The Christian Medical Fellowship

encourages churches to use the resources available on the UNAIDS website

in the worldwide fight against HIV/AIDS

 An estimated 5 million people are being infected with the HIV virus annually.  According to the United Nations AIDS Programme (UNAIDS), the epidemic is clearly outpacing a response which is not on the bold scale required to reverse its course.  Concerned about the worldwide epidemic, the Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) is running a campaign to encourage the Church to join the fight against HIV/AIDS, warning that unless Christians in the West increase their efforts, the spread of the disease will continue unchecked.   In a press release in November 2004 the CMF states: (29/11/2004):  ‘Global bodies like UNAIDS, the World Health Organisation and the Global Fund are stepping up worldwide strategies to tackle HIV and AIDS, and increasingly are seeking to work with Christian agencies.  It is a great challenge for organisations such as CMF to work constructively with these bodies in tackling the global HIV crisis effectively, while at the same time holding on to our distinctive Christian voice, ethos and perspective.’   According to the press release, ‘Churches and prayer groups can participate in the World AIDS campaign by using the resources available on-line at www.unaids.org.’^[i]

The rationale behind the CMF campaign, it appears, is that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is so tragic, the spread of the disease so remorseless, that Christians should be prepared to work along side organisations like the United Nations and the World Health Organisation.  And to make sure that churches know how to access resources from UNAIDS the press release actually provides the website address.  What the CMF is proposing, in effect, is that the Church of Christ become a partner of the UN and WHO in tackling the AIDS epidemic.

The purpose of this paper is to show that CMF is wrong to use its authority as a Christian medical organisation to promote the idea that the Church should work in partnership with UNAIDS, and other like minded organisations in the fight against AIDS.  In particular, CMF is wrong to encourage churches to use resource materials from the UNAIDS website.  

Resources from the UNAIDS website

To describe the type of resources that churches are being encouraged to use I have examined a sample of materials provided by the UNAIDS website.  The following three points emerged:      

1.  UNAIDS promotes safer sex

UNAIDS is committed to the ‘safer sex’ ideology which sees the condom as central to the prevention of HIV/AIDS and other STDs.   According to UNAIDS, prevention programmes should ‘include accurate and explicit information on safer sex, including correct and consistent male and female condom use, as well as abstinence, delay in onset of sexual debut, mutual fidelity, reduction of the number of sexual partners, comprehensive and appropriate sexual education and the early and effective treatment of sexually transmitted infections… The male latex condom is the single most efficient available technology to reduce the sexual transmission of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.  Along with the female condom, it is a key component of comprehensive prevention strategies to reduce risks to sexual exposure to HIV, and both should be made readily and consistently available to all those who need them.’_[ii] 

The UNAIDS sex education manual for the uniformed services explains ‘safer sex’ as follows: ‘Safer sex is a means of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV.  The easiest form of safer sex for those who are sexually active to adopt is the use of latex condoms every time they engage in vaginal, oral or anal sex.  Safer sex also includes not having sex, fidelity between uninfected partners, and practising non-penetrative sex such as hugging, kissing, masturbation, mutual masturbation and simulating sex between a partner’s thighs or breasts.’_[iii]

UNAIDS website gives advice to young people who wish to protect themselves against AIDS. ‘The best prevention method is the adoption of safe sex behaviour.  Safe sex includes using a condom – but, using a condom correctly, and using one every time you have sex.  You should learn how to use condoms and how to negotiate the use of condoms with your partner.  For information about effective and healthy use of condoms, you should consult health services for young people and pharmacies.’_[iv]

The chief characteristic of ‘safer sex’ ideology is that no type or form of sexual behaviour is wrong or immoral.  In other words, the ‘safer sex’ ideology does not recognise the concept of sexual immorality.

2.  UNAIDS and sex education

UNAIDS is a keen promoter of sex education.  An example is the Peer Education Kit for Uniformed Services, a sex education manual for the military, peacekeepers and the police.  The Education Kit is designed to ‘inform planners and policy-makers who may eventually develop and manage a peer leadership programme… There are exercises designed to desensitize sexual issues, to assess risk and to enhance communication within relationships.  Exercises on condom use and STIs are also included.’_[v]  

The Education Kit aims to teach individuals how to change their behaviour.  Once a person has been made aware of the dangers of HIV they ‘might now begin to think seriously about the need to protect themselves and their loved ones from HIV/AIDS or other STIs.  This is when they might become motivated and ready to change.  They may think about this for a long time and decide not to have multiple sexual partners or perhaps go out and buy condoms.  At this stage, condoms need to be easily available and individuals need to feel capable of using condoms and negotiating safer sex.’_[vi] 

Peer educators must not be judgemental.  They must respect everyone’s opinion.  ‘A peer educator who is faithful to his wife or girlfriend may find it hard to understand why other men visit sex workers or turn to sex with other men.  However, it is essential to focus on protecting your peers from infection, not changing moral and social behaviours to resemble your own…_[vii] It is impossible to reduce HIV infections without condoms.  Some peer educators may be personally against condoms or feel uncomfortable talking about them.  However, peer educators cannot do their job effectively without getting beneficiaries to consider consistent condom use.’   People must be helped to overcome personal blocks to condoms. ‘Some people in the uniformed services have never seen, touched or used a condom.  Pass condoms out.  Have people open the packages and examine them.  Ask them to stretch them and even blow them up into balloons.  Demonstrate how to put them on, using a banana or a wooden model.’_[viii]

The Education Kit provides peer educators with a number of display cards to demonstrate opportunities for promoting condoms.  Display CARD 14 is a picture of a wife handing her uniformed husband a supply of condoms as he prepares to leave home for a mission.  The text around the card explains that ‘wives and regular girlfriends should ensure that their whole family is protected from HIV by giving their husbands condoms when they leave on mission’._[ix]  Here the implication is that as a man is bound to be unfaithful to his wife when he is away from home, the wife should give her husband condoms to protect him from STDs.  The wife apparently accepts the fact that her husband will be having sex when he is away from home.  This scenario obviously condones adultery.

According to the UNAIDS manual promoting condoms can be fun.  ‘One of the best ways for overcoming shyness and discomfort when it comes to condoms is to get fun out of them… People usually find it very humorous when condoms are blown up into balloons.  The blown-up balloons can be batted around or attached to walls as decorations.  Bars and nightclubs are particularly good places for “playing” with condoms.  Condom balloon blowing contests can be held where prizes are given to the largest balloon or the first one blown up and tied.’_[x] 

Sex education and the sexual revolution

The essential point to understand about sex education is that it has evolved out of the ideas of those who have driven the sexual revolution against Christian moral standards over the past century.  In my book on sex education, Lessons in Depravity, which examines the relationship between sex education and the sexual revolution, I reach the following conclusion:  ‘It is my contention that we can only understand the motivation behind sex education if we grasp the essential point that sex education has evolved out of the ideas of the sexual revolution.  Indeed, our study of the history of sex education has shown, beyond reasonable doubt, that it has grown out of the activities and campaigning of the sexual revolutionaries.  We have seen that Marie Stopes was the motivating force behind the FPA.  We have seen that the IPPF was set up to promote the ideology of Margaret Sanger.  Both of these women, and the revolutionaries like Wilhelm Reich, Alfred Kinsey and Wardell Pomeroy understood that sex education could be a powerful vehicle for promoting their ideas among children.’_[xi]  

3. UNAIDS and the IPPF

UNAIDS is ideologically in the same camp as the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), two organisations that have been in the forefront of the sexual revolution against Christian moral standards.  UNAIDS works closely with the IPPF on the human rights agenda for people with AIDS. In August 2005, for example, UNAIDS, in collaboration with IPPF, convened a meeting of people working on HIV-related human rights and discrimination indices._[xii]  A recent report on the role of reproductive health providers in preventing HIV was produced jointly by UNAIDS and the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), working closely with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the IPPF._[xiii]  A key message of this report is that ‘condom promotion, of course, is an integral component of HIV counselling—and here too, reproductive health providers can make a critical contribution.’_[xiv]  There is no doubt that UNAIDS is heavily influenced by the IPPF.  So when the CMF promotes UNAIDS, it is really promoting the ideology of the IPPF.

To grasp the motivation of the IPPF it is necessary to understand the ideology of its founder Margaret Sanger, the woman who devoted her life to the promotion of contraception, and who coined the term ‘birth control’.  She believed that preventing conception helped to liberate women from the bondage caused by bourgeois morality, laws and superstitions._[xv]  She was an open and ardent propagandist for the joys of the flesh and believed that traditional attitudes towards sex were infantile, archaic, and ignorant.  She claimed that the birth control movement freed the mind from ‘sexual prejudice and taboo, by demanding the frankest and most unflinching re-examination of sex in its relation to human nature and the bases of human society.’_[xvi] 

The strength of the IPPF is that it is a federation of national Family Planning Associations (FPAs), which, while operating within their own cultural and legal setting, are committed to the ideology of the Federation.  The IPPF encourages governments to accept responsibility for establishing state-controlled family planning, such as we have in the UK.  By the year 2000 the IPPF had a network of Family Planning Associations in over 180 countries actively engaged in spreading its ideology of ‘safer sex’, ‘safe abortion’ and sex education.

A fundamental objective of the IPPF is to get family planning, legal abortion and sex education accepted as human rights.  This objective is embedded in the constitution of the IPPF as a fundamental principle on which its worldwide network of membership is based.  Since its inception it has striven to make birth control a human right for all people._[xvii]

The IPPF believes that it is always a mistake to enter into debates on questions of morality.  Instead, the approach of those who advocate family planning, abortion and sex education should be to insist on free and informed choice._[xviii]  This is an interesting admission for it shows that the IPPF and its constituent FPAs are striving to demoralise all discussions on contraception, abortion and sex education.  They are uncomfortable entering into a moral debate for fear that the immorality of their ideology, when exposed to biblical truth, will be revealed for what it is.   

The resource materials quoted from the UNAIDS website illustrate the amoral ideology that lies behind the HIV/AIDS prevention strategy of the United Nations.  As churches use the resources of the UNAIDS website, as recommended by the Christian Medical Fellowship, it is inevitable that they will absorb the amoral ideology of the IPPF and Alan Guttmacher Institute.

The biblical view of sexual conduct

The amoral approach to sexual conduct of UNAIDS stands in direct opposition to the Christian view.  The Bible makes it clear that God, in his great wisdom, created mankind as sexual beings, with the ability to reproduce sexually, and the divine plan is that men and women should unite in marriage to create families and thereby propagate the human race. God’s plan is that human sexual activity should be reserved for marriage.  The Bible condemns sex outside marriage in the strongest possible terms—sexual relationships outside marriage are condemned as fornication and adultery.  The Bible warns that those who sin sexually are sinning against their own bodies, and commands us to flee from sexual immorality.   

Christian sexual conduct is expressed in the four virtues—modesty, chivalry, chastity and fidelity.  While each virtue applies to an aspect of sexual behaviour, together they form a coherent inner belief system that expresses the biblical attitude to sex, marriage and the family.  Sexual purity is the foundation on which these virtues are built.  

Modesty is the virtue that teaches a woman to cover herself in a way that is discreet and decent. It discourages lust and encourages faithful love and reveals itself in the way a woman dresses, speaks and behaves.  A modest woman is careful not to be sexually provocative. She hides her eyes from explicit images and closes her ears to explicit language.  She has an inner beauty that radiates her true worthy as a woman (1 Timothy 3:9-10).  The great strength of a modest spirit is that it rejects sexual immorality, for it recognises the rightful purpose of sex as something private that is meant for the relationship between husband and wife.

Chivalry is the virtue that teaches men to relate to women with honour and respect.  It gives men the inner motivation to practise self-control, honesty and decency in relationships.  A chivalrous man treats women with courtesy and care.  It understands and respects the sexual vulnerability of women that is wrapped up in pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood.  A chivalrous man does not take sexual advantage of a woman, but seeks to protect her honour.  Chastity is based in the desire for sexual purity, both before and after marriage.  It welcomes the discipline of self-control and self-denial.  Fidelity is based in faithfulness that rejoices in the lifelong nature of the marriage union, and so provides security for all members of the family.  Marriage flourishes when all four virtues are practised.  And most important of all, these are the Christian virtues that guard children from danger and abuse—they provide children with God-given protection against the ravages that result from sexual immorality.  In his great wisdom God has instituted moral laws around human sexual conduct that preserve marriage, secure the family and protect children.  These virtues are based in the holy, righteous character of God, and reflected in his moral law. 

This teaching does not come from the mind of man, but from the wisdom of God. Therefore, those who reject this teaching do not reject man but God.  The Bible’s teaching on sexual conduct alone has the answer to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, for it can set young people free from the bondage of promiscuous sex and all its dreadful and inevitable consequences.  And most people, when they hear the biblical view of sexual conduct, because they are created in the image of God and have a conscience, know in their hearts that it is right and good.  Most women do not want to be sexual objects, reliant on condoms to prevent sexual tragedies.   Most women do not want to rely on ‘safer sex’ to prevent HIV/AIDS.  Most women want one man to be their husband and the father of their children.  Most men, when they understand God’s plan for human sexual conduct, recognise an innate motivation to treat women with honour and respect, and want to have a wife that is free from the ravages caused by sexual immorality.  And men who have learned the biblical view of sexual conduct understand why casual sex is wrong, and why sexual lust needs to be controlled.  Self-control, not safer sex, is the sign of a worthy man.

God has called a people who are to be holy; who are to purify themselves as Christ is pure.  It is God’s will that there should not be even a hint of sexual immorality among Christians (Ephesians 5:3).  The world must see, by the way that we live and behave that God’s holy people are different.  Christians, as the light of the world, must bear witness to God’s standard for sexual conduct, teaching that God’s law which surround sexual conduct are both right and good for all people.  We must have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them for what they are (Ephesians 5:11).

Why the CMF is wrong

The Christian Medical Fellowship could have encouraged churches to teach the biblical view of sexual conduct in the fight against AIDS.  But it has not done so.  Instead it has encouraged churches to use the resources of the UNAIDS website.  The CMF’s campaign to encourage the Church of Christ, God’s holy people, to become partners with UNAIDS is wrong for two reasons.

1. Not unequally yoked

First, the CMF is wrong to ignore the Scriptures that command God’s people not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.  ‘For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness…?  “Therefore come out from among them and be separate”, says the Lord.  “Touch no unclean thing and I will receive you.”’ (2 Corinthians 6:14, 17).  What does the Church of Christ have in common with the ideology of UNAIDS?  God’s command it clear – ‘touch no unclean thing and I will receive you’.  The CMF is wrong to introduce the Church to the uncleanness of the UNAIDS website.  The CMF, it appears, has been taken captive by a hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human wisdom and the basic principles of this world (Colossians 2:8).

2.  Enticing the Church into sexual immorality

Second, the CMF is wrong to encourage the Church to use a website that promotes an amoral view of sexual conduct.  The Bible warns against an attitude in the Church that is tolerant of sexual immorality.  Our Lord had this against the Church in Thyatira, that it tolerated that woman Jezebel, who called herself a prophetess, and by her teaching misled God’s people into sexual immorality (Revelation 2:20).  In effect, the CMF is enticing the Church to tolerate the teachings of ‘that woman’ Jezebel, in the guise of UNAIDS.

The leadership of CMF needs to understand that their press release stands as a public record.   The whole world knows that the Christian Medical Fellowships recommends that churches and prayer groups should use the materials of UNAIDS.   But the Church must reject the advice of the CMF.  In view of God’s holiness, there can be no partnership between the Church of Christ and the detestable teachings of UNAIDS.  The true God stands opposed to evil and sin just as light stands opposed to darkness.  God is actively and intensely set against evil and will not tolerate evil among his people.  He commanded Gideon to ‘tear down your father’s altar to Baal and the Asherah pole beside it’ (Judges 6:25).  The divine command is clear: ‘You shall purge the evil from your midst’ (Deuteronomy 22:21).

Endnotes