By: E&P Staff Before his current problems -- involving accusations of cheating on his wife by paying for sex with a male escort, and more -- evangelical leader Rev. Ted Haggard was last in the news releasing a statement to the media denouncing the recent documentary "Jesus Camp."
Haggard, who appears in the film, stated in late September, "This movie manipulates facts like a Michael Moore film and works the camera like 'The Blair Witch Project.'"
In one scene in the film, Haggard takes a boy, 12, who wants to be a preacher, aside and tells him to "use the cute kid thing until you're 30 and by then you'll have content."
An April 4, 2004, article in The New York Times quoted Haggard denouncing portrayals of "the effeminate Jesus," endorsing instead a view of Jesus as sometimes wrathful and judgmental. He was a prime promoter of Mel Gibson's "The Passion."
In a January 31, 2004, article in the Times on emerging uses of the Internet, Haggard said: ''You have a moral obligation not to be deceitful. But you don't have a moral obligation to tell everything you know upfront.'' Haggard was a leading anti-gay rights activist.
Late last year, Haggard (who claims he chats with aides in the White House at least once a week) made the national press when he told ABC interviewer Barbara Walters that only those who accept Jesus as their savior will go to heaven. When Walter, who is Jewish, pressed him further, he repeated it, adding, "unfortunately."
Haggard stepped down as president of the National Association of Evangelicals Thursday after radio and TV reports featuring a male escort saying that he had frequently paid him for sex and also bought meth from him. Haggard has denied the charges but today his church's senior pastor revealed that he had privately admitted to one or more of the charges. Later today Haggard admitted buying meth but claimed he had only paid for a massage from the accuser, not sex.
"I bought it for myself but never used it," he said, referring to the drug. "I was tempted, but I never used it."
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