Was the rejection Haggard experienced after his ‘exposure’ the root problems than the sins he confessed to two years ago?

I was sent an e-mail by a very close e-friend of mine that included a link to this article from Religion Dispatches entitled Recovering From Rejection: The Second Coming of Ted Haggard where a Denver-based freelance reporter by the name of Wendy Norris wrote a well-written, but very disturbing article of Haggard in his “post restoration session” mindset where Haggard reveals in his own quoted words:

“My therapy for the past two and a half years has been recovering from rejection by the church.”

What about the ‘other stuff’? Did he or his ‘restoration dream team’ deal with and talk about the ‘other stuff’? I really wonder now since when he asked about the question on whether he still has gay tendencies, the words Haggard uses are the words “sexually complex.”

The article left me really wondering if Haggard is really one major life-altering tragic incident away from a breakdown or a relapse???

After reading this article, it is my personal opinion that Mr. Haggard is not ready to be preaching from a pulpit, nor is he ready to host a home group in his barn. Yes, he has made some progress but I feel that he still has a very long way to go before we can call him restored. In that realm of thought and only in that realm of thought; I can agree with his critics as stated in Ms. Norris’ article.

Part of the problem does lie with Haggard and his progress. However, I personally feel that part of the problem is that conservative religious-right America believes that Haggard must confess as sin first not his homosexual desires and not his crystal meth desires, but confess first and foremost his ‘part’ in the ‘demise’ of the ‘foundation’ of the conservative religious-right in America.

Remember, this scandal broke out just days before voters were to go to the polls and vote for or against Colorado Amendment 43 (2006) that would ban same-sex marriage in Colorado. Remember when the former gay prostitute by the name of Mike Jones came out and exposed Haggard because Jones despised the ‘hypocrisy’ of Haggard pushing for the amendment while behind the scenes was participating in homosexual activity?

The religious-right called it a Satanic attack designed to defeat the amendment. Haggard did not come out and admit his wrongdoings until the story was about to break wide open.

However, the Amendment barely passed with 56% of the vote.

Even though this scandal took place two years before the 2008 election, there is a facet of the conservative religious-right in America that wrongly places all of the blame of the Republicans losing that election on Haggard and Haggard alone. Not the past eight years where the original enemy of 9-11-01 has not been captured, not the failure of government bureaucracy to adequately respond to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina in a blue state, not the rogue and pentecostal / charismatic / NAR Christian mindset of Sarah Palin, not the fact that if Palin was not the VP choice that the religious-right big wigs threatened to tell their followers to ‘stay home’ or place a third candidate to run as an independent, but the fact that Haggard was exposed before two major elections.

In the minds of the religious right, Haggard could have “retired” from preaching very shortly before November 2006 to where Colorado Amendment 43 (2006) would have passed by a wider margin and McCain could have been elected President while Haggard would have privately gone through his “repentance and restoration”. However, history tells us that Haggard was exposed before the November 2006 election of Colorado Amendment 43 (2006) and to the religious right, the tide and ‘progress’ of the last eight years was now stopped and all of these ‘curses from God’ we were supposed to have had from the Clinton years were now coming back upon America.

In other words… Was the purpose of Ted Haggard’s ‘restoration and repentance’ truly designed to restore and bring Haggard to Godly repentance or was it really the conspired ‘life-grudge punishment’ orchestrated because it was now certain that eight years of ‘moral progress’ and the closest opportunity ever in the history of “Christian America” to implement the social theories of R.J. Rushdoony (propagated by such men as Dobson, Wildmon, Kennedy, Falwell, Robertson and others) was now down the tubes to the point of these men never seeing their desires become true?

It appears that Haggard not only was supposed to repent for his sexual and drug sins, but first and most importantly repent for the ‘almost unforgiveable’ sin of ruining the potential utopia of Christian Reconstructionism so dreamed of by such men as Rushdoony, Robertson, Dobson, Falwell, Kennedy, and others and for ruining the chance of making Colorado Springs, Colorado the true Christian utopia, the “American Jerusalem”.

In the mindset of the American religious right, Haggard’s ‘secret sin’ cost America it’s ‘last chance’ to become a Christian nation again. I find it funny how the leaders of the American religious right movement in their conservative and mainline trained theologies that usually denounce Charismatic practices and dominionist mindsets from their own pulpits can suddenly start acting Charismatic and dominionist in nature when it comes to politics by calling forth mega-fasts and repent-a-thons to get God moving to sway an election their way. More ironic is when the same Charismatic and dominionist mindsets are used when their political strategies fail, backfire, or unravel and someone from within has to be the scapegoat and fall guy and take all the blame individually for the corporate team-effort failure.

I’ll go as far as to ask another question. Was the first part of Haggard’s restoration process designed more to ‘repent’ for the damage done to the religious right first and foremost? If Haggard did not repent (nor repent enough) for the perceived sin of destroying the religious right and could not eventually be restored to being in their eyes a card carrying member of the religious right, then repentance and restoration of the other two major sins (the homosexuality and meth purchase) could not and would not be even addressed until the politics issue was addressed?

I really have to wonder now if the real motives was not to bring repentance and restoration for Haggard, but instead to do damage control quickly in order to have a chance of winning the 2008 election? From the initial reports of a five year repentance plan (quite ridiculous since most pastors who go through genuine repentance successfully average around two years in the process), it seems now that the original plan was to get Haggard out of the public limelight in order to win the election since he had strong ties, influence, and affluence with evangelicals, the religious-right, the outgoing President, and the NAR / World Prayer Center and to do whatever it took to keep Haggard from going back into the public limelight.

I now honestly believe that Haggard got the wrong group of counsel to restore him and he should have gone elsewhere. Not elsewhere to coddle him, but elsewhere to get to the crux of the matter of those two major areas Biblically and place the politics aside. In one way, I can clearly see why Haggard left that particular repentance and restoration process ‘early’ because I now believe that this ‘repentance and restoration’ session would have dragged out longer than it should have (until everyone forgot) out of anger against Haggard and still would not have gotten to the inner root problems that may still exist.

Haggard still needs to speak out now against the political wrongs and the “phariseeism” of the religious right. As an insider, he would have a lot to tell about in reference to the inner power struggle. However, Haggard does not belong in a pulpit, does not need to jet set to churches to speak every weekend, nor does he belong as a small group leader. Even though Haggard seems to have repented, it still seems that Haggard is not really fully restored and Haggard still needs more counseling from another set of leaders in order to deliver him from being ‘sexually complex’ to being ‘sexually whole and pure’. I believe that every Christian would want to see Haggard fully repented and restored.

But by whose definition of “repented and restored”? The religious right’s definition of a card carrying James Dobson clone? The liberal left’s definition of ‘anything goes in the era of cheap grace’? Or the Scriptures definition of John 8:10-11

When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?”

She said, “No one, Lord.”

And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

The biblical definition is the one I want to see.

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