Haggard revelation exposes evangelical confusion about sexuality

-08/11/06

By Simon Bar


Haggard revelation exposes evangelical confusion about sexuality

-08/11/06

By Simon Barrow
[News and Comment]

For some church leaders it proved a moment of pain and sorrow, for other observers an occasion of barely disguised schadenfreude at the embarrassment of the moral right ñ the Rev Ted Haggard, leader of the 30 million-strong US National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) has admitted to having gay sex.

The scandal, in a part of the church which regards homosexuality as uncomplicatedly sinful, has absorbed acres of news print, and has featured widely on television and across the web.

Mr Haggard was promptly fired from his position as head of New Life Church in the USA after he revised his initial story. Since the NAE had put all their HQ eggs in his property basket, this has been additionally calamitous for them.

The married evangelical leader, who has supported his traditionís vehement anti-gay stance, first tried to claim that he had simply received a few pats from a ëmasseurí in a Denver hotel room, and that although he bought methamphetamine he ìnever used itî.

The defence collapsed a few days later, as Haggard talked in self-recriminatory fashion. He termed himself a ìliar and a deceiverî and spoke of ìa part of my life that is so repulsive and dark and I’ve been warring against it my entire adult life.î

But psychologists and others have suggested that the true shadow here may actually be a profound confusion and fear about sexuality within the community that shaped the hapless Mr Haggard.

Responses to the drama have been both swift and predictable. Critics have enjoyed a laugh ñ more at the expense of his backers than the man himself. Meanwhile a large section of the evangelical community has closed ranks around its ideology.

Typical of this approach was an editorial comment on the Christian Today website, which claimed that the affair was an ìexposure of how deeply the sin of homosexuality has taken root in the American societyî and that it should occasion the faithful to ìlook within [their] own walls and battle against the culture of sin that looms before the Church.î

Others will see such an attitude as simply an extension of the culture of repression which led to Mr Haggardís downfall in the first place ñ and has condemned countless thousands of others to lives of misery, deceit and denial.

They will suggest that, instead of pulling down the shutters, it might be time for more people in the US evangelical world to raise the curtain on the moral, political and theological complexities surrounding their deep-seated revulsion towards same-sex relations.

There is evidence that this is happening in Britain, with the work of networks such as Accepting Evangelicals and the Courage Trust ñ who nevertheless find themselves ostracised or ignored in the ongoing life of the wider (read narrower) evangelical community.

Looking in from the outside, it is hard to understand why sexuality has become the defining issue for ëfidelity to the truthí in some sections of the church. Perhaps it is because it exposes us to the most joyful and grievous part of our identity.

For many Christians, it seems, amassing wealth at the expense of others or sanctioning war are no bars to recognition within the church ñ but forming a loving and committed relationship with someone of the same gender is.

The decisive issue, so it is claimed, is the Bible. But one wonders whether it is not more to do with an ideology about the Bible, privileging its claimants over other interpreters, than the text itself ñ which, like God, can be gloriously difficult to pin down.

On the one hand, the abuse of the poor and the accumulation of unjust wealth are persistently condemned throughout Scripture, and Jesusí stand against violence in the Gospels is overwhelming. But in these matters, quite a number of those who claim the Bible as their highest authority observe it more in the breach.

However when it comes to a handful of texts which outlaw certain same-sex acts ñ in the setting of ancient purity codes, abuse, tribal survival and cultic prostitution, rather than modern partner-relations ñ those same people are prepared to condemn utterly, and to tolerate no alternative argument.

What seems to have been marginalised in this distorted biblicism is the evangel, the good news itself. The Christian message is that the Word became flesh, not concrete. Followers of Jesus are people of a person before they are people of a book.

The function of the texts is to point to that person (who said nothing about homosexuality, but much about welcoming the outcast), not to become a leaden substitute.

Matters of contested meaning require wisdom and sensitivity within the vulnerable community called into Christís shape, not inflexibility.

It was dogmatic certainty that enabled many of the righteous to justify slavery on thoroughly ëbiblicalí grounds for hundreds of years – until the deeper pattern of the Spirit became irresistible. Now these same texts that condemned people to mass suffering are seen in a quite different light.

It would be a real sign of hope if at least some around Ted Haggard began to show a willingness to ask questions of themselves (not just him), and to wonder whether their leaders might not have to seek sad moments of seedy gratification if there was a deeper theology of faithful human relationships available to them.

As for Mr Haggard himself, well it seems that he was beginning to move before his ëfallí. He was a hard-line opponent of gay marriage, an advocate of creationism, and a friend of the White House, for sure. But he also opposed some of the more extreme attempts at homophobic legislation in Texas. And he tried to get evangelicals to embrace a more generous environmental agenda.

These were gestures toward a new tenderness in the midst of what turned out to be overwhelming personal disturbance and turmoil.

It is these signs, Christians in the wider church are likely to believe, not the obvious crashing of heroes from pedestals, which point American evangelicals away from their current head-on clash with both reality and a broader biblical vision.


Haggard revelation exposes evangelical confusion about sexuality

-08/11/06

By Simon Barrow
[News and Comment]

For some church leaders it proved a moment of pain and sorrow, for other observers an occasion of barely disguised schadenfreude at the embarrassment of the moral right ñ the Rev Ted Haggard, leader of the 30 million-strong US National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) has admitted to having gay sex.

The scandal, in a part of the church which regards homosexuality as uncomplicatedly sinful, has absorbed acres of news print, and has featured widely on television and across the web.

Mr Haggard was promptly fired from his position as head of New Life Church in the USA after he revised his initial story. Since the NAE had put all their HQ eggs in his property basket, this has been additionally calamitous for them.

The married evangelical leader, who has supported his traditionís vehement anti-gay stance, first tried to claim that he had simply received a few pats from a ëmasseurí in a Denver hotel room, and that although he bought methamphetamine he ìnever used itî.

The defence collapsed a few days later, as Haggard talked in self-recriminatory fashion. He termed himself a ìliar and a deceiverî and spoke of ìa part of my life that is so repulsive and dark and I’ve been warring against it my entire adult life.î

But psychologists and others have suggested that the true shadow here may actually be a profound confusion and fear about sexuality within the community that shaped the hapless Mr Haggard.

Responses to the drama have been both swift and predictable. Critics have enjoyed a laugh ñ more at the expense of his backers than the man himself. Meanwhile a large section of the evangelical community has closed ranks around its ideology.

Typical of this approach was an editorial comment on the Christian Today website, which claimed that the affair was an ìexposure of how deeply the sin of homosexuality has taken root in the American societyî and that it should occasion the faithful to ìlook within [their] own walls and battle against the culture of sin that looms before the Church.î

Others will see such an attitude as simply an extension of the culture of repression which led to Mr Haggardís downfall in the first place ñ and has condemned countless thousands of others to lives of misery, deceit and denial.

They will suggest that, instead of pulling down the shutters, it might be time for more people in the US evangelical world to raise the curtain on the moral, political and theological complexities surrounding their deep-seated revulsion towards same-sex relations.

There is evidence that this is happening in Britain, with the work of networks such as Accepting Evangelicals and the Courage Trust ñ who nevertheless find themselves ostracised or ignored in the ongoing life of the wider (read narrower) evangelical community.

Looking in from the outside, it is hard to understand why sexuality has become the defining issue for ëfidelity to the truthí in some sections of the church. Perhaps it is because it exposes us to the most joyful and grievous part of our identity.

For many Christians, it seems, amassing wealth at the expense of others or sanctioning war are no bars to recognition within the church ñ but forming a loving and committed relationship with someone of the same gender is.

The decisive issue, so it is claimed, is the Bible. But one wonders whether it is not more to do with an ideology about the Bible, privileging its claimants over other interpreters, than the text itself ñ which, like God, can be gloriously difficult to pin down.

On the one hand, the abuse of the poor and the accumulation of unjust wealth are persistently condemned throughout Scripture, and Jesusí stand against violence in the Gospels is overwhelming. But in these matters, quite a number of those who claim the Bible as their highest authority observe it more in the breach.

However when it comes to a handful of texts which outlaw certain same-sex acts ñ in the setting of ancient purity codes, abuse, tribal survival and cultic prostitution, rather than modern partner-relations ñ those same people are prepared to condemn utterly, and to tolerate no alternative argument.

What seems to have been marginalised in this distorted biblicism is the evangel, the good news itself. The Christian message is that the Word became flesh, not concrete. Followers of Jesus are people of a person before they are people of a book.

The function of the texts is to point to that person (who said nothing about homosexuality, but much about welcoming the outcast), not to become a leaden substitute.

Matters of contested meaning require wisdom and sensitivity within the vulnerable community called into Christís shape, not inflexibility.

It was dogmatic certainty that enabled many of the righteous to justify slavery on thoroughly ëbiblicalí grounds for hundreds of years – until the deeper pattern of the Spirit became irresistible. Now these same texts that condemned people to mass suffering are seen in a quite different light.

It would be a real sign of hope if at least some around Ted Haggard began to show a willingness to ask questions of themselves (not just him), and to wonder whether their leaders might not have to seek sad moments of seedy gratification if there was a deeper theology of faithful human relationships available to them.

As for Mr Haggard himself, well it seems that he was beginning to move before his ëfallí. He was a hard-line opponent of gay marriage, an advocate of creationism, and a friend of the White House, for sure. But he also opposed some of the more extreme attempts at homophobic legislation in Texas. And he tried to get evangelicals to embrace a more generous environmental agenda.

These were gestures toward a new tenderness in the midst of what turned out to be overwhelming personal disturbance and turmoil.

It is these signs, Christians in the wider church are likely to believe, not the obvious crashing of heroes from pedestals, which point American evangelicals away from their current head-on clash with both reality and a broader biblical vision.