Over the last three years, Kay has traveled the world educating herself on the global epidemic that has infected 40 million and killed 25 million. She’s been to Africa, India and Thailand and has trips planned for Russia and China. She spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Matthew Philips about why she feels the Christian church is uniquely positioned to fight AIDS. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: When and why did you first start focusing on AIDS?
Kay Warren: It was about four years ago. I was reading a magazine that had a story on AIDS in Africa. I can’t say why it caught my attention but it did. And as I sat down to read, I was quickly horrified by all the pictures that showed men and women dying, and emaciated children, too. I remember covering my face with my fingers, trying to block out the pictures and focus on the words. I remember it said that 12 million children had been orphaned in Africa due to AIDS, and it just rocked me. I dropped the magazine and—here I was sitting in my nice comfortable living room—and I thought, “Do I even know one orphan? Do I even know one person with AIDS?” I didn’t.
I had a real intense internal dialogue over the next few weeks. I realized that I could either forget about it, pretend I hadn’t even read it, or I could let my heart get involved and make a conscious decision to say yes. And in that moment, it felt as though my heart was put through a wood chipper, shattered into a million pieces. I began to cry. I cried for days and, honestly, hardly a day goes by that I don’t cry about it. I became a seriously disturbed woman, I couldn’t think of anything else.
What was your first step toward advocacy?
I had to start from scratch and educate myself. I started going to medical conferences and was quickly overwhelmed by its size and scope. I went to one at UCLA, and a woman approached and asked me who I was. I told her I’m a pastor’s wife, and she said, “Well hallelujah, the church is finally here.” That to me is a metaphor of what has happened over the last four years.
How did you get your husband, Rick, to share your passion for wanting to address AIDS?
He was always totally supportive of my interest in it, but would say that it had nothing to do with him or our church. I said that’s OK but told him that as a woman, I cannot get to the end of my life and look back and say that I didn’t do anything, that I was just too busy. I couldn’t face God like that, not if I ignored what I’d learned. I knew that [Rick] would come around, and pretty soon, within a few months, he became engaged as well. He got it very quickly, and it became our shared dream.
Talk about your trips to Africa and other Third World countries to learn about AIDS.
I first went to Africa within about six or nine months of reading that article. I thought I had to go see it. In the spring of 2003, I went twice within six weeks, first to Mozambique and then to Malawi. Nothing in my life prepared me for rural Africa. I’d never seen poverty and the lack of technology on that scale. I’ve since been back eight or nine times. After that first trip, I came back determined to start an HIV ministry at our church. Here we were preaching a message of God’s compassion for the sick, yet we hadn’t lifted a finger about [AIDS].
Why did you choose to focus on AIDS instead of other diseases?
There’s a stigma with AIDS in this country. I’ve had breast cancer, and people ask why I don’t advocate for breast cancer, and I say because there’s no stigma. The fact is the gay community was hit the hardest in the U.S., where [approximately] 50 percent of people with AIDS are gay or bisexual men. My response to that is, “So what?” Should that change our level of compassion? Of course not. That doesn’t give us a pass to look the other way. And to the extent that the church has in the past has been a great mistake. That was sinful of us. It was not a Christ-like response. That’s one of the reasons it took me so long to catch on—my sense was that I thought it was largely a gay disease. And I’ve cried bitter tears over that. But the good thing is that it now allows me to reach into the hearts of other evangelicals who think that way and to say that I know where they’re sitting because that’s where I sat and that we’re wrong to think that way.
How hard is it for evangelicals to get past the characterization by some of AIDS as God’s scourge against the sin of homosexuality?
That’s definitely something we’re trying to get past. It’s flawed thinking, for starters. To follow that line of reason means that then, I suppose, the cold I have is God’s judgment against me for going out in the rain without my boots on. Thinking that way is not helpful. We live in a broken, sinful world. We all make mistakes, but at the same time God cares passionately about everyone he has made. You never find Jesus asking people how they got sick, not once does he ask that. When sick people came to him, he simply said, “How can I help you?” And that’s where we’re trying to go. That needs to be the first question out of our mouths.
When did you first start thinking about holding an AIDS summit?
It was pretty much the dream from the beginning when I realized that it was not just about Africa or some other far off place but where I live, where we live. Wherever you are, whether it’s Rwanda or Detroit, you have to ask yourself, “What are you doing about people with AIDS?” I decided pretty much off the bat that we had to do this conference. Nobody in the church was convening to talk about the unique role of the church in combating this. Because neither the government nor the private sector can do the things that the church can.
Like what?
For starters, the church has the world’s widest distribution of volunteers. There are 2.3 billion people who claim to be Christians. Our goal is to mobilize half of them to get involved with people’s physical and spiritual needs. Just today we looked at an overlay map of Rwanda showing three hospitals in the western province, about 16 or 18 clinics, and you know how many churches? Literally thousands. Rwanda is a very hilly country; it’s hard, hard terrain. Trying to get health care for HIV is an arduous task so, as simply a matter of proximity, you’ve got to look at the situation on the ground, and the churches are well positioned to help. Plus, the church also brings a grass-roots approach. It’s not a bureaucracy, there’s not a lot of administration to get through. And we also have moral authority. Government doesn’t have moral authority; nor does the private sector. And on top of that, the church has a motivation that’s different than anyone else’s. The government may feel responsible to protect its citizens; the private sector gets involved because of a profit motive. But people who follow Christ, we have a motivation that outlasts all of those, and that is the motivation of love.
When Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, spoke out against the inclusion of Sen. Barack Obama as a speaker at the summit, did that surprise you?
A bit, and maybe I was a little naïve, but I was so intrigued by [Obama]. I watched him take an HIV test in Kenya and could not think of anyone else like him who had done that publicly, and I immediately thought of him when we were putting together our program. That kind of stuff takes leadership. I’m cognizant of the fact that you can’t get the approval of everyone on everything. But that’s not going to stop us from pursuing our goal of doing our best to end this epidemic. And toward that, we’ll concentrate on the intersection of people that come together on this goal. That’s where we’re going to work, and I don’t expect everyone to agree with us.
How important is it to get beyond the politics that surround AIDS?
It is because this is not a political issue, it’s a moral one. If you have one ounce of compassion in you and have ever met people who have been stigmatized like that, and looked into the eyes of another human who is suffering, it’s almost impossible not to care for them. It’s a moral response from one person to another.
How optimistic are you in our ability to win the fight against the AIDS epidemic?
Two years ago, I wasn’t at all. I went to an AIDS conference in Bangkok, and there was this clash of worldviews and the enormity of it paired with the lack of answers … I left very depressed. But this year I left the conference in Toronto smiling. And it’s not that the problem has gotten smaller. It hasn’t. But the engagement of millions of Christians is very encouraging, and now I do believe we can end AIDS. Just as Jesus said in Mark 10: 27, “With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.”
