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One recently lost his mega New Life
Church and leadership as president of the National Association
of Evangelicals when a part of his life, "so repulsive and
dark that I have been warring against it all my life," was
brought to light. ("My Dear New Life Church Family,"
letter from Ted Haggard, Nov. 5, 2006). Another recently lost
his major Republican political base when the so-called "terrorism"
he had been warring against all his presidency brought him-and
the lives of hundreds of thousands of others, including Americans-to
a dead end in Iraq. Ironically, the one was a spiritual advisor
to the other, and "joke[d] that the only disagreement between
himself and the leader of the Western world is automotive: Mr.
Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas he prefers a Chevy."
("Cheer Up, Conservatives! You're still winning,"
by John Mickle Thwist and Adrian Wooldridge The Wall Street
Journal, June 21, 2005)
Whatever their difference in
cars, both Rev. Ted Haggard and President George Bush are apparently
being driven from power by a similar dynamic: their inner struggle
with socially unacceptable impulses and feelings of inadequacy
that are too threatening to acknowledge. They defend against
the very urges and self-doubts that unconsciously drive them
by obsessively reacting against people who mirror what they believe
to be their own inner "sinful condition," or people
seen as personifying their own aggression and "evil"
propensity for power over others.
They demonize other human beings
with the "demons" inside themselves. They seek to
curb and destroy in other persons what they despise in themselves.
In the name of "Christ" or "freedom," of
course. Certainly not in the name of their own unconscious reprehensibly-driven
sexual attractions or "dead or alive" aggressive impulses.
An understanding of their anti-introspective behavior, and their
resistance to objective cause-and-effect soul-searching or self-examination,
may bring some sanity to certain religious and political beliefs-and
thus justice and healing of divisions that separate people into
"normal" versus "objectively disordered"
or "incompatible" sexual orientations and "good
versus evil" ideologies.
The obsessive warring of many
evangelical Christians against homosexuality betrays the need
to dumb down their god. Rev. Haggard provides a classic
example. In the film, "Jesus Camp," a documentary
on the indoctrination of children into evangelical Christianity,
Haggard tells a huge audience, "We don't have to debate
about what we should think about homosexual activity. It's written
in the Bible." ("Fired evangelist Ted Haggard appears
in 'Jesus Camp' doc condemning gays," Christy Lemire, Canadian
Press, canada.com, Nov. 6, 2006) Haggard is actually
telling children life is not about thinking but about believing.
In fact, it is about not thinking-especially when their
reality challenges or contradicts what is "written in the
Bible."
While Rev. Haggard confesses
to life-long warring against a part of himself "so repulsive
and dark," the Bible itself has helped to keep him in
the dark about himself. He
is passing on to children the
very homophobic "darkness" passed on to him by what
is "written in the Bible" and engulfing his life with
shame and guilt and denial-and the lives of gay and lesbian persons
with discrimination and physical and spiritual violence.
It's written in the Bible?"
So is anti-Semitism (Matthew 27: 15-26; Mark 15: 6-15; Luke
23: 13-25; John 19: 1-16) The enslavement of Black people (Ephesians
6:5ff). Patriarchy's subjugation of women (Ephesians 5: 22-25).
World domination by Christians (Matthew 28:16-20). And other
"darkness" from which knowledge and truth have set
us free.
Most evangelical and fundamentalist
Christians who condemn homosexuality have had nothing whatsoever
to do with their own heterosexual orientation-just as most gay
and lesbian persons are born and develop as they are. To put
a moral stamp of "natural" and "unnatural"
on an individual's sexual orientation flies in the face of genetically
predisposed sexual development and preference.
Here a Christian doctrine of
free will-and faith in a god who said, "Let us make man
in our own image, after our own likeness" (Genesis 1:26)-serve
to dismiss and explain away belief-threatening cause-and-effect
understanding of genetically determined psycho-sexual development
and behavior. The god of the infallible Bible is gay but not
that gay.
The beliefs that homosexuality
is "unnatural" and "sinful" and can and should
be "cured" have been rejected by the American Psychiatric
Association, and other such professional groups whose work is
based on the scientific and clinical study of human behavior.
Since 1973, the American Psychiatric Association has maintained
"that
homosexuality per se is not
a diagnosable mental disorder." And in 1998, the APA's
Board of Trustees began opposing "any psychiatric treatment,
such as 'reparative' or conversion therapy," that assumes
"homosexuality per se is a mental disorder" and "that
a patient should change his/her sexual homosexual orientation."
("Position Statement on Therapies Focused on Attempts to
Change Sexual Orientation (Reparative or Conversion Therapies),"
Approved by the Assembly, May 2000.)
In cases where same sex attraction
may involve free will or choice, it is still about two people
loving each other. Two people committed to each other's fulfillment.
Nor should any loving gay or
lesbian couple's right to marry be put to a vote by a state legislature-which
Rev. Haggard's state of Colorado did recently and banned with
his strong support. It was his hypocrisy here that led his gay
sex provider of three years to force him out of his sanctuary
closet. Sadly, what is "written in the Bible" had
forced him into that self-denying and destructive church closet.
The homophobic cry of "Let
the people vote!" on gay marriage, now being heard loudly
in Massachusetts, is not about democracy but about certain citizens
trying to use the democratic process to impose their own indoctrinated
"dark side" on gay and lesbian persons and drive them
back into the shadows. It should not be about politicians like
President Bush exploiting such "darkness" to shore
up his conservative Republican base
before an election. Nor about
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney trying to capitalize on the
same "darkness" to create a "conservative base"
for his 2008 presidential run. The ethical and democratic issues
here are not about preserving the traditional family but about
honoring the rights of all members of the family born in those
"traditional marriages."
"It's written in the Bible."
For many Bible-believing Christians, it is about authority not
authenticity. Certain religious leaders and their followers
need to protect their god-and themselves from knowledge. The
more mysterious their god's ways, the more they can interpret
and control his movement with an infallible compass-the Bible.
They need to believe that their god's ways are "unsearchable"-beyond
human cause-and-effect understanding. Therein lays these religious
leaders' authority and power over people-and their followers'
need to remain dependent and powerless. They dumb down their
god to rev up their religious authority.
Thus "an organization
of Christian fundamentalists claims that destruction brought
on by Hurricane Katrina is God's judgment against New Orleans
for holiday festivals like the annual gay Southern Decadence
party. 'Although the loss of life is deeply saddening, this
act of God destroyed a wicked city.' said Repent America director
Michael Marcavage on the organization's Web site." ("Religious
groups link Hurricane to gay event," Christopher Curtis,
gay.com/ Planet Out.com Network).
The assignment of such divine
judgment seems to be shared by evangelical Christian leader Rev.
Franklin Graham, who said, "'There's been a black spiritual
cloud [italics added] over New Orleans for years.'"
Appearing at Liberty University, a Christian university founded
by Rev. Jerry Falwell, "Graham spoke about how some believed
God was using the hurricane to spark a religious revival there,"
because "New Orleans is a city known for Satan worship,
orgies and widespread drinking and drug use." ("Some
US Christians say Katrina was God's handiwork," by Paul
Simao, Reuters Alert Net, Oct. 16, 2005) What would a
white spiritual cloud represent? Goodness? Showers of
blessings? The revelation of Rev. Franklin Graham's own unconscious
feelings of racial superiority? To what degree are spirituality
and one's god colored by one's own racial conditioning and identity?
Civilized society punishes
people severely for committing a fraction of the wanton and destructive
behavior certain Christian fundamentalist and other religious
leaders attribute to their god. It would seem that such leaders
are projecting onto their god their own unconscious hatred and
aggression. Such a destructive god should be restricted to history
or banished to the heavens, or confined to a book, or studied
in a laboratory to understand his terroristic nature-and not
allowed to return and "move in mysterious ways" upon
the earth and among human beings until his worshippers enjoy
the therapeutic touch of a Golden Retriever, or unexpectedly
discover the humanizing love of a gay or lesbian son or daughter,
or experience unconditional love themselves from another human
being, or benefit from the acceptance and clinical insights
of a psychologically-trained therapist rather than be limited
to the focus of a Biblically-based reparative counselor.
"It's written in the Bible"
accommodates an excessive need for authority and absolutes that
provide security, promise a "cure-all," alleviate feelings
of powerlessness and legitimize anti-democratic beliefs and behavior.
Thus, an evangelical Christian can believe "God is love"
while denying to gay and lesbian persons their innate and inalienable
birthright. Tragically, a birthright believed to be "so
repulsive and dark" that Rev. Ted Haggard felt forced to
strongly deny and war against it all his life-and even more so
now as he faces the spiritual Catch-22 of "reparative therapy,"
conducted by other evangelical Christian ministers being guided
by what is "written in the Bible." Bible-based "reparative
therapy" is believed to be a further attempt to protect
one's god from empirical knowledge.
The threat that psychologically-guided
soul-searching poses to evangelical and fundamentalist Christians
especially is seen in the change in the training of ministers
in pastoral care and counseling at Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. The seminary has dropped "secular
psychology" from its curriculum and "is taking its
Christian counseling department in a new direction, one built
upon the sufficiency of Scripture and designed to train pastors
to deal biblically with the needs of hurting people." This
"wholesale change in emphasis [is] built upon the view that
Scripture is sufficient to answer comprehensively the deepest
needs of the human heart" [italics added]. The very
psychological knowledge and supervised clinical training, through
which ministers gain self-understanding and are thus better able
to love themselves, and hence their neighbor, are dumped into
a wastebasket. Replaced by "true 'pastoral care' as defined
by the Scriptures." ("Southern Seminary Launches new
vision for biblical counseling," By Jeff Robinson, (BP)news, Feb. 15, 2005)
It may be "written in
the Bible," but pastoral psychotherapist, Rev. Dr. Perry
Miller states that he and other such psychotherapists and clinical
supervisors of ministers-in-training "have had to pick up
the pieces of people's lives who have been counseled or supervised
by such a limited model." Miller stresses the importance
of clergy gaining insight into themselves and other persons through
integrating knowledge of the social sciences under the guidance
of a clinically trained supervisor. ("A Threat to Clinical
Pastoral Training," by Perry Miller, Pastoral Report.com,
The Newsletter of the College of Pastoral Supervision and
Psychotherapy, Feb. 23, 2005). The spiritual health of worshippers
depends greatly on the emotional health of their religious leaders.
Self-knowledge is believed
to be a fundamental qualification of any clergy person and of
anyone committed to democratic values. One has to know where
he or she is coming from in order to know where other persons
are at. Self-knowledge helps one to avoid getting in one's own
way in living and working with other people. The more one is
in touch with and accepting of oneself, the better prepared one
is to experience and accept other persons as themselves-better
able to experience rather than interpret their reality.
Jesus seemed to ground spirituality
in self-knowledge and human relationships. When asked which
was the greatest commandment in the law," he answered, "You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart . . . [And]
the second it like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
(Matthew 22: 35-40) It is assumed that love of one's neighbor
depends on love of oneself: one's ability to experience one's
own humanness and to embrace one's own worth and rights.
"Love your neighbor as
yourself?" The very church that Rev. Haggard founded in
his basement 21 years ago, and built into a 14,000-member congregation,
turned him away after he confessed to "sexual immorality"
with a gay man. " 'We are a family' . . . said interim
pastor Ross Parsley, himself in tears. . . . 'When difficult
times come, families pull together.'" ("Haggard: 'I
am a deceiver and a liar,'" By Patrick O'Driscoll, USA
TODAY, Nov. 6, 2006) A long-time church member stated, "We
all love him [Haggard] because he's a part of our family. You
don't just throw away a sister or a brother," ("New
Life Church Pardons Disgraced Evangelical Ted Haggard of Sexual
Immorality." By Nji Che, All Headline News, Nov.
6, 2006)
Rev. Larry Stockstill, Rev.
Haggard's and his wife Gayle's own pastor for 22 years and his
"spiritual mentor," assumes that Haggard's reparative
therapy "may take two years. After that, neither his fellow
overseers nor Haggard himself have ruled out a return to the
pulpit. 'We believe he will,' Stockstill said. 'Just not here'"
[italics added] ("The Preacher and the Prostitute,"
by Jill Smolowe, Vickie Bane and Ansley Roan, People,
Nov. 20, 2006) Rev. Haggard's "Church family," though
big, thanks largely to him, was not big enough to continue loving
him as their minister. It is much easier to believe than to
love. This may have been Jesus' point when he was recorded as
saying, "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another." (John 13: 35) That,
too, is "written in the Bible."
There may be far more hope
for Rev. Haggard than for "the leader of the Western world"
who prefers a Ford pickup to a Chevy. Faced with the truth of
his hypocrisy, Haggard ended his denial with, "The fact
is, I am guilty of sexual immorality. I take full responsibility
for the entire problem. I am a deceiver and a liar." ("Letter
to New Life Church Family, Nov. 5, 2006")
No such words from President
Bush. When Saddam Hussein was recently convicted and sentenced
to death, by a US-controlled Iraqi court, Bush declared, "Saddam
Hussein's trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people's efforts
to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law"
[italics added]. (The New York Times, Nov. 6, 2006)
"The rule of law?"
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan condemned the Bush administration's
pre-emptive war against Iraq as "illegal," a violation
of international law because it lacked UN Security Council approval.
Annan said about Bush's "advance of liberty" in Iraq,
"Those who seek to bestow legitimacy must themselves embody
it, and those who invoke international law must themselves submit
to it." (The New York Times, Sept. 22, 2004)
"The rule of law?"
Never mind the violation of the Geneva Conventions by the US
military in dropping massive quantities of white phosphorus on
the Iraqi citizens of
Fallajah during an attack on
the city in November of 2004. ("US forces 'used chemical
weapons' during assault on city of Fallajah," by Peter Popham,
The Independent, Nov. 8,
2005). The torture of Iraqi
detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. The outsourcing of torture by
"'disappearing' detainees into a network of secret prisons
and by abducting and sending people for interrogation to countries
that practice torture such as Egypt, Syrian and Morocco. ("Annual
Report," by Larry Cox, Executive Director, Amnesty International
USA, May 23, 2006) And the detainment camp at Guantanamo Bay,
which totally contradicts "the rule of law" in which
America itself takes such pride.
Saddam Hussein's trial and
conviction and death sentence are "a milestone"? Said
by "the leader of the Western world," whose own administration
is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
people, in "bringing to justice" a tyrant who was a
friend of, and aided and abetted by the United States during
his brutal reign.
"I'd like our troops to
come home, too, but I want them to come home with victory,"
President Bush said at his November 8, 2006 news conference.
He continues to talk about "victory" and "we'll
succeed unless we quit." (The New York Times, Nov.
18, 2006) This denial of reality said in the face of overwhelming
sectarian violence that is finally being recognized as a civil
war-provoked by the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. An invasion
and occupation not based on "the rule of law" but on
the role of lies: Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction
and ties to 9/11 that did not exist. It is not about the "victory"
of "democracy" in Iraq but about the violation of another
country's human rights for oil and empire. How do you turn a
crime into a "victory?" Or into a "mistake?"
The invasion of Iraq was not a "mistake!" Nor
a "failure." It was a crime against humanity! Committed
against the people of Iraq and of America. By a president driven
by political power and the opportunism of his so-called "neo-conservative
" policy makers. And apparently also driven by "demons"
within himself.
"See, you can't talk sense
to the terrorists. You must bring them to justice." "All
they can think about is evil." "Flat evil."
"Evil doers." "Killers." "Murderers
of women and children." "Lenin and Hitler types."
Islamic fascists." "A never-ending global war on
terrorism." "They want to create a unified totalitarian
state and destroy the free world." "A struggle for
civilization." "This will be a monumental struggle
of good versus evil, but good will prevail." "Either
you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." These
are the words of a man driven by projection not guided by introspection.
It does not appear that President
Bush, who was stumped when a reporter asked if he had made any
mistakes regarding Iraq, will follow the example of his "spiritual
advisor" and also confess, "I am a deceiver and a liar."
But a majority of Americans used the recent national elections
to begin saying that to him and to the world. History will make
the same judgment. It is time for the new Democratic majority
in Congress to bring this criminal war to an end now and begin
our country's atoning for the war crime by making restitution
to the Iraqi people. Congress should end Bush's self-justifying
obsessive "vow not to withdraw troops 'until the mission
is complete'" (The New YorkTimes, Nov. 29,
2006) and bring them home to their loved ones, and provide whatever
restitution and rehabilitation they may need. It is also time
for Congress to bring to justice the very person who is obviously
consumed by the "dead or alive" need to "bring
to justice" other human beings.
Rev. William E. Alberts,
Ph.D. is a hospital
chaplain, and a diplomate in the College of Pastoral Supervision
and Psychotherapy. Both a Unitarian Universalist and a United
Methodist minister, he has written research reports, essays and
articles on racism, war, politics and religion. He can be reached
at william.alberts@bmc.org.
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