Are churches telling HIV patients to stop treatment?

I asked Bill what his pastor and fellow parishioners thought about his decision to stop HIV treatment. “They totally support me,” he said. “In fact, it was their idea.” His congregation had encouraged him to stay off his HIV medications despite his doubts, to see this revelation through “to the end, whatever may come.”

Bill is not alone in his church’s insistence that welcoming a preventable death is somehow an act of faith, that stoic acceptance of sickness and death are the only road to the conditional love of his Pentecostal brethren. The BBC reported recently that many Pentecostal congregations have advised their parishioners to skip HIV therapy and, like Bill, leave their lives in God’s hands.

Read my full article at The Atlantic - Health.

Great video chat about the story on HuffPost Live with Josh Zepps which was then picked up in HuffPost Religion. Look Ma!