Philip Yancey, prominent Christian author, admits to extramarital affair
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Christian author Philip Yancey's books have sold more than 20 million copies in 49 languages.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Ruth Graham
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NEW YORK - Prominent evangelical author Philip Yancey, 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,” Yancey wrote in a statement published by 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.”
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”.
His books have sold more than 20 million copies in 49 languages, according to his official biography. Former US president Jimmy Carter, an evangelical Christian and a fellow Georgian, once named Yancey as his favourite modern author.
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 Yancey with an award for lifetime contributions to the church and society in 2023.
Yancey’s writings about grace and Jesus are “in the subconscious of evangelical Christians in ways that are hard to overstate”, said Dr Ed Stetzer, 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.”
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. NYTIMES
