Ted Haggard, senior pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., and president of the National Evangelical Association, apologized to his congregants yesterday, stating that he is “guilty of sexual immorality.” He characterized his alleged sin of homosexuality as “a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my adult life.”
Amy DeRogatis, associate professor of religious studies at Michigan State University, says, “What is significant about these allegations is not the drug use, the lying or the political ramifications for the upcoming elections.
“The central issue for Haggard and his congregants is homosexuality and adultery. Over the past few decades, evangelicals have been arguing through sermons, workshops, books, TV stations, seminars, radio broadcasts, retreats, videos, Web sites and blogs that heterosexual sex in Christian marriage is sanctioned in the Bible as part of God’s design for humanity. It is the cornerstone for Christian life. Any other form of sexuality subverts God’s will and disrupts social order. As president of the National Evangelical Association, Haggard served as the public face of Christian marriage and conservative social values.
“Evangelical groups that have devoted an enormous amount of energy to family life issues will need to find answers to the question of why one of their leaders has participated in the sins that they so vehemently denounce.”
Amy DeRogatis
Associate professor of religious studies
Office: (517) 432-7158
E-mail: derogat1@msu.edu
Web site: http://www.msu.edu/~derogat1/
Author of many articles on gender, sex and religion in the United States, she is currently writing a book on evangelicalism and sexuality titled “Saving Sex: Sexuality and Salvation in American Protestantism.” Her most recent article on the topic is “What Would Jesus Do: Sexuality and Salvation in Protestant Evangelical Sex Manuals, 1950s to the Present” (Church History, 74:1 March 2005).
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