Pastor Who Resigned over Gay Hooker Claims Is Bush’s ‘Spiritual Consigliore’

by Jon Ponder
Pensitor Review
Nov. 03, 2006

Rev. Ted Haggard, who counsels Pres. Bush on a weekly basis and has been called his spiritual consigliere,” resigned today as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and as pastor of the megachurch he founded in Colorado Springs because a gay prosititute says he’s been having sex for pay with Haggard for more than three years.

Rev. Haggard is closer to the president than his better-known rival, Dr. James Dobson, head of the anti-gay nonprofit group, Focus on the Family, which is also headquartered in Colorado Springs:

The press tends to regard Dobson as the most powerful evangelical Christian in America, but Pastor Ted is at least his equal.

Whereas Dobson plays the part of national scold, promising to destroy politicians who defy the Bible, Pastor Ted quietly guides those politicians through the ritual of acquiescence required to save face.

He doesn’t strut, like Dobson; he gushes. When Bush invited him to the Oval Office to discuss policy with seven other chieftains of the Christian right in late 2003, Pastor Ted regaled his whole congregation with the story via email.

“Well, on Monday I was in the World Prayer Center”— New Life’s high-tech, twentyfour- hour-a-day prayer chapel —“and my cell phone rang.” It was a presidential aide; “the President,” says Pastor Ted, wanted him on hand for the signing of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

Pastor Ted was on a plane the next morning and in the President’s office the following afternoon.

“It was incredible,” wrote Pastor Ted. He left it to the press to note that Dobson wasn’t there.

Mike Jones, the male escort, says he did not know Haggard’s identity until he saw him on television. Jones says he has voicemails and other proof of his relationship with Haggard and will release them tomorrow.

In an interview excerpted on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight, Jones also said that Rev. Haggard used methamphetamines during their sexual encounters.

Haggard was in the news in September when he disavowed his appearance in the controversial documentary “Jesus Camp,” which exposed the indoctrination of children into Christian nationalism at a summer camp in the Midwest.