After the wrath of God: AIDS, sexuality, and American religion

This dissertation examines the history of religious participation in the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. The project makes two central arguments. First, it demonstrates how religious actors in the United States have defined debates over morality and sexuality in public discussions of the epidemic. And second, it illustrates the political roles American religion has played in the formation of public health policies since the 1980s. Religious groups in America have a long history of involvement in social reform and providing social services alongside or, all too often, in place of those provided by the state. The AIDS epidemic, however, presented a unique challenge for religious organizations, given the early association of the disease with gay men and drug users. How would churches respond to a disease transmitted through sexual practices that most religious denominations denounced, if not actively condemned? Indeed, this association did slow religious responses, but as this dissertation demonstrates, religious groups did not remain silent for long.;By the mid-1980s, a number of religious leaders, congregations, and denominations confronted AIDS by calling for care for those suffering with the disease and by establishing AIDS ministry programs. Most responses also placed the epidemic in a particular social and moral context, as religious groups addressed the sexual behaviors involved in the transmission of HIV. This dissertation examines how these groups constructed AIDS as a moral epidemic precisely through their discussions of sexuality. It demonstrates how religious discourses about AIDS often posited a moral etiology for the disease, placing moral reasoning alongside biological and medical arguments in discussions concerning the genesis of the epidemic and methods for preventing new cases. These languages of sexual morality, moreover, often found expression through recourse to the imagined nation and national citizenship, contributing to the formation of a particular American sexual morality that privileged monogamy and abstinence as crucial components both in the fight against HIV/AIDS and for the security of national health.