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A Christian investigative journalist I once wholeheartedly supported has serious ethical problems [1]
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Date: 2025-02-13
When I was a member of the Community Contributors Team from 2021 to 2023, my role was to show that there was such a thing as a Christian left in this country. As I saw it, part of my role was to highlight Christians who were actually calling out the massive fails in their own house. On the face of it, Christian investigative journalist Julie Roys fit that bill to a T. She has taken on the task of “reporting the truth” and “restoring the church” by exposing waste, fraud, and abuse in the evangelical world.
As most of us know, whenever liberal bloggers or mainstream media call stuff like this out, they invariably get slammed for anti-Christian bias. That was true well before Donald Trump. They can’t do so when Roys turns the hot lights on them. She’s reported extensively on the outrages of the likes of John MacArthur, Mark Driscoll, and John Piper, and played a key role in bringing down evangelical titans like James MacDonald, Mike Bickle, and Robert Morris. Indeed, I first discovered her when she reported on evidence MacArthur was covering up a massive COVID outbreak at his Southern California megachurch (diaried here and here).
But two things can be true at the same time. While it’s undeniable that Roys is providing a public service, she also has some serious ethical problems. Specifically, she found it acceptable to announce that Christian speaker Jen Hatmaker was divorcing—before Hatmaker had a chance to do so herself. As I note at my Substack, her decision to run this, as well as her justifications for doing so, meant I could not give her the unreserved support I’d once given her.
This really saddened me, because Roys’ work is definitely solid. For instance, she revealed that MacArthur publicly shamed and bullied a domestic violence survivor attending his Grace Community Church when she refused to reconcile with her abusive husband. Worse, he actively coddled said abuser. I diaried this here.
Additionally, Roys revealed that Franklin Graham shamed and bullied Naghmeh Panahi, the wife of pastor and persecution victim Saeed Abedini, when it emerged that Abedini had subjected Panahi to all manner of abuse (diaried here). She did so a year before most of the secular world knew about it via The Washington Post. Her work was largely responsible for Bickle being pushed out of the International House of Prayer when he was exposed as a serial sexual abuser, and also helped show that Robert Morris wasn’t the only problem at the church he founded.
But two years ago, I learned that Roys had engaged in a staggering lapse of judgment. In 2022, she revealed that Cora Jakes Coleman, daughter of televangelist T. D. Jakes, was divorcing her husband, Richard Coleman—better known as rapper SkiiVentura. Abuse advocate Julie Anne Smith wasn’t pleased that Roys allowed comments on the original article and on social media, since Cora had asked for privacy.
x Why are we publicizing a couple's divorce and inviting public comment and speculation? Who benefits from this? Can we please stop this?
https://t.co/Zj2QqfTrUo — Julie Anne Smith (@DefendTheSheep) January 29, 2022
Later in 2022, The Christian Post reported that Cora had filed for divorce after learning that Richard had molested his adopted daughter. When Smith saw this, she argued that this was proof Cora had good reason to ask for privacy.
x I publicly challenged a Christian journalist when she reported on Cora Jakes' divorce when Cora explicitly asked for privacy. Her ex-husband's was recently arrested for sex abuse. Cora's wishes should have been honored. We don't know the rest of the story.
https://t.co/eFgVx8RdpB — Julie Anne Smith (@DefendTheSheep) June 4, 2022
One of Smith’s followers revealed that two years earlier, Roys had broken the news of Hatmaker’s divorce before Hatmaker could announce it herself. I couldn’t believe it, but in fact it was true. It turned out that Roys’ story all but forced Hatmaker to announce the divorce on her socials. That didn’t sit will with Roys’ Facebook and Twitter followers, who rightly pointed out this wasn’t Roys’ story to share.
Roys’ responses were just as disturbing. In response to one outraged Facebook reader, Roys said that she’d gotten Hatmaker’s divorce papers from one of Hatmaker’s Instagram followers. That Instagram follower saw something in Hatmaker’s posts that suggested her marriage was on the rocks, and found the divorce papers on public records. Even more disturbingly, she told a Twitter user that the divorce filing was all but certain to go public anyway.
Sorry, but this was wrong on so many levels. Even if the filing was going to go public anyway, there was no reason for Roys to be the one to do it. She dug herself an even deeper hole in my mind when she claimed Hatmaker made her family part of her brand. Um, isn’t that reason to have enough respect for Hatmaker’s family to wait for Hatmaker to announce it first?
Indeed, every time I think of this affair, I find myself thinking about the moment Gawker torpedoed any chance of surviving the Hulk Hogan lawsuit—when it reported that Conde Nast Chief Financial Officer David Geithner, the brother of President Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, was being extorted by a gay porn star and male escort. According to Mother Jones, Gawker took only only one working day to run this article even though it was based almost entirely on text messages between Geithner and the escort. It should have taken less time than that to see that Gawker should have been calling the police, not doing a story.
Gawker deleted the story amid furious objections from its editorial staff; among other things, Jezebel’s Natasha Vargas-Cooper crassly tweeted, “If it’s true, you publish.” They either didn’t know or understand that by running that story, Gawker made itself an accessory to extortion. Pulling that story may have saved Gawker from criminal charges. However, I’ve believed for some time that the prospect that story could have even been published scared off anyone who would have been inclined to rescue Gawker when the Hogan suit forced it into bankruptcy.
It’s sad, because Gawker did a lot of good work. Among other things, it turned the hot lights on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s substance abuse, and revealed that a Texas Internet programmer was actually a notorious Reddit troll linked to a tranche of racist and obscene posts, and revealed Bill O’Reilly used his influence to start an investigation of his ex-wife’s boyfriend. But none of that even began to make up for a culture in which it was even remotely acceptable to publish something just because it was true.
While Roys didn’t veer into criminal conduct in the way Gawker did, the fact she was willing to announce someone’s divorce before that person could do so herself is disturbing. It’s equally disturbing that she did so based on a person essentially rummaging through someone’s mailbox and blasting out the contents for all to see. Behavior like that obscures the important work Roys is doing—and that’s truly saddening. It’s not purity trolling to withhold support from someone whose ethics can rightly be called into question.
That’s just scratching the surface of my concerns. To see more, check out my Substack, Loud, Liberal, Christian. If it’s in your budget, get a paid subscription; it helps support my work.
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