I was watching Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary about Ted Haggard (Friends of God: A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi) the other evening. It’s fairly devastating. Pelosi’s ’shoot from the hip’ style, is raw and unflinching. Her presence behind the camera is clearly heard and felt, and her style, bemused, teasing, accesible but not too friendly, allows us to feel as if we’re the one holding a cheap camera, and (badly) shooting Haggard’s hardships.
Haggard comes across as a decent fella. It seems that this man, an evangelist who ran a 14000 followers mega church, and represented 30 million others, fundamentally believed in making people’s life better. His transgressions, having sex with a male prostitute and allegedly smoking crack, suddenly seem minor in comparison to the punishment meted out by his church, the evangelical movement, and millions of people consuming this titillating story. Judging from Pelosi’s selection of old footage from his halcyon days, and juxtaposed to demonstrate, almost comically, his self denial, his is a story common to many other closeted family men of his generation and upbringing.
Tragically however, Haggard is trapped. While struggling to accept his sexuality, and trying to reconcile his long road of deceit with his otherwise sunny and positive disposition, it is clear that he’s not yet ready to conclude his torturous path, at least while Pelosi was busy chasing him and his family around. One hopes that Haggard and his beleaguered family will find solace. Alas, at the end of a documentary chronicling just over a year after his expulsion from Colorado, Haggard is moving back, after getting the nod from his church. Why would anyone want to do so is hard understand, and the documentary does little to explain his mind set in this regard.
It is also a puzzle why a man with such talent and knowledge, is pursuing ‘honest living’ in the form of life insurance sales, and is not attempting to build a new pulpit for himself. I have little doubt that his message will now carry the extra weight only repentant ’sinners’ could muster. In fact, he could be the perfect counterweight to the Evangelical bias against anyone who does not believe in their family doctrine. Ted Haggard could preach and provide solace to all those who are casted aside by mainstream evangelical movement. Not a believer myself, I none the less see his gift as a win-win. I am a bit puzzled by his choice to continue and live with his wife, having clearly discovered that he’s gay. But that’s an entirely different post.
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