Haggard: Mosque issue overblown

Services at Ted Haggard’s St. James Church, held at the Pikes Peak Center downtown, are becoming regular stops for religion writers across the nation, including from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

Dropping in Sunday was Laurie Lebo, author of the “The Devil and Dover: Dogma and Darwin in Small-Town America.”

Lebo came away impressed. She writes that Haggard spoke of evangelicals becoming “too focused on politics and not enough on improving the lives of those around them.”

“In Haggard’s church,” she writes, “there is no discussion of Obama being a covert Muslim, of socialist-led plots to force death panels on Grandma, or of decrying the concept of social justice. (Actually, each week, Haggard devotes 30 percent of the offering to a cause named by a member of the congregation.)”

His main themes, she said, are love and forgiveness.

After the service, Lebo interviewed Haggard, at which time Haggard commented on the NY mosque controversy.  (You can read my column on the NY mosque here.)

“The man who has often spoken of the violent spirit of the Quran says that the Park51 mosque is a local zoning issue and should not be up for a national debate,” she writes.

Read the whole essay here.

Haggard: Mosque issue overblown is a post from: The Pulpit