Chapter 11 - HIV/AIDS and Black Communities in Britain: Reflections from a Practical Black British Liberation Theologian

Summary

In this essay, I will be addressing the social mores and theological frameworks that have influenced the reaction of Black, African Caribbean peoples in Britain to the growing incidences of HIV/AIDS within their communities. I am writing this piece as a Practical Black Liberation theologian, whose principal area of expertise is in Liberative models of Christian education and formation that are cognizant of Black cultures and histories. I am not, I hasten to add, a specialist nor have I undertaken specialist work in HIV/AIDS. In this essay, I want to offer a brief snapshot of how and for what reasons many African Caribbean Christian communities have been unwilling to either confront or offer any meaningful support and pastoral care to those suffering from HIV/AIDS from within their ranks.

This work will be approached by means of some participatory fieldwork I undertook some years ago and to which I returned in order to write this essay. This initial work has been supplemented by a more recent return to one of the groups with whom I worked a number of years ago in order to continue the quest of teasing out their theological reflections on the whole nature of suffering and illness in respect to the scourge of HIV AIDS.

The experience of poor, marginalized and oppressed peoples within Christian history and the church has largely been one of struggle, opposition and invisibility. Black people have often been perceived as problems rather than opportunities. We have been controlled, denigrated and treated with suspicion.