Religion, Health, and Community - Ulysses Burley

In this episode of ReligionWise we sit down with Ulysses Burley, founder of UBtheCure, a consulting company that describes itself as being at the "intersection of Faith, Health, and Human Rights." A trained physician turned social activist, Dr. Burley is interested in the role and responsibility of communities to play a part in public health and our collective response to both wellness and disease, including but not limited to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Black community.

Transcript

Chip Gruen: 0:04

Welcome to ReligionWise. I'm your host, Chip Gruen. Today, our guest is Ulysses Burley, who is a founder of an organization called UB the Cure. If you're looking for that online, it's the it's his initials, U B and then thecure.com which is an organization that describes itself as a consulting company at the intersection of faith, health and human rights. Dr Burley, who is trained as a medical doctor and also holds a degree in public health, describes himself as spending as much time in the pulpit as he does in the clinical practice room, because he's moved on to advocacy and social justice work, particularly around the epidemic of HIV and AIDS in the African American community. Though it should be noted, he was super active in the COVID 19 pandemic and other health crises as well. He has served in a variety of organizations, including the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the United States Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS under the Obama administration. At this point, his work really concentrates on the community aspects of health and what are called the social determinants of health. So how does race, class, vocation, living environment, wealth, all of those things, how do they affect our health and wellness or sickness, as it were. Since his work is really interested in the public aspect of health and the community interactions and how they affect health, I think it's interesting to think about values and how values get embedded in scientific endeavors, in in this case, health and medicine endeavors, etc. I mean, particularly when we're on the cusp of having officials in the current federal government who have been historically vaccine deniers and have really questioned some of the key principles of public health. I think it's useful to think about the values that we might share and how those might clash with other values that are sort of more clearly espoused or espoused in opposition to those values of shared responsibility, of community responsibility, that are the backbone of public health. The one that I will just mention here quickly, and then we'll get on to our conversation, is the idea of self determinacy and freedom. So if you remember back to the days of lockdowns and the public health crisis that was the COVID 19 epidemic, most of us found ourselves doing things that we really didn't want to. Isolating, schools and churches and community organizations and crowds of any time were not only discouraged and many times made absolutely verboten that we were asked to wear masks in public places and then eventually asked to get a vaccine in order to create herd immunity. I think it goes without saying that when you're asked to do something that you don't want to do, that that is an impingement, or can be perceived as an impingement on freedom and self determinacy. Now I think for the vast majority of us, we understood this as a trade off that was well worth making. But there is a particular strand of political discourse right now that wants to see individual choice and freedom, regardless of its consequences for the community, as being sort of the heart of the American political project, and so they have potentially real concerns or real hesitancy about seeding any of that self determinacy to the greater good. And I think that that's kind of where we are right now. So I think it's really an interesting time to have Dr Burley on ReligionWise, so that we can talk about those intersections, about religion as a function of community in most cases, and about the values that are embedded in that, and how those may or may not translate to public health initiatives, to political discourses, to the world we find ourselves in now. So if you're a regular listener, you know that we try to be as timely as we can and since this is dropping in February, I will also recognize that February 7 is the National Black HIV and AIDS Awareness Day. You know, here situated within the larger context of Black History Month. So with that context in mind, here's the conversation I had with Dr. Ulysses Burley, I hope you enjoy it. Ulysses Burley, thanks for coming on ReligionWise.

Ulysses Burley: 5:28

Thank you for having me Chip.

Chip Gruen: 5:30

All right, so let's just jump right into it. You know, we're gonna get into a little bit of the, you know, the medicine and the interac...interactions of the medicine and advocacy, and then how the church and religion plays into all of that. But I like to start with something more informal and maybe biographical about how you got where you are, your origin story, if you will. So could you just, you know, give us a little bit of your own personal history?

Ulysses Burley: 5:58

Yeah. How much time do we have Chip? No, certainly can So, born and raised in Houston, Texas to mother and father, both of my parents were professionals. My mother a real estate broker, and my father an engineer. He made electricity and grew up, always intrigued by science, always asking questions about the world around me. Was particularly intrigued by the human body, and so I think I knew I wanted to be a doctor from as early as I knew what doctors did, and I worked toward that goal from a very early age. I had examples in my family and in my community of doctors, and so it wasn't something that was pie in the sky or far fetched. I could see people who looked like me, who were in my own community, who were living out this dream of mine. And so I felt like it was attainable. And I pretty much worked toward that goal, excelling in school, particularly in math and science, and later on, even going to schools, specifically for people who were interested in health professions, which I was really grateful for. Houston in particular, is really good about high school education for specific career paths. And so we had a high school for health professions, which is where I went to. We had a law enforcement high school and a high school for performing and visual arts, where you might know somebody by the name of Beyonce went to. And so we had these kinds of schools. And so I was really grateful to be immersed in those professional environments from early on, but really the fuel for me wanting to be a physician was my mother's illness. She was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was very young, and at the time, the doctors only gave her six months to live. She ended up living two years, but eventually succumbing to stage four breast cancer. And so then I knew exactly what kind of doctor that I wanted to be. I wanted to be the kind of doctor who prevented that from happening to other people. And so cancer kind of became my focus, and I started to do graduate level cancer research as early as my junior year in high school, and continued that research throughout college. Morehouse College, where I went on a research scholarship, was a full scholarship for African American men to encourage us to continue to pursue the sciences in a research capacity, and I studied prostate cancer, and then went to medical school, Northwestern University, and also got a master's in public health while I was there, my master's work was in cancer epidemiology, particularly pancreatic cancer, and everything was going according to plan up until that point. And then I did a study abroad program, kind of right in the middle of medical school, where I was supposed to be working with people living with cancer, and there's a much longer story to it, but I ended up working with people living with HIV instead, and was my first time really being exposed to that type of medicine, but more specifically, the first time that I was exposed to what we call the social determinants of health, those things in our native environment that contribute to our health and our wellness physically. And it really changed my outlook on medicine and public health and really shifted my career trajectory from one of heavily cancer focused to one of HIV and AIDS. And there's more there that I'm sure that we'll get into about how I went from a public health priority to a faith priority, and then mixing the two, but that's the long and short of it.

Chip Gruen: 10:08

Yeah, so let me follow up on that, actually, because I'm curious about the religious intersections here, because I don't know the religion of our youth or the the way that that is understood in our family, I think, is pretty determinative as well. So I'm, I'm curious about, you know, as you are, this very science interested kid, this very medicine interested, you know, then young adult, what is the religious landscape look like? That will eventually, you know, affect you vocationally as well, right?

Ulysses Burley: 10:39

Yeah. So, so we weren't a super religious family. My mother was third generation Lutheran, and my father was Baptist. And when we were born, my mother said, I want to raise my children, Lutheran. And so that's what she did, and my father didn't have a problem with it, and went to church every Sunday and baptized and went through confirmation, as we do in the Lutheran confession, and had a healthy understanding of God, a good belief in God. I prayed like I was supposed to pray. I had a really tenuous relationship with God after my mother's passing, I was just too young to understand death in that context, and particularly death of a parent, a parent who was a good parent and the best person that I ever knew. And so I really was angry at God for a lot of my my teenage years, but it took me into adulthood to really reconcile those feelings just living and experiencing and understanding faith and spirituality better, but those things really didn't play a huge role in the transition. I'll tell you what will, what did when I was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in South America, and that's where I was doing my what was supposed to be cancer training ended up being HIV training. I was doing it through an organization called the Fundación Huésped was which is the principal HIV and AIDS organization in Argentina. And there were a lot of volunteers with the Fundación Huésped who were directly impacted by the HIV and AIDS epidemic, and one of them was a woman of trans experience who was living with HIV as a consequence of participating in survival sex work. And up until that point, I had never had deeply personal relationships with people of trans experience, and so it was certainly a growing opportunity for me, and we would engage in deep conversation. And a consistent theme in that conversation was her faith, particularly her Catholic faith, which more than 98% of Argentina at the time, was was Catholic, and I could tell that she really loved God, and there was even some example of her love for her church, but she vividly communicated how the church didn't love her back because of her identity, and a part of that rejection is what drove her into not being able to provide for herself and her family, and so having to engage in sex work and exposing yourself to that disease like HIV and AIDS, and when I returned, I wondered how faith in that way was playing, also a role in what we were seeing in the States. And the time also coincided with the release of the HIV and AIDS strategy by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, of which I was still a worshiping remember, by now, I was in Chicago for med school, and I was attending St Stephen's Lutheran Church there, which I'm currently still a member of. And I had gotten connected with the African descent ministries of the ELCA at church wide, which the headquarters is based in Chicago, and they had a young adult program for Black young adults called Elisha's Call, and it was led by Reverend Albert Starr. And I remember sharing my story. You know, I'm a medical student. I just got back from a year in Buenos Aires Argentina, where I was, you know, working with people living with HIV. And Reverend Starr said, Did you know that the ELCA just released its first strategy on HIV and and I said, Wow. I had no idea that that churches, or even my church, did that kind of work. That's interesting. And he said, Yeah. He said, we we have a strategy, but we actually have to implement it. We could, we could use somebody with your expertise to help us implement it. And I said, Okay, well, you know, I'm a student. I'm pretty busy, but, you know, I'm open to looking at it. And that turned into an opportunity to attend the International AIDS Conference, which is the largest HIV conference in the world, usually in excess of 20,000 clinicians, researchers, people living with HIV, community advocates, civil society and the ELCA, a sponsored me and a few other young adults who were in the health careers to attend the International AIDS Conference as young adult delegates, and this was in 2010 and so the ELCA releases HIV and AIDS strategy in 2009 which was the year that I returned back from Argentina at the International AIDS conference, with the support of the ELCA in 2010 in Vienna, Austria, and I meet a gentleman at the conference by the name of Reverend Edwin Sanders. He was another African American man, and we were the only two Black men there who were representing faith based organizations. And he told me about what he was doing in the States. He was the only faith based organization in the entire United States who was funded by the Centers for Disease Control to do HIV capacity building training in the country as a faith based organization. And he said, you know, we should connect when we get back and I can, you know, tell you what we've been doing, and you can see if there's some areas of partnership. So I said, okay, yeah, I'll be open to that. And so we did connect. And between him, Reverend Sanders, Reverend Albert Starr at the ELCA and my own pastor, Reverend Booker Vance, at the time at St Stephens, all African American men, they really cultivated in me this sense of call and really opened me up to this idea of vocation, where profession meets call, if you will. And they noticed something in me that I either didn't notice in myself or was actively rejecting because I had been so focused on a singular career path, particularly around cancer and becoming a doctor, and now I've been thrust into this world of HIV and faith, and I found out that they have intersections, and it feels very comfortable. It feels very native in a way that I didn't expect. And those mentors around me noticed it and put me in positions to be able to further explore that intersection. And once I stopped resisting God's call, if you will, and started to lean into what I felt like God was doing in my life, incredible things started to happen. I started to get noticed by larger entities like the World Council of Churches and United Nations, and eventually the White House, where I would go on to serve as one of Barack Obama's advisors on the Presidential Advisory Council HIV and AIDS. And so there's a lot more in between there, but, but it was an unlikely, an unlikely journey and the result of some great men who saw something in me that I maybe didn't see in myself.

Chip Gruen: 18:46

I want to follow up on something that this is, forgive me if this comes out a little half baked. But, you know, you grow up in it, ELCA community in Houston, yeah, go have this. You know, start medical school in Chicago, right? Northwestern? Is that? Right? Yes, and then go have this transformative experience in Argentina. And as I was preparing for the interview, I was sort of looking and trying to put the dots together of all the trajectory. And I said, Oh, this is somebody who became interested in combating HIV and AIDS, who is African American, obviously, you know, the Black community HIV and AIDS is this huge scourge. But it's so interesting to me that this was not a direct like, that's not the reason, right? Like your identity and your upbringing in your community is not what led you to HIV and AIDS, although you made that connection later. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Ulysses Burley: 19:44

Yeah, for sure. So I suppose, much like my faith, as you know, the the ELCA is the whitest church in America. It's only 1% African descent, and I was fortunate enough to come up in one of two African descent Lutheran churches in Houston, Augustana Lutheran Church, just one now, and Augustana is the only one left, but...

Chip Gruen: 20:10

So the membership there is predominantly...

Ulysses Burley: 20:12

Black

Chip Gruen: 20:12

African American, Black. Okay.

Ulysses Burley: 20:13

Yeah, so Lutheran growing up in a white confession, but still feeling like I was having a Black church experience in Black church. And then when I got to Chicago, same St Stephen's Lutheran Church was a African descent Lutheran Church. But when I started doing work for church wide, and you travel, and you start to speak on behalf of the church, and you realize, oh, this is not I'm the sort of an outsider, if you will, in this church. And I make that reference because in many ways I'm an outsider as it relates to the HIV and AIDS epidemic. It does disproportionately impact Black people, but in particular, same gender loving Black men, which I am not, Black women, which I am not. I am not a person living with HIV. It particularly impacts people with low socioeconomic status, if you will, people with low literacy rates, and so none of which that I can identify with. And so you're absolutely right. It really was, you know, this function of trying to make the best out of a broken experience in Argentina and going, you know, supposed to be there working with people living with cancer end up working with people living with HIV. But the the really, the really interesting thing about HIV is that, you know, if you receive a cancer diagnosis, people's first response is to empathize with you. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do for you? If you receive an HIV diagnosis, people's initial response is usually not empathy, it's usually judgment, and they want to know how you got it, and I'll use that information to determine whether or not I have empathy for you. And despite the fact that both cancer and HIV are both medical diseases that impact the immune system on a cellular level, but because of how they are acquired, one of them is viewed socially different than another, and because of that, HIV then becomes a social justice issue. And as a Black person, as a young Black man, I've always been aligned with social justice issues. It was one of the core tenets of my undergraduate education at Morehouse College, which was the college of Martin Luther King, Jr and many others and so Argentina really exposed to me the ways in which social inequalities make people sick. And it gave me, then, this curiosity around what are the other ways in which society is making people sick in my own country, and that really is the basis for the work that I do now and who I've become now in this space, in terms of approaching everything with the health equity lens, HIV and AIDS was a justice issue. Was a justice issue. It is a justice issue that continues to disproportionately impact Black people, and that's really what drew me to the disease, because it allowed for me to not only live into my lifelong goal of being a doctor, but it also simultaneously allowed for me to really develop and lean into this innate sense of morality and ethics and justice that I feel like everybody's entitled to. And from my understanding, I feel like as a core theme of my Christian faith, a faith that you know, is founded on the life of Jesus Christ. So I say that because if I had continued on the cancer path, I don't know that I would be sitting here having this kind of conversation with you, because there really isn't a justice lens for a disease like cancer in the ways in which there are for a disease like HIV and AIDS and so it really was the gumbo, if you will, of a lot of different ingredients that came together and tasted really, really good to me, if you will, in terms of fulfilling all of my parts. Yeah.

Chip Gruen: 25:00

So I want to talk a little bit and sort of maybe a little bit more generally about this, and I think shift is the right word, from a desire for clinical practice, for that sort of patient doctor relationship, towards public health. Yeah, right. And you know, public health systems have been around for a long time, but I think that we are maybe more aware of them now, particularly post...

Ulysses Burley: 25:29

COVID

Chip Gruen: 25:29

...pandemic, right and and maybe even more so now that we can see the pillars of public health system potentially being chopped at...

Ulysses Burley: 25:39

Collapsed

Chip Gruen: 25:39

...you know, right in the next, in the next few years, but, but I want to think about values, you know, which, which, which is language I actually really like. I mean, it's sort of, you know, people might quibble about whether you're talking about morals or ethics, but values we all have...

Ulysses Burley: 25:57

Yes.

Chip Gruen: 25:58

...right? Religious, irreligious, whatever, we all have values, right? And I think fields have values. And I'm curious about how you feel like the values of public health are different from the values in traditional medicine, and how that, how that affects the way that public health is perceived by the public as well, right? Because there are values there that are not neutral?

Ulysses Burley: 26:21

Yeah, that's a really compelling question. I think to answer that question, I think we have to take a step back and consider what health care was designed to do and what it actually does. One of the reasons why I could transition out of a clinical role into a more of a public health role, is because healthcare as it exists is not operating in a way that I thought it would, as somebody who has pursued health careers for my entire life, and I spent more time fighting about bureaucratic red tape and insurance companies and investigational review boards and fill in the blank than I did actually seeing patients and helping patients, and there were so many barriers that prevented me and continue to prevent others from doing the job that we spent years of training to do, to help our patients. And a lot of times when people criticize the healthcare system, they immediately identify doctors, because that's those are the people that are most accessible to the patients. And the truth is, doctors are really just another cog in in this larger infrastructure where we don't have a lot of control, and we try to operate within the system as it exists, and it's a system built on capitalism. And so if you, if you build a health care system on capitalism, well then it's probably not a health care system. It's a sick it's a sick care system because it only works if people continue to engage in the system and and I quickly realized that, and I realized that it wasn't what I had set out for. And so if healthcare operated in which the ways and that it was designed to operate, which we see in other high income countries, particularly, you know, the Nordic countries and the Dutch and and others then, again, maybe we're not here having this conversation, but there was a human element that was missing from my practice and public health, in and of itself, has to be communal. It has to be human. Has to be done in community. And if people didn't realize that before to your point, we know it now after COVID 19, because no matter what we did, no matter how isolated we found ourselves, we were all at risk. We were all subject to exposure at some point, because we cannot live separate from one another. We were created to be in community, I genuinely believe that, and I think that is an asset to public health, and it offered me at least a greater sense of calling, if I can encourage one person to get vaccinated, I know that I am then protecting 10 people around them by way of vaccinating that one person, whereas in a clinical setting, if I can treat this individual person's needs, I fulfill this person's needs. Maybe they don't translate to a community setting. Maybe they do. And so I think, from the public health, when done correctly, embodies a much more holistic approach that requires us to engage community and not do medicine in isolation of one another. And for me, that very much so mirrors the ministry of Jesus Christ. And again, you know, when people ask me, you know, a lot of people pit science and faith against one another. And for me, I was like, ah, they, they look a lot alike to me. You know, if you, if you come into this, the way I come into it, if you believe what I believe. And, you know, I believe that Jesus Christ's public ministry looked a lot like public health work and, you know, and healing was his primary ministry. And so again, for me, it's just kind of like this, this beautiful symphony, if you will, of all of my identities coming together and working together for the goodness of of the whole.

Chip Gruen: 31:08

So I, you know, midway through that question, you probably saw my my face kind of clouded over thinking about community and the importance of community for public health. And, you know, something that occupational hazard of a college professor who studies religion, thinking about institutional breakdown, thinking about, you know, younger generations not to sound like an old man, but I am, but younger generations turning their back on membership in anything, right? So we see it in, you know, we see it in, you know, religious institutions. We see it in social clubs. We see it in, you know, across the board, right, even, even political identity, right? Like people don't want to be a card carrying member or less likely to be a card carrying member of anything. And so I was just as you were giving that really, you know, beautiful answer about the importance of community for public health. I'm sitting here sort of thinking, oh no, right we are, you know, as faith in institutions drops. The question I had was about trust, right? About trust in institutions. But I wonder if you could kind of respond to that and think about how maybe as an awareness of community, the importance of community towards the health of the community is growing. You know, faith in community identities and group dynamics are sort of sliding...

Ulysses Burley: 32:31

Yeah

Chip Gruen: 32:32

...and how that is a challenge for us.

Ulysses Burley: 32:34

Yeah. So let me be clear what public health is for me and what public health actually is might not be the same things either. I think a lot of people approach public health the same way in which they approach civic engagement. Most people go into a voter's booth and make decisions for themselves and for their immediate family. Very few people go into a voters booth and say, You know what? This might not help me outright, but I know that it'll help a lot of other people. And because of that, this is the way that I should go. One of the reasons why COVID 19 was as bad as it was was because we we couldn't get people to see past their own well being. Maybe you're young, maybe you're healthy, but maybe you could put on a mask, because everybody else around you isn't as young, it isn't as healthy, and your wearing a mask is showing love to your neighbor in a way that might be an inconvenience to you, but it benefits the whole and I think what we're seeing in the context of community institutions and maybe more specifically faith institutions, is I think people still have faith, Regardless of their participation in a formal religion or worship setting, I think how they access that faith has changed, because faith institutions themselves have lost its sense of community, and so whereas public health and maybe even civic engagement, I believe, are a function of expressed individuality. I believe that by and large, people to desire to be in faith communities, but those communities have largely become isolating social clubs, and as a result, people have chosen to retreat from those particular spaces and access faith in other places. I do a lot of work with LGBTQIA plus communities, usually as a function of my my HIV work, and some of that work is meeting those communities where they are in their faith journeys, and a lot of those people have been harmed by traditional faith communities. And so we ended up having, we end up having worship in ballroom spaces, and not the kind of ballroom where you waltz and you dance, but the house and balls that were built as safe havens for LGBTQ plus communities, or we'll have church at a pub or a club, because that's where people commune. That's where they feel safe in their communities. And so we bring the faith to them. I try to bring the faith to them when traditional faith spaces have become isolated, and so I think, you know, the behavior that we see in society is just an expression of what we've seen in some of our traditional faith communities. And I think for the sake of human flourishing, but also for the sake of the flourishing of religion, both have to make a shift. Otherwise, I think traditional religion, as we know, is going to fade away, and people are going to be more isolated than they've ever been, and lose their sense of values and morality, most of which is usually shaped by some faith identity, and so it's a challenging time, I think, and I think it all links back. So I think the way people vote, the way people interact with public health, the way people even exercise their own faith, is all indicative of, I think, where we're where we're headed as a as a society, and, you know, in our context, maybe even as a country, and I don't think it's a good thing. And so one of the reasons why I do the work that I do is to try and bring folks back to a sense of community apart from their own individual well being.

Chip Gruen: 37:02

So let's talk a little bit more specifically about the work that you do right, and the advocacy that you do, and the community work that you do. And it really seems to me, you know, looking at your your dossier and the things that you do in your organization, that you're influenced by liberation theology...

Ulysses Burley: 37:22

For sure.

Chip Gruen: 37:23

...right? That you know this is for those who are unfamiliar out in the audience, the idea that Christ can be found in the disenfranchised and suffering, and that those who are disadvantaged, socially, economically, politically, etc, are for that reason, can relate more readily to this message. So, which probably, I don't know, maybe coincidentally, not coincidentally, is like grows up in Latin America, right? So you know your work in Argentina is, you know, certainly rhymes right with with the work of the liberation theologians. And so I was actually on YouTube, and I watched a message that you gave at Wake Forest University, and you had said in that that the Black body of Christ has HIV. So I want to talk about that message...

Ulysses Burley: 37:42

Yes. Yeah.

Chip Gruen: 38:12

...how that relates to these sorts of principles of liberation theology, how it relates to the public advocacy work that you do, and you know how that's received too.

Ulysses Burley: 38:23

Yeah. So I think it goes back to this message around us not existing apart from one another, our neighbor. And the inspiration really is from First Corinthians, um, beginning at the 12th verse, I think First Corinthians, Chapter 12, 27th verse, maybe, where you know, Paul is talking about members of the body and everybody having a role, and one member of the body not existing at the expense of another, essentially all of those members of the body working and coming together to form this beautiful body of Christ. In the work that I do around HIV and AIDS, because it has so devastatingly impacted certain groups of people, the LGBTQ plus community, Black people, women. Oftentimes, people don't feel like it's something that they need to be concerned about or aware of, because it's their disease. It's doesn't impact me, whereas COVID 19, it impacted all of us in a very clear way. People don't necessarily feel the same way around HIV, oh, I'm not gay, oh, I'm not, you know, a person of trans experience, or I'm not Black, and for me, I recognize again that we don't exist. We can exist in isolation of one another. And so if we are all the body of Christ, and one member of the Body of Christ has HIV, then all members of the Body of Christ have HIV. The body of Christ has HIV. And depending on the setting, I'll go even a step further to say the Black body of Christ has HIV. And intentionally, I might be lifting up the fact that Christ was a brown skin, Palestinian Jew who was on the fringes of society, was born to, you know, a refugee mother and father and who prioritized those very people and HIV disproportionately impacting Black people, who In many regards, are people who experience multiple marginalized identities. There are the very people who Christ would call family or friend and the very people who Christ would defend. And so for me, the embodiment of Jesus really is the embodiment of community and all members of the community not being good, as long as one member of the community is not good. And, you know, there might be a message of diversity, equity, inclusion sprinkled in there, you know, about how we we try and separate ourselves from each other based on, you know, these man made characteristics, and it's just not what we were created to do or be. And so certainly, the body of Christ has HIV, as long as one member of the body has HIV. And even more so, the Black body of Christ has HIV, and that should provide pause for all people who profess to believe in something higher than themselves.

Chip Gruen: 42:10

So the question I always like to end these conversations on, so I'm always trying to be really aware of what I am ignoring. Right? If I'm steering this conversation. There's something that I'm not paying attention to or that you think is really important for our audience to hear from you today. What are we not talking about that we should be talking about?

Ulysses Burley: 42:31

So I'll give you two things from both of my lenses. One, a scientific consideration, we don't talk enough about HIV vaccines which don't exist yet, but we've never eradicated a disease without either a cure or a preventative vaccine, and we don't have either for HIV, and in a world where we are progressively retreating from vaccination and inoculization, and people need to be reminded that if we are to end the HIV and AIDS epidemic as a public health crisis, we need an HIV vaccine to be able to do that. And HIV vaccines are the primary priority for my organization UB the Cure, and for me as a physician, as a scientist, and so that's what I dedicate most of my time to. And so part of my advocacy work is to make sure that we're talking about vaccines, even as we are poised to crown and anti-vaxxer to the highest governmental health position in our country that people need to continue to to to get vaccines, and people need to prepare for an eventual HIV vaccine, something that we don't talk about enough, where we talk about prep and antiretrovirals that have revolutionized the HIV and AIDS epidemic. We can't forget HIV vaccines in the conversation. That's the scientific consideration. The moral consideration is that when I talk about HIV and AIDS, I'm not only talking about HIV and AIDS, I'm talking about sexual and reproductive health rights. I'm talking about health equity for people who are differently abled. I'm talking about the ability for people to identify and the bodies in which they feel most comfortable in. I'm talking about children having access to education. I'm naming all of these things because we all live in a house with many rooms, Chip and HIV and AIDS is one house. Sexual and reproductive health rights is another house. Health Equity for people with disabilities is another room. Excuse. Excuse me, there's another room in the house, but the roof is on fire on the house. And the way fires work, it's not going to save the sexual and reproductive health rights room over the HIV and AIDS room, it's going to all burn out, burn up. And so we need to understand that fighting for one issue is tantamount to fighting for a number of different issues, and until we realize that all of these issues intersect and that we have to be advocates, not just for our thing, but for the thing that's impacting our neighbors, the roof is going to continue to burn, and a country, for a lack of a better metaphor, is going to continue to burn. We've got to all band together and put out the fire collectively, to not just save our own rooms, but to save all of the rooms. And I don't think we talk about the intersections enough when we lift up our single issues that impact our specific communities, because they don't just impact our specific communities. And so that's what I'll leave you with, Chip.

Chip Gruen: 46:07

All right. Well, I think that's a great place to end our conversation, that call to action. Ulysses Burley, thank you so much for coming on ReligionWise. This has been great.

Ulysses Burley: 46:16

Thank you for having me.

Chip Gruen: 46:18

This has been ReligionWise, a podcast produced by the Institute for Religious and Cultural Understanding of Muhlenberg College. ReligionWise is produced and directed by Christine Flicker. For more information about additional programming, or to make an inquiry about a speaking engagement, please visit our website at religionandculture.com There, you'll find our contact information, links to other programming and have the opportunity to support the work of the Institute. Please subscribe to ReligionWise wherever you get your podcasts. We look forward to seeing you next time.