Friday, November 03, 2006

megapastor ted haggard is an "indianan"

pastor ted, who resigned yesterday after allegations of meth use and a long-standing affair with a gay escort, is apparently an "indianan":

Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in denim. He likes to say that his only disagreement with the President is automotive; Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas Pastor Ted loves his Chevy. In addition to New Life, Pastor Ted presides over the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), whose 45,000 churches and 30 million believers make up the nation's most powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a smaller network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving Churches, 300 or so congregations modeled on New Life's "free market" approach to the divine.

yes, an indianan. presumably this means he is a hoosier; a person born in indiana. i could go on a rant about the non-word "indianan" and its misuse by the media, but i'll spare you that. (zach wendling already did that rant at in the agora in march.)

the harpers article doesn't say anything more about that, but now that i know what to search for, let's do some more digging.

pastor ted wrote a book titled the life giving church. amazon tells us that the book's first sentence is "Delphi United Presbyterian Church is where Mom and Dad took me and my three older brothers to church while growing up on a farm in Indiana."

searching for "Delphi United Presbyterian Church" (in quotes) only turns up hits relating to ted haggard. so does that mean the church is no longer around? that it has no web presence (not even a phone book entry or a blog posting by a churchgoer)? or maybe he got the name wrong, and he meant the first presbyterian church in delphi, indiana?

2 comments:

Wilson46201 said...

I heard some announcer somewhere say Ted was from Yorktown - I am curious whether Ted "experimented" in Indianapolis at some of the local gay bars on his knees ... maybe some folk around here have known him - strictly in a Biblical sense of course!

Anonymous said...

Yes, it's just "First Presbyterian" in Delphi. Moved to Yorktown in 1969, graduated form Yorktown HS 1974.

I'm also curious if anyone knew him in Yorktown.

Adrian