Television and Movie Appearances
Haggard has appeared on several broadcast network programs, including Dateline NBC and ABC's 20/20. He also appears in the documentary Jesus Camp, the History Channel documentary The Antichrist, the documentary Constantine's Sword, as well as the HBO documentary Friends of God: A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi. In 2009, Pelosi made The Trials of Ted Haggard, a film which documented Haggard's life in exile after the scandal, which was aired on HBO. To date, this documentary has been shown over forty times on HBO. Trials has received critical acclaim.
In early 2006, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins interviewed Haggard as part of a British television documentary entitled The Root of All Evil?. During this interview, Dawkins spoke with Haggard about contradictions between the cumulative knowledge produced by science, and a literal interpretation of the Bible (particularly its account of creation). In response, Haggard claimed to "fully embrace the scientific method." Haggard then stated that the conclusions of that method regarding the age of the earth and evolution were only the result of "some of the views that are accepted in some portions of the scientific community." When Dawkins pointed out Haggard's misconception of the theory of evolution (for instance Haggard's notion that complex organs such as the eye spontaneously manifested), Haggard suggested that Dawkins should be less arrogant about his learning.
As Dawkins and his film crew were packing up to leave, there was a brief altercation in the church parking lot. According to Dawkins, Haggard ordered Dawkins's crew off his land with the words "You called my children animals" and threatened legal action and confiscation of their recording equipment. Later, Dawkins speculated that Haggard actually believed that Dawkins had implied that his children were animals, something Dawkins reflected he agrees with, given common descent.
Most recently, Haggard appeared in the reality television show "Celebrity Wife Swap", where he swapped wives for one week with Gary Busey.
Read more about this topic: Ted Haggard
Famous quotes containing the words television, movie and/or appearances:
“Television ... helps blur the distinction between framed and unframed reality. Whereas going to the movies necessarily entails leaving one’s ordinary surroundings, soap operas are in fact spatially inseparable from the rest of one’s life. In homes where television is on most of the time, they are also temporally integrated into one’s “real” life and, unlike the experience of going out in the evening to see a show, may not even interrupt its regular flow.”
—Eviatar Zerubavel, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life, ch. 5, University of Chicago Press (1991)
“It was easy to recognize in him the anti-social animus of a born evangelist, but there was also something else—a kind of voluptuous delight in the shabby and preposterous, a perverted aestheticism like that of a latter-day movie or radio fan, a wild will to roll in and snuffle balderdash as a cat rolls in and snuffles catnip.”
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“What I often forget about students, especially undergraduates, is that surface appearances are misleading. Most of them are at base as conventional as Presbyterian deacons.”
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