As Kansas City’s HIV infection rate rivals Africa’s, some black ministers admit that silence equals death

Now he could open up to others without worrying. But not everyone was as accepting.

"I had a lot of backs turned on me," Robinson says.

Fifteen years ago, the Rev. Eric Williams was one of the only black pastors in Kansas City who would perform funeral services for people who had died of AIDS-related illnesses. His church, Calvary Temple Baptist at 29th Street and Holmes, was one of the first three churches in the metro to participate in local events for the national Black Church Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS. The idea was to increase HIV awareness in the hopes of preventing its spread — and call out the church's role as African-Americans (especially women) were becoming disproportionately affected. Williams encouraged his congregation to get tested for HIV.

"When we started it was us, Longview United Methodist and St. James United Methodist," Williams says of Kansas City's first Black Church Week of Prayer in 1996. "It's been very slow growth. I've done personal outreach to pastors and congregations, and some flat-out turned us down. To be fair, churches are asked to be involved in everything from blood donations to diabetes. The unique thing about churches is, God gives us each an area that we're good at. But I think this needs to be on the palette of services we all provide."

Out of nearly 500 black churches in the metro, only 12 partnered for the Taking It to the Pews Revival, with roughly twice that many involved in the week of prayer for AIDS victims that followed. Running from February to March as a lead-in to the prayer week, Taking It to the Pews was conceived as a way to speak about HIV directly to church congregations and help overcome some of the stigma surrounding the virus.

Prim stands out as one of the few preachers to have been converted.

"I'm ashamed to say it was only a few years ago that I really accepted a new way of thinking about it," Prim says. "That was my failure as a man of God, out of my ignorance. How are people in alternative lifestyles going to hear the word if they're scared to even come into the church? Who else is going to tell them? If I'm supposed to be a light, what's the good unless I'm shining in the dark?"

Two years ago, Prim's wife, Carolyn, started work as an HIV awareness trainer for the Red Cross. She'd worked in health services before taking the Red Cross job, and she and her husband had talked about HIV. She would always argue that it wasn't a sin but a disease and should be treated as such.

"It wasn't that he didn't care, but we didn't know anybody with the virus and didn't do any research into it. It just wasn't in our circle," Carolyn says. "To me, after those talks, it was like he immediately started to change his thinking."

Two years ago, he stood up in front of his congregation and offered a full apology.

Afterward, he figured that some people were glad to hear it and others would say he should've kept his mouth shut.

Just because Prim has changed his mind about HIV doesn't mean he's going to change his preaching about safe-sex practices — which he opposes because he preaches abstinence until marriage. He refuses to mention condoms in a sermon because, he says, he doubts that "one piece of plastic is going to save you."

Prim says he knows he won't be invited to preach in some churches again.

"Other clergy have not necessarily embraced this doctrine, so we've got to try and establish some commonality with them, some sort of mutual understanding," Prim says. "Because it's going to get to the point very soon, if it hasn't already, where there's not going to be a single congregation that doesn't have someone there, at the service, who's HIV-positive."

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The week after Robinson's talk at Metropolitan Missionary Baptist, his fears about his health turn out to be well-founded. He calls in to work and spends the next week sick at home. He's had only four serious periods of illness since his diagnosis, with each following the same weeklong pattern: three days of illness and two to recover his strength.

Wednesday night, March 6, he's back in the pulpit, this time at St. Monica's Catholic Church at East 16th Street and Paseo. He's finishing up another testimonial, and once again, the congregation is shouting amens, telling him to keep preaching.

"People keep telling me to get over this and live my life, and I hate it when they do that," he tells the congregation. "I understand that to some people, they're trying to be strong, and to them that means acting like things don't hurt you and just pushing them away. How am I supposed to get over it when every day I look at myself and I don't know how much longer I'm going to be here? Don't ever tell me to get over it."

He leaves the altar, and those in the front pews stand to embrace him. Prim is already taking his place behind the microphone. He's in a dark suit with a black shirt; his gold necklace sparkles under the lights. As with each sermon Prim has delivered at Taking It to the Pews Revival services over the past month, he starts with an apology for the church's dismissive attitude toward people with HIV and AIDS.