This NY Times article reports on the how Ted Haggard‘s evangelical church dealt with the termination and succession issues in the large Colorado church that Haggard had started and had become identified with him. The article concludes that the church ultimately handled the termination and succession reasonably well, although it appears that warning signs regarding Haggard’s behaviour went largely unheeded among church leaders before his public meltdown.
But the more interesting analysis of the current state of the Evangelical movement is contained in this Ben Witherington post, which includes these following observations regarding the dubious political allegiance between Evangelicals and certain elements of the Republican Party:

[T]he alliance between Evangelicals and the hard line conservatives in the Republican party has made it difficult for many Evangelicals to see the difference in our time between being a Christian and being an American, and in particular being a certain kind of an Americanónamely a Republican. The problem is that this reflects a certain kind of mental ghettoizing of the Gospel, a blunting of its prophetic voice on issues ranging from war to poverty, and sometimes this even comes with the not so subtle suggestion that to be un-American (defined as being opposed to certain key Republican credo items) is to be un-Christian. But Christianity must and does transcend any particular cultural expression of itself, otherwise we have the cultural captivity of the Gospel which leads to a form of idolatry. It is one thing to sing ëmy country tis of Theeí, its another thing to have a bunker mentality which makes our countries ills hard to define and our flaws even harder to critique and correct. [. . .]

Christians should never be making their major decisions in life chiefly based on fear or a desire for revenge, or both. Nor should we support politicians who do so, whether they go to church or not. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution. If the question is WWJD, for sure its not what weíve been mostly doing as a nation in the last six years.
So its time to wake up and smell the coffee. Does it smell like the aroma of Christ and his Gospel, or does it smell like dirt, like grounds, like mud? I hope someone out there in the Evangelical Church is listening. We need a whole new approach to ethics and ministry in the years to come in the 21rst century. It’s time for a year of Jubilee. It’s time to mend fences with our neighbors and the neutral. It’s time to stop sticking sticks in hornetís nests and wondering why we keep getting stung. May God help us overcome our American and Evangelical myopia.

Read Dr. Witherington’s entire post. It’s well worth it.