Focus on the fundies: The Ted Haggard Story

The Colorado Springs Gazette today published a long account of Ted Haggard's rise and fall. It contains this hilarious quip from a former Haggard colleague:

The church is still grieving. Haggard was pastor, mentor, even spiritual father to many.

"I always assumed that the grief cycle was like a Trivial Pursuit game, where you get your orange piece, and then your blue one," said associate pastor Rob Brendle. "And when you get them all, you check it off and you get your grief-cycle merit badge and you go on with life. What I found is that I'm on the grief-cycle wheel of fortune."

And a few days ago in the same city, the conservative rector of the city's largest Episcopal church -- for all intents and purposes, a megachurch not dissimilar from Haggard's nondenominational Christianist mall -- was suspended while his congregation investigates him for misuse of funds. (Link courtesy Pam Spaulding.)The Rev. Donald Armstrong was a vocal critic of the national church's sympathy for women and gays; the Rocky Mountain News called him a national leader of the homophobic movement.