Jesus Jokes

And on the seventh day, after he rested, God created comedy.

And Jesus, the son of God, was the first Comedian. He sure loves playing jokes on us poor sinners!

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In case you are not familiar with him, here's some light reading:

Soldiers of Christ -- Inside America's most powerful megachurch with Pastor Ted Haggard.

Harper's originally published this piece about Ted Haggard in May of 2005, and has now posted it on line:

They are drawn as if by magnetic forces; they speak of Colorado Springs, home to the greatest concentration of fundamentalist Christian activist groups in American history, both as a last stand and as a kind of utopia in the making. They say it is new and unique and precious, embattled by enemies, and also that it is “traditional,” a blueprint for what everybody wants, and envied by enemies.

* * * *

The city's mightiest megachurch crests silver and blue atop a gentle slope of pale yellow prairie grass on the outskirts of town. . . .

“Church” is insufficient to describe the complex. . . . The true architectural wonder of New Life, however, is the pyramid of authority into which it orders its 11,000 members. At the base are 1,300 cell groups, whose leaders answer to section leaders, who answer to zone, who answer to district, who answer to Pastor Ted Haggard, New Life's founder.

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. . . . 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.

* * * *

No pastor in America holds more sway over the political direction of evangelicalism than does Pastor Ted, and no church more than New Life.

Of course, Pastor Ted never had sex with that gay man . . . .

UPDATE: Jeff Sharlet, who wrote the Harper's article on Haggard, reflects on Haggard in light of the recent revelations at his blog, The Revealer, in Haggard's Downfall.

Tags: Religion, Ted Haggard