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Ted Haggard on ‘Loveless’ Evangelical Church

By Lauri Lebo

…sitting here in the Rev. Ted Haggard’s new church of St. James in Colorado Springs, listening to him talk about love. “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself as love,” says Haggard, who speaks softly and matter-of-factly in a collared shirt and jeans and has lost much of the bravado he once exhibited before he was outed three and a half years ago for having sex with a male prostitute and buying crystal methamphetamine from him. “How…

Phelps’ Vile Words Test First Amendment

By Lauri Lebo

…r these kinds of places. Before attending Ted Haggard’s church in Colorado Springs on Sunday, I visited the home of Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church last week in Topeka, Kansas last week. By the way, it’s been described by the media as a compound. It’s actually a city block of fenced-in homes in a rather nice residential neighborhood with lovely landscaping. It’s so nice that at first, I figured I was at the wrong place. But then I saw…

God is Love: A Desert Prophet’s Message

By Lauri Lebo

…in Topeka, Kansas, and attended Ted Haggard’s comeback church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In addition, I’ve talked to many many people along the way about their faith and religion. Most recently, I drove to Slab City, which is a forsaken piece of land out in the Colorado Desert near California’s Mexican border. People here say it’s the “last free place in America.” The site of a former military base, Slab City takes its name from the concrete…

Seek and Ye Shall Find… Anti-Gay Views

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…tly by NPR—offering built-in bias. Shea Houdmann runs SeekFind, a Colorado Springs-based Christian search engine that only returns results from Web sites that are consistent with the Bible. He says SeekFind is designed “to promote what we believe to be biblical truth” and excludes sites that don’t meet that standard. Houdmann says a search on his site would not turn up pornography. If you search “gay marriage,” you would get results that argue aga…

Religious Right “Compassion” and Other Lies

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…just knocks the wind right out of me. Take this gem quoted in the Colorado Springs Gazette over the weekend in a story about the recent rash of gay teen suicides: Peter Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., said the rash September suicides by gays might be linked to the students believing they were born gay. “That creates hopelessness,” he said. “It is more loving and compassionate to say you…

Focus on the Family’s Conversation Starter a Non-Starter

By Sarah Posner

…y want abortion to be legal, safe and rare, Daly said, and so his Colorado Springs-based media powerhouse will try to walk that common ground with them — lessening demand for abortion. The “let’s talk” offer to reproductive-rights groups signals a sea change in Focus’ uncompromising approach to the abortion issue. It is bound to engender controversy about whether detente advances or hinders Daly’s ultimate goal of making abortion illegal. However,…

Unreasonable Doubt: Vincent Bugliosi Defends Agnosticism

By Eric Reitan

…thony Flew, who (before apparently becoming a deist in his dotage) wrote a number of important philosophical papers on atheism. One of the most significant is “The Presumption of Atheism,” in which Flew argues that in the absence of compelling evidence for the existence of God, the default presumption should be atheism. Flew even invokes the criminal court metaphor, arguing that context matters. When we are inquiring into an existential claim, Fle…

Rick Perry and the New Apostolic Reformation

By Sarah Posner

…eaving the seminary in the early 1990s to establish a ministry in Colorado Springs, Wagner began to build his empire, founding the NAR in 2001. The 21st century, for Wagner, is the beginning of the “Second Apostolic Age.” Those in the NAR believe that in order to bring about the coming of Christ, Apostles must be recognized, and the government should be run by Christians in order to cleanse the world for Christ’s coming. Power encounters such as e…

When Religion Kills: The Narco-Traffickers of the Borderlands

By Luis Leon

…w others get close to God.” Credo sixteen extols the virtue of patriotism. Number nineteen advises humility and nobility, while twenty-two announces that no woman should fear a Knight, but, rather, should feel protected by him. Twenty-nine reiterates that every Knight should be “firmly and truthfully in the just cause of God.” Numbers thirty-four through thirty-eight prohibit drugs, kidnapping, and mandate drug testing. Forty-three requires member…

Jeffress is Both Right and Wrong on Religion & Politics

By Peter Montgomery

…is a creation of Satan, that Jews can’t achieve salvation, and that Islam springs from the “pit of hell”—also protects others’ rights to criticize him for doing so. Furthermore, it is perfectly possible to be an ardent defender of free speech and to believe that it is not good for our country to have political campaigns revolve around which candidate’s faith is more sincere, or for policy debates to turn into battles over competing interpretation…