Ted Haggard has come to twitter and gently predicted the end of the religious right.
There is a link to his Web site, which includes a surprising Healing Overview.
Don't expect a therapeutic guide.
It's a sanitized version of his sexual history at New Light Baptist Church in which he acknowledges one contact with gay escort Mike Jones and effectively denies there was anything else.
Candace Chellew-Hodge, associate pastor at Garden of Grace United Church of Christ in Columbia, S.C., blistered the formerly homosexual Rev. Ted Haggard for hypocrisy after Haggard said that at his new church he would "'encourage' members to strive towards the ideal of biblical heterosexuality and monogamy."
It’s disappointing when you realize the lesson [of his period of being widely shunned] has gone unheeded—that Haggard is so desperate to again be accepted by those who disowned him that he will bury his own truth and continue to shun, abuse, and belittle others all while hiding behind his pulpit and his Bible.
My partner and I never went to the Episcopal church that had so gladly “welcomed” us. I hope that no gay or lesbian person makes the mistake of believing that Haggard has changed and is really “welcoming” them to his new church.
Ted Haggard actually started his new church in November. Last week's incorporation was just another step for the man who left his last big church amid scandal and left behind a hush money agreement.
Why incorporate now? He told the Colorado Springs Gazette that it's about the money. That is:
. . . St. James was incorporated “to keep the accounting in order” of the paid talks they’ve given for about a year and a half at evangelical churches across the country. The Haggards incur out-of-pocket expenses while on the road, so St. James is a way to be reimbursed for those costs in an orderly manner, he said.
Steve Rabey writing about coverage of Gayle Haggard's promotion of her new book about life with Ted:
The Haggard story has now evolved into the type of media events Neal Gabler called “lifies,” which are celebrity-driven, media-friendly stories about failure and redemption that serve up big, gooey life lessons for viewers.
Ted Haggard, who started New Life Church in his Colorado Springs basement, plans to host a prayer meeting in his living room next week.
In 2006, Haggard resigned from New Life amid a predatory sex and drug scandal.
Reactions to his modestly stated goals for this project were generally skeptical, as they have been since he made his peremptory return to the ministry. Adrienne S. Gaines of Chrisma magazine wrote Thursday:
Ministers who have worked with Haggard say it is premature for him to launch into ministry.
Mark Barna of the Colorado Springs Gazette wrote:
Several people who have worked with Haggard said it’s premature for him to be leading a church. C. Peter Wagner, who co-founded New Life’s World Prayer Center with Haggard, said the former pastor should first seek approval from the overseers before leading people in prayer and worship. Haggard quit the five-year restoration program in February 2008.
The man who once led the National Association of Evangelicals and a church with a membership of 14,000 appears to have mapped his path carefully.
We'll miss Gayle & Ted Haggard's appearance to discuss how their marriage survived the predatory homosexuality/drugs blowup.
They want people to know that divorce is not the answer. Although this is not volunteer missionary work:
The couple will be paid an undisclosed amount for the interview, the latest in a series of public appearances that started in January when Ted Haggard began promoting an HBO documentary about his time in exile. He also has appeared on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Larry King Live."
We sense a comeback. For Gayle told the Denver Post she believes his struggles have deepened his Christian walk: "I think he is better equipped to minister to people than ever before."
They're like cockroaches explains Christa Brown of Stop Baptist Predators:
It is the very nature of such agreements that they hide in the dark. That’s the reason for them. By design and function, they keep troubling news quiet. Most of the time, they work. The people never talk, and you never hear about the hush money or the reason for it.
She discusses the New Life Church claims with regard to Ted Haggard:
After all, this is a church whose leaders not only paid a young man to keep quiet, but then they effectively denied doing it. Instead, they had the sickening gall to claim they were trying to help the young man. “Compassionate assistance,” said Brady Boyd, the senior pastor.
She proceeds to document how the Baptist General Convention of Texas has offered hush money to clergy sex abuse victims, and having purchased the victims' silence, denied having done so.
Read the entire post here. Hush money agreements are like cockroaches. Yes. The piece is well worth reading.
Christa Brown at Stop Baptist Predators goes right to ethical core of the most recent Ted Haggard revelations when she writes:
It was about pastoral abuse and exploitation.
It was about a mega-church cover-up.
No one involved has any excuse for confusion about the real nature of the issues here. Decades of research and documentation of the psychiatric impact and ethical implications of the sexual exploitation of positions of power and trust, preceded everything that took place under fallen fundamentalist superstar Ted Haggard's authority at New Life Church.
She's simply being sraightforward when she writes:
The young man was in his early 20s. So he was of legal age. But here’s the thing. The young man was part of Haggard’s congregation.
Haggard was his “pastor.” That’s not just an empty word. A pastor occupies a position of high trust toward the members of his congregation.
That’s why what Haggard did was so abusive.
It wasn’t merely “inappropriate,” as the church describes it. Rather, Haggard’s conduct was abusive of another human being.
It is inherently manipulative for a minister to use a congregant -- even an adult congregant -- for his own sexual ends. In some states, such conduct might even be a felony, just as it would if a psychologist sexually exploited a client.
Truth came to the table in this case because the victim, Grant Haas, who had been paid to be quiet, stepped forward. Certainly knowing that he would be greeted with a blizzard of unfortunate implications.
Gently clarifying the nature of payments made by New Life Church to a young church volunteer who had a problem with fallen fundamentalist star Ted Haggard, the New York Times writes:
DENVER — The New Life Church, a nationally known evangelical institution that fired its founding pastor, Ted Haggard, in 2006 over accusations that he had had sex with a male prostitute, made payments starting in 2007 to a young male church member who had a relationship with Mr. Haggard before the dismissal, the church’s pastor told worshipers on Sunday.The payments — part of a confidential legal settlement in 2007 that included money for counseling and college expenses — came from insurance money, not donations from members, the senior pastor of New Life, Brady Boyd, said in his sermon at the church in Colorado Springs.
Mr. Boyd said in an interview on Monday that the payments, and what has now amounted to second body blow of scandal, were kept quiet for two years partly because of legal constraints, and partly because of ministerial confidentiality rules, since the man had sought out church authorities for counseling about the affair. Mr. Boyd declined to identify the young man, but said he is now in his 20s and was over 18 at the time of the relationship. Mr. Haggard is now 52.
Mr. Boyd said he had decided to break the silence because the young man called a few weeks ago and said he was thinking of going public himself.
Grant Haas, now 25, sees matters differently:
Silence and abuse do seem to have robbed the victim of his church family.
Thus far we have heard no evidence that the church provided the emotional support and reassurance a victim requires to fully recover.
Wade Burleson is able defender of the faith as he reviews Newsweek's profile of Ted Haggard
It is when he turns to leadership
We Christians should take an honest look at what it is we think qualifies a person to lead. I sometimes wonder if one of the problems of modern Christianity is that we have created such a false sense of super-spirituality that we succumb to a certain mode of pretending that we never struggle. Christians, especially we who lead, sometimes try to act as if we are perfect. We have pastors who bully those who question them, denominational leaders who call those who oppose their decisions "liberals" and other actions that lead me to believe we have a God-complex among some of our leaders. This false sense of moral invincibility has led to a climate where transparency, honesty, and personal integrity are no longer a part of our corporate faith. ... .
Southern Baptist International Mission Board inflated, sometimes fabricated statistics of missionary accomplishment certainly raise those issues. Former IMB Trustee Burleson is expert on those problems. But his point is more general.
Burleson concludes:
The SBC church, institution or agency that believes the "leader" is beyond simple accountablity will find that leader has the capability to ruin the organization. When and if that happens, the fault will reside not only with the leader, but those laymen who were unable to see that a lack of transparency is the first indication that something is wrong.
Will his call to Southern Baptist reform be answered?
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