E-mail joke suddenly turns sour

Evangelical leader clashes with foe of proselytizing at AFA

Jean Torkelson, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 30, 2005 at midnight

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First, there was the joke, e-mailed Wednesday night. Then, the cordial reply: "looooong time no chat, bro. . ."

By Thursday, the e-mail exchange had escalated into a war of words between evangelical Christian leader Ted Haggard of Colorado Springs, who sent the joke, and activist Mikey Weinstein of Albuquerque, who is fighting what he calls religious proselytizing in the military.

The exchange took on added dimensions when Haggard's office called the media Thursday to publicize it.

"An ambush - a cowardly ambush," Weinstein said of the release of the e-mail exchange.

Replied Haggard, head of the New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs and president of the National Association of Evangelicals: "We keep no secrets at our office, unless it's marked private or confidential. This is a public issue because he has sued the United States Air Force."

Weinstein, a 1977 Air Force Academy graduate, claims that evangelical Christian officers and cadets illegally impose their religion on others at the school.

His lawsuit is intended to stop religious proselytizing at the academy and across the Air Force.

Though Haggard and Weinstein are at legal odds, they have enjoyed behind-the-scenes communications after being introduced by a mutual friend in Colorado Springs.

The two periodically exchange e-mails, as well as debate each other on national TV shows dealing with the issues of separation of church and state.

The e-mail clash began with a joke.

"Mikey, I thought you would get a kick out of one of the jokes that are being circulated in the Christian community in response to the debate about additional supervision of religious expression in the military," Haggard typed out Wednesday night, signing off, "God Bless."

What followed was an elaborate satire on a world without religious expression ("Please accept . . . our best wishes . . . for a gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday. . .")

Weinstein replied, "Ted . . . sincerely hope you and yours are well" and said he keeps waiting for an invitation to Haggard's church "to give my side of this bloody thing."

Weinstein closed by wishing "a wonderful New Year . . . Shalom."

Haggard admitted Thursday he was taken aback - he refuses to characterize it as angry - at Weinstein's reference to the issue as a "bloody thing" and at what he considered digs, including Weinstein's suggestion that "you provide the security/bodyguards" if Weinstein did, indeed, happen to visit Haggard's church.

"I sent him an olive branch by sending him a joke, and he responded by calling us 'dominionist' and said he needed security," Haggard said.

"I thought his (entire exchange) to me was so hostile I wanted my office to know about it and did not mark it confidential."

Weinstein also distributed the e-mails - but only to supporters on his e-mail list. "I did not send them to the media," he said.

In the e-mails, he wrote, "It's nice to know that old Ted and I are apparently so close and chummy. I wish somebody had told me . . ."

Weinstein said he became offended when Haggard, in one of his e-mails, began detailing how he was trying to protect Israel's interests globally, while "at the same time, men like yourself (are) trying to use increased government regulation to limit freedom here at home."

Weinstein, who is Jewish, said Thursday, "To claim he and his band of followers are somehow the last stand between international anti-Semitism and the abyss for the Jewish people is a travesty."

Haggard said he wanted people to see that Weinstein is "bombastic and condescending in those e-mails," and said he planned to put up the full exchange on a Web log.

Weinstein called Haggard "sanctimonious and sneaky" and "infantile in the extreme" to publicize the e-mails.

"I would have expected it from a third-grader passing notes in Mrs. Johnson's class," Weinstein said. "He wants to turn it over to the press?

"Let's rock and roll."

• E-mails online: The exchange of e-mails between Ted Haggard and Mikey Weinstein will be posted on www.nonprophet.typepad.com,according to Haggard's office.

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