1 Boring Old Man

Colorado Springs is a pretty town – home to the U.S.A. Olympic Training Center and the Air Force Academy. It’s a retirement town for a lot of military people. As you drive north across the high flat plain, the older city disappears and is replaced by a giant sea of new, subdivisions packed tightly on any available land. In our part of the world, it’s hard to see "sprawl." The trees and hills hide it. But north of Colorado Springs, it’s visible for miles – vinyl sided houses as far as the eye can see. As we rode along Interstate 25 north towards Denver, we saw a blue dome rising above the line of houses. You guessed it – the New Life Church [formerly the venue of Pastor Ted Haggard].

New Life Groups

How do you choose your friends…people who enjoy similar interests…people at the same stage of life…people who share the same goal …? That’s what New Life Church Groups are all about. Building friendships with others whom we share interests.

In the 1940’s and 1950’s, a lot of us grew up in the "suburbs" that blossomed after World War II. It was a little different – not so packed together. The houses had more room, looked different from the others on the block. But there was a lot that was the same. On my block, most of the other families attended the Baptist Church around the corner where their social connections seemed centered.

As I wandered around the New Life campus, I couldn’t help thinking that the appeal of Pastor Ted’s New Life Groups, or his charismatic take on religion, was an antedote to the impersonality of the sprawling sea of similar houses and restaurant chains. But it kind of made me mad. They could do the same thing without demonizing homosexuals, or unwed mothers, or minorities. They could provide a community service without getting involved with politics, without backing an incompetent President because he pandered to their issues du jour. There’s nothing wrong with helping people in an impersonal sprawling world. Why do they have to do the crazy political thing?

Back, closer to town, but still amid the "sprawl" communities, there’s an even bigger campus – James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. It’s even harder to understand. James Dobson grew up in a fundamentalist minister’s family. When he announced that he was going to the prom, his dad resigned and moved his family to another place. James didn’t go to the prom. He became a child psychologist and practiced until he wrote a book saying that it was okay to spank children – which earned him the love of the Religious Right. He now oversees a huge, bustling campus of people giving advice to families. The advice is monotonous – traditional family values. His psychological formulations are sophmoric, and his theology fundamentalist. He’s also a darling of the Religious Right and a homophobe. As Falwell and Robertson receed, he moves increasingly to the forefront of the movement.

And so it goes, day after day. People talk as if it were the days of Father Knows Best or the Donna Reed show. There’s no war in Iraq. There’s no poverty. It’s feels like pap delivered as if the sprawling, impersonal neighborhoods of Colorado Springs are representative of American life, and the planet isn’t burning itself up, and there’s room for unlimited suburbs stretching as far as the eye can see – like what this world’s children need is Christian financial advice.

I didn’t understand North Colorado Springs. I just didn’t know what it was about…