Ted Haggard Returns - the Daily Beast 8/2/11 3:37 PM

Ted Haggard Returns - The Daily Beast 8/2/11 3:37 PM

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CHANGE TEXT SIZE AUTHOR The Lost Shepherd Ted Haggard's sex scandal cost him his church, and some of his faith.

Jan 9, 2009 1:28 PM EST Print Email 0 Like

Tony Dokoupil From his bedroom turned office in Colorado Springs, Ted Haggard prepares people for the afterlife. Not the roof-shaking "power encounters" with God that once defined him as founder of New Life Church and leader of the 30 million– THIS WEEK'S ISSUE

strong National Association of Evangelicals. Now he's offering deliverance of a A Dogma to Wreck the Country different sort: life insurance. Drumming up leads through a referral service, Haggard and his wife, Gayle, work the phones, setting up in-house When Dictators Shoot Back consultations with the former "Pastor Ted" to close the deal. "One thing we can guarantee our clients," Haggard likes to say, "is that bad things do happen in The Scariest Summer life." (Article continued below...)

You can say amen to that. It's been two years since a prostitute named Mike Jones alleged he'd had a three-year, drug-fueled affair with Haggard. Haggard,

now 52, ultimately admitted to a crystal-meth purchase and "sexual immorality." MOST POPULAR Within a week, he'd stepped down from his posts and into the pantheon of When Reality Fame Runs Dry evangelicals (Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart) felled by their own sins. Now, in his first magazine interview since the scandal, Haggard talks about his ongoing Debt Deal’s Winners & Losers struggle with his sexuality, his former church and his plans for the future. Why now? For one thing, he's pushing "The Trials of Ted Haggard," a wincingly Hoover’s Secret Files candid HBO documentary due to air on January 29. But as you can sense in the film, and hear in conversation, Haggard still feels a lot of anger—at New Mormons Wrestle With a Racist Past Life Church, as well as at himself.

Obama’s Birth-Control Shakeup On that day in late 2006 when he finally dropped the denials, Haggard felt exhausted and lost, and so he did what came naturally: he put his trust in the church. "I was disoriented, confused, depressed. I had thrown my life away, and STORIES WE LIKE I had to trust these men," he tells NEWSWEEK. "I would have signed anything." EW.COM Under the terms of his severance package and "restoration" deal, Haggard MTV: 30 'Did You See It?!' Moments agreed to never set foot in New Life again and to leave Colorado forever (although the banishment was lifted after just more than a year). He took his STYLELIST family and his severance package—a year's pay, around $140,000—and began Cindy Sherman for MAC: The Weirdest, Most Awesome Collaboration Yet? what the Haggards refer to as their life in exile. They spent the next 18 months crisscrossing Arizona with their two teenage sons piled into a U-Haul, staying in ASK MEN a series of budget hotels and the homes of "kind strangers." Pickup Tips From 'Crazy, Stupid, Love'

Cash and Christian mercy were in short supply, but at least one friend made SHELTER POP sure to come calling: Alexandra Pelosi. The Emmy-winning director (and A Well-Suited Room Inspired by Chris Speaker Nancy's daughter) met Haggard in 2005 while shooting "Friends of Evans http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/01/09/the-lost-shepherd.html Page 1 of 4 Ted Haggard Returns - The Daily Beast 8/2/11 3:37 PM

God," her tour of evangelical America. She says she initially traveled to Arizona to make sure he was OK, and ever the filmmaker, just started filming when she POLITICAL WIRE saw Ted carrying a rack of his church suits into a cheap motel. He wasn't Why Perry Can't Take Credit for the Texas Economy compensated for Pelosi's roughly 10 hours of footage, spread over several visits. "This movie was stolen from Ted," she says. "I was there, I had a camera, BUZZFEED that's it." Haggard says the film is "fair and even" and let her shoot it. "Here's 40 Amazing Hipstamatic Photos of the the way I've worked in my lifetime: I tend to say yes," he says. War in Afghanistan

Unfortunately, other people kept telling him no. Struggling to find work in the secular world, he turns to hanging "hundreds, maybe thousands" of mortgage advertisements on suburban doorknobs, and when Pelosi zooms in to ask about his success rate, Haggard's Grand Canyon smile goes missing. He didn't get a single response. In another scene, Haggard is feeling confident on the way to his first secular job interview, a counseling position at the University of Phoenix, the adult learning center. "If they don't Google me, I'll get the job," he tells Pelosi. Apparently they did, because he struck out there, too. Finally, Haggard lands work as a traveling insurance salesmen, a prelude to his present-day success with a different commission sales company, Mortgage Protection Group. He now says he makes around $1,000 a week.

And yet, while he strives to turn the other cheek, full Christian forgiveness eludes him. He believes that New Life cast him away when he needed it the most. As he says in the movie: "The Church has said go to hell." Haggard now thinks that he lashed himself too hard. "I understand why when a criminal is caught they will sometimes admit to things they didn't do," he says. "I wanted to overrepent, and I think I did overrepent. In my [resignation] letter to the church I said I was a deceiver and a liar, but I hadn't lied about anything except to keep quiet about what was going on inside me."

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TAGS: America, Alexandra Pelosi, life insurance, Nancy, Grand Canyon , Jimmy Swaggart, Culture, Colorado,United States, the Emmy , Friends of God, USD, Jim Bakker, NEWSWEEK , Arizona,United States