Redemption songs: women, religion, and the moral politics of HIV in Barbados

ABSTRACT

At an historical juncture where HIV/AIDS is rapidly disappearing as a public health issue throughout the Caribbean region, alongside stagnant or reduced funding for HIV-related support services, spirituality and membership in Christian communities of faith occupy a central role for older, working-class women from Barbados living with HIV. However, many of these Christian religious organisations are historically responsible for discriminatory discourses about people living with HIV, creating practical and moral challenges for HIV positive members. Through interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, this paper explores how and why a group of Barbadian women living with HIV develop a strong personal commitment to a spiritual life, and why membership in communities of faith, where HIV infection is often associated with sin and immorality, continues to be important for many of them. I argue that these women’s HIV status transforms and/or intensifies their personal spiritual commitments but also contributes to a critical reflexivity of the wider institutionalised religious communities to which they belong.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV/AIDS
• Barbados
• gender
• religion

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the research participants for their time and generosity in sharing their experiences of living with HIV. Thanks also to the congregations and ministers of the West Coast Methodist Church and New Life Church¹³ for inviting me to attend services and church activities. All opinions and arguments expressed in this paper are those of the author.

Disclosure statement

I have no conflict of interest in relation to this research project.

Notes

1. Names and other identifying factors of all participants in this article have been changed.

2. Jackson-Best (2016) and Edge and Rogers (2005) also note the importance of spirituality and religious affiliation as a coping mechanism for women in Barbados and Black Caribbean women in Britain who face various forms of stress and/or depression affiliated with pregnancy, birth, and motherhood.

3. This pattern extends to the wider African diaspora in the Americas i.e. (Moultrie 2017; Casselberry and Pritchard 2019).

4. Prior to interviews, participants were informed of my research objectives, institutional affiliation in Canada and non-affiliation with any Barbadian HIV programs or international HIV-AIDS agencies.

5. https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-around-world/latin-america/overview, accessed 28 February 2020.

6. https://www.worldbank.org/en/results/2015/12/09/barbados-responds-effectively-to-hivaids and https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P106623?lang=en accessed 28 February 2020.

7. https://www.unaids.org/en/regionscountries/countries/barbados accessed, 1 March 2020.

8. See (Lazarus 2012) for a similar discussion on religion and nationalism in Jamaica.

9. https://www.gov.bb/Visit-Barbados/demographics accessed 29 February 2020.

10. For examples of research focusing on the significance and impact of spirituality and/or religion for PLHIV elsewhere, see Aholou et al. (2016), Ironson, Stuetzle, and Fletcher (2006), Litwinczuk and Groh (2007), Siegel and Schrimshaw (2002) and Simoni, Martone, and Kerwin (2002).

11. https://www.adventist.org/articles/making-sense-of-the-millennium/accessed 3 August 2020.

12. The fact that Cheryl, Patricia and a number of other participants noted in the interviews that HIV was transmitted through their husbands/male partners may explain why some of them disassociated their HIV status from sinful behaviour. As Barrow and Aggleton observe, in Barbadian public rhetoric, older married women are assumed to have contracted HIV as a result of a ‘philandering’ husband and thus exhibit what may be called a ‘Halo effect’ reflecting a distinction between how they ‘caught it’ and the way younger single women ‘caught it’ (2013, 32). However, other participants like Alana did not challenge the claim that HIV infection is the result of sinful behaviour, but, at the same time, ‘democratized’ HIV as just one sin among many. Although it is beyond the scope of this article, it is worth noting that male participants I spoke with generally replicated female participants’ range of perspectives on HIV as a sin.

13. The names of these churches have been changed.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this research was provided through a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant. The author is indebted to the present and past staff and members of HIV support groups, HIV Civil Service Organizations, and HIV-related government agencies in Barbados for sharing their time and knowledge.