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No More Suffering In Silence

The Amos Institute along with Resurrection Community Church is pleased launch its campaign of “No More Suffering in Silence!” 
 
For too long brothers and sisters afflicted with HIV have in many cases suffered in silence within the confines that has traditionally provided love for so many that could not find love elsewhere: The Black Church. At a time when people should receive an outpouring of love, they have received isolation, segregation, and separation. Thus, they are forced to suffer in silence. 

The purpose of this campaign is to create an atmosphere that allows people to see and hear each other by affirming our humanity rather than our perceived differences. The great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Groups are far more immoral than individuals.” 
 
That is the challenge of the “No More Suffering in Silence” campaign to remove the stigma that has been unfortunately associated to those suffering with the AIDS virus as a group where we are afforded the luxury of hiding behind our preconceived notions as a reason for non-action. By achieving that goal the black church can then collectively respond to the call of an individual on the Jericho road of need. 
 
This is not to suggest that there are not wonderful programs spawned by the black church to provide care to those in need, but there is still far too much isolation for those who are afflicted, when inclusion and love is what they need most. 
 

We are calling on the Black Church to do what it has since its inception that is to be on the vanguard of black suffering. Long before Thomas Jefferson’s words “That all men (and women) are created equal,” was universally accepted to include people of color, the black church was working on the Jeffersonian assumption that all meant all. In doing so, for over three centuries the black church has faced head on one crisis in black America after another.

With black America is losing its best and brightest young minds to a disease that carries an equal portion of death and stigma, we declare on this day that suffering in silence will be met with love, tenderness, and compassion. 

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