{"id":186,"date":"2009-01-30T09:01:28","date_gmt":"2009-01-30T09:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html"},"modified":"2009-01-30T09:01:28","modified_gmt":"2009-01-30T09:01:28","slug":"st-gayle-haggard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html","title":{"rendered":"St. Gayle Haggard"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, I watched the HBO documentary, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hbo.com\/events\/trialsoftedhaggard\/index.html\"><i>The Trials of Ted Haggard<\/i><\/a>, and then caught the second half of Ted and Gayle Haggard&#8217;s appearance on Larry King Live.<\/p>\n<p>I went in quite skeptically.&nbsp; I know a couple persons who knew\/know Ted, and they describe him as something of a meglomaniac.&nbsp; No surprise, Alexandra Pelosi paints Ted as a sympathetic figure.&nbsp; In fact, using footage from her earlier documentary that features Haggard, it&#8217;s clear that she has a real affection for him.&nbsp; Through the doc and the LKL appearance, I couldn&#8217;t really get a handle on Ted.&nbsp; He&#8217;s pretty circumspect on many issues; for instance, he just wouldn&#8217;t answer the question when a caller from Orlando who described himself as a gay Christian man asked Ted about the possibilities of being a gay Christian. Ted&#8217;s response was basically: read your Bible and get into a good church.&nbsp; Ted obviously doesn&#8217;t feel the authority to judge anyone right now, which is surely smart on his part.<\/p>\n<p>What stunned me, both in the doc and more acutely on LKL, was Gayle Haggard.&nbsp; Either she is one of the finest actors I&#8217;ve ever seen, or she is one of the most spiritually and psychologically <span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Haggard2.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/198\/import\/Haggard2.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"margin: 0pt 20px 20px 0pt;float: left\" height=\"206\" width=\"316\" \/><\/span>healthy persons on this planet.&nbsp; She answered every question with composure.&nbsp; She&#8217;s not the stand-by-your-man-no-matter-what, mindless, conservative evangelical woman that some have portrayed her to be.&nbsp; Nor is she the unkempt, sexually uninterested wife that <a href=\"http:\/\/tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com\/tallskinnykiwi\/2006\/11\/mark_driscoll_t.html\">Mark Driscoll infamously insinuated<\/a> when the scandal broke (of course, Mark&#8217;s orginal post is gone, but the Internet never forgets!).<\/p>\n<p>She is, instead, thoughtful, kind, gracious, and forgiving.&nbsp; She has stuck with Ted through a truly horrific experience.&nbsp; She has accepted his remorse and granted him forgiveness.&nbsp; And, as a cherry on top, the Haggard&#8217;s eldest son, Marcus, joined them for the last bit on LKL and he was even more composed than Gayle.&nbsp; This is a truly extraordinary family&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Or, they are positioning themselves for a new career.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve been told by one insider that the Haggards, basically broke, are hoping to establish an income by writing and speaking about their trials.&nbsp; Indeed, at the end of LKL, both Gayle and Ted said several times that they want to &#8220;communicate their story.&#8221;&nbsp; Fishing for a book deal? Speaking gigs? A reality TV show?&nbsp; Very possibly.&nbsp; So, my cynical side has to acknowledge the possibility that Gayle&#8217;s (and Ted&#8217;s and Marcus&#8217;s) grace and composure is actually a patina, covering a family in great distress trying to dig themselves out of a massive financial hole.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose time will tell.<br \/>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, I watched the HBO documentary, The Trials of Ted Haggard, and then caught the second half of Ted and Gayle Haggard&#8217;s appearance on Larry King Live. I went in quite skeptically.&nbsp; I know a couple persons who knew\/know Ted, and they describe him as something of a meglomaniac.&nbsp; No surprise, Alexandra Pelosi paints&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,21,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-glbt","category-movies"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>St. Gayle Haggard - The New Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"St. Gayle Haggard - The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last night, I watched the HBO documentary, The Trials of Ted Haggard, and then caught the second half of Ted and Gayle Haggard&#8217;s appearance on Larry King Live. I went in quite skeptically.&nbsp; I know a couple persons who knew\/know Ted, and they describe him as something of a meglomaniac.&nbsp; No surprise, Alexandra Pelosi paints&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-30T09:01:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/files\/import\/Haggard2.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tony Jones\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"St. Gayle Haggard - The New Christians","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"St. Gayle Haggard - The New Christians","og_description":"Last night, I watched the HBO documentary, The Trials of Ted Haggard, and then caught the second half of Ted and Gayle Haggard&#8217;s appearance on Larry King Live. I went in quite skeptically.&nbsp; I know a couple persons who knew\/know Ted, and they describe him as something of a meglomaniac.&nbsp; No surprise, Alexandra Pelosi paints&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html","og_site_name":"The New Christians","article_published_time":"2009-01-30T09:01:28+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/files\/import\/Haggard2.jpg"}],"author":"Tony Jones","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html","name":"St. Gayle Haggard - The New Christians","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/files\/import\/Haggard2.jpg","datePublished":"2009-01-30T09:01:28+00:00","dateModified":"2009-01-30T09:01:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/a5d6dffe0f41c25b4bd8136be22c4074"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/files\/import\/Haggard2.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/files\/import\/Haggard2.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2009\/01\/st-gayle-haggard.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"St. Gayle Haggard"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/","name":"The New Christians","description":"Tony Jones on Christianity and the Emerging Church","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/a5d6dffe0f41c25b4bd8136be22c4074","name":"Tony Jones","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d50\/d50708c3731048719806adf9c6f6df30x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d50\/d50708c3731048719806adf9c6f6df30x96.jpg","caption":"Tony Jones"},"description":"Tony Jones is the author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier and several other books on Christianity and prayer.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/author\/tjones"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}