Posts on Ted Haggard

The Colorado Springs Gazette reports that New Life Church has narrowed down it candidates to replace its disgraced former pastor, one who will be less concerned with political activity: "Brady Boyd, 40, is an associate senior pastor at Gateway Church in suburban Dallas, another well-known evangelical megachurch. He is scheduled to preach at New Life three times — Aug. 12, 19 and 26 — before the congregation votes Aug. 27 on whether to hire him as senior pastor ... Boyd’s résumé indicates a man who is much more concerned with a church faced inward for healing than a church faced outward toward politics. He is not well-known nationally, and his selection may show that the leadership of New Life wants to strengthen its core evangelical role rather than regain prominence in the national political arena."

Ted Haggard now reportedly “completely heterosexual”

Is GOP “a vocal minority of extremists” such as Santorum, Falwell, Robertson, and Haggard? asks the group, which held off until after the elections. Watch.

Jesse Lee Peterson of Brotherhood Organization for a New Destiny is a frequent right-wing speaker. More on Peterson.

Abramoff-linked Traditional Values Coalition chief claims sign for him was Haggard saying homosexuality is genetic; “They need to say that.”

Before he resigned from his position as President of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard had been overseeing an organization that was trying to broaden its agenda beyond the standard anti-gay, anti-abortion issues that mobilize most religious right political organizations.

In early October, NAE unveiled a document entitled “For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility” which, according to the project’s co-chair

[C]alls evangelicals to a biblically balanced concern that reflects the full range of God's concerns for the well-being of marriage, the family, the sanctity of human life, justice for the poor, care for creation, peace, freedom and racial justice. No longer dare one accuse evangelicals of being 'one-issue' voters focused exclusively on one or two issues.

As part of this new mission, NAE had become active on everything from global warming to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. 

NAE’s attempts to focus on broader issues created a significant amount of tension between the organization and the old school, hard-line right-wing groups such as Focus on the Family.  

As such, it is not surprising that some of the most ardent Religious Right activists would seek to use Haggard’s downfall to discredit the NAE’s attempts to broaden its agenda  

The Reverend Rob Schenck (pronounced SHANK), president of the Evangelical-dominated National Clergy Council in … released the following statement today on the resignation of the Reverend Ted Haggard from the presidency of the National Association of Evangelicals:

The moral failure of recently resigned president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Rev. Ted Haggard, may explain in part the leftward drift of the organization over the last several years.

Apparently, Schenck thinks that only those suffering from “moral failure” could possible care about poverty, inequality, the environment, or human rights.  

Amid allegations that Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, had a three-year relationship with a gay male prostitute, James Dobson did what he has taken to doing frequently since the media began investigating reports of increasing voter disenchantment with the GOP even among the most conservative voters - and that is to blame the media for trying to keep so-called “values voters” from the polls next week.

"It is unconscionable that the legitimate news media would report a rumor like this based on nothing but one man's accusation. Ted Haggard is a friend of mine and it appears someone is trying to damage his reputation as a way of influencing the outcome of Tuesday's election -- especially the vote on Colorado's marriage-protection amendment -- which Ted strongly supports.”

Ever since the Mark Foley scandal broke, Dobson has been on a mission to blame every piece of news that might harm Republican turn-out at the polls as part of a conspiracy by the liberal media:

"What Mark Foley did was unconscionable. It was terrible," Dobson said. "... Thankfully he's gone. But tell me -- now that he's gone, why is it still with us? Why are they still talking about it? Why are they trying to blame somebody for it? It is because they are using that to suppress the values voters."

Dobson hammered away at this supposed conspiracy again just the other day on this radio program, according to FOF’s own “CitizenLink” news service

It is imperative, he said, for conservatives to be alert to what's at stake. Dobson asked [Gary] Bauer whether he's ever seen the media more biased and more determined to suppress conservative turnout. "I thought I had seen it all," Bauer said. "This has been unbelievable. It's not even camouflaged. Big, liberal media has been engaging in an all-out war on the Christian vote -- to suppress that vote, to discourage faith-based voters, to make them think through distorted polls that the election is already over."

Haggard was named in a TIME magazine cover story as one of the most influential evangelicals in the U.S. He was recently on the big screen in the highly acclaimed indie documentary “Jesus Camp” although he complained about the way he was “portrayed in the movie.” The film’s directors responded to Haggard’s complaints: saying

Perhaps Pastor Ted regrets how he comes off in the film and is expressing it by criticizing us, Becky, and the children in the film. What he calls “negative” and not “normative” we see as simply true and accurate.

Watch the clip here of Haggard in "Jesus Camp" joking

“I think I know what you did last night. If you give me a thousand dollars, I won’t tell your wife.”

UPDATE: A spokesperson for Haggard's church has acknowledged that "some of the accusations were true."

The acting senior pastor at New Life, Ross Parsley, told KKTV-TV of Colorado Springs that Haggard admitted that some of the accusations were true. "I just know that there has been some admission of indiscretion, not admission to all of the material that has been discussed but there is an admission of some guilt," Parsley told the station. He did not elaborate, and a telephone number for Parsley could not be found late Thursday.