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AIDS As Metaphor Susan J 44 / SOCIETY * JANUARY / FEBRUARY 1989 tions in American mainstream religion, particularly those The recent death of Barbara Hargrove is deeply regretted by her related to what we have known as the Protestant ethic, or many friends and colleagues in sociology and religious studies. what Robert Bellah has called "utilitarian individualism." Her life demonstrated the highest quality of scholarship, intellect, and humane endeavor The need for questioning both a utilitarian ethic and ram- pant individualism may be most clear in rural North America right now, but is evident much more broadly in READINGS SUGGESTED B Y THE A UTHOR: the society. It remains to be seen whether the rural situa- Freudenberger, C. Dean and Gregory, John, eds. Proceedings, tion may lead to broader religious movements that not Volume I: Forum on Church and Land. Claremont, Calif.: only question that ethic but offer new alternatives. [] The School of Theology at Claremont, 1986. Paddock, Joe; Paddock, Nancy and Bly, Carol. Soil and Survival. Land Stewardship and the Future of American Agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986. Barbara Hargrove was professor of the sociology of religion at Ridgeway, James. "The Farm Belt's Far Right." Sojourners 15 the Iliff School of Theology in Denver Her many publications include The Reformation of the Holy, Religion and the Sociology (1986). of Knowledge, and The Emerging New Class: Implications for Zeskind, Leonard. Background Report on Racist and Anti- Church and Society. She edited Sociological Analysis, served as Semitic" Organizational Intervention in the Farm Protest vice president of the Association for the Sociology' of Religion, and Movement. Atlanta: Center for Democratic Renewal, was president of the Religious Research Association. 1985. AIDS as Metaphor Susan J. Palmer lthough there is a tendency in the popular media to the strengthening and/or definition of boundaries be- A adopt a no-nonsense, demystifying approach to tween the group and the larger society. AIDS--acquired immune deficiency syndrome--and to The differences between the groups' various attitudes insist that the problem is one of public health not of mo- toward AIDS are striking. This study attempts to account rality, an examination of the literature of certain religious for these differences and to interpret the meaning of the minority groups reveals a rich strain of "metaphorical AIDS threat within each group. It is postulated that in thinking" about AIDS, reminiscent of the phenomenon each group AIDS is used as a symbol to reinforce its own described by Susan Sontag in Illness as Metaphor For particular standards of sexual behavior and ideal of fam- many of these groups, whether one classifies them as ily life. This in turn helps to define the boundaries be- church, sect, or cult, AIDS has become a symbol of spir- tween the group and the larger society. itual pollution or moral decay, and they insist that the In order to understand how and why AIDS is treated as issue is indeed a moral one and even, in some cases, a a symbol in these groups, it is useful to turn to Peter magical one. Berger's thoughts on nomization. In The Sacred Canopy he suggests that "the most important function of society Seven religious groups were chosen for this study: the is nomization" which creates a shield against terror: every Worldwide Church of God, the Jimmy Swaggart Minis- nomos is "an edifice erected in the face of the potent and tries, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Seventh Day Adven- alien forces of chaos." Thus the social order provides a tists, the Christian Scientists, the Unification Church, and shelter from marginal situations which reveal the "innate the Rajneesh movement. The first two groups represent precariousness of all social worlds." Death is the marginal fundamentalist and evangelical churches within main- situation par excellence, not only because of its obvious stream Christianity; the next three might be classified as threat to the continuity of human relationships, but be- Christian sects; and the last two conform to R.S. Ell- cause it threatens the basic assumptions of order on wood's definition of a cult in Religious and Spiritual which society rests. Sexual deviance is another area that Groups in Modern America. A perusal of the literature on provokes anomic terror. Berger notes that the sexual pro- AIDS reveals that the topic is usually discussed in connec- gram of a society is taken for granted not simply as a tion with four main themes: (I) millenarian beliefs, (2) utilitarian or morally correct arrangement, but as an in- sexual mores, (3) magical approaches to illness, and (4) evitable expression of "human nature." He cites the "ho- RELIGIOUS REVIVAL IN AMERICAN LIFE / 45 mosexual panic" as an illustration of the terror unleashed If we examine the literature on AIDS issuing from con- by the denial of the program. temporary churches in the light of the theories of Berger, Religion, according to Berger, is "the human enterprise Conrad, and Sontag, it appears inevitable, when faced by which a sacred cosmos is established," and it plays a with a catastrophic event involving the issues of fatal ill- strategic part in world construction. Since the antonym to ness, sexual morality, and the outcast status of AIDS vic- sacred is profane, to be in a right relationship with the tims, that each church must respond in an effort to sacred cosmos is to be "protected against the nightmare bolster its own particular world construction and to re- threats of chaos and anomy." Nomic costructions, de- duce terror in its congregation. Since we live in a secular signed to keep terror at bay, achieve their ultimate age in which reality is multifaceted, it is also inevitable culmination--"literally their apotheosis"--in the sacred that different churches should come up with different in- cosmos. Since each religion projects its version of the terpretations of the same set of events. The striking vari- human order--including its sexual program--into the to- ety in the responses might be ascribed to the different tality of being, it is understandable that a fatal, sexually belief systems found in these religious organizations. In transmitted disease that is contracted through what each cases in which the response to AIDS does not reflect the church defines as sexually deviant behavior, should be- group's major beliefs (for example, the Christian Scien- come a symbol of the profane. tists do not emphasize faith healing, and the Adventists Disease is another marginal situation to which society do not emphasize the Last Days, it might more accurately must respond. Peter Conrad describes the anomic terror reflect the church's relationship to its host society. In other of the profane when he writes, in a 1986 issue of Social cases the statements might say more about the type of Policy, of the American public's "overblown... irrational leadership found in the religious organization; charis- and pointless reaction to AIDS." He asserts that illness, matic cult leaders Reverend Sun Myung Moon and Bhag- unlike disease, which is a "biophysical phenomenon" in- wan Shree Rajneesh are the most bold and inventive in volves the world of subjective interpretation and mean- working the AIDS symbol into their millenarian ing; "how a culture defines an illness and how individuals prophecies. experience their disorder." He attributes the public's hys- The primary method of data collection was the perusal terical response to AIDS to the particular social features of the literature which was sent, at my request, by the of the disease which combine to form a cultural image of churches. A secondary method was to interview members AIDS that is socially devastating: "AIDS is a disease with of those churches that practiced healing rituals, body ritu- a triple stigma: it is connected to stigmatized groups, it is als to ward off the disease, or instituted obligatory AIDS sexually transmitted, and it is a terminal disease." Conrad testing. Five of these groups have issued official, well- touches briefly on the moral and religious aspects of the defined policies concerning AIDS and AIDS victims. Two social meaning of AIDS, and he points out that it belongs groups insist on AIDS tests for their congregation, and to that group of illnesses which reflect moral shame on one group, while exhibiting signs of metaphorical think- the individuals who had the ill luck to contract them. He ing about AIDS in its rituals and folklore, has not yet refers to Allen Brandt's observation concerning venereal published a statement on the topic. diseases as also applicable to AIDS: "Venereal diseases... became a symbol for social disorder and moral decay--a Religious Responses metaphor of evil." Television evangelist, Herbert W. Armstrong belongs to Susan Sontag explored the social meaning of illness in the biblical prophecy movement, the Worldwide Church the nineteenth century's romantic obsession with tuber- of God, characterized by a belief in a cataclysmic end to culosis and in the contemporary mystique surrounding the present age, the Second Coming of Christ, and the cancer. She argues that metaphorical thinking about dis- dawn of the millennium. This movement has flourished ease leads to placing the burden of guilt on the patient. in America over the past two decades and has been popu- Sontag attributes this to our cowardly inclination to re- larized by Hal Lindsey's book, The Late Great Planet duce ineluctable realities like fatal illnesses to mere psy- Earth, which sold over fifteen million copies. Given this chological phenomena. Illness as Metaphor was background, it is not surprising that AIDS is linked to published in 1978, before awareness of the AIDS virus in biblical prophecy in an article appearing in the Church America, but Sontag's ideas contribute toward an under- publication, The Plain Truth.
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