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Library Journal Review

Stressing Jesus's unconditional compassion for the sick, suffering, and poor, this clear guidebook offers a succinct overview of AIDS' medical/psychosocial dimensions and urges church communities to reach out to victims and their loved ones through caring ministries, as described in the final chapter. Given the plethora of AIDS titles, librarians should also be familiar with the authors' AIDS, a Manual for Pastoral Care (Westminster, 1987) and an excellent new reflective work by John Snow Mortal Fear: meditations on death and AIDS (Cowley, 1987). EC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

The authors direct this book toward Christians (especially ministers) who have contact with those who suffer from AIDS. Their aim is both educational and pastoral ``that this volume will help the people of God to respond to this expanding public health crisis in an informed and loving manner.'' The first two chapters deal with the basic facts about AIDS and the challenge it raises to both medical practitioners and to the Christian churches. The next two chapters outline the pastoral issues of the AIDS crisis, placing them, first, in the general context of the Christian view of illness (that it is not a punishment for sin, but a call to compassion) and, second, in the specific context of God's ``preferential option'' for the poor where AIDS victims ``are contemporary instances of the `poor' toward whom the people of God have a special mission.'' Later material offers descriptive proposals for AIDS ministries and an impassioned defense of the claim that ``God's people have no option in the AIDS crisis but to design and implement a compassionate, healing, and prophetic ministry that sets an example for all of society to follow.'' This volume is worthy of serious attention. SEM. 261.8'321969792 AIDS (Disease) Patients U.S. Pastoral counseling of / AIDS (Disease) Religious aspects Christianity [CIP] 87-14753