Search Results for: haggard

Colorado Springs’ New Life Church just announced that it has fired Pastor Ted Haggard for his “sexually immoral conduct.” The much publicized meth and gay hooker scandal has elicited a little bit of soul searching and a lot hemming and hawing from Haggard’s fellow Evangelical leaders, but perhaps the most ridiculous response came yesterday from Pastor Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hills mega-church-wannabe. Writing in his personal blog, Driscoll offers his fellow pastors “some practical suggestions” on how to avoid the type of temptation that consumed Pastor Haggard. And near the top of his list?

“Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.”

Uh-huh. Leave it to a fundamentalist Evangelical preacher to have such a profound understanding of human sexuality. Or as the inimitable Dan Savage so aptly put it:

“I’m sure Ted Haggard is saying something along these lines to his wife right now: ‘Oh, honey… I wouldn’t have been having those meth-fueled ass-banging sessions with that gay hooker if you hadn’t have let yourself go like that!’ “

Of course, using Pastor Driscoll’s line of reasoning one would suppose about two-thirds of married, middle-aged Americans — men and women alike — to be meth-addicted homosexuals. Hmm. I haven’t looked at the statistics recently, but that figure strikes me as just a tad high… at least, outside of Colorado Springs.

But scroll further down Pastor Driscoll’s list and you’ll find some more useful suggestions on how to avoid temptation. Like a pastor should never travel alone, or freely give out his cell phone number, or hang out at places where he might come in contact with “lonely people”… you know… like at his own church. Pastor Driscoll also advises against keeping “a secondary email account from which to build a secret identity.” Personally, it never occurred to me to create a secret identity, but I suppose the prospect must have some appeal to joyless, rigidly moral, puritanical hypocrites like Pastor Driscoll and his colleagues.

But mostly what I’ve learned from Pastor Driscoll’s sage advice is that becoming a pastor is a great way to meet women. (And men, I guess.) Apparently, the ladies think pastors are hot:

“I have, however, seen some very overt opportunities for sin. On one occasion I actually had a young woman put a note into my shirt pocket while I was serving communion with my wife, asking me to have dinner, a massage, and sex with her. On another occasion a young woman emailed me a photo of herself topless and wanted to know if I liked her body. Thankfully, that email was intercepted by an assistant and never got to me.”

Pastor Driscoll has been “blessed with a trustworthy heterosexual male assistant,” and I’m sure he was equally thankful to intercept that scandalous email. Praise the Lord.

Wow. Mega-church preachers are like rock stars — there’s sexual temptation lying behind every pew. With office perks like that, even a secular Jew like myself might consider becoming an Evangelical preacher, except, unlike Pastor Driscoll, I’m not into all that kinky stuff:

“How can we proclaim that we are new creations in Christ if we continually return to lap up the vomit of our old way of life?”

Blyech!

If I ever find myself alone in a room with Pastor Driscoll, remind me to stay off the meth.

I found this glossy flier while going through my pile of mail this week. It came from the Timberlake church in Redmond…

“No weird stuff”?

That a church would place such a comment at the top of their advertisement is telling about the public perception of religion in America.

A couple of decades ago, Christians were just…Christians. But this changed with the rise of televangelism. A relatively small segment of the fundamentalist Christian right proclaimed themselves the “moral majority” and openly pushed a political agenda. To the majority of Americans this unholy commingling of religion and politics was uncomfortable at best, bordering on weird.

Over the last couple of decades the weirdness has accelerated to the point that it seems everything we hear about “religion” in the mainstream media now comes off as weird. If there isn’t something criminal being discussed then there’s probably politics involved. The “revolutionary suicides” of Jonestown and the Branch Davidians showdown were specular specimens in their day.

Today the weirdness has become a lot more normalized, so that “weirdness” seems to underly most of the media’s coverage of religion. We learn about the Westboro Baptist Church’s “God hates fags” protests, Sarah Palin receiving a blessing of protection against witchcraft, Rev. Hagee’s holocaust comments, Rev. Wright’s damnation of America, Rev. Rick Warren’s anti-gay crusade, Pastor Ted Haggard’s male prostitute problem, almost everything coming out of William Donohue’s mouth (like the evils of a Chocolate Jesus last year). The list goes on and on. Locally, we’ve even had our own special strain of weird in a homophobic Rev. Ken Hutcherson and his “Prayer Warrior” communiqués.

So we get “no weird stuff” from a church apparently trying to distance itself from the contemporary stereotype of American religion. And some Christians are becoming sensitive about how they are labeled.

I don’t think the labels are the real problem. Rather it’s the commingling of religion and politics that has nudged the image of religion out of the mainstream.

Oh my gosh…

I stumbled across this website at Craig’s List. It’s run by Rossi superfans, and I think they got a little too carried away:

…which looks super similar to this:

Way back when, the local GOP stirred up all sorts of fake outrage when the WA Dems put a bumper sticker on their website for 5 seconds. (The sticker, if you don’t remember, made the allusion that Christians could be hypocrites, which we all know isn’t true.)

And no, I’m not saying Dino Rossi is a Nazi (cool your heels, Don!) The Iron Cross had a long history before being corrupted by Adolf Hilter. But if I was a Republican running in a race that’ll be tough enough already, I’m not sure I’d be happy if my fans were putting my name on Nazi-ish iconography.

[UPDATED]

A Maltese cross, while very similar to an Iron cross, is not the same thing:

[Oops, the above should read “Maltese cross” and “Cross pattée”]

Alright, I’m officially freaked out about how much I know about this stuff…

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: The Stranger Hour with Josh and Erica
The Stranger’s Josh Feit and Erica C. Barnett join me for our weekly roundup of the week’s news, and look forward to coming events. Tonight’s topics will surely include a discussion of Monday’s presidential fundraiser for Dave Reichert Darcy Burner, Ted Haggard’s family values fake charity, and of course, our good friend Stefan’s brilliant ham-fisted PR coup disaster.

8PM: Are you rooting for a housing slump?
Washington state’s housing market continues to defy gravity and national trends, with prices continuing to increase even as other markets tumble in the midst of a spreading credit crunch. Seattle/Bellevue scored an impressive 9.89% increase, while Wenatchee (yes, Wenatchee) led the nation with an astounding 23.54% gain. Um… is this a good thing? Are you cheering our housing market on, or quietly rooting for a slump so that you can swoop in and scoop up a bargain? And why are so many folks so eager to live here in a place that is steadily being destroyed by liberal Democrats like me? (Or so I’m told.)

9PM: The Blogger Hour with McJoan
Idaho native and Daily Kos front page blogger superstar Joan “McJoan” McCarter joins me for the hour to discuss the Craig Affair, the Warner retirement and other issues of national import.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

As Dan Savage reported yesterday on Slog, in assisting with Rev. Ted Haggard’s “restoration,” his New Life Church is conducting a sexual witch hunt, soliciting the public’s help in uncloseting other sinners amongst its staff and leaders. Well, score…

New Life Church — still reeling from the fall of its charismatic founder — was stunned when a second church pastor left due to sexual impropriety.

Christopher Beard, 35, who led the young-adult leadership program twentyfourseven, resigned after telling New Life’s Board of Overseers about a one-time sexual encounter he had several years ago, before he was married.

In a statement released Monday evening, New Life said Beard had “displayed poor judgement in several decisions throughout his tenure. This poor judgement included one instance of consensual sexual contact with another unmarried adult several years ago.”

Officials for the 14,000-member church declined to say anything more about the encounter.

Beard’s resignation came a little more than a month after the Rev. Ted Haggard, New Life’s senior pastor for 21 years, was dismissed after allegations he had a three-year sexual tryst with a male escort. The escort also said he saw Haggard use methamphetamine.

Gees… I sure hope Beard didn’t get a blowjob in Georgia. He could do hard time.

Speaking of So many pastors and so little time, ex-pastor Ted Haggard, now in deep therapy, might have a new therapy buddy:

On Sunday, Paul Barnes, founding pastor of the 2,100-member Grace Chapel in this Denver suburb, told his evangelical congregation in a videotaped message he had had sexual relations with other men and was stepping down.
[…]

On the videotape…Barnes told church members: “I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy … I can’t tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away.”

But, but, but, all Barnes needed to do was put himself into the hands of Jesus! (Um…so to speak.) I mean, God hates homos doesn’t he? You would think an ordained pastor would have figured that out from the 15th chapter of the Gospel according to the Apostle John, verse 16: “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.”

Failing that, he could always go for the 10-day solution with Anita Bryant’s Homo No-Mo.

Just read Robert Jamieson’s column in today’s Seattle P-I: “Critics go after the wrong pastor.”

Hmm. I wasn’t aware that us critics were limited to going after only one pastor at a time.

It’s an embarrassment of riches out there with the likes of Mark Driscoll, Ken Hutcherson, Joe Fuiten, Ted Haggard, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, and the inimitably mule-fucking Rev. Neil Horsley routinely making headlines. So many pastors, so little time.

Pastor Ted Haggard confesses:

Pastor Ted Haggard came out of his house Friday morning and admitted to 9NEWS that he bought meth from a gay escort in Denver. Haggard says he bought the meth from a gay escort, 49-year-old Michael Jones, after contacting him for a massage.

A “massage.” Um, yeah… massaging his penis.

Until yesterday’s scandal broke, Haggard was the pastor of a 14,000 member Colorado Springs mega-church, and the president of the 30-million strong National Association of Evangelicals. He is also a close advisor to President Bush and the primary backer of Colorado’s anti-gay marriage amendment.

What with so many of our most prominent gay-bashers turning out to be closeted homosexuals, it’s almost getting to the point where straight men will start strutting their support for gay rights, as a sign of their own machismo. Fearful of being perceived as gay by bashing gays, men will start picking up women with slick lines like: “Hey babe, I support marriage equality for same-sex couples, how about you?”

(Actually, considering how my gay friends in college always had the most beautiful women hanging on them, I’ve often wondered if the most effective pick-up technique might be to actually pretend to be gay myself.)

Perhaps the most shocking part of these allegations is how unschocked most Americans seem to be about the news. A right-wing, gay-bashing evangelical preacher/politician outed as a meth-snorting closeted homosexual? Tell me something I don’t know. Jim West, Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, the mule-fucking Rev. Neal Horsley… right-wing hypocrisy is now so commonplace it barely warrants a headline.

Still, you can’t help but believe that there will be political fallout from Haggard’s high-profile fall from grace as the Republican’s usually reliable evangelical base struggles to energize itself on behalf of a party that simply doesn’t practice what it preaches. I guess we’ll find out Tuesday.

Well, I never had a chance to say hello to Tim Eyman this morning… he refused to make eye contact with me, and rushed out as soon as his Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) enforcement hearing was over.

Ah, well. Screw him.

As it turns out, Tim only got a slap on the wrist, a fine of $150.00 each for two incidents of failing to report an in-kind contribution ($300.00 total.) Looking a bit haggard and unshaven — and lacking his usual shit-eating grin — the early morning drive down to Olympia for an 8 AM hearing seemed to be worse punishment than the punishment itself.

The enforcement was in response to a complaint I jointly filed on behalf of TaxSanity.org with my fellow Eyman-watchers, Steve Zemke of Taxpayers for Washington’s Future, and Andrew Villeneuve of Permanent Defense. I stand by my allegations of conspiracy to defraud contributors, but clearly the PDC is not the proper forum to pursue justice. If you provide a detailed complaint of an isolated violation they will investigate and respond accordingly. But they seem unwilling (or lack the jurisdiction) to connect the dots.

Essentially, Tim’s whole public charade of separating his initiative campaigns and his personal compensation fundraising into two separate Political Action Committees is a total sham. Funds raised for one are used to support the activities of the other, and vice versa. This, despite the unambiguous disclaimer that appears in his most recent fundraising email:

Voluntary donations to I-900, the Performance Audits of Government Initiative, will be used to qualify this important taxpayer protection initiative for the ballot. A different political action committee, “Help Us Help Taxpayers,” raises money for a compensation fund for Tim Eyman, Jack Fagan, & Mike Fagan for their effective political work on behalf of taxpayers. These two campaign committees are kept separate and donations and expenditures for each fund are publicly reported every month.

What he doesn’t tell you is that absolutely 100 percent of HUHT’s activities are paid for out of VWMC funds. And, that money raised this fall for HUHT, is currently being used to subsidize the early fundraising activities of VWMC.

(Did I ever mention that Tim Eyman is a lying, thieving, blowhard?)

Anyway, perhaps we’ll just have to take our evidence someplace else — like a prosecuting attorney’s office — for the PDC is apparently too damn busy protecting the integrity of our system from the real villains. You know, like Rev. Paul Benz, who lobbies for social justice issues on behalf of the Lutheran Church, and was fined $100 today for reporting late on his lobbying fees for November, 2003… a month he didn’t have any lobbying fees.

Who the hell files a PDC complaint against a Lutheran minister for reporting late on absolutely nothing? I don’t know, but I did find out who tattled on the two unfortunate teachers who were fined $500.00 each this morning for distributing R-55 petitions to fellow teachers on school property… why, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation of course. (I’d call EFF a bunch of mean-spirited, vindictive bastards… but Marsha might shoot me.)

Meanwhile, Tim Eyman, a professional liar with a documented history of flouting the public disclosure laws, is fined only $150.00 per violation. And last spring, when the PDC ruled he had filed his January reports three months late, he was fined nothing at all. But I guess Tim deserves the benefit of the doubt… unlike that shady Rev. Benz.

Whatever.

Tim should rest assured that he shouldn’t rest assured, for we’ll continue to monitor his public disclosure filings, just to keep him honest. Hell… somebody’s got to.