The Associated Press reports that Ted Haggard is alleged to have been having sex with a man about once a month for the past three years.
Ted Haggard was one of Time magazine’s 25 most influential evangelicals in the US. He is one of the most powerful and active advocates for marriage amendments across the country. He is a married father of five.
First, let me get this out of the way: the allegations are untrue and this will be proved in the end. The article makes this pretty clear:
“He loves the Lord, homosexuality is a sin and that’s not Ted,” DeMio said. “His desire is to serve other people and uphold the word of God. … I don’t know him well enough to give a complete character description, but I know him enough to know it’s not true.”
Carolyn Haggard, spokeswoman for the New Life Church and the pastor’s niece, said a four-member church panel will investigate the allegations. The board has the authority to discipline Haggard, including removing him from ministry work.
Ted Haggard and sin just don’t go together. The very idea that the leader of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of New Life Church might sin is just absurd. But you don’t have to take my word for it or the word of New Life Church member Brooks DeMio who has actually seen Ted Haggard. The four-member church panel will do a thorough and unprejudiced review of the facts, according to Ted’s niece who is the spokeswoman for the church.
More evidence that there is no way that these allegations are true. Why would a man who was involved in such an affair randomly look into the camera of a documentary film maker and say, “I think I know what you did last night. If you send me $1000, I won’t tell your wife.” That’s basically impossible.
Even though this particular incident will soon blow away, it does bring up some issues that are related to some things that have been happening at our University recently.
In April, Equality Ride visited campus. This was a bus tour of GLBT activists whose sole purpose, according to Wheaton President Duane Litfin, was to stir up negative media attention so they could be on TV. Their claims to be trying to dialog about University policies toward homosexuals was calculated to get the attention of TV cameras.
Well, it didn’t work here because we seem to be caving in on all of our core values. We have let these evil-doers on campus. We barely even talked to them about the fact that they are going to hell.
This is one nice thing about Ted Haggard. He makes it clear on the website of the National Association of Evangelicals:
Homosexual activity, like adulterous relationships, is clearly condemned in the Scriptures. In Leviticus 18:22 God declares the practice of homosexuality an abomination in His sight. In Romans 1:26-27 the practice of homosexuality is described as a degrading and unnatural passion. I Corinthians 6:9-10 identifies the practice of homosexuality as a sin that, if persisted in, brings grave consequences in this life and excludes one from the Kingdom of God.
Our University actually hosted a forum at which a representative from the Equality Ride was allowed to present his views! The university representatives on this panel also presented only the most liberal side of evangelical thought on the topic. For example, at a related event, Provost Rudyard was asked whether it was a sin when homosexuals live together in a loving, monogamous relationship. He said that it was better but still wrong compared to promiscuous homosexuality.
I have to take issue with the hierarchy of sins that Rudyard constructs here. Jesus destroyed hierarchies of sins in Matthew 5.19-48 where he gave a list of sins and claimed that they were all on the same level. In fact, Jesus said that these various sins, ranging from anger and lust to adultery and murder, are all equally damning. Jesus’ point here is that either you live free of sin, like Ted Haggard and other evangelicals, or you will “be judged by God and sent to hell where [you] will be eternally tormented with the devil and the fallen angels“.
Our University seems to be on its way down this path as well. What we hear from our University spokesmen is that our response to homosexuals should be to “keep telling them that they’re sinners and keep loving them.” Jesus certainly didn’t love homosexuals and other sinners enough to remind them constantly of their failure to live up to his standards. You won’t find him showing them that kind of love anywhere in the gospels. And I say that if Jesus didn’t even love them that much, why should we?
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[...] November 9, 2006 — royalcares The Associated Press is reporting that Ted Haggard, former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, is to undergo some counseling and [...]
[...] want to share with my readers an example of his hermeneutical prowess. On the day that the “Equality Riders” were expected to be attending Chapel here at Bethel last year, he spoke on the topic of [...]