Another Evangelical Tragedy
A month ago, the Rev. Paul Barnes of Grace Chapel in Doug las County preached to his 2,100-member congregation about integrity and grace in the aftermath of the Ted Haggard drugs-and-gay-sex scandal.
Now, the 54-year-old Barnes joins Haggard as a fallen evangelical minister who preached that homosexuality was a sin but grappled with a hidden life.
"I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy," Barnes said in the 32- minute video, which church leaders permitted The Denver Post to view. "… I can't tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away."
[Eric Gorski, "Pastor resigns over homosexuality", Denver Post, 11 December 2006.]
May we see by a show of hands how many still feel that it's vitally important to their own lifestyle and morality that this man cry himself to sleep and beg his God to make him something other than what he is?
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To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.
I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Tuesday, 12 December 2006 at 00.19
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It's beginning to look as though becoming an evangelical preacher is a strong indicator of some serious emotional problem bordering on the pathological. Note that I'm not saying the apparently high incidence of homosexuality or bisexuality is in itself a serious emotional problem. Rather, it's either the preacher's reaction to his own sexual orientation or some similar disorder relating to a basic drive or need.
Womanizing, by contrast, is a behavior, a compulsion, but is not a sexual orientation. It, too, seems surprisingly common among these preachers.
And yes, it's sad if this guy cried himself to sleep and prayed for God to change his basic nature. He undoubtedly learned early in life from those closest to him that being homosexual was unacceptable and could cost him the love of one or both parents and other family members. That really is sad.
on Wednesday, 13 December 2006 at 07.24
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Let's not condemn all evangelical preachers. I suspect that the incidence of pathological social problems among evangelical preachers mirrors that of the population at large.