The implications of religion and spirituality on sexual health

 

 

I’m just a simple Dutch pastor from a very traditional protestant background who has been ministering people with HIV for the last 23 years. To start with: Dutch young gay men, in the eighties, having to cope with death, as there was no cure at all. With a double coming out: they were gay and they were having Aids. I must say, the most experienced pastor guiding them was pastor Jan van Kilsdonk, an old catholic priest who had as a main principle: showing ultimate respect for the person in front of him. Without any doctrine, without condemning people, without any moral questioning. Homosexuality he described as a find of the Creator. Being part of creation. And never, never he was finger pointing at people because they were infected by HIV. He taught me to listen without any prejudice, to look with compassion and to act with – call it – loving presence.

 

I’m not quite sure if I have done the right thing, spoken the right words; sometimes I could only be there, hang around en clean up the mess. I remember a fine young Afro-American, who had led a live as a drag queen in Berlin, living the last months of his live in Amsterdam. No one took care anymore, as if he was a leprous. The person to give home care did not have the patience to wait until he was able to open the front door, which could take five minutes or more. When I was able to get him a place in a home for the sick, he died at the day he was transferred. It was the time that people died in no time. No time to prepare a funeral or a farewell.

 

Only some years ago, in 2006, when I started working at Kerkhuis (Church House) in Amsterdam South-East, to meet undocumented people with HIV, I got to know better what HIV brings to people from Africa and Latin America. I have got the impression that especially Sub-Saharan people with HIV must be very lonely. They don’t seem to be able to share their feelings and fears with the people from their own community. People told me: ‘If my landlord would know I have HIV he would put me out, together with the chair I have been sitting on.’ People told me: I can’t talk to anyone except the specialist at the hospital, the consultant, the social worker. And to you. For sure not to the church members, hardly to my pastor.

 

What does religion do to people? The representatives of the religion, the migrant churches, seem to show intolerance, casting out people who are so much in need of compassion and care.

The Christian church can be very intolerant to people with HIV. If they open up about their status they might become outcasts. So, in general, they keep quiet. Thank God there are also organizations like PAMA, where people with HIV can meet and share. But they will not reach out to everybody. There is still to much shame to talk about it in the open.

 

What harm does religion do to people?

If pastors preach against fornication, sex before marriage, threaten with hell and so on, they will never give people with HIV courage to confide in them. If pastors are excluding some of their flock by their harsh condemnation of some sexual behavior, they will never become a listening ear for those who would long to turn to someone who might understand their people most, regarding their culture and upbringing.

 

Throughout the years I met people with HIV from Africa and Latin-America, I asked myself what I could offer them. Perhaps because I am white and old and grey, and without prejudice, are people not scared to share their feelings, their anxieties, their worries, their hopes, their faith. Yes, their faith as well. Because people who feel being excluded from the church, from their fellow church goers, have not lost their faith. They wish to believe in a merciful God. Sometimes it’s their only stronghold: ‘I have Jesus’, some lady told me.

 

For me it’s important to be able to share my faith within a community.

I would feel left out if people who share the same faith, would ignore me, condemn me because of what I am, pretending that they would be better believers than ‘a sinner such as I’.

I always have the feeling that migrants need fellow migrants, fellow countrymen, people with the same cultural and religious background, to be able to establish in this society.

Migrant communities and migrant churches are very important to find one’s way into Dutch society.

If in that community you can’t be open about your status, one can become lonely, frustrated and depressed. It takes time to find the right people to confide in, the right organizations to get help en understanding.

In the World House Amsterdam, where I work as a pastor and counselor, we decided that people should be able to confide in us, workers, without being stigmatized. My first aim, starting at Kerkhuis, four years ago, was being able to give undocumented people with HIV the opportunity to come and talk to me, without being recognized as such. That’s why my counseling hours were open to any person with questions on getting access to necessary health care. People with hospital bills, people with diabetes or high blood pressure, people with vague health complaints and people with HIV were welcome.

 

Perhaps 10 to 15 percent of the regular visitors had been involved with some STD.

We could help them with advice, refer them to general practitioners, even straight to the municipal health organization or a hospital. And we developed good contacts with HIV consultants and social workers at the hospitals. And they knew to find us and refer people to Kerkhuis first, to the World House now, to get immediate financial support for daily expenses, thanks to Aids Foundation.

The next step would be contacting a lawyer to start a procedure to obtain a residence permit for medical treatment, to get access to social benefits and housing. Things work smoothly, especially in the contact between AMC and OLVG.

 

How does one reach out to people with HIV who don’t know they have got this chronic disease?

In 2007 we invited migrant churches to participate in some effort to reach out to people with HIV in their community. Different songwriters and choir leaders wrote texts and music on HIV and community care. We organized a song contest and produced a CD. I found out that singing and talking about human sexuality does not automatically bring an opening in preaching and counseling by migrant pastors.

 

Quite recently there was the Holy Sex project, sponsored by SoaAidsNederland, interviewing pastors and members from migrant churches. I was still disappointed by the stories I read in the booklet that went with a CD. Most pastors give the obligatory answers, condemning sex before marriage. I even found some advice to married couples to wait to have sexual intercourse until one and a half years after the wedding, as if practice is not completely different from principle. I think we still have a long way to go before migrants with HIV feel safe and comfortable to tell their story openly within their church community. It needs a different attitude to get there. Strangely enough one of the obstacles that might help to solve the problem, is caused by the regulations from the municipality. I often heard that people would be more open to their fellow migrants if they would have their own house, and not depending on renting a room from some narrow-minded landlord. At this moment people with HIV do not get any priority to get a house on their own, because the Housing Service of the municipality of Amsterdam considers HIV as a common chronic disease that should not give priority to others at the housing market. Not only a house on their own is important. A residence permit without further conditions would help as well. As you might know, Ghanaian and Nigerian people with HIV got recently told that they can safely go back home, as there is sufficient medication available in their country of origine. Facing this hash and inhuman decision, even sustained by the High Court (Raad van State) will make people more cautious to open up about their status.

In the meantime World House is working on empowerment.

 

Since eleven months we have a weekly radio program in Amsterdam, at the air time of Radio RaZo.

We called it Health & Entertainment Radio. It provides useful information on getting access to health care for undocumented people, starting with basic information about the general practitioner, free medication, free access for undocumented people to some hospitals, the do’s and don’ts, having interviews with doctors, consultants, counselors, and so on. Many people seem to follow the program on internet. We counted almost 10.000 listeners through internet, let alone people who listen through the radio. Actually the program was meant especially to reach out to undocumented people with HIV. But we found out from our ‘peers’ that talking too openly about HIV it might scare off our target group, as people in their network might think ‘why do you listen to this Aids program all the time?’. So we chose for the same concept as I did before at Kerkhuis: everybody is welcome, we give general information on issues like ‘free access to health care’, including information on the issue of HIV and STD’s. I think it’s works. The last month I gave information on the issue of woman trafficking and the women that contacted the World House on this issue increased.

Anyway, I like to do this radio program, with the African ‘peers’ and nice international music, from reggae to gospel. I do not expect miracles from it. Perhaps I should, as a Christian pastor. But I am too much down to earth with the people who need care, that I dare to say that God does not perform miracles out of the blue.

 

If God has ears, he is using ours.

If he has a mouth, he is using ours.

If he has a heart, he is using ours.

If he has hands, he is usings ours.

 

Because, in my opinion, God is so down to earth that he is using us to make other people’s lives less miserable and he does not expect a high moral standard, but people who are willing to take care, show compassion and understanding. I can’t think of another way.

 

Cor Ofman

 

(presentation at the 5th ETHNIC MINORITIES CONFERENCE on Religion and Sexual Health / the Hague October 8th 2010)