Los Angeles – Filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi never imagined that her 2007 documentary about evangelical America would give her a front row seat to the downfall of one of its biggest stars, megachurch pastor Ted Haggard.
She also couldn’t have predicted just how closely her life would become intertwined with Haggard’s.
The two met in 2006 as Pelosi — a cradle Catholic and daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — was working on her sophomore documentary, “Friends of God,” in which Haggard served as her “tour guide” through American evangelical life.
Months later, Haggard resigned his pulpit at New Life Church in Colorado Springs and as head of the National Association of Evangelicals when a male escort went public with lurid allegations of gay sex and drug use.
Her new documentary, “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” airs on HBO on Jan. 29 and tracks Haggard’s attempts to rebuild his life, come to terms with his downfall and restore the frayed bonds of his family.
Pelosi said the documentary is as much about the church as it is about the Haggard family.
“The story is about a church that preaches forgiveness,” she said in an interview here. “He, as a pastor, preached forgiveness and redemption. But he was not forgiven and he was not redeemed. They cast him out and they exiled him.
“It was very biblical in a way. Not that I even read the Bible, so I wouldn’t know. But the people who go to church get told every Sunday, `We forgive.’ He was not forgiven. That, to me, is what is interesting about it.”
New Life Church declined comment beyond a blog post from Pastor Brady Boyd, stating that Haggard’s family received more that $300,000 in severance payments and is working toward reconciliation with Haggard.
The film follows Haggard, his wife Gayle, adult daughter Christy and adult son Marcus as they leave Colorado Springs in search of a new life in Arizona and Texas. The film avoids the Haggards’ two younger sons and special-needs son, who receives financial support from New Life.
Due to his notoriety and his lack of training in anything other than the ministry, Haggard has a difficult time finding employment. “I essentially have a high school education in the market,” he told reporters.
Throughout the film, Haggard wrestles with his faith and his attempts to reconcile his same-sex attractions with his understanding of Scripture. He discloses childhood sexual abuse and recalls his struggles as a youth as he battled his attraction to other boys.
In the film, Haggard shows moments of hope in his faith, as well as times of deep despair. It’s in those dark times when his relationship with Pelosi and her husband, Michael Vos, became much more personal.
“They were so helpful to us,” Haggard explained in Los Angeles, “Michael called one day when I was in the back yard, sobbing, by myself crying. And he was alarmed because he thought we were being taken care of. Alexandra’s sister lived not far from where we were in Phoenix, so when they would come down and visit, they would come and help. They helped us move.
“One time I was just dying in despair of loneliness, and Michael went and sold health insurance with me for two or three days.”
Pelosi’s first encounter with Haggard came when she attempted to understand and translate evangelical life.
“It’s so everything that I’m not. It’s foreign to me,” Pelosi said, “The whole Christian evangelical world is so foreign to me. Ted was my tour guide through it. He introduced me to this whole world. I’m from San Francisco and I live in New York (and) where we come from, it’s `Gay? So what?”‘
The new documentary has the same no-holds barred ethos as “Friends of God” as Haggard delves into his sexuality, his grief, his loss of purpose, and his hope for the future.
However, people looking for a clear explanation of his sexuality or a neat resolution to the scandal will be disappointed.
“This is the problem with Ted,” Pelosi said. “The gay community is not going to embrace him because he’s not going to say `I’m gay’. The Christian community is not going to embrace him because he is saying, `I have gay issues. I have issues with my sexuality.’ So he’s fallen through the crack in between this cultural divide in America. He can’t answer the questions. Go try for a few hours. He can’t answer them.”
Haggard, who recently moved his family back to Colorado Springs, was until recently barred by contracts with New Life from speaking to the media. He explained his decision to bare his soul to millions through Pelosi’s camera.
“Well, we had to answer the questions,” he said. “For the sake of our kids going to school. For the sake of me trying to build a business.
And just a message, our life message. So we moved back home to finish the story. If we would have stayed away, the story would have just ended with that. And we moved back home to finish the story.”
By Rebecca Cusey
Religion News Service
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
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posted January 15, 2009 at 11:17 pm
“It was very biblical in a way. Not that I even read the Bible, so I wouldn’t know.”
What a bizarre statement.
Ms. Pelosi sought to make a documentary about evangelicals and didn’t make any serious effort to read the Bible as part of her research?
I’m not a fundamentalist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have journalism training and it just seems strange and sloppy not to do some study of the basic text, herself. Yet, she seems eager to deny she has ever looked at the book. Does she fear contamination?
She is less hesitant to render judgments on the evangelicals who have a hard time with Haggard.
Actually, I have great sympathy for him, and I also think he was abandoned in a way that was graceless, and trapped by a theology that can be cruel. I don’t condemn him, or anyone else, for being homosexual, though it seems his orientation may be less clear cut, which can be a probelm even in environments where homosexuality is not stimagtized.
But,
posted January 15, 2009 at 11:22 pm
(got cut off somehow)
But, I hope Haggard can find peace and realize that God is far more gracious than either he or Pelosi may realize.
posted January 16, 2009 at 8:41 am
There is a difference between forgiveness and acceptance and restoration to a position of leadership. Firgiveness is about if I am holding something against that person in my heart.
Whether he can be restored to a position of leadership is a different story. That takes time, a dn rebuidlding of trust. Just like I would not want someone who is a brand new Christian leading a mega church, i would not want someone who has just had a revelation of their sin and is need of personal restoration leading that church either.
At my job, we do not make it public knowledge when someone is being written up for poor performance and the plan for their development is not made public either. IN the same way, we may not be seeing how people are reaching out to Ted Haggard in hi private life.
Why the media and the left expect tyhis double standard is beyond me.
posted January 16, 2009 at 8:48 am
Why is it that the article seems to indicate that the church does not embrace those struggling with Same-sex attaraction. Ministries like Exodus International have changed that dynamic in the Christian community. CHurches from all denominations are opening their arms wide to help those with same-sex attraction deal with that battle and help them fight the good fight.
There is still a stigma at times like it is “that sin” versus my sin, but that stigma is not as strong as it used top be.
Praise God for ministries like Exodus and those that are reaching out to the gay communicty to let them know there is a better way
posted January 16, 2009 at 10:16 am
It is sad that the mainstream churches do not reach out to those in need. I feel for Ted, I can identify with some of his struggles. Ministries like Exodus are great, but they are few and far between.
I just hope Ted is coming forward for the right reasons. His comment that he had to answer questions for the sake of his kids and the sake of his business, and to tell his story, bother me. What about just for the sake of the gospel? I think God can really use him now, probably more so than when he was a pastor at New Life Church. But only if he does it God’s way and not his.
posted January 17, 2009 at 1:02 am
Interesting. I experienced something similar, but on a tiny scale. I was a pastor of a small church and committed adultery. It was publicly dealt with. Almost every one of my “Christian” friends, pastors especially, abandoned me. One tried calling me a few times and another was friendly when he saw me, but all the others avoided me. Even the ones I approached. Even my mentor, whom I contacted over and over, avoided contact with me. Now my wife and I are back together and basically alone. It is very very cold and lonely.
posted January 17, 2009 at 9:02 am
“Ministries like Exodus are great, but they are few and far between.”
Thank goodness.
posted January 17, 2009 at 9:14 am
I find it very hard to have sympathy for Haggard. He devoted himself to dehumanizing people who were “struggling” with the same attractions he himself felt. Then on his free time, he was behaving in a way that brought shame to us responsible members of the LGBT community. Now even his own minions have turned on him. I say it’s poetic justice: now he knows what it feels like to be gay in a Christian-run world.
posted January 17, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Robert,
Same-sex attraction is not a “battle” or a “struggle” or a “fight”. Certainly no more than opposite-sex attraction is. What an absurd statement.
And Exodus has not “helped” a single soul. All they’ve ever done is make people feel ashamed of the way God made them. Not a single person has become a heterosexual (nor even heterosexually attracted – certainly not exclusively, anyway) through their lies, nor are they “reaching out to the gay community”. They do no “good work”, only harm.
For God’s gay and lesbian children, false heterosexuality is by no means “a better way”. It is delusion. And foolishness to try and tell them otherwise.
posted January 17, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Seems Ted has tried to base his attraction to the same gender on childhood sexual abuse? Wouldn’t that make you want to avoid having sex with the same gender?? (assuming the abuse was done by another male). I’m almost sure Ted is homosexual…he is just afraid to accept it. Obviously his version of “Christianity” won’t allow him to accept himself! He has spent his life, until “caught” telling folks that homosexuality was “BAD”! Too bad his version of a loving god is one that won’t love him for who he reallly is…after all, that god was supposed to have “created” him!
posted January 18, 2009 at 10:54 pm
I suppose one is only surprised when experts and leaders fall . With extended fingers we wag them in the faces of these said leaders, for they should have known better.We forget , however that human nature is , well, human . We all fall , we all have weaknesses .
I’m not sure why homosexuality seems to have a greater sin status than say adultery (and perhaps only in the minds of people).
God , however seems to worked this problem out for us , giving us perfection ,Himself with skin on, as the eternal antidote to the sin problem. If we choose the antidote, that is.
So the truth is as much as we judge other peoples failings we are in fact judging our own human natures. That is a constant , we all screw up somewhere , sometime, because we are human . So instead of focusing our attention on one particular sin , let us walk together , with love and integrity before God and man,helping one another in the journey of this life, because Life after all is in the Living.
posted January 23, 2009 at 5:08 pm
I am the religion reporter at the Colorado Springs Gazette. Please read my interview with Haggard at gazette.com under my Pulpit column beginning Friday evening, Jan. 24. Also go to my blog to read my further interviews with Haggard and “Trials of Ted Haggard” director Alexandra Pelosi under The Pulpit blog. You can also access the blog at the pulpit.freedomblogging.com
Mark Barna
Religion Reporter
Colorado Springs Gazette
posted January 24, 2009 at 11:53 am
Ted is going through what many GLBT Christians go through daily. The fact that he was leading a double life is tragic for him, and his family. This is never easy, and can be completely destructive as we are seeing in the case of Ted. I only wish the best for him, and hope he can come to grips with his sexuality, whatever that may be. Most-likely bisexual. God loves everyone, and that’s all there is to it. I am sure Ted is not the only gay member of his ministry.
posted January 27, 2009 at 6:05 am
For a tender and touching portrayal of how God helps one gay teen reconcile his homosexual orientation and his fundamentalist Christian upbringing, read the young adult novel, Nothing Pink by Mark Hardy.
posted February 20, 2009 at 9:09 pm
It’s ashame to hear comments made about a person who fell from grace and sinned. Just because you are a Christian does NOT mean you do not sin! God does love Ted. We all sin and fall short of God’s glory! Don’t forget (Pagansister) that every sin is the same in God’s eyes! I know that is a tuff one to grasp for some. It took me a while too. It is a shame that his church family would not forgive him. God forgives him. I am sure of it!! Jesus would have to die all over again if that were not so. Yes….God loves us all and He chooses His children. He knows every mans heart and knows of sin before it is commited. God bless us all in this fallen world.
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posted March 29, 2011 at 2:24 am
Saw this on HBO.. The documentary appeals much to me not because of its homosexual theme but because the documentary was so well done and it attracted my attention because of the plot about a preacher doing some “bad deed”.