Purpose: Using qualitative methods, this study explores the religious formation of ten black gay men living with AIDS to understand their experience of the black church while managing their disease. The study also explores their experience of religiously sanctioned homophobia and heterosexism.

Methods: Following Seidman's (1998) approach to in depth interviewing, the ten informants participated in three, ninety minute interviews. The first interview solicited life history data. The second interview solicited their experience of religious formation and education within the black church. The third interview solicited the meaning those events had in relation to the informants' understanding and use of spirituality while living with AIDS as well as their experience of alienation from the church because of their disease status and sexual orientation. Thirty interviews were analyzed using Runyan's (1982) Stage-State analysis, Narrative Analysis and Discourse Analysis.

Results: The data analysis revealed a developmental process of identity formation and coping. Informants described the development of their religious, spiritual, gay and racial identities. The informants' religious identity was subsequently diminished because of their alienation due to religiously sanctioned homophobia and heterosexism. This loss was particularly difficult because their spiritual identities were formed, in part, through their experience of church affiliation. As a response to this loss, the informants illuminated “spiritual agency”, a concept coined by the researcher. Spiritual agency is the integration of spirituality and Agency (Bandura, 2000). Where as Bandura's understanding of agency “places a premium on collective efficacy to exercise control over personal destinies of the individual”, these informants identify and utilize the core features of spirituality to manifest their desires. The informants' spiritual agency was a significant coping response to the loss of church affiliation, a personal, cultural and historical coping resource.

Implications for Practice: This study supports spirituality and spiritual agency as an important phenomenon in the lives of the informants in the wake of rejection from the church. “Starting where the client is” offers an advocacy function for social work practice with this population. The data indicates the need for social workers to assess issues of spirituality for their African American gay male clients living with AIDS, especially those alienated from the church. Additional research is needed to further explore the salience of spiritual agency in the lives of clients whose cultural and historical coping resources, specifically the institutional church has been made unavailable to them.

Bandura, A. (2000). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology. 52: 1-26.

Runyan, W. M. (1982). Life Histories and Psychobiography: Explorations in Theory in Method. New York: Oxford University Press.

Seidman, I. (1998). Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A guide for researchers in education and social sciences. New York: Teachers College Press.