Story by Emily Belz<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Christian author Philip Yancey said in an emailed statement to CT that he had engaged in an affair with a married woman for eight years and would retire from writing and speaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yancey\u00a0started his writing career\u00a0in 1971 at\u00a0Campus Life<\/em>\u00a0magazine, which became a part of CT a few years later. He wrote for CT for decades, reporting and later becoming a regular columnist and editor at large. His books, including\u00a0What\u2019s So Amazing About Grace?<\/em>,\u00a0have sold\u00a0more than 15 million copies. He often wrote about faith in the face of pain and suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yancey, 76, has been married to his wife, Janet Yancey, for 55 years. He said he was sending the news \u201cdue to my longstanding relationship with CT\u201d and continued:<\/p>\n\n\n\n To my great shame, I confess that for eight years I willfully engaged in a sinful affair with a married woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My conduct defied everything that I believe about marriage. It was also totally inconsistent with my faith and my writings and caused deep pain for her husband and both of our families. I will not share further details out of respect for the other family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have confessed my sin before God and my wife, and have committed myself to a professional counseling and accountability program. I have failed morally and spiritually, and I grieve over the devastation I have caused. I realize that my actions will disillusion readers who have previously trusted in my writing. Worst of all, my sin has brought dishonor to God. I am filled with remorse and repentance, and I have nothing to stand on except God\u2019s mercy and grace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am now focused on rebuilding trust and restoring my marriage of 55 years. Having disqualified myself from Christian ministry, I am therefore retiring from writing, speaking, and social media. Instead, I need to spend my remaining years living up to the words I have already written. I pray for God\u2019s grace and forgiveness\u2014as well as yours\u2014and for healing in the lives of those I\u2019ve wounded.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Yancey also provided a statement from his wife:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I, Janet Yancey, am speaking from a place of trauma and devastation that only people who have lived through betrayal can understand. Yet I made a sacred and binding marriage vow 55\u00bd years ago, and I will not break that promise. I accept and understand that God through Jesus has paid for and forgiven the sins of the world, including Philip\u2019s. God grant me the grace to forgive also, despite my unfathomable trauma. Please pray for us.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In 2023, Yancey was diagnosed with Parkinson\u2019s disease. He\u00a0wrote for CT\u00a0about how the disease had been slowly disabling him and how his wife had been preparing for the journey of caretaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But he still had public speaking engagements this year. Yancey\u00a0had been\u00a0scheduled to speak at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, California, on Wednesday at a service marking the one-year anniversary of the devastating Eaton fire, but now the church\u00a0does not list him\u00a0as the featured speaker in its announcement. Yancey\u2019s social media\u00a0pages\u00a0appear to have been\u00a0deleted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Story by Emily Belz Christian author Philip Yancey said in an emailed statement to CT that he had engaged in an affair with a married woman for eight years and would retire from writing and speaking. Yancey\u00a0started his writing career\u00a0in 1971 at\u00a0Campus Life\u00a0magazine, which became a part of CT a few years later. He wrote<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[40],"tags":[418,417,419],"coauthors":[364],"class_list":{"0":"post-9607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-faith","8":"tag-extramarital-affair","9":"tag-philip-yancey","10":"tag-sin"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Philip-Yancey.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9610,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9607\/revisions\/9610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9607"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cvnznews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=9607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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