Brown RISD Hillel News

 “Is AIDS a judgment from God?” – the Reverend Billy Graham, often lauded as “America’s Pastor” owing to his popularity in late 20th century, asked this question to a crowd in Columbus, Ohio. “I could not say for sure,” he answered, “but I think so.” This talk looks at the role of religious figures in the early history of the AIDS crisis in the United States. While some leaders of the Christian Right pronounced AIDS as God’s punishment for homosexuals and for the nation that harbored them, others called for care and compassion or even joined the front lines of AIDS relief work and activism. Major Christian leaders and organizations offered new moral visions – both Protestant and Catholic, progressive and conservative – for AIDS education, as they brought Christian discussions of sexual morality, including homosexuality, into the national spotlight. AIDS sparked the creation of this moral rhetoric and quickened efforts to advance a larger moral agenda regarding the health benefits of abstinence and monogamy, a legacy glimpsed as much in the traction gained by abstinence education campaigns as in the more recent cultural purchase of gay marriage.

Professor Anthony Petro is Assistant Professor of Modern Christianity in Boston University's Department of Religion and Program in Women's Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and is the author of After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion (Oxford). 

This event is brought to you by Moral Voices and co-sponsored by Brown RISD Hillel, Brown School of Public Health, Office of Chaplains and Religious Life, Department of Religious Studies, Department of History, RISD Office of Intercultural Engagement, Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies