Another Colo. Megachurch Pastor Quits Over Gay Affairs

1. More resignations predicted Paul Barnes has resigned as pastor of the 2,100-member Grace Chapel in Denver, confessing to sexual infidelity with other men. “Barnes is not a household name,” The Denver Post notes, but his “admission is attracting more attention because it came a month after Colorado Springs pastor Ted Haggard was fired amid allegations that he had paid a male prostitute for sex.”

The two cases may actually be tangentially related: Associate pastor Dave Palmer told the Post that the church received an anonymous call “last week from a person concerned for the welfare of Barnes and the church. The caller had overheard a conversation in which someone mentioned ‘blowing the whistle’ on evangelical preachers engaged in homosexuality, including Barnes.”

Denver Seminary president Craig Williford told the Post he expects more pastors to fall as the Haggard scandal fallout continues. “When one person gets caught or confesses, it’s almost like others get a new courage to face this dark side of their private lives,” he said. “Not only that, but the person who is complicit with the pastor will come forward. We may not be done.”

2. Christian Embassy under fire for Pentagon video Having lost his suit against the Air Force Academy, Mikey Weinstein has turned his attention elsewhere. He’s accusing seven Army and Air Force officers of violating military regulations “and possibly the Constitution” (says the Associated Press) by appearing in uniform in a promotional video for the Christian Embassy. “We don’t think we did anything in violation,” Robert Varney, executive director of the Bill Bright-founded organization, told the AP. “The Pentagon gave us permission to film the video, and I don’t think they’d give us permission if it were in violation of the regulations.” Still, Weinstein’s complaint is getting widespread attention, with bloggers abuzz about a Christianist conspiracy behind the fellowship group.

3. Black-eyed bishop “A bishop must be above reproach … not a drunkard,” says 1 Timothy. Some in the Church of England say that’s why the bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler, should resign. Butler initially complained that a mugging had left him bloodied (at church on Sunday, he sported a black eye and a bruise that prevented him from wearing his mitre). But more recent reports suggest that he was spotted drunk and behaving badly. Butler says he can’t remember anything. Supporters say they think perhaps he really was mugged.

4. Another quick Christmas war ended The Christmas trees are back up at Sea-Tac Airport, before Weblog even got a chance to talk about them being taken down. Christians everywhere can now rejoice that such an important religious icon will remain; there are even reports that passengers are removing the sandals from their feet in reverence of such holy ground.

Honestly, these Christmas battles are getting quite interesting: Weblog has recently received press releases from two different Christian organizations complaining that Home Depot deserves to be on the “naughty list”—not because it has banned the word Christmas (it hasn’t), but because Christmas isn’t as prominent at the store as the word holiday. In the words of one press release: Home Depot’s “web site says ‘Holiday Store’ and ‘Holiday Lighting’ and only at bottom of [the] site says ‘Make your Christmas decorations complete.'” Didn’t these campaigns start as a protest against Orwellian language bans?

5. Newsweek: Jesus was Jewish! “The Jewish family values that were prevalent in first-century Judea—the values of Mary and Joseph and of the young Jesus—became the values of Christianity, and of the regions of the world in which Christianity has long been a critical force,” Lisa Miller writes in Newsweek. Family values, sexual values, religious values—they’re all there in the Nativity story.

Here’s one of her first paragraphs:

But whatever one’s personal beliefs, no student of religion or culture should overlook the significance of the world of the Nativity, for the milieu into which Jesus was born—and in which he was raised—has fundamentally shaped the manners and morals of the ensuing two millennia. The Jewish family values that were prevalent in first-century Judea—the values of Mary and Joseph and of the young Jesus—became the values of Christianity, and of the regions of the world in which Christianity has long been a critical force.

Here’s her conclusion:

No matter what one thinks of Jesus of Nazareth—that he was the Son of God, an interesting prophetic figure or a religious provocateur with particularly prolific followers—surely we can agree that he was no ordinary man. Yet at the end, in agony on Golgotha, Jesus affirmed the familial order he had spent so much of his public ministry arguing was about to be disrupted. … At the end of his life, then, Jesus took care of his mother, the penultimate act of a nice Jewish boy—and a blessing of the kinds of values that should endure, as his followers say even now, until his coming again.

Remarkably, the article does not quote Jesus saying, “I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,” “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me,” or “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” The emphasis on Christianity adopting Jewish family values is nice, but in such a cover story, why not raise the question of whether Christianity also differs in some of those values? Judaism, after all, is a religion about a family of blood—the children of Abraham. Christianity is not. Miller quotes Elaine Pagels, who argues that “Matthew recalibrated some of Jesus’ more radical sayings to accommodate the familial concerns of regular people.” Whatever. If you’ve got room for that, you have room to talk to Norwegian church historian O. M. Bakke, author of When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity, about how Judaism and early Christianity stood together against the social mores of Greco-Roman culture—and how the church fathers differed from their Jewish counterparts.

An online sidebar notes that many Nativity scenes “are historically inaccurate” and rarely portray the Holy Family as Semitic. (“It is a powerful human inclination to be drawn to people who look like ourselves.”) Groundbreaking stuff. And by groundbreaking, I mean painfully obvious.

Juxtaposition of the day “Jim Caviezel, star of The Passion of The Christ, is to reprise his role of Jesus in an audio Bible project for Thomas Nelson Publishers, according to a report in The New Yorker. Caviezel is to be joined by Seinfeld star Jason Alexander who will portray an unspecified Old Testament character in the project.”

—From the December 11 “Christian Etailing” newsletter

“Thomas Nelson … wants to work with authors who profess a personal faith in Christ, embrace the central truths of historic Christianity and seek to live according to standards of biblical morality. ‘We want people to have confidence that our books will be written from a Christian worldview, by people who profess to be Christians and are striving to walk the talk, regardless of the subject matter they may be addressing,’ [Nelson CEO Michael] Hyatt said.”

—From the same newsletter. (Read that New Yorker article on the Bible publishing business, by the way. It’s good.)

Quote of the day “But for most evangelicals, gay men and lesbians cannot truly be considered Christian, let alone evangelical.” — From an article by Neela Banerjee in today’s New York Times. Her story suggests a major chasm over the understanding of the word “gay.” Does it apply to a man who is sexually attracted only to other men, but chooses not to act on that attraction because he believes it’s wrong to engage in homosexual sex? If so, her sentence is wrong, and astoundingly so. Does it apply to a man who is sexually attracted only to other men, but chooses not to act on that attraction because he believes it’s wrong to engage in sex outside of a “long-term, religiously blessed relationship”? In Banerjee’s article, it does.

Paul Barnes and Ted Haggard | Sexual ethics | Life ethics | Iraq and terrorism | Christians and Islam | Qur’an oath | Middle East | Malaysia | China | Cuba | Religious freedom | Church and state | Sea-Tac’s Christmas war | Christmas commerce | Newsweek’s Nativity cover | More Christmas | Ring those bells | Pentagon video inquiry | Politics | Higher education | Church building growth | Church life | Milingo and Moon’s married ministers | Catholicism | Anglicanism | No mugging | Crime | Abuse | Money and business | Books | Entertainment and media | Jay Bakker documentary | Missions & ministry | People | Other stories of interest

Paul Barnes and Ted Haggard:

Megachurch pastor resigns over homosexuality | In a tearful videotaped message Sunday to his congregation, Paul Barnes of Grace Chapel in south metro Denver confessed to sexual relations with other men and announced he had voluntarily resigned his pulpit (The Denver Post)
Update: Rev. Barnes, ex-church chart future | Grace Chapel takes a patient approach after the pastor’s gay admission. Others weigh fallout (The Denver Post)
Also: Sermon: “Most of us … wear masks” | On Nov. 5, the Rev. Paul Barnes scrapped his prepared sermon. The Rev. Ted Haggard scandal was still unfolding, and he couldn’t let it go unnoticed (The Denver Post)
Church soliciting scrutiny | As Ted Haggard begins his “restoration,” churchgoers are asked to give details about him or others (The Denver Post)
Gay and evangelical, seeking paths of acceptance | Gay evangelicals come from a tradition whose leaders have led the fight against greater acceptance of homosexuals (The New York Times)
The great divide | Churches grapple with meaning of verses tied to homosexuality (The Gazette, Colorado Springs)

Share

Sign up for The Daily Briefing

More articles

Related Elsewhere:

Share

Our Latest