I used to write grants for the medical and public health schools of a medical research university, and I often helped public health researchers write grants for HIV/AIDS programs in Africa.  Time and again, they scoffed at faith-based groups in Africa who preached abstinence and fidelity.  They never said quite why they didn’t approve of these methods, but you got the feeling that they thought preaching morals was imperialistic and, well, moralizing.  Instead, they wanted AIDS education and AIDS medication (both good things, but not enough by themselves).  In other words, they didn’t want to step on their own pluralistic toes by suggesting that something was fundamentally flawed in African culture and in the worldviews of certain peoples, so they dared not suggest these good people change their view of right sexuality.  A new report on all this is discussed at great length at First Things.

Katherine Marshall and Lucy Keough, lead authors of the report, are clearly uncomfortable with approaches to HIV prevention that emphasize sexual responsibility, behavior change, and morally based messages. They praise the work and compassion of faith communities in treating and caring for people ­living with AIDS and their families, yet harshly ­criticize the messages of faith communities for increasing the stigma of AIDS. Their discomfort with attempts to change sexual behavior is evident early in the report, when, for example, they muse: “Should the focus be on changing the behaviors that contribute to HIV/AIDS? (Is that possible? Desirable? How? With what assurance?)”

Education and medicine bring change, but the gospel brings the most fundamental change in all of history.  That’s why it works in the fight against AIDS/HIV.