My Perspective on Ted Haggard, Politics and the Church

In hopes that you aren't sick of the Ted Haggard story I'll say a few more things about it in this post.  Much has been written about it and some of it has actually been quite helpful and thoughtful.

Among many good things he said about the whole situation in his post at Out of Ur I found Gordon MacDonald's comments about the assassin within especially helpful.

Phil Johnson quoted Spurgeon on the subject "Moralism Fosters Immorality," and that is particularly appropos, given the moralistic nature of Haggard's ministry.  Along those lines, Phil Ryken shares his own experience visiting Haggard's church:

I visited New Life Church when it was in its popular ascendancy about a decade ago.  The strongest impression I had on that particular Sunday was a palpable absence of the gospel -- lots of feel-good worship and moralistic exhortation to lead a good life, but little in the way of a biblical message of repentance for sin and grace in Christ.  Yet this is the only gospel that can save any of us who are guilty of scandalous sins.

In the same vein, Russ Reeves examines Haggard's weak views on indwelling sin and suggests that this reveals a sin deeper than hypocrisy:

My point in addressing this is not to call Haggard a hypocrite; that hardly needs to be said at this point, and it’s not all that exceptional, since the only person who can avoid hypocrisy in some form is the person devoid of morals. Rather, the problem with Haggard is that he is a worse kind of “h” word, a heretic.

There is much more being written and though I'm taking a more critical look at the whole situation I do believe we should look at him as an erring brother who, along with his family, needs our prayers and I do hope and pray that a day comes when in his and his family's life when joy returns.

Having said all of that, my only comment to add today concerns the effect this will have on the political realm and the church.

I don't know that this will have any effect on Tuesday's election, maybe there will be some blowback in Haggard's home state of Colorado, but it's hard for me to imagine this will have nationwide effect.  I suppose it could in that, since evangelicals are so closely tied to Republicans, that the Republicans could take a hit from those who are sick of hypocritical evangelicals.  Again, I don't know as political analysis is not my forte. I've seen stories in the last day or so that the Republicans are gaining some lost ground here at the end (maybe as a result of the latest John Kerry gaffe) and others say the Dems stand a good chance of a major victory on Tuesday.

My concern though is that the initial reactions to the Haggard scandal focused heavily on the political fallout rather than the ecclesiastical fallout, the damage that has been done to the church's witness.  Although I am an amillenialist, I've had enough postmillenial cross-pollination to convince me that the Kingdom of God is doing and will continue to do just fine here on the earth, thank you very much. And, in the grand scheme of things scandals like this aren't going to stop the spread of the gospel and by extension the spread of the Kingdom.

But on the smaller scale in which we all live things like this do have consequences.  Things like this have a tremendous impact on the credibility of the church and it's witness.  And that's a far greater concern than political fallout. 

Some time back I did a post called "The Social Dimension of Belief," which was built on Os Guinness's explanation of plausibility structures.  He defines plausibility structures this way:

"the degree to which a belief (or disbelief) seems convincing is directly related to its "plausibility structure" - that is, the group or community which provides the social and psychological support for the beleif. If the support's structure is strong, it is easy to believe; if the support's structure is weak, it is difficult to believe. The question of whether the group's belief is actually true or not may never become an issue."

Something like this scandal further weakens the plausibility structure for Christian belief in the American community, it makes Christianity that much harder to believe.   That's the worst part of something like this.  True, faith is a gift from God, and God can overcome any weaknesses in the support structure of Christianity.  But real damage has been done to that support structure of Christian belief and that ought to be the thing of greatest concern to Christians.

Having said all of this I realize I am coming perilously close to grinding Haggard down here, a thing Scott McKnight warned us all about.  I accept Scott's warning about that, but also think it can be helpful to Haggard and all of us to be reminded that the church is more important than the body politic, and that Christianity is a religion of grace, not moralism.