Ted Haggard, who built an evangelical empire whose influence reached all the way to the Bush White House before a gay sex scandal brought it all crashing down in 2006, is back at the pulpit at his new church in Colorado Springs. –JCL
The Guardian:
Ted Haggard is back and about to start preaching again. Haggard, once America’s leading evangelical pastor, who was brought down and removed from his own mega-church after admitting to a gay sex scandal, has set up a new ministry and will hold the first service in his new church today.
His wife, Gayle, who has stood by him throughout his troubles, will be the church’s co-pastor.
“We realised that I am a sinner and she is a saint, but that way we do have a very broad appeal,” he joked in an interview from his home in Colorado Springs, a city that has been described as the Vatican of America’s evangelical movement. “I feel we have moved past the scandal. We have forgiveness. It is a second chance,” he said.