ABSTRACT
Although there is a tendency in the popular media to adopt a nononsense, demystifying approach to the disease AIDS (The New York Magazine, 19 April 1987), and to insist that the problem is one of public health not of morality, an examination of the literature of certain religious minority groups reveals a rich strain of “ metaphorical thinking” about AIDS (Sontag 1978). For many of these groups, whether one classifies them as church, sect, or cult, AIDS has become a symbol of spiritual pollution or moral decay, and they insist that the issue is indeed a moral one and even, in some cases, a magical one.
