THE PULPIT: Haggard opens up about pain

Ted Haggard says he's an insurance salesman, not a preacher.

But he's got it backward.

Haggard is a born preacher who just happens to be selling life insurance now.

Once he gains some confidence and stabilizes his life a little more, Haggard probably will be back in the pulpit in Colorado Springs, and perhaps writing a book about his experiences - or so was my impression after talking with him this month.

What will he preach and write about? Well, for starters, how about his belief that Christians cast aside public figures who fall?

Haggard offered the example of how evangelicals pounced on President Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal rather than reach out to help him heal morally and spiritually.

"When people go through a crash, that is the time to demonstrate the Gospel message," Haggard said in an interview from the road, where he was promoting the "Trials of Ted Haggard," a compelling HBO documentary premiering Thursday. "We won't be forgiven if we don't forgive others."

But he also has used himself as an example, saying New Life abandoned him emotionally and spiritually after his affair with a gay prostitute became public in November 2006.

Some of his anger is on display in the documentary, in which director Alexandra Pelosi followed Haggard, his wife, Gayle, and two of their five children in Arizona after Haggard was exiled from Colorado Springs as part of a severance agreement.

"I cried 12 hours a day," Haggard said of the time from January 2007 to June 2008, when the Haggards moved back to the Springs.

Haggard is a lonely figure in the film. "Gayle and his kids were the only people who wanted to be seen anywhere near him," Pelosi told me.

New Life - which paid about $300,000 in severance to the Haggards in salaries, counseling costs and family medical coverage - was right to remove Haggard from the pulpit. His hypocrisy of preaching against gays while carrying on a gay relationship is sad and shocking.

But it is arguable whether he should have also lost his church entirely, been exiled from Colorado Springs and prohibited from giving his side of the story and starting another area church.

Last year, New Life senior pastor Brady Boyd, who was not involved in the severance deal, freed Haggard from most of its conditions, including a ban on starting a Springs church. Boyd also has had two meetings with Haggard that they both characterize as positive.

Perhaps in part because of Boyd's actions, Haggard's anger toward New Life has greatly diminished.

"I have come a million miles since the filming," which ended in spring 2007, Haggard said. "I love and respect Brady so highly and am so proud of the church."

For more of my interviews with Pelosi and Haggard, in which he talks about "his secret," go to my blog, The Pulpit.

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CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0367 or mark.barna@gazette.com.