was once thought the disease could spread through saliva exchange, as in kissing. But he said that recent, reliable studies conclude it would take approximately a gallon of saliva to be infectious.
• Anticipated deaths: It was originally thought that only a relatively small percentage of those who carried the HIV would develop symptoms. Now some are saying all who have the virus will eventually show symptoms. Harrison said this aspect of the crisis is debatable. “More than half of those I screened and evaluated as HIV positive over five years ago are asymptomatic today,” he said. “We may have to wait 20 or 25 years to see what proportion really do come down with AIDS.”
• The safety of the blood supply: Harrison said one naval physician, while aboard ship, accidentally punctured himself with a needle while treating a man later diagnosed with AIDS. The physician was tested monthly for the HIV antibody, and turned up positive in the seventh month.
This and other studies have contributed to the knowledge that the virus can be present (typically for six months, but in some cases for a year or more) before it is detectable through current tests, which are designed to discover HIV antibodies, not the virus itself. So it is possible for contaminated blood to go undetected. More sophisticated tests (for the virus itself) are being developed and would eliminate this problem. But in the meantime, Harrison noted, the American College of Surgeons and other medical groups are recommending that, when possible, those anticipating surgery donate their own blood.
• AIDS and the church nursery: “The risk of transmission in this kind of a setting is so infinitesimally small, it’s unmeasurable,” said Harrison. But he added, “I don’t think any physician would say the risk is zero.” Harrison said the risk must be balanced against “the problems that are going to occur if you begin to exclude people from public gatherings because they are HIV positive.”
Harrison said precautions, such as using rubber gloves and disinfectants, are reasonable as safeguards against all diseases. He noted that people are dying regularly from the hepatitis B virus, which receives no media play even though, unlike AIDS, it can spread through casual contact and is curable.
By Randy Frame, researched by Marty White.
Par For The Course?
According to Lutzer, Moody’s AIDS policy is similar to or even less restrictive than that of other churches he has heard from, some of which, after studying the issue, he said, decided not to allow children under seven to attend Sunday school under any conditions.
It is not just churches, but secular agencies responsible for child care that are concerned about the relative ease with which infants and toddlers can exchange blood and body fluids. In fact, the country’s three largest day-care chains all have policies that potentially could ban children with AIDS, though none has had to deal with the issue of whether to accept an HIV-positive child.
Ann Muscari, who handles health issues for Kinder-Care, the country’s largest day-care chain, said the company does not have a corporate policy on AIDS, adding that inquiries and problems are handled case-by-case.
Jack Brozman, president of the second-largest chain, La Petite, said the company would have to turn away a child with AIDS. “I don’t feel good about it,” he said. “But I don’t want to have a problem with the 90 to 100 other parents.… You can talk about how [AIDS] is transmitted all you want. I don’t know that they know everything. The fact of the matter is we’d be putting other children potentially at risk.”
Ken Riemer, vice-president of human resources for the third-largest chain, Children’s World, said the age of an HIV-positive child would go a long way toward determining whether he or she would be admitted. “We tell every parent [of a young child] their child will be bitten,” Riemer said. “According to what we’ve read, the disease could be transmitted that way.”
Toward A Middle Ground
By and large, the medical community has sought a middle ground that takes appropriate cautions without raising unfounded fears. While AIDS experts agree there is virtually no chance of acquiring AIDS even through the kinds of noncasual contacts likely to occur in a church nursery, they also are instinctively inclined to guard against any risk of what is theoretically possible.
This typically translates into the suggested use of rubber gloves when changing diapers, use of a disinfectant to clean up blood and other body fluids, and frequent washing of hands. Such advice appears in the handbook “The Church’s Response to the Challenge of AIDS/HIV,” produced by the Washington, D.C.-based Americans for a Sound AIDS Policy (ASAP). ASAP has received a grant from the federal Centers for Disease Control for the purpose of helping churches address the AIDS crisis.
According to ASAP president Shepherd Smith, only a handful of churches have AIDS policies in place. Said Smith, “Many churches who thought they would never have to deal with AIDS—especially urban churches—will have to, and sooner than they think. Smith added, “All our experiences have told us that if there isn’t a policy in place, when a problem surfaces it can quickly get out of hand and be very detrimental to the congregation.”
Smith said the church has the opportunity to take the lead in caring for people with AIDS, especially since many of those, particularly in the homosexual community who were caring for the sick five years ago, are now sick themselves. Beyond urging compassion for people with AIDS, ASAP has called on the church, in light of the epidemic, to take a more aggressive role in the sex education of its youth. “As a church, and often as Christian families, we have left it to others to talk about sex,” said Smith. “As a result, we have left our young people at great risk.”
No longer are those risks merely spiritual or psychological. Smith said that although AIDS has been associated with homosexuality in this country, it can also be spread through heterosexual contact. He urged the church to “send strong messages to young people about the physical dangers of sexual experimentation.”
By Randy Frame
