"The Protector," a homoerotic statue at New Life Church

Even gayer at New Life: "The Watcher" by Thomas Blackshear

Lauren Sandler has a great overview of New Life's first post-scandal service. From Salon

On Sunday morning the 12,000 members of New Life Church officially learned what had been the talk of the nation Saturday evening: that Rev. Ted Haggard, their founding pastor and the former head of the National Association of Evangelicals, was to lead their flock no more. On Thursday, a male prostitute in Denver, Mike Jones, accused Haggard of paying him for sex and buying and using methamphetamines over a three-year period. Sunday, a visiting pastor named Larry Stockstill, who heads up New Life's Board of Overseers -- and who gave Ted Haggard his first associate preaching post before he founded New Life 26 years ago -- announced Haggard's dismissal from the church.

"We interviewed Haggard on Thursday and discovered the roots of his problem," Stockstill told thousands of congregants gathered here today for the 9 a.m. service, filling the 7,000-seat sanctuary and spilling out into every worship area on New Life's giant campus. The board then called Focus on the Family's James Dobson and powerful pastors across the nation, Stockstill said, who unanimously called for Haggard's dismissal.

Stockstill stood in a dark suit behind a Lucite podium and told the members of Colorado's largest megachurch that God opted to reveal Haggard's indiscretions now for a reason. And he implied that the reason had everything to do with Tuesday's election. "We can be mad at God. We can say that's not fair, the timing is terrible," said Stockstill. "He chose this incredibly, um, important time." God was telling the nation, Stockstill said, on the eve of an election favoring Democrats even in this blood-red congressional district, that it's time for a "revival." Then Stockstill read a letter from Haggard to his congregation.

"I am a sinner. I have fallen," Haggard wrote. "The fact is, I'm guilty of sexual immorality." Mike Jones' allegations, the pastor insisted, are not all true, but "enough of them are true."

"Part of my life is so repugnant and dark," Haggard said in the letter Stockstill read. "I've been warring against it all my life." He told of how he had sought counseling to address his sexuality, which he said cured him for spells. But then, he wrote, "the dirt I thought was gone would resurface ... the darkness increased and dominated." Haggard asked his congregation for forgiveness for him, and also for his accuser, who he suggested was inspired by God to reveal his "deception and sensuality."

Haggard's letter was followed by one from his wife, Gayle, addressed to her husband's female former congregants. "What I want you ladies to know is I love my husband Ted Haggard with all my heart. I am committed to him with all my heart." Her words, which echo the guide to marriage the Haggards published earlier this year (still on sale here in the bookstore outside the sanctuary), inspired a standing ovation.

A service that began with easy listening-style worship music sung by a 300-person choir, bathed in the fuchsia and lavender lights that suffuse the sanctuary, quickly became a clarion call for heterosexual marriage, and the "therapeutic restoration" of the soul of the founding pastor of this church. The choir and worship band sang about God's all-knowingness, of having absolute trust in him and nothing else. The clear message here was neither to question, nor to reassess, nor even to consider the personal struggle of their beloved former leader, who is at once the same man they have adored and followed -- and someone who happens to be attracted to men. It was to go back to the Psalms, and to soldier on. READ IT ALL