’ “I’d shoot my son if he had AIDS”, says Vicar’, was a tabloid headline only four years ago. Thankfully, most Christians have moved on from that type of reaction. Nevertheless, the variety of Christian responses covers a wide spectrum of opinion and practice. In this respect Christians are no different from many other people in society. The Churches reflect and consolidate the values and mores of the society of which they are a part. The overall challenge for Christians facing HIV/AIDS, as well as many other contemporary issues, is how to be prophetic. This means not simply falling into a reactionary mould, but analysing what is happening in the pandemic of HIV, reflecting upon this reality and after much listening to people’s needs, discerning whether the Churches have anything valuable to say.

It is important to distinguish institutional Christian responses, reflected in official statements, and the action on the ground by Christians of all denominations. In some responses there is convergence of view, in others informed dissent from ‘official’ lines. It is also important to note the context within which the debates about pastoral responses to AIDS/HIV take place, for these touch on other lively issues such as the right to life, understanding drug use, sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular. If society at large shows discomfort in dealing with these and some of the other major issues which AIDS raises, such as death and dying or the politics of health care, then it is hardly surprising that the Churches have been faltering in their first steps to respond.

Much has been written on religion and culture from the perspective of the sociology of religion, as well as from the perspectives of anthropologists and sociologists in general. The last two groups have largely tended to absorb the one into the other, and, as has been the case with most modern epistemologies in the social and human sciences, religion is the element which is always dislocated from its rightful place. There has been a tendency to look at religion itself as acultural phenomenon, rather than viewing the dialectic between the two as necessary for a proper understanding of both.

In the modern vision, however, both religion and culture have come into disrepute. Religion is seen basically as those myths and superstitions which hold back rational and scientific development in society; and culture is also viewed as an impediment which keeps people from participating in the fruits of the Enlightenment (primarily rationality) and the techno-scientific developments of western society. Emphasis on the social presence of religion and culture is therefore seen largely as a problem of ‘underdeveloped third world societies’.

The hall-mark of a genuine spirituality must lie in the honest recognition of our rootedness in the world of matter. It is the theme of poets as various as John Donne and Dylan Thomas. Perhaps in Donne we find its chief expression in the Devotions on Emergent Occasions and Severall Steps in my Sickness of 1624, but it is present as the background of many of his poems:

Dylan Thomas refers to Donne with approval and comments in a letter to Pamela Hansford Johnson in similar vein:

This rootedness is our greatest glory. It must drive us towards engagement with the stuff of creation, in contrast to a spirituality which offers us ways of putting up with things as they are.

This suggests a spirituality which must face up to the concrete particularity of our daily life. As Jon Sobrino has remarked recently:

We go on and on learning about AIDS. I first became aware of AIDS when I started reading the early press reports some ten years ago. Eventually I knew of people who were ill because of AIDS, I knew that lovers of friends of mine were ill, and in due course they died. I remember the very first time I saw the skin cancer Kaprosi Sarcoma: it was on the hand of a friend whom I was visiting in Amsterdam. I remember helping in 1987 to light over a thousand votive lights in the Dominican Priory Church at Oxford at an all-night vigil, to represent the current number of people in the United Kingdom known to be HIV Positive, and, of course, those candles also represented those who had died. My experience also included explaining how HIV infection is transmitted (and how it is not), talking about ‘safer sex’, and giving advice about the HIV test.

However, nearly two years ago I came to Edinburgh, and in my time there my experience of AIDS has broadened tremendously. I knew nothing about drug abuse whatsoever, although I knew that was how the HIV virus had been spreading so widely in Edinburgh, making it the worst-hit city in Britain after London. I had no idea how relevant my experiences of AIDS and of how it affected gay men in England would be. As it turned out, they were of great value. What, though, I was not prepared for was how AIDS affected children. Of course, gay men have parents and brothers and sisters and grandparents, all of whom are affected in one way or another when someone becomes HIV Positive.

‘Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.’

According to St Luke, the Lord dies fully conscious, quoting this line from the 31st psalm: ‘Into thy hands I commit my spirit!’ And, later on, in St Luke’s second book, the Acts of the Apostles, we hear St Stephen, the first Christian martyr, saying as he is dying: ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ And in the 1st epistle of Peter Christians suffering severe hardship are told to ‘entrust their souls to a faithful Creator’.

Trusting ourselves to God, letting go, putting ourselves in the hands of God. Down through the ages numerous holy men and women have urged us to do this, but it is not quite as easy as it sounds. There are all sorts of obstacles—our sins, hang-ups deep down inside us—that stop nearly all of us, right until the end, right until death, from letting go completely.

Mahayana Buddhism is called the religion of grace. In other words, the very core of its teaching is dependent on the compassionate work of Amida Buddha, the Saviour of all sentient beings. In this article I, who am today a Christian, would like to show how, through the Jodo Shin- shu teaching which was established by Shinran (1173—1262), and which very fully embodies the essence of Mahayana Buddhism’s teachings, I came to understand the doctrine of ‘Nishu Jinshin’ (‘Two kinds of deep belief’), and why this doctrine has been so important in my religious development.

To do this I must first write about the beginnings of my knowledge of Christianity. When, for the first time, I heard the name of Jesus Christ, from my elementary school teacher, Miss Yamano, I was just six years old. One day, in her class, we were talking about the greatest people in the world, and she told us the stories of Buddha, Hideyo Noguchi and Jesus Christ, among others. I still clearly remember what she told us about Jesus Christ: ‘Jesus Christ is the man crucified on the cross for all people’s sake.’ I remember it because I was deeply impressed by this, and wished to meet this man. However, since I was a small boy, I did not know anything at all about an institutionalised Christianity. Nevertheless, from that time onwards, Jesus Christ became a great man for whom I longed. He was also the first person to teach me the value of self-sacrifice for the sake of others, something the consciousness of which grew steadily stronger in me under the influence not only of people whom I met but also people whom I knew through their writings.