Abstract #213  -  From the ministry of souls to the ministry of bodies? The position of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC) towards sexual behaviour, between HIV/AIDS and American donation
Authors:   Presenting Author:   Mrs Judith Hermann-Mesfen - IRD/Inserm UMR 912/Cémaf
Additional Authors:
Aim: The apparition of HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia has put sexuality, which is traditionally taboo, in question. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC), involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS since 1998, exhorts its followers to respect what it calls : “ one man is for one woman” and vice et versa. The EOC is an extra-mundane ascetic church, which means that the body is considered as impure by essence. Consequently, its denial to the benefit of the soul is the only way to save the whole person. Under those circumstances, none of the EOC’s clerics speak about sexuality, a body matter. Since 2004, the American prevention programs (President’ Emergency Plan for Aids Relief –PEPFAR – and USAID) has chosen faith based organisations - and specially EOC - to promote abstinence and faithfulness in agreement with the Ethiopian religious dogma. Strong moral and religious values underlie PEPFAR & USAID prevention programmes which are obviously influenced by the American Christian right wing and therefore can also be considered as a theological discourse. In this presentation, first, I will compare the EOC with the PEPFAR – theological ?- conceptions of HIV/AIDS and sexuality. Second I shall examine how those positions interact concretely on the fieldwork.
Method / Issue: Ethnographical surveys have been conducted in Ethiopia, in urban and rural areas. Some documents of the EOC, USAID, PEPFAR about HIV/AIDS prevention have been collected. Also their Web sites have been visited. More than 150 persons have been interviewed : secular and regular clerics of the EOC, persons living with HIV/AIDS, USAID and PEPFAR coordinator’s in Ethiopia, coordinators of clergy training, people in urban and rural locations
Results / Comments: In 2008 USAID funded a training program for the EOC’s priests, to bring them to discuss their followers’ sexual behaviours. But from the interviews, its appears that despite the incitation of PEPFAR and USAID to make priest and religious association’s members talk about this subject, none of them is willing to discuss such issue explicitly.
Discussion: Nonetheless, beyond an apparent moral similarity, conceptions and representations of HIV/AIDS and sexuality underlying the American and the Ethiopian theologies are opposite. It seems that PEPFAR and USAID build prevention programs in order to influence and know more about the EOC followers’ sexual behaviour, to control their bodies. If HIV/AIDS changes the EOC’s way to consider sex, its discourse on HIV/AIDS did not change, it remains “one man for one woman”. And the EOC’s ministry is not about the followers bodies but their souls.
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