The End of The Roys Report?
Julie Roys is catching it from all sides these days.
John MacArthur fans despise her and want her to go away.
Some of the “survivor” community wants her to go away because of the way she handled a strange relationship detailed in her book.
Some survivor advocates believe that anyone who holds to a traditional , “biblical ” view of sexuality (as Roys does) is abusive just for that reason….and they look for other reasons to take the traditionalist out.
She recently had to withdraw from her own conference because of the uproar.
Before proceeding, it’s worth a look at what Roys has accomplished.
Before the “Roys Report” most of us who did this sort of reporting were one person shops.
We did all the interviews, collected the evidence, wrote the stories, and took all the heat they generated.
We didn’t have a budget…we did it all out of our own pockets.
It was time consuming, exhausting, and expensive…we all had other jobs as well.
Roys found sponsors and hired professional reporters who did excellent work…the Ben Courson story being one example.
She had resources to devote to doing things well…and for the most part, I think she has.
Another troubling aspect of the story is that Roys (and others) were taken in by a “survivor” who appears to be a complete and total fraud.
This person not only concocted stories, she concocted “evidence”.
“Evidence” that if you didn’t investigate more closely would have fooled any of us.
The mantra has been “always believe the abused”…and this fraud has single handedly blown that framework to hell.
Nobody seems to want to talk about this.
The last time I looked, Roys still has a podcast up that mentions this liar favorably.
She needs to take it down…now.
As technology allows people to construct elaborate lies, verification of abuse and exposer of abusers grows more tenuous and puts sites like this at even more legal risk than we took on before.
Once someone shows themselves to be a fraud, they need to be marked clearly as such.
Will the Roys Report survive?
The bigger question to me is whether she and her co-workers will choose to continue if the sponsors flee and the hits decline.
Truth seeking is not a viable business model…
I followed Julie closely for a while. Then her smug tone and absolutist tenor cooled my interest.
She was not reasonable or compassionate. The old hellfire preachers had to be tempered. The exchange between a couple of puritan preachers is instructive.
āWhat did you preach today?ā Ah āthe wicked shall be turned into hell and all those that forget God!ā ā Aye! āā¦ and did you preach it with a tear?ā
Julie was too happy with the taste of blood for my for my comfort.
I hope she survives ā with a limp.
Dread,
I’ve experienced the joy of the taste of blood…until it was my own .
She needs to learn…
The survivor community is just gutting itself on social media right now…
Two posts in less than 24 hours since saying you would go to a limited schedule and posts would become more sporadic.
Glad that things are working out so well. š
KevinH,
The family is on the coast and I’m making the most of this rare break…one more coming before I rest…
Just like all of us, Julie R. has things to learn. I’ve been teaching 40 years, and I’m still learning about my kids and subject. But, the survivor community is just going crazy, re-posting the same screen shots over and over and screaming that Julie should disappear. They haven’t said anything new in two weeks about what they’ve already said. Meanwhile, Julie is still posting some good, well-researched information. My hope is that Julie becomes more discerning in her approach to reporting and that the survivors run out of steam/vitriol.
As to impostors in the survivor community, all such communities have them (like the cancer survivors who actually never really had cancer, but still have GoFundMes sending them money). i thin, at some point, that all of these kinds of groups and ministries of survivors need to get past triggers and trauma onto thriving and overcoming. I attended a well-known group for relatives and friends of addicts for about a decade. Then, I started feeling uncomfortable because I wasn’t living in that same space anymore. I realized that the group had taught me excellent coping skills that helped me manage my life better. The last meeting I attended, a roomful of adults was blaming all of their current problems on their parents. I realized that wasn’t me anymore, and I have gone on to interact better with addicted members of my family without getting engulfed in their drama. I found my own life.
This needs answered…
Who is the person in the video?
Yikes!!!
Sheās in a world of hurt.
Linn,
He identifies himself in the beginning.
Dread,
If she doesn’t have a reasonable answer…she’s toast.
Pastor Dread @10:24
Exactly! ! !
Amen
Julie has some great reporting but she definitely has a serious problem here. However, I’m actually more concerned about psychologist Diane Langberg Ph.D who is scheduled to speak at Julie restore conference. Diane has some good things to say and tweet but I wonder how she would react if the microscope was put on her personal life and practice? Diane is a so called expert on abuse in the church so how could anyone really question her? But I have questions and they have not been answered.
Diane Langberg is the best…what are your questions?
The drama is so tawdry, so byzantine, it’s like a British tabloid.
I’m happy in my little out of the way Lutheran parish.
No drama, no scandal, no alpha males jockeying for power.
Just liturgy, communion, a short homily, and then coffee and donuts with great people.
End of story.
Michael, it is best to take this discussion about Diane Langberg offline because it involves personal information I have but I hesitate calling her the best by a long shot. She knows the power she holds and the question is whether she has ever abused it. All you have to do is read her book “Redeeming authority: understanding authority and abuse in the church” to understand the dynamic. She holds tremendous authority and power in the church but how did she exactly get to this place of prominence and how is she being held accountable? I don’t think you can exactly call July Roy’s her accountability buddy.
Muff P, Sounds like a great church and situation
Those things you mentioned is really what it’s all about.
hooo boyyy…thanks for that video, Michael.
It’s hearing stuff like this that makes me just wanna get a plot of land somewhere out in the middle of nowhere and go be all Amish-like.
But what’s this with Dallas Jenkins, exactly?
Long time reader, very rare commenter. Roys posted a piece in response to the video thatās well worth a read. Personally I watched the video and couldnāt shake the feeling I was listening to an unreliable story teller (the way he addressed the camera I think led me to think this). Roys piece seems to explain it well though.
Julie wanted this posted here and I have agreed…
https://julieroys.com/opinion-former-harvest-volunteer-publishes-falsehoods-people-quick-to-retweet/?mc_cid=fd5451a347&mc_eid=0790c0a682
Well Julie ā come post it here. Weād love to have you. And Michael is honorable to do it.
Dread,
What Mike posted is well-worth reading. The people who are going after Julie are like sharks, devouring others and themselves with tweets and FB posts. Iām not saying that Julie didnāt make a mistake (why she ever put the whole saga in her book baffles me), but the reaction has been way over the top. If thatās a survivors network, Iām never signing up!
Linn,
It’s a bit more complex than that…I’m in the process of deciding how much I want to get involved…
Michael,
Iām sure it is, but it seems like the tweets, retweets, etc just make it worse. What I come away with is āIām a victim and I can do no wrong. I can respond to you any way I feel like. And victimhood always gives me the moral high ground.ā
I donāt think thatās a good posture to take. Iāve had help in the past for some of my own trauma, but it made me more compassionate towards others.
Linn,
Iāve no axe to grind with Julie. Let the merciful obtain mercy. Let her remember such things as she searches high and low for leaven in the body.
Linn,
It has been very ugly on Twitter .
Which is one of the reasons why I’m being very cautious about my own involvement.
There is a point where if your pack goes about with the sword that you start cutting each other…
I agree in terms of involvement. I just read the stuff that gets posted and Iāve had enough.
“Video has been removed by uploader” — Certainly not an admission of guilt, but good grief this is not a good look for many people.
The “Church Abuse” circles on Twitter have been trending rather toxic in the past few years and it’s turned me off of a lot of the discourse. That’s honestly a tragedy, since it’s such a needed outlet — but watching the circular firing squad on Twitter has been illuminating. I don’t want to get cynical about ChurchToo but boy have various “advocates” made it difficult not to be. It sucks, especially since we need to take it seriously, and it’s clear some only take it seriously if it fits their narrative.
Watching LGBT absolutists cozy up to Protesita cozy up to exvangelicals has been an interesting twist.
It’s been a mess and there seems to be no way to stop it
“Watching LGBT absolutists cozy up to Protesita cozy up to exvangelicals has been an interesting twist.”
It’s been weird and disheartening…
I’m pretty sure I’ve been doing this sort of reporting longer than anyone.
For most of my time online the colleagues who came along acted collegially and did hold each other accountable.
The difference is that we weren’t competing for clicks and ad dollars…
Michael, I truly believe that what you’ve done on this site IS God’s will. We’ve had some very opportunist, manipulative shepherds in the past decade or so. There were always a few, but “touch not God’s annointed?”
How about, “depart from me you workers of iniquity. I never knew you!”
Em,
We tried…and I’m satisfied that we did what we could.
What does that 11:48am post mean?
It sounds like another capitulation of āniceā evangelicals to very anti Christian interests.
Dread,
It means that the survivor/abuse media have taken on “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mantra to shoot at each other.
It’s a bad scene…
Christians have been known for those that shoot their own wounded. That has been going on long before the ODMs were instituted or more recently the abuse advocate blogs started. I’ve been shot a few times metaphorically so I know what it’s like. I can’t help but believe this is an orchestrated plan of our real enemy the devil using the sin of willing participants to accomplish his goals. It seems as if exposing sin is one of the primary goals for all those entangled with this. It sounds righteous. I kind of bought into this for awhile but it doesn’t quite line up with what Jesus said about removing the log from our own eye first.
Just chiming in. I have a few friends in the industry I work in that are staunchly livid at the āslanderā against Johnny Mac. These are not even CC guys, in fact they have never heard of Calvary Chapel. They just spent decades listening to him and eventually holding him in that place of infallibility. I could not give a damn what people think of Roys, Mac needed to be called out of for one thing only, to watch Christians reject the āslanderā outright for the same ātouch not godās anointedā mentality that permeates the vast majority of Christian culture. Celebrity āTrumpsā reality.
John MacAurther is IMNSHO a gifted teacher of Scripture, but none of us are above committing sins
Johnny Mac is a mean spirited mas as far as I am concerned. He constantly took shots at Chuck Smithā¦even just a week or so after he died. Heās a solid exegete but a not so nice man.