Have you heard the word?

By Acey
Cross Post with Come on, Pilgrims.

This was a fascinating interview. (see below) Ted Haggard is of course the disgraced minister who for most of President Bush's time in office would conduct weekly prayer sessions via phone with the President. I say this not to take a cheap shot at the former President (or even the former pastor for that matter), rather just as a note as to his former level of influence, power and esteem in the evangelical community.

I've embedded the first two videos which I would highly recommend you watch, there is a third section though as of this posting it wasn't available yet. I apologize and don't necessarily agree with any commentary added by the Youtube poster. Now that I've got all that business out of the way...



I found this fascinating from a very human perspective. If you're able to set aside the homophobic swill that this man peddled for most of his adult life, if you're able to look past the early part of the interview where he makes, what to my mind, is a veiled attempt to link his "homosexual tendencies" to sexual abuse, and assuming you're able to ignore the distortion of Gospels into self-aggrandizing moralistic vitriol by far too many like Haggard, then I think you'll see a tragic and almost pathologically self-loathing human being.

Early in the interview Oprah asks him the proverbial $64,000 question, "Are you gay?" to which he responds, "No." Read the rest here.