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Friday, November 10, 2006

Jim Haggard is about to be sent to his own version of Dante’s Inferno, exept all the rings of hell are going to be filled with fundies.

There will be prayer, and perhaps the laying on of hands. There will be counseling and a confession. And there will be advice, confrontation and rebuke from “godly men” appointed to oversee the spiritual “restoration” of the Rev. Ted Haggard.

After tumbling from the pinnacle of the American evangelical movement amid allegations he snorted meth and cavorted with a male prostitute, Haggard has agreed to a rehabilitation process that could last three to five years.

“I see success approximately 50 percent of the time,” said H.B. London, vice president for church and clergy at Focus on the Family, the conservative Christian ministry in Colorado Springs. “Guys just wear out and they can no longer subject themselves to the process.”

Those who fail “end up selling cars or shoes or something, and being miserable and angry the rest of their lives,” London said.

Well that makes sense.  Living a life as an open homosexual must be absolute mental torture.  A far better approach is to go through this Christian deprogramming so that you can deny exactly who and what you are for the next forty years or so, that’s got to be far less emotionally and spiritually taxing.

The process includes counseling, in groups and alone, and prayer. Each restoration is unique, with a program tailored for the needs of the participant.

“From the Christian perspective, we think in terms of prayer, we think in terms of what we call godly counsel, where godly men who are clean themselves insert themselves in the life of the one who is struggling,” London said.

The symbolic laying on of hands may also be a part of the recovery, London said.

“I’m sure there will be those who lay their hands on Pastor Haggard as an act of faith, calling on the act of God to restore and heal,” he said. “The prayer can be therapeutic, the laying on of hands can be ceremonial.”

I wonder if these are male hands.  It seems to me that having male hands laid over his body was what got him into this mess in the first place.

Note the expectation here that he can be cured of his sinful affliction.  You gotta love dogmatic believe in the obviously untrue.