The latest news is that former New Life Church megachurch minister Ted Haggard is starting a prayer group.  I wonder what he'll pray for.  I hope he considers praying for the folks on Wall Street to find their moral compass and maybe lay off the gays for awhile.

My personal belief is that Haggard, like the puritanical mayor in the movie Chocolat, was not so much a hypocrite as the victim of his own repressive religious views.

If you haven't seen the film, the mayor starts a campaign against the immorality of the village chocolatier, only to be found one morning, having broken into the chocolate shop, sleeping in the chocolate he gorged himself on the night before.

It may come as a surprise, but if you read the Bible, you'll see that sexual sins comprise a fairly small percentage of the whole.  A mere 10 percent of the Ten Commandments deal with sexual blunders (unless you include coveting your neighbor's wife as separate from adultery).  Quite a few commandments deal with ethical behavior in financial matters as well.

 And yet, most of what we hear coming from religion in America deals either directly (abstinence education, gay marriage) or indirectly (abortion) with sexuality.

One of my strongest memories in my visit to New York in 2005 was of standing on a street corner in Midtown Manhattan and overhearing a couple guys dressed like Wall Street bankers comparing notes on, no, not their stock portfolios.  Their churches.

I wonder what kinds of things they preached in those churches.  Somehow, I don't think  the sermons had to do with the immorality of finding ways to enrich yourself by robbing others of their life savings.  You know, thou shalt not steal.  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's derivatives or subprime mortgages.  Those biblical laws against usury are all but forgotten in anything but Islamic cultures.

 No.  I'd venture to guess the young people in those churches (what few of them are left) are made to feel like moral inferiors because of their healthy God-given sex drives, while those in mid-life can pat themselves on the back, attributing their declining incidents of sexual temptation as not so much the byproduct of natural aging, but a sign of their growing morality, a morality which is in no way jeopardized by doing "whatever it takes" to get rich, even at the expense of others.  

If Wall Street bankers seem baffled as to why Americans are angry about them receiving  bonuses after we've bailed them out with our tax dollars, it may be because we've had little in the way of moral leadership when it comes to dealing with money.  It's a moral blind spot in our capitalist culture, a void that extends even to our religious institutions.

On the other hand,  you have middle-aged people like Haggard who've repressed their sexual feelings for decades, dutifully "taking every thought captive," and thus sublimating even legitimate desires they've been taught are unacceptable to act on, or even to analyze them in order to see if there may be some underlying concern that might be addressed before it's too late.

Bury your desires long enough and eventually you become a divided person, comprised of buried longings on the inside, and the false image you portray of yourself to others so that you'll be considered acceptable in church.  By the time you eventually act on those impulses, your church persona is so disconnected from your real self as to be virtually unaware of what you're doing.

I know this, because I went through it myself, which is why I decided during my 40's I wasn't going to be a church lady anymore.  I was raised by a father who was a risk-taking maverick, who encouraged his children to be risk takers and mavericks.  After my father died, I realized I couldn't be the woman my father raised me to be, and who deep down I really wanted to be, and still fit in to my church culture.  By letting go of my religion a little, I was able to embrace my own identity, and who I think God wanted me to be, as well.  After all, the Ten Commandments say we should honor our father and our mother.

To me, Haggard isn't so much a hypocrite, as a pathetic example of how religion can ruin a person as much as help him, a reminder to me to be myself and  stop worrying about what others think about me.