RaviWatch - Investigating the false claims of evangelist Ravi Zacharias_Internet

Toggle navigationNewsFishy ClaimsDetailed DocumentationAbout MeMy AgendaThe RZ StoryRaviWatchInvestigating the false claims of evangelist Ravi ZachariasRAVI ZACHARIAS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED AS A BULLY, LIAR, AND SEXUAL PREDATOR. BUT WHO HELPED HIM GET AWAY WITH IT? (NAMES NAMED BELOW)This website is my attempt to document the deceptions that Ravi made before he became known as a massage spa operator and sexual predator. Talking about Ravi’s credential fraud now may seem a bit like talking about Ted Bundy’s parking violations. But Ravi’s growth as a deceiver and predator would never have happened if the Evangelical Industrial Complex had valued integrity over brand success. But it didn’t. And it doesn’t. And that, not Ravi Zacharias-as-sleazy-preacher, is the big story here. WE HAVE WON THE RAVI ZACHARIAS BATTLE! Ravi was a sexual predator, an academic fraud, and a man who led a double life. He made false claims on his book covers about his credentials, deceived tens of millions of Christians about his education, led trusting minds to believe there were simple answers to complex questions about God, operated two massage spas, and sexually abused massage therapists in the U.S. and across Asia. Ravi was also a vicious man who brutalized those who threatened to expose him. This is all confirmed now.It took not just an evangelical village, but a vast evangelical empire, to nurture, enable, and cover up for Ravi Zacharias. While Ravi lied for decades about his credentials, not a single Christian spoke out publicly. Zero. It fell to an atheist (me) to complain that the evangelist had no clothes. Ravi Zacharias International Ministries lied to the public and to its employees to preserve Ravi’s reputation. And even when the evidence became indisputable major Christian institutions and publishers continued to honor Ravi with speaking gigs, awards, and book contracts. The Christian press remained largely silent, and when it commented it did so with a clear pro-Ravi bias. The real battle here is against this general lack of integrity on the part of Christian evangelical leadership (at least in the US, Canada and the U.K.). The Evangelical Industrial Complex shamelessly nurtures a celebrity culture that puts butts on pews and bucks in the coffers. These values have made evangelicalism a breeding ground for deceivers and sexual predators whose reputations then need to be protected in order to keep the business model working.It is revealing about evangelical Christian values that it took a massage spa sex scandal to get the Christian press motivated to finally do some real investigative work on the man widely known as “the great apologist of our time.” But it was not their fault that they missed the SpaGate story. The story almost never broke.On May 27, 2020, I was contacted by a Christian woman who had worked in one of Ravi’s spas as a massage therapist. She told me Ravi was a “sexual pervert.” I did a quick check and found her credible. But I could not break such an explosive story with only one witness. So I sat on it. Then on July 14, 2020, I received a call at my law firm from a man wishing to discuss spiritual matters with me. Mr. Anurag Sharma informed me that he had been a close friend and business colleague of Ravi’s. After a long conversation about religious stuff I asked Mr. Sharma if he had heard anything about Ravi being in the massage business. “I was in the massage business with Ravi.” His story checked out. In our next phone call he told me that he had shut down the Jivan Wellness spa partly because of the way Ravi was treating the women. I was able to speak to another massage therapist who had worked in the spas and she described her personal experience with Ravi’s “sexual perversions” in the massage rooms. I now had what I needed to share the story. My Christian friend and colleague, Prof. James Beverley of Tyndale University, also interviewed all three of these witnesses at length and was prepared to confirm their stories when the anticipated cries of “atheist liar” came from Ravi devotees. James persuaded me to let Christianity Today break the story. So we gave the magazine our evidence, but I reserved the right to publish on my own if their investigation took too long (for me.) It did. So on September 8, 2020, I published our evidence on YouTube. The story exploded and the Christian press did a fine job of investigating and sharing the very ugly side of the man Vice President Pence only four months earlier had eulogized as “a good man, a godly man, he spoke truth, he spoke it with kindness.” (Christianity Today had opted to do a more thorough investigation than I had done. Their excellent report on September 29, 2020, was the first release of SpaGate by professional media.) On December 23, 2020 Ravi’s ministry announced that he had committed sexual misconduct and that they had commissioned the Miller & Martin law firm to do an investigation. On February 9, 2021 M&M released their findings. Ravi was worse than anyone ever imagined, everyone, that is, except a large number of women who had known him as their boss or client in the massage businesses across Asia and in the U.S.Things got uglier a few days later with the 26-page letter that the current PR manager of Ravi’s ministry, Ruth Malhotra, wrote to the ministry leadership. The ministry had helped Ravi cover up his sexual misconduct! It is particularly gratifying to me that a handful of fine Christian scholars, real academics with real doctorates, have begun pointing out that Ravi was an intellectual lightweight who was in over his head on philosophical and theological issues. As a long-time part-time philosophy of religion graduate student I believe that Ravi’s most long-lasting legacy will be the dumbing down of complex issues to make his trusting fans believe there are easy responses to all those things atheists complain about. Ravi reduced complexity to fortune-cookie sized applause lines that filled bellies but left millions of minds malnourished.Back to the sex stuff, we have not even scratched the surface. Ravi brought women over from Asia to work his Georgia spas. As an immigation lawyer I strongly suspect that this involved immgration fraud for sex trafficking purposes. Nobody has investigated this. Ravi owned two apartments in Bangkok where he supposedly spent time alone writing. We have no information about what went on in the those apartments, which happen to be in the sex tourism capital of the world. Three years of Ravi’s cell phones were also missing. What was on those? SPECIAL MENTION TO RAVI’S CHRISTIAN ENABLERS But Ravi Zacharias still has much to teach us about the Christian institutions that enabled him to deceive and harm so many vulnerable people around the world. Special mention goes to the Christian & Missionary Alliance (which misled the world about their most famous licensee); the Southern Baptist Convention (which honored Ravi with the pulpit at its Annual Convention in Dallas six months after Ravi dismissed his sexting lawsuit and paid money to silence his victim); Pastor Mac Brunson and his son Pastor Trey Brunson (who physically removed Baptist author and archivist Jim Lutzweiler from their church’s public Q&A when he attempted to ask a question about Ravi’s misconduct); RZIM President Michael Ramsden and RZIM lawyer Abdu Murray (a small portion of whose multitude of sins are documented in the Malhotra letter linked above); a very large slew of RZIM speakers (who decided that career was more important than truth); HarperCollins Christian Publishing (which, among many other things, announced a new book deal with Ravi four months after he settled his vicious and defamatory 2017 federal sexting lawsuit); the Christian folks on the RZIM Board of Directors (who disregarded their oversight duties even in the face of compelling evidence of Ravi’s misconduct); to those members of Zacharias family who valued the family empire over the well-being of the many people Ravi deceived and abused over the years; and to all those in the God business who feel that they are so important to the Kingdom that the rules don’t apply to them, many of them so drunk on God that they don’t even know that this means them.That, in a nutshell, is the Ravi Zacharias story. Christian business leaders who benefit from the religious celebrity fetish want us to focus on how awful Ravi was as a human being. He was. But so are they. And as long as we overlook the systemic role in making Ravi Zacharias the scoundrel he became, the Evangelical Industrial Complex will carry on as the Roman Catholic Church did until it got caught. And the number of deceived and abused will continue to grow unchecked.Let me close this section with prophetic words from one of the fine, caring, and wise Christian people I have met along my Ravi journey."My question is simple. If [Ravi] lies about this, what else does he lie about?"Dee Parsons on Ravi Zacharias’s credential fraud, published at The Wartburg Watch on October 2, 2015, (over five years before the current crowd of apologetic apologists publicly admitted that something was amiss with their Great Leader.)Steve BaughmanAttorney at LawBAUGHMAN & WANG39650 Liberty Street, Suite 240Fremont, CA [email protected] RAVI ZACHARIAS’ ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS: 12 FISHY CLAIMSClaimFinding1. "I am now a professor at Oxford"False. For years Ravi claimed for himself the very prestigious title of professor at Oxford. The claim can be still seen at his website on the Internet Archives and at THIS video. In August 2018, under mounting pressure, Ravi admitted to a Christian psychology professor that he had never been a professor at Oxford. He offered no explanation for his years of making the false claim.More info2. "Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University"False, per Cambridge. RZ removed the claim from his website after I informed him of my intent to expose it as false in the summer of 2015More info3. "Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University"False. RZ held an honorary Senior Research Fellow position at an "affiliated institution" of Oxford University. RZ modified the claim at his website after I informed him that I was investigating his credentials. He has since removed the Oxford claim entirely from his website.More info4. RZ frequently claims to having studied quantum physics at Cambridge University and refers to Cambridge's Dr. John Polkinghorne as "my professor in quantum physics." (Autobiography p. 206)False: Dr. Polkinghorne retired from physics in 1979 to become a priest. In 1990, the year RZ was on sabbatical, Dr. Polkinghorne taught two courses, “Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism” and "The Modern Dialogue of Science and Theology." He taught no physics class that year.See my video on the issue.More info5. "Chair of the Department Evangelism and Contemporary Thought at Alliance Theological Seminary."False. Such a department never existed. RZ fabricated the title to bolster his scholarly image.More info6. "I am an official lecturer at Oxford" where I lecture "three times a year."False. The University informed me that it has no record of Ravi being on their payroll. Wycliffe Hall told me that Ravi has never held a formal teaching position there.More info7. "Cambridge educated"False. RZ’s B.A. and M.Div. degrees are from fairly obscure institutions. While on a 2-3 month sabatical at a place called Ridley Hall, RZ attended some classes and lectures at Cambridge University on a part-time basis. This is the sole basis for the claim that RZ is "Cambridge educated."More info8. RZ's references to himself in his press materials as "Dr. Zacharias"Misleading. RZ has no academic degree beyond a B.A. from the Ontario Bible College. (He also holds a non-academic professional M.Div degree.) RZ has not earned a doctorate degree.More info9. "Zacharias holds three doctoral degrees"False. RZ has no earned doctorates, only honorary ones, and, despite criticism, has repeatedly failed to disclose that his doctorates are merely honorary.More info10. Ravi claims he won the "Asian Youth Preacher Award" at an international preaching competition.False. The Award appears not to exist, and the only preaching competition Ravi won was India only.More info11. "I have spoken on almost every major campus - Berkeley, Princeton, Cornell, you name it."Misleading. It appears that RZ's college lectures are mainly (almost exclusively?) self-organized or pursuant to invitations from student clubs, not invitations from the faculties of these universities. RZ does not clearly disclose this.More info12. RZ’s book bio describes him as a "Recognized authority on comparative religions, cults, and philosophy."False. RZ has no scholarly publications and bears exactly none of the indicia required to make one a "recognized authority" in an academic field.More info13. In his autobiography RZ claims partial credit for the idea of The Veritas ForumFalse. The Veritas Forum was fully underway before its founder, Kelly Monroe, ever heard of RZ.More infoThe Case Against Ravi Zacharias A brewing RZ sex scandal?A one minute video summary of RZ's misleading claimsDetailed findings of my investigation (video)Contact Raviwatch: © 2022 Steve Baughman