There’s not much I have to say about this. Other than, “it’s best not to have heroes.”
Read it all here:
Ravi Zacharias International Ministries needs to rebuild trust, rebrand and consider reparations for victims of the evangelist and apologist it is named after. A series of allegations about Zacharias has only grown since his death this year, involving his interactions with women employees at a spa company he invested in. Earlier cases involved sexting, with new information coming at the time of his death, and exaggerated credentials.
So writes Dr. Max Baker-Hytch, a senior tutor with RZIM’s OCCA The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and a lecturer at Wycliffe Hall – a private hall of the University of Oxford – in a five-page letter in which he outlines a poor response to each of these scandals. The letter, which was first reported by blogger/journalist Julie Roys, details that:
RZIM had a slow response to the credential scandal which he investigated internally. Warren Throckmorton, Psychologist, Professor and blogger uncovered this issue of the inappropriate use of the title Doctor and claims to have lectured at Oxford University According to Baker-Hytch RZIM exhibited “slowness and reluctance to set the public record straight, which finally happened only after a great amount of external pressure was brought to bear on the issue.” He adds the the RZIM foot dragging on this issue was “a source of embarrassment for me as an academic.”.
On the sexting scandal, according to Roys, Baker-Hytch asserts that “RZIM President Michael Ramsden stated in a December 4, 2017, all-staff update that ‘no money had changed hands between Ravi and the Thompsons [the couple involved].’”
“But in September 2020, Baker-Hytch says he learned that Zacharias paid the Thompsons $250,000 as part of the 2017 settlement of the apologist’s lawsuit against the couple.” He recounts other gaps in the RZIM narratives of the issue.
Strike three for Baker-Hytch was the emergence of the ‘spa story’. Steve Baughman, a long time investigator of Zacharias, gave the story to Christianity Today, which did an intensive investigation showing sexual misconduct by Zacharias at the spa. (Eternity gave more details in our earlier story.) Baker-Hytch says that comments by RZIM leaders undermined the credibility of the witnesses including an allegation they had been coached.
The letter inches a plea for RZIM to offer a wholehearted apology to Zacharias’ spa victims should their testimony be confirmed. He calls for “meaningful reparations” to these women. And says that RZIM should set up a support group that any further victims could come forward to.
I have seen examples of his using C.S.Lewis in ways that showed a lack of intellectual grasp.
We all need the grace and mercy of the triune God. True repentance is a “must” in the Christian life.
agree with above two commentators..
1) it might have been in wanting to show all that he had an impressive “intellect”, having intellectual grasps of concepts, that he ended up in a self-deceit bind. Winning a low-level “Preaching Contest” back in India as a teenager must have got to his head (“intellect”) somehow;
and he might have been addicted to that feeling (of esteem and worth) since then …
2) “Repentance” might just have been another concept for him, as well as for him to explain, in his well-elucidated apologetics — it might not have been personally discovered or experienced — maybe buried in the whole process of trying to illustrate “repentance” in ways that his audience would then say, “I’ve never heard it explained this way before – it really enlightened me!”
… enlightened perhaps, but was Repentance experienced personally?
Yes, I agree. Those of us who TALK about our faith are in danger of that all the time.
yes..
just a letter away from truth/reality:
T-alk vs W-alk
Indeed, a lesson for all of us! It is often difficult for us to understand or detect other people’s hearts, because people disguise their deepest thoughts and feelings to show their best side. If other people could know our every thought, our lives would be quite different. We should not focus too much on ourselves humans. We should focus on the triune God who sees and knows everything including all our thoughts and secrets.
Hi Michael, I wanted to click “LIKE” to you8r latest post and run out of house, but it brought me to a Webpage to register for WordPress. I’ll do that later tonight or so, since here, in Australia, a new day has only just started …
As you can see, this old Anglican man (65 y.o.) is really backward in social media and the likes, despite being a professor of science, having a PhD science, done a M.Divinity program, mixing with lots of young folks/studentsd — too invloved with computer-programs but not computer-literate in the social media world!
..don’t even have a Face-book account!
I also wanted to comment on your very serendipitous use of the term, “the triune God” — I wish more people would use this..
As well as the lack of “the fear of God” in contemporary Christianity, whatever the denomination ..
Good to get connected to you guys because of my reading on Zacharias
Really good material on other topics on this Web-site!
gotta run
Chris
Dr. Chris: FYI – my earliest childhood friend from Hong Kong has been living in Sydney, NSW since May 1959. During the current pandemic, my wife and I had been enjoying the online worship service from St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney which will resume again in January. Dr. Leon Morris, the late Principal of Ridley College, Melbourne, has been one of my faith heroes since 1967. By the way, I don’t have a Face-Book account either.
To be personal, the Morrises were our personal friends. He was Warden of Tyndale House when I started biblical studies as a young graduate and we were waiting to be married, preached at our wedding, my Father being too busy marrying us and celebrating the HC. His sermon I remember to this day: it helped me to sustain my marriage through the early difficult years. That is recounted in my book O Love How Deep, where because of the necessary thin layer of fictionalisation he becomes Dr. Dancer.
Some friends who work in medicine have suggested that the actions being reported might have been a direct result of dementia. If so, that would explain a lot.
There’s a large body of work produced by RZ which is genuinely good stuff, but these revelations will inevitably undermine that work. The question about the man’s integrity is really whether he personally knew that what he was doing was wrong and whether there was private repentance. I don’t have those answers. But, yes, whatever his gifts, this man was obviously flawed.
The thing I find more troubling is that his organization is continuing to do harm to victims by stonewalling the way they have. Most of those who have read the articles in question would come to the conclusion that this was not a smear campaign, but evidence that RZ for whatever reason was way off the rails for the later years of his life. I can forgive a man for his failings. I have a harder time with an organization that is more concerned about the legacy of that mortal man than they are about the very real harm their denials are doing to the victims; not to mention that many will see it as yet another example of Christian hypocrisy – an anti-witness.
It is all very sad.