Philip Yancey, a prominent evangelical author known for his work on the Christian concept of grace, announced this week that he would retire from writing and speaking because of a long-term “sinful affair” with a married woman.
“My conduct defied everything that I believe about marriage,” Mr. Yancey wrote in a statement to the magazine Christianity Today, where he was a contributor for decades. “It was also totally inconsistent with my faith and my writings and caused deep pain for her husband and both of our families.”
Mr. Yancey, 76, said the extramarital relationship had lasted eight years, and that he would not share other details “out of respect for the other family.”
Mr. Yancey did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
His books have sold more than 20 million copies in 49 languages, according to his official biography. President Jimmy Carter, an evangelical Christian and a fellow Georgian, once named Mr. Yancey as his favorite modern author.
Mr. Yancey was not a moral crusader or a political brawler. He wrote about the “scandal of grace,” the notion that God’s forgiveness and love are extended “not only to the undeserving but also to those who in fact deserve the opposite.”
He is best known for two books he published in the 1990s, “The Jesus I Never Knew” and “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” Both reached a wide audience and were named “Christian Book of the Year” by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, which presented Mr. Yancey with an award for lifetime contributions to the church and society in 2023.
Mr. Yancey’s writings about grace and Jesus are “in the subconscious of evangelical Christians in ways that are hard to overstate,” said Ed Stetzer, the dean of the Talbot School of Theology. “This was the guy whose platform was built on sincerity and honesty and wrestling with hard things and being a person of character.”
Mr. Yancey began his writing career in the 1970s writing for Campus Life, a magazine for Christian young people that he eventually led. At Christianity Today, he wrote a popular back-page column for 26 years starting in 1983, a period in which the magazine became arguably the most influential publication in mainstream evangelicalism, before the Trump era scrambled hierarchies of clout among many Christian leaders and institutions.
Mr. Yancey has lived in Colorado since the early 1980s. Sporting a halo of white hair and a gentle, deliberate manner, he became a popular speaker at churches and evangelical conferences around the world.
In 2021, he published a memoir that excavated his harrowing childhood, in which he was raised in poverty by his widowed mother in a household ruled by a fire-and-brimstone strain of fundamentalism. “My earliest memories all involve fear,” he wrote.
The book opens with the revelation that his father, who died when Mr. Yancey was an infant, had eschewed his doctor’s recommended iron lung treatment for polio, convinced that God would heal him. Raised to believe his father was a “saint” struck down by disease, Mr. Yancey was in college when he found out that the man was in fact a “holy fool” whose faith had, in a way, killed him.
As an adult, Mr. Yancey found his way to a form of evangelicalism that emphasized God’s mercy, rather than the threat of eternal damnation.
Mr. Yancey is the latest of many high-profile evangelical men in recent years to either confess to or be accused of infidelity and other behaviors that Christians categorize as sexual sins, and that in some cases rise to the level of crimes. The list includes the megachurch pastor Bill Hybels and the late evangelist Ravi Zacharias.
He has been married to his wife, Janet, for 55 years. When he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2023, he wrote about how his “omnicompetent” partner was in the process of becoming his caretaker.
In its report on Mr. Yancey’s affair and retirement, Christianity Today also published a statement from Janet Yancey, shared through her husband.
“I made a sacred and binding marriage vow 55½ years ago, and I will not break that promise,” she said. “I accept and understand that God through Jesus has paid for and forgiven the sins of the world, including Philip’s.”
Forgiveness between humans does not come as easily, she suggested: “God grant me the grace to forgive also, despite my unfathomable trauma,” she wrote.
Ruth Graham is a national reporter, based in Dallas, covering religion, faith and values for The Times.
The post Philip Yancey, Prominent Christian Author, Admits to Extramarital Affair appeared first on New York Times.
