HBO Documentary to Examine Ted Haggard's Life After Scandal

In anticipation of HBO's Thursday airing of Alexandra Pelosi's documentary, "The Trials of Ted Haggard", the Washington Post examines how the former pastor of the New Life Church, an evangelical megachurch in Colorado Springs, has responded to the revelations about his hidden homosexual experiences and drug use, secrets made public as Haggard led a campaign against the legalization of gay marriage.  Required by church officials to undertake secular counseling as a condition of his severance package, Haggard no longer attends church and struggles financially as he sells insurance with his wife and daughter. He no longer sees opposition to gay marriage as an necessary central tenet of evangelical Christianity and sees his experiences as demonstrating the hazards of absolutism in belief. In a poignant passage at the end of the Post piece, Haggard expresses his gratitude for being able to remain with his family as he recalls waking up to hear the sounds of his children in the house and thinking he was "so grateful I wasn't waking up in a little garage apartment by myself."

JFB