Carson Weitnauer Image: Photo by Ayo Ogunseinde on Unsplash
What happened by Ravi Zacharias and what happened at RZIM – the coverups, the exchange of money, the grooming of press releases – illustrated, sadly, all over again toxic cultures in need of tov. If you read
A Church called Tov every chapter speaks into the RZIM situation. We are in fact sorry to read the corner has not been turned toward tov at RZIM.
It’s exasperating. Now to.
By Carson Weitnauer
May 25, 2021
Carson Weitnauer is an author, speaker, and the founder of Reasons For God. He worked at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries from 2013-2021, serving as U.S. Director and as the Innovation and Ministry Partner Specialist. You can connect with him at Reasons for God.
The French Press
The inside story of how Ravi Zacharias’s ministry concealed and enabled his abuse.
(Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Kathrin Forbes/GTMO Public Affairs/Wikimedia Commons.)
In May 2018, the senior leadership of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) gathered together with two more junior employees RZIM’s public relations manager and spokeswoman, my longtime friend Ruth Malhotra, and global media director Nancy Gifford at an offsite conference room for a three day “conciliation” meeting. The group had spent months together serving as an impromptu task force designed to deal with the fallout from claims by a Canadian woman named Lori Anne Thompson that Zacharias, one of the Evangelical world’s most-respected apologists, had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with her. She claimed he’d “groomed” her over a period of months and persuaded her to send him inappropriate pictures, including nudes.
Evangelist Ravi Zacharias taught his followers to ask tough questions - just not about his sexual conduct
Michelle Boorstein, The Washington Post
Feb. 9, 2021
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White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, during a May 20, 2020 White House briefing, calls attention to the death of evangelist Ravi Zacharias.Washington Post photo by Bill O Leary
As a boy growing up in Canada, Daniel Gilman loved church and what he saw as compassion from the God of the Bible for those who suffer. As a college philosophy student, a question began to chip away: Is God just an inspiring fairy tale character, or does he exist? It was a celebrity evangelist named Ravi Zacharias who filled Gilman with confidence that it was possible to be an intellectual believer in a God who is real.
Ravi Zacharias International Ministries confirmed on Wednesday that its late founder “did indeed engage in sexual misconduct.” The ministry released an interim report by an investigation team it hired.
Christian apologist and author Ravi Zacharias speaks to tens of thousands of young adults in Atlanta s Philips Arena on Sunday, January 3, 2016. | Courtesy of Passion Conference/Phil Sanders
An apologist with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries is calling for repentance and reparations in response to how accusations of misconduct and other scandals were handled.
In a five-page letter addressed to RZIM leadership, Max Baker-Hytch, a senior tutor with the ministry s Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and a lecturer at Wycliffe Hall in England, wrote that he was troubled by how the organization responded to the misrepresentation of the deceased apologist s academic credentials and sexting allegations involving Lori Anne Thompson, a Canadian woman, both of which were first reported in 2017. The letter also mentioned more recent allegations that Zacharias had sexually harassed several massage therapists at day spas that he co-owned.