Another mega-church leader (and head of the US National Association of Evangelicals) falls on his own hypocrisy. Of course, the problem isn't that he's gay - except that the sheer violence of his anti-gay lobbying seems a bit out of step with his actual behaviour. His mega-church movement helped get Bush into power and are hard-line extremists.

No wonder people are shocked. (And yet notice that the second article, from a Christian publication, reinforces his extremist distortion of our faith by saying the problem is satanic forces prowling around, not that repression leads to transgression).

The problem is not Evangelicalism in itself. It is fundamentalist fanaticism disguised as "Christian certainty" that we are right and everyone else is acting for Satan. It's a case of the Pharisees following all the rules (on the surface) and being total hypocrites the rest of the time.

Well, that's one more conservative asshole down. A few more to go. God help us all.

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'Restoration' after the fall
Fellow evangelicals seek to help the Rev. Ted Haggard address the behaviors that snared him in a scandal.
By Stephanie Simon,
LA Times
December 8, 2006

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. — The Rev. Ted Haggard this week formally begins his long journey toward recovery from a drugs-and-gay-sex scandal that forced him to step down as one of the most influential evangelical leaders in the nation.

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Could it happen to you?

By Doug Trouten
Christian Examiner

What’s the worst thing that could happen to an evangelical leader who has been an outspoken critic of the homosexual agenda? You’d think it would be a scandal involving the services of a gay prostitute. But Ted Haggard, recently departed head of the National Association of Evangelicals, managed to top even that. In Haggard’s case, it appears that his favorite male prostitute was also his drug dealer.

Many in the evangelical community are wringing their hands, wondering how such a thing could happen. It’s the wrong question. We live in a fallen world and have fallen natures, and we face a relentless enemy who “prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (I Peter 5:8, NIV). The real question is not how something like this could happen, but why it doesn’t happen much more often.

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