Ted Haggard, Alexandra Pelosi and the Bible

HBO is airing a documentary this week on Ted Haggard and his life after his fall from grace. I just read a CT interview with the filmmaker, Alexandra Pelosi (the daughter of Speaker of the House Nanci Pelosi). It is really a fascinating read and worth your time. Haggard is clearly broken and trying to get back on his feet (it sounds like he has to some extent). What I found most intriguing and hopeful in the interview was Pelosi's explanation of what got them through the ordeal:

There was an AP story on Friday about another young man in New Life Church claiming he had an ongoing sexual relationship with Ted.

I'm not surprised. I mean, you never get caught your first time.

Are you going to put a tagline at the end of the film about this news?

It's too late. [The New York Times reports that HBO plans to add a brief statement at the end of the film.] I think that the point [with this news] is that Ted was a deceiver and a liar. But I wasn't so interested in Ted's sexual problems. What I think is interesting is watching the family and watching this man go through this private hell publicly. It's just sad for his family. But somehow he got his life back together.

I'm not a really religious person. We consider ourselves to be Catholics, but we think of it more as a cultural thing. But what I love about Ted's story, at least about Ted's family, is that the Bible got them through. They read the Bible. They would read these passages, and it moved me. I went out and bought a new Bible. When I was making Friends with God, everybody quoted the Bible, but I was never inspired to go buy one. But this experience with Ted turned me onto the Bible in a whole new way, because he would read these passages and it would really inspire me.

People might come away from this movie being a little anti-church, but it makes you really pro-Bible. It makes you really pro-God in a way, because you read these things in the Bible and you're like, wow.

Gayle and the kids read the Bible a lot, and they weren't doing it for me. They got through all of this with the help of the Bible.

Read the whole thing.