"We are our brothers' and sisters' keeper"

By Jeff Brock
Digital Content Manager

In his poem "Religion vs Spirituality," Elmer Ray Knowles writes:

Spirituality is not a set of rules and regulations.
Spirituality is not a set of traditions and customs.
Spirituality is all inclusive.
Spirituality is the awareness that there is a being, power, or a source that is
Greater than us and it is a part of all of us
And connects us all. ...

We believe that we are our brothers' and sisters' keeper.
We believe all of our brothers and sisters are lovable.

Knowles, a longtime member of Black Brothers Esteem (BBE), embraces his spirituality.

And he's not alone. As part of its mind-body-spirit approach to fighting HIV/AIDS in the African-American community, BBE is helping its clients develop their own sense of spirituality, affirming a connection between improved health outcomes and membership in some kind of spiritual community.

"Spirituality helps people heal and feel less stress," says William Bland, Community Programs Director at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, which has run BBE for more than ten years. Bland, who is black, gay and HIV-positive and has reconciled a spiritual current in his own life. "Growing up in the South, I know how important church was in my life," says Bland, who was raised as a Baptist. "It's a huge cultural component of the African-American experience, whether you embrace it or not."

Gay, bisexual and same-gender-loving African-American men have been hit hard by HIV. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in seven major American cities, about 45% of black gay and bisexual men are HIV-positive. Persistent poverty, inadequate housing and a lack of access to healthcare services contribute to this disproportionate rate of HIV infection.

Through its Brothers in Worship workshop series and spirituality retreats, the Brothers of BBE have made altars, created their own Sunday worship service, and visited congregations throughout the Bay Area. "It's allowed the Brothers to reconnect, to feel like there is a way to reconcile their spirituality and same-sex desires and HIV status," Bland says.

On March 10, BBE will sponsor a Black LGBT Spirituality Forum to mark the Black Church Week of Prayer, an 18-year-old effort by Black churches worldwide to fight some churches' silence on HIV/AIDS. [Read the press release about the event.]

As part of this initiative, BBE created a Spiritually Healthy Brochure that describes spiritual resources for the African-American LGBT community in the Bay Area. To find congregations that would accept them as black gay men, the Brothers evaluated churches, temples and synagogues asking whether they were welcoming environments, used inclusive language or provided health ministries.

Bland says the BBE effort is the first formal program to recognize the connection between spirituality and HIV. "The government has been interested in funding faith-based work, but they assume it can only take place in a church or synagogue," he says. "This is a faith-based program in a non-faith-based organization." [The SFAF Podcast]

Tony Bradford, who serves as BBE's Manager, was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. Bradford admits he had "a bad taste of churches and organized religion," because of how the church treated him for being gay.

Bradford avoided church for many years until his first Brothers in Worship workshop, held at the East Bay Church of Religious Science. "My self-esteem and self-worth were at a low. What I liked when I walked into the church was it was very affirming," says Bradford, who was so impressed that he joined the church and is studying to be a spiritual practitioner.

"As black gay men, we lost that sense of spirituality when we left our home, our family," he says. "Some of the brothers had been out of touch with their spiritual self, and they have now come full circle. With HIV, many brothers felt they were being discarded. Now they understand their own self-worth."

Visit the Black Brothers Esteem homepage to learn more about the program.