168 6.5.3.4 Spiritual Empowerment
It was briefly stated earlier in the chapter that women in The Haven shelter are empowered through counselling and other ministerial service114. In fact, church members in all circuits receive such services through sermons, prayer meetings and Bible study. Through these services, people are emotionally and spiritually strengthened by the belief in God‘s love, God‘s protection and the future heavenly life. This belief helps them nurture a positive view of life and live with hope. According to the results of this study, these are the services the most provided in the FMSKZN. However, in Chapters 5, the Church still has a negative attitude towards HIV and AIDS and PLWHA which results in silence on the pandemic or in inadequate ways of addressing it. It instead settles for mere moralistic teachings on sexuality115 without offering any ministerial service initiated with the intention to (adequately) address HIV and AIDS.
From this overview on the health and social initiatives in the FMSKZN, it is noticeable that only one project, The Haven shelter, has HIV and AIDS in its conception. Although all of these initiatives can be used as a way of addressing HIV and AIDS, none is fulfilling that purpose.
169 6.6.1 Absence of Collaboration
The common view resulting from this study is that the FMSKZN has not developed any strategic and systematic partnership as a way to respond to HIV and AIDS. One example of developing a partnership was found in one circuit, where the youth invited officials from the Health Department to address the community on HIV and AIDS. This initiative drew objections from church leaders since the use of condoms was encouraged which is against the teachings of the Church.117 In Pietermaritzburg, The Haven shelter collaborates with other organisations in caring for women survivors of domestic abuse, especially in counselling. But the way this partnership relates to HIV and AIDS is not very visible.118
In addition, the Church has sometimes responded to the invitations or suggestions of other institutions in the context of HIV and AIDS or gender. These institutions include ECAP (ESSA Christian AIDS Programme) which was welcomed in UFMC in Pietermaritzburg, for the HIV and AIDS awareness campaign.119 This same circuit has also responded to some invitations of PACSA (Pietermaritzburg Agency for Christian Social Awareness) for workshops on gender and HIV and AIDS.120 In Fairview, they have twice received donations from the Anglican Church and another Non-Governmental organisation (NGO) based in Port Shepstone.121 This circuit has also welcomed people from the municipality for gender awareness campaign on Women‘s Day.122 It seems that these potential partners include government departments, NGOs, and faith-based organisations. These organisations that have been partnered could become an important network in addressing the pandemic. However, the Church neither initiates such partnerships nor maintains those initiated by others. Therefore, for some participants, such unacknowledged and non-reciprocal partnerships do not yield fruits. In the following excerpt, the caregiver, CG8:6, expresses this thought:
Interviewer: Now, has the Church developed any relationship with other institutions or other structures like NGOs as a way to deal with HIV?
CG8:6: [...] But as a said to you whenever we invite people, they talk on the topic, and then they go. And there is no follow-up on the topic to see whether there is anything [that]
you can do within, you see. We just invite people, they talk, open discussions and people just sit there and look at the person, there is no discussion, and then the
117 See CG8:8.
118 See CL37:7.
119 See CL4:3-4.
120 See CG1:16-17.
121 See CG27:4; CL22:6-7.
122 See FGD9:7.
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person steps down from the podium and it ends there. But the previous convention, just I was working I was not there but [they invited people]. But no other than that that happened.
From these insights therefore, it is clear that the FMSKZN has not developed substantial partnerships which can bear fruit in addressing the pandemic.
6.6.2 Rejection of the EHAIA
The EHAIA is an ecumenical network created in 2002 by the Health and Healing Programme of the WCC in collaboration with the All Africa Conference of Churches with the objective to empower churches and theological institutions to be HIV and AIDS competent (Weinreich and Benn, 2004:99; EHAIA, 2011:6). The EHAIA facilitates churches and faith-based organisations in Africa to have access to information, training, resources and contacts with other churches and bodies working in the field of HIV and AIDS (EHAIA, 2011:6). Since 2002, the EHAIA has recorded important successes. As an example, until 2008, it organised and facilitated 222 training events attended by 12,082 people (EHAIA, 2011:11). Training themes include awareness in HIV and AIDS, stigma and discrimination, gender and advocacy; development of skills in counselling, communication, strategic planning, fund and resource mobilisation, ecumenical approaches and the integration of HIV and AIDS in theological curricula; specified group such as church leaders, youth and women in relation to HIV; sexuality and gender-based violence; as well as responses to HIV which include prevention, treatment care and contextual Bible study (EHAIA, 2011:15).
Until 2011, the EHAIA worked with 81 faith-based organisations and developed a partnership with 41 governments and international institutions (EHAIA, 2011:45-49).
Therefore, in asking the question on the EHAIA, it was hoped that since it is an ecumenical network helping churches to be competent in HIV and AIDS, the FMSKZN would have taken this opportunity to use it in order to address the pandemic. However, the results of the study show that this network is unknown in this Church. Only three church leaders out of seventeen have heard about it and none have interacted with it. It is also noteworthy that while almost all the participants who had heard about the EHAIA during this study recognised it as a worthy resource that the Church can liaise with, two influential pastors123 remain sceptical simply because it is initiated by the WCC. The excerpt of the interview of one of the pastors CL11:4, reads as follows.
123 I abstain myself from describing how they are influential for ethical discretion purpose.
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CL11:4: In fact the [World] Council of Churches has weakness of people with dubious characters. Yeah. Some may say something, and practice something else. So, it‟s like this politics, which means, politics can influence people to say things which they don‟t practice. Many times, we find people in the World Council of Churches, who have dubious characters.
Interviewer: Like what? Can you describe those dubious characters?
CL11:4: They say something in public and they practice something else [...] Yeah. So, I cannot take it from the World Council of Churches because I don‟t trust them, yeah, completely because unless somebody is genuinely saved and lives a green life. So, to me it doesn‟t need [World] Council of Churches [...]. It needs the person who is spiritually strong.
For this pastor, the WCC is not trustworthy in terms of holiness, and therefore, there is no need to connect with it.
For the other pastor, CL37:14, there is still doubt of how the FMSKZN can collaborate with the WCC due to the difference in doctrine. He views are as follows:
CL37:14: No we don‟t have any connection with them. Basically one of the reasons is because EHAIA is a project under WCC [...] and in terms of denominational biases.
Interviewer: Biases?
CL37:14: Yes, I can say that we are known as evangelicals. So we don‟t have any close collaboration. It‟s in the same sense when you talk about the KZN [KwaZulu- Natal] Council of Churches, which is actually a good organization that deals with issues of HIV and AIDS also but it is also under WCC where it receives a lot of funding. The major issue that I can raise there is because some of the approaches of handling the Bible [...] when they are addressing issues of HIV and AIDS sometimes contradicts or go into conflicts with our own belief. So [...] I don‟t see our Church at the level where it is to be able to engage in that context. So, those are some of the reasons. [...] There is the whole issue of how we address some issues, ethically, doctrinally, which varies.
Unlike the former pastor who rejects the WCC because its people are ‗liars‘ and ‗unsaved,‘ this pastor argues that they have different ethics and doctrines. What is not plausible is, if these pastors do not like the partnership with the WCC, why do they not seek to liaise with World Evangelical Alliance, which also deals with HIV and AIDS (http://www.worldevangelicals.org/commissions/list/?com=wc)?
However, the views of these pastors are different to that of the overseer of the FMCSA who believes that this Church can collaborate with the EHAIA although they have not yet started124.
124 The researcher affirms that the bishop of the FMCSA is willing to collaborate with EHAIA/WCC because in 2011 he accepted his [researcher] proposition of inviting consultants of EHAIA for a workshop in the FMSKZN in
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In addition, their views are different from those in other countries like Rwanda. The FMC in this context is a member of the Protestant Council of Rwanda (CPR) which is a collective of Protestant churches and a full member of the WCC. CPR was led by a Free Methodist pastor some years ago until 2009, and through it, the WCC has sponsored the studies of one Rwandan Free Methodist bishop who graduated with a Master‘s degree from the University of KwaZulu- Natal in April 2008125.
This therefore means that although the views of these pastors may disturb the partnership of the Church with institutions such as the WCC, this is not the norm in the FMCSA and elsewhere.
But one then needs to ask, what is the reason for these conflicting views in the same Church?
Literature shows numerous controversies among Christian churches, including the evangelical churches, around sexuality. The Baylor Religion Survey of 2005 has shown that 81% of evangelical Protestants, 57% of Catholics, and 54% of mainline Protestants in America are of the opinion that same sex relationships are wrong (Scheitle and Hahn, 2011:2). The ordination of homosexuals in the Evangelical Lutheran Church and Anglican Communion in America has found opposition, especially from Africa (Goldingay et al., 2011: 2-3; Legge, 2011). Therefore, although these two pastors in the FMSKZN did not specify exactly what is wrong in the WCC, issues of sexual orientation may be one of their points of reference. This is because the WCC believes that people infected or affected by HIV are to be loved and assisted regardless of their sexual orientation (Ngure, 2007:122) while homosexuality was raised in this study by one of these two church leaders as a source of spreading HIV and AIDS.126
To conclude this section, the FMSKZN has not developed any consistent partnership in addressing HIV and AIDS. Even the EHAIA, which could assist this Church to be HIV and AIDS competent, is looked down upon by some church leaders. However, their position is not the norm.