The New Life Church took a big hit in 2006 when its Pastor, Rev. Ted Haggard, was caught with a male prostitute. Boy, we on the left had fun with that one, a man who preached with all the other Right Wing Christian Mullahs about the evils of homosexuality found to be paying for a little man sex. Hypocrisy is always a good thing to put up front and center in one’s blog. But the real evil here was Haggard lying to himself, lying to his congregation, and lying to the world when he preached hate about homosexuality. All that lying harmed real people, including the members of the New Life Church.

Well, in the two years or so since the Haggard scandal the New Life Church has recovered some of its reputation, at least until the other day when it was found out that they paid someone off to keep quiet about his relationship with Ted Haggard. But, oops, that’s not how they’re telling it. The responses from Brady Boyd, Ted Haggard’s successor at New Life, are so contradictory as to constitute lies, not that anyone reading this would be surprised at a liar in the pulpit at New Life. Here’s the first part of the article from the Chicago Tribune:

Boyd said an “overwhelming pool of evidence” pointed to an “inappropriate, consensual sexual relationship” that “went on for a long period of time … it wasn’t a one-time act.” Boyd said the man was in his early 20s at the time. He said he was certain the man was of legal age when it began.

Reached Friday night, Haggard declined to comment and said all interviews would have to be arranged through a publicist for HBO, which is airing a documentary about him this month.

Boyd said the church reached a legal settlement to pay the man for counseling and college tuition, with one condition being that none of the parties involved discuss the matter publicly.

Boyd said a Colorado Springs TV station reached him Thursday to say the young man was planning to provide a detailed report of his relationship with Haggard to the station. Boyd said the church preferred to keep the matter private, but it was the man’s decision to go public.

There’s the contradiction there, in the space of just two paragraphs. First Boyd said the settlement with the young man who had the affair with Haggard came with the condition that the young man not speak about the affair. Then he said speaking about the affair was entirely the young man’s decision. Well, which is it? It is yet another marker of the deterioration of the news industry that the reporter at the Chicago Tribune, Eric Gorski, didn’t even ask. Gorski did get, later in the Tribune story, a repeat of the contradiction by Brady Boyd:

Anticipating criticism of the settlement with the former church volunteer, Boyd said Friday that it was in the best interests of all involved. He would not name the volunteer or the settlement amount.

“It wasn’t at all a settlement to make him be quiet or not tell his story,” Boyd said. “Our desire was to help him. Here was a young man who wanted to get on with his life. We considered it more compassionate assistance — certainly not hush money. I know what’s what everyone will want to say because that’s the most salacious thing to say, but that’s not at all what it was.”

He said that “secondarily, it’s not great for our church either” that the story be told. Boyd said Haggard knew about the settlement two years ago.

In a letter e-mailed Friday to New Life Church members, Boyd said of the settlement and agreement not to talk: “This decision was made not as an attempt to conceal wrongdoings, but to protect him from those who would seek to exploit him. His actions now suggest that he has changed his mind.”

Again, there’s mention of an agreement to keep Ted Haggard’s affair with a male member of the New Life Church hushed up, and again Brady Boyd denies that the arrangement was anything more than in the best interest of the young man involved. Now that same young man has decided it is not, and though Brady Boyd claims the church has legal standing to take action against the young man for making his affair with Haggard public, Boyd also claims in the article that there was no such agreement. There are blatant lies here, and those lies were told to the members of the church, not just the press. I guess that’s one of the big things I don’t get. How many lies do the members of the New Life Church accept before they get an inkling that the church and those who run it are there not for spiritual enlightenment, but to do anything possible to save their skins.

Meanwhile, HBO has a documentary about Haggard putting together the pieces of his life, and that documentary is flawed as well, since it evidently has nothing of this past affair. Haggard is going on Larry King and Oprah this week, and now they’ve got some good questions to ask him. In the end, and this is predictable, Brady Boyd does not blame New Life Church for its payoffs, nor Ted Haggard, nor even the young man Ted Haggard screwed. He blames HBO, and the publicity of the HBO documentary.

Boyd said he had spoken to the man once and came away with the impression that he was speaking out because of the documentary. “I think what caused this young man to be a bit aggravated was Ted being seen as a victim, when he himself had experienced a great deal of hurt,” Boyd said. “I seriously doubt this man would have come forward if the documentary had not been made.”

Whoever is a victim is in this sordid mess, there are lots of perpetrators, and Brady Boyd in covering up misdeeds by his former Pastor Ted Haggard is one of those perpetrators. Will Brady Boyd ever learn that God deserves the truth? I doubt it.