Seeing the Light

Encouraged by African religious leaders who helped shatter HIV stigma overseas by publicly taking HIV antibody tests, bishops in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America say they plan to follow suit with their own public testing event at their March bishops' conference. ELCA's presiding bishop, the Reverend Mark Hanson, says he hopes he and his peers will inspire other church members to learn their serostatus and to seek support if they are infected. Church leaders also hope to develop a global HIV strategy, which will be presented to the entire Lutheran congregation at ELCA's biennial assembly in August.