Returning to San Francisco where they began in 1986, approximately 200 members of the National Episcopal AIDS Coalition (NEAC), at its Forward in Faith conference March 23-25, were reminded, in the face of declining support, that "the church still has AIDS." Three guest speakers each warned of complacency in the church caused by what NEAC co-chair, the Rev. William Frampton, described as the feeling that the AIDS epidemic is over.

In three days of workshops, presenters emphasized repeatedly the growing global HIV/AIDS pandemic where the "mode of transmission," according to Frederick Lyagoba, a Ugandan now at the University of Washington, "is either sexual (mostly heterosexual), from mother to child, or by blood transfusion."

AIDS related deaths, at 2.3 million worldwide in 1998, replaced tuberculosis as the leading cause of death, according to the World Health Organization. Data from the Centers for Disease Control indicate a 22 percent jump in new AIDS cases among Americans age 50 or older.

Pamela Chinnis, president of the House of Deputies, was honored at the closing luncheon. "I do not intend to recuse myself from presiding," she said, and "I want to assure you, until I go out of office — and even long after — I will be an ardent supporter of AIDS ministry, and of people who are homosexual, because I believe that's what God wants all of us to do."

Jesse Milan, director of the National Prevention Information Network and an attorney, who has lived with HIV for 18 years, said there are fewer diocesan HIV commissions than three years ago, and while there are new energized people, many parish ministries have closed down. He noted that the AIDS National Interfaith Network closed, the result of "complacency and lack of funding (that) plague all of us."

Gwen Hall, founder of Sojourner Truth Unity Fellowship Church in Seattle, in her keynote presentation focused on the impact of HIV/AIDS — and corresponding silence — in African-American communities. Saying the tendency in America is to make black people invisible, she delineated 10 elements in taking the "faith walk," the first being "we have to live it."

Christian de la Huerte, founder of Q Spirit, "an international network of gays and lesbians and spirituality," stressed the connection of spirituality and the homosexual community.

A conference-concluding "town meeting" produced discussion on declining financial resources at all levels, seen as symptomatic of perceptions that the church was past the AIDS crisis.