Global AIDS Summit: Activist David Miller Finds Christ

Dan Wooding | ASSIST News Service | Updated: Dec 13, 2007

Global AIDS Summit: Activist David Miller Finds Christ

December 7, 2007

LAKE FOREST, CA -- David Miller has long been on of the most controversial AIDS activist in the world, but now there has been an incredible turn-around in his life – he has found Christ as his personal savior.

Miller surprised many at the recent Third Annual Global Summit on AIDS and the Church at Saddleback Church, Lake Forest, California, when Pastor Rick Warren asked him to be a keynote speaker at the event attended by about 1,700 delegates from around the world.

Miller presented at the Plenary Session: Why Leadership Matters, along with Saddleback Leaders Rick Warren and Kay Warren; Jay Hein, Director of the White House Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives; Her Excellency Mrs. Maureen Mwanawasa, First Lady of Zambia and President of The Organization of African First Ladies Against AIDS; and Her Excellency, Mrs. Jeannette Kagame, First Lady of Rwanda, Co-Founder of The Organization of African First Ladies Against AIDS.

He said, “It has been my pleasure to have had this very special opportunity to present at The Global Summit on AIDS and the Church with Rick and Kay Warren. This unprecedented and prestigious gathering of leaders at Saddleback Church provided an important forum to allow for critical dialogue about the worldwide HIV/AIDS crisis and has given us an important strategic platform for stressing the need for people with HIV/AIDS to receive proper nutrition through the use of supplements such as Nutraplete in the domestic and international marketplace.”

This year's conference featured more than 90 speakers, including Peter Piot, M.D., Ph.D., executive director of UNAIDS; Ambassador Mark Dybul, M.D., United States global AIDS coordinator; Her Excellency Mrs. Jeannette Kagame, and first lady of Rwanda and co-founder of The Organization of African First Ladies Against AIDS. Also, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., addressed the Summit attendees. Video messages were provided by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Barack Obama, D-Ill., John Edwards, D-N.C., and former Govs. Mike Huckabee (R) and Mitt Romney (R). An estimated 1,500 people representing local churches, para-church ministries, non-governmental organizations and legal and medical organizations attended the three-day conference.

Miller, who is a Board Member of the AIDS Institute, (www.theaidsinstitute.org), the nation's leading advocacy organization for federal support of people with HIV/AIDS and their providers as well as Co-Chair of the New York City HIV Planning Council Advisory Group, which oversees the distribution of Ryan White CARE Act grants, later agreed to talk to ANS and also Safe Worlds IPTV about what has happened in his life.

David, who is HIV-positive himself, was a longtime member of ACT UP NY and has participated in numerous demonstrations for access to essential life-saving medicines and nutritional supplements for people living with HIV/AIDS, and personally witnessed his protests at many World AIDS conferences around the world, so I began by asking him how many times he had been arrested.

He paused briefly, and then said, “I’ve been arrested two-hundred and nineteen times.” Then he added in typical blunt fashion, “What about you?”

I told him that had been arrested once – on a reporting trip to Nigeria.

“Then you’re having a hard time understanding that part of Jesus’ life,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “I mean Jesus got arrested. If you are going to end up fighting evil, you’re going to have to be willing to get smacked around a little bit. AIDS activists don’t get arrested because we want to make a scene; we get arrested because that brings media attention to a cause that’s been historically been neglected, misunderstood and has carried deadly levels of stigma with it and hasn’t been given the appropriate level of attention as a world wide issue.

“The Church admits this, and has apologized for it, and it is late in coming to this struggle. Society in general treated us like lepers. This is a disease that has global implications regarding everything from health care to stability; to international security….”

George Bush should get the Nobel Peace Prize

Miller went on to say, “Quite surprisingly George Bush has done a lot of good things regarding HIV. He started the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR/Emergency Plan) for which, in my opinion, he should be given a Nobel Peace Prize.”

During his on-stage appearance at Saddleback, he was joined by Rick Warren, who Miller said had helped him find Christ.

When I asked him about his friendship with Warren, he said, “I’ve been an AIDS activist for twenty years. When you do something that long, you better get good at it and you learn about activism as a whole. You get involved with other activist issues but you keep AIDS as your core. You can’t fight AIDS without fighting poverty which is why you have The One Organization here. It’s a very complicated thing being an AIDS treatment activist. You have to learn science and medicine and go to a lot of conferences.

“But that was all mechanical for me and you do it because you love your people -- and that’s spiritual. Everybody with the virus is my brother or my sister; and we have got to look out for each other and we will all die together.

“I gave, in my speech yesterday, a quote from Paul Monay who said, ‘It seems to me the choice is simple collaborate or resist.’ Paul Monay said something else that is pretty exceptional. It was, ‘Thou shalt not be a victim; thou shalt not be a perpetrator most important of all thou shalt not be a bystander.’ The church was a bystander for a while and then the church came into the epidemic via Rick Warren.

“Up until that time, I didn’t see the church doing much in the epidemic and then Rick did a big thing that somebody needed to do.”

There were, however, several Christian ministries fighting a mainly lone battle to wake-up the Church, including He Intends Victory based in Southern California.

Miller said that Rick Warren had apologized for the misdeeds of some American Christian leaders.

“I needed to have somebody ask for forgiveness and then Rick taught me that I have a need in my life; to learn who Jesus Christ is. That was hard to learn, but he gained my trust as a man and this community [at Saddleback] gained my trust as a body and showed me that they really did care.

“Over a long time of souls searching over two years, Rick came over to my hotel World AIDS Day last year (2006) with Steve Kay and David Shaw, and I accepted Jesus in my life. It was a big deal. There were no trumpets; no bright revelation, I just accepted Christ. It was cool.

“This morning, I woke up and my wife and I debated that Hillary Clinton was coming to speak at the summit and we’ve got all kinds of issues with Hillary, but because we’re Christians now, as well as AIDS activists, today’s going to be a day that we will leave it and we let her say her piece at a place like this.”

He was true to his word and didn’t protest her appearance.

Miller added, “Rick and his community have embraced me in my struggle to be a Christian and, for me, it’s a real struggle. It’s a really hard; every moment of the day, it is a struggle. I’ve had a lot of fights with people like New York’s Mayor Bloomberg and, as the head of the HIV Planning Council, I’m learning how to hate what people do and not them personally.”

I reminded David Miller of Herb Hall, a Californian who had left the gay lifestyle and recommitted his life to Christ and then turned up at all of the World AIDS Conferences to pray for people like himself. Herb, a founder member of He Intends Victory, has since died from AIDS-related illnesses, and so I asked him to imagine that Herb was still with us on earth and to give him a message.

Miller, not known to be emotional in this way, teared up as he said, “Herb, we’re continuing as if you were here because you are with us. And when a day comes when AIDS is a piece of history and not an emergency in front of our faces, part of that will be because of what you did. There will be a day soon when me and you get together in heaven, I think we’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about.”

Note: I would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.

© 2007 ASSIST News Service, used with permission

Global AIDS Summit: Activist David Miller Finds Christ