A lawsuit filed by Lorraine Zielinski against the Grace Community Church in California, headed up by fundamentalist Pastor John MacArthur contain some truly jaw-dropping insights into what can best be described as a deeply controlling cult.
Here briefly is Lorraine’s story
In 2022, Lorraine Zielinski, a long-time member of Grace Community, turned to the church for help.
Her then husband was being abusive and physically violent.
The lawsuit documents the details …
Plaintiff informed GCC counselors repeatedlyof incidents in which her husband had been physically aggressive towards her. Plaintiff described how, in the past, her husband had thrown things around Plaintiff and her daughter when he was upset. Plaintiff also described an event during which she and her husband got into an argument about parenting. Plaintiff’s husband grabbed her arm and wrist and would not let go.
Plaintiff described to GCC counselors the fear and anxiety that resulted from her husband’s behavior, and the ongoing fear she had towards her husband, including the fear that he would cause her great bodily harm or death.
Plaintiff told GCC counselors that she was afraid her husband would smother her in her sleep with a pillow.
Plaintiff told GCC counselors that she was afraid of the anger with which her husband looked at her and her daughter.
Plaintiff alsodescribed her daughter’s fear of her father, noting her daughter would comment: “Mom, I’m afraid to go to bed. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of dad. I’m afraid.”
She was told that all communication with her counselors would be strictly confidential.
They lied.
The very first thing they then did was to go directly to her abusive husband, told him all that she had said, and also advised him on how to prevent her from pursuing a divorce.
Meanwhile, they they proceeded to pressure her to remain with her abusive husband and to abandon any ideas of separation. Their absurd stance was that it was all her fault that he was being abusive.
Her response to this complete betrayal, and intimidation was very sensible, she requested different counselors.
The church said “no”.
One of the pastors who oversaw all the counselors quietly advised her in confidence that her best way forward was to walk away from Grace Community. He was as equally horrified by it all as she was.
She did exactly that. In December 2023, she sent an email advising the church that she was leaving.
The church refused to accept that resignation and instead reverted to blackmail …
The GCC pastor (…not the one who advised her to leave, but another one…) informed Plaintiff that, because of the marital issues between her and her husband, her pursuit of legal separation, his superiors had determined that she wasnot permitted to leave GCC.
The GCC pastor told Plaintiff she was required to attend a meeting with GCC leadership to discuss her marriage, and if she did not attend, GCC would publicly share the private information shehad shared during counseling with the entire GCC membership.The purpose of this meeting was to ensure she remained with her husband—even though GCC knew about Plaintiff’s reports of physical abuse
She was sensible enough to not bend to this deeply immoral and completely unethical demand, and so …
When Plaintiff did not attend the meeting, GCC made good on its threat and shared information gained through confidential communications relating to her marriage with GCC membership.
GCC also misrepresented parts of these communications, painting Plaintiff as a bad actor in the marriage and the party at fault for the marital dispute.GCC also omitted Plaintiff’s husband’s desire to remarry and dissolve the marriage.
GCC shared the information with a directive to GCC members to pressure Plaintiff to submit to the direction of GCC counselorsand other members of its leadershipand cease her attempts to separate from her husband
Yea, plot twist. Her “husband” wanted a divorce, and was pressing for one so that he could shack up with his new girlfriend, but apparently she was the bad actor in all this, and so the church then proceeded to crank up the pressure on her (Where is Coldplay when you need them).
The lawsuit then goes on to lay out the legal case …
- Violation of Right to Privacy—Bane Act
- Violation of Right to Free Association—Bane Act
- Breach of Confidentiality
- Public Disclosure of Private Facts
- False Light
- Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress
- Intentional Interference with Contractual Relations
It is dated July 3, 2025.
The above is history repeating itself
Grace Community has played out the exact same utter farce many times before.
The Christian Run website, The Roys Report, that flags up abuse, spotlighted a very similar example back in 2022 …
On August 18, 2002, prominent radio pastor and author, John MacArthur, took time during an evening service to address a grave matter at his 8,000-member Grace Community Church (GCC) in Sun Valley, California.
A woman at GCC was living in sin, MacArthur alleged. And though shaming her publicly was “sad,” MacArthur said it was necessary to maintain fidelity to God and His Word.…
…This is what the Lord wants. He wants discipline . . . to be put out of the church, to be publicly shamed, to be put away from fellowship. In this case it applies to Eileen Gray.”
According to MacArthur, Gray’s sin was that she had decided “to leave her husband, to grant no grace at all, to take the children, to go away, to forsake him.” This, MacArthur emphasized, meant rejecting “all the instruction and counsel of the elders, all instruction from the Word of God.”
MacArthur then encouraged the church to pray for Eileen and to “treat her as an unbeliever—for all we know, she may be.”
The problem with his “public shaming” is this – She wanted out and away from an abusive husband, and the church insisted she must stay with him – She refused, hence the public shaming.
Why was The Roys Report running a story in 2022 about something that took place in 2002?
Eileen had kept quite about it all at the time because she wanted to protect her children , but started speaking up in 2022 because they had all grown up by then.
She had a very solid foundation for what she was saying. Eileen Gray’s husband, David Gray, ended up serving 21 years to life in a California prison for his 2005 convictions for aggravated child molestation, corporal injury to a child, and child abuse. Everything that Eileen Gray had been saying was right, and everything that Grace Community did was wrong. She had turned to them for help, and they instead proceeded to help her abuser and did nothing for her.
She explains that Carey Hardy, a former GCC associate pastor and personal assistant to John MacArthur, told her she needed to model for her children how to “suffer for Jesus” by enduring David’s abuse. When she refused, the church started with the blackmail policy demanding that either she bows to their will or they will publicly shame her.
When she refused, John MacArthur publicly shamed her, not once, but twice—once in May 2002 and again in August 2002. Between both of these events, she received numerous visits from members and staff pressuring her to fall in line.
Like the previous instance above, Eileen also wrote to the church telling them she was leaving. Again, as with they other example they refused to let her go. Meanwhile, at the same time, the guy they were insisting she remain with, was threatening to kill her and the children. She even had late night visits from church staff who pressured her and became angry when she refused to obey them.
If you read the full Roys Report then you will discover lots more shocking details, the degree of abuse, the failure of the church to report it despite being mandated by law to do so, the observation that the church allocated counselor was not in any way qualified. They also refused to believe what she was telling them – the church even filed a court deceleration in 2002 against her separation declaring that she simply does not like her husband and that her claims against him are exaggerated and irrational. (At that time David Gray was a member of church staff responsible for teaching children – he is now in prison for child sexual abuse and violence – yikes!).
What Later Happened after the 2002 Sexual and Physical Abuser is unmasked?
For this next insight, we now turn to a 2023 article in Christianity Today …
The elders had publicly disciplined a woman for refusing to take back her husband. As it turned out, the woman’s fears proved true, and her husband went to prison for child molestation and abuse. The church never retracted its discipline or apologized in the 20 years since.
As a lawyer and one of four officers on the elder board at Grace Community Church (GCC), Cho was asked to study the case. He tried to convince the church’s leaders to reconsider and at least privately make it right. He said pastor John MacArthur told him to “forget it.” When Cho continued to call the elders to “do justice” on the woman’s behalf, he said he was asked to walk back his conclusions or resign.
He resigned.
Though Cho stepped down quietly, he continued to hear from other women from his former church. They had also been doubted, dismissed, and implicitly or explicitly threatened with discipline while seeking refuge from their abusive marriages.
… and so he came to this conclusion …
“This is when I sadly came to believe beyond any personal doubt that GCC congregants who we still love could effectively be playing Russian roulette if they ever needed counseling at GCC, especially anything involving the care of women or children. I knew I could not pass by silently on the other side of the road, that I needed to help this woman and to call out a warning, or else the blood of the people would be on my head.”
It is worth nothing that Christianity Today fact-checked, as any good journalist should, and talked to eight women who had similar stories of being pressured to conform and not report abuse.
This is a Church that sided with an abuser, who turned out to be a child molester, over a mother desperately trying to protect her three innocent young children, and this was not just one mistake, it is a pattern of deeply abusive behaviour by Grace Community.
Other Insights
One rather significant and recent event is that the founder of this deeply abusive and controlling Megachurch cult, John MacArthur, died on July 14 just a few weeks ago.
What is perhaps not a shock, but if you check out his Wikipedia page, then you discover the usual litany of religious lunacy …
- Deeply homophobic
- Very very anti-science – planet earth of only 6,000 years old, climate change is a myth, etc…
- Horribly Racist – famously claimed that MLK was “not a Christian at all” and that the late civil rights leader was “a nonbeliever who misrepresented everything about Christ and the gospel.” (Actually, his racism is a lot deeper than that – see here for a deep dive into his blatant and deeply weird racism – “In a series of sermons from Genesis preached during the summer of 2001, MacArthur laid out the case that many white supremacists have used throughout history to promote racism and defend slavery.“)
Here are a few tweets that call out his legacy …
… and there were many more like that.
However, the real cherry on the cake was an Obituary by Baptist News …
How should we respond when someone who uses theology to promote ignorant, misogynistic, racist, power mongering authoritarianism dies?
To use biblical language, we might call these people false prophets, ravenous wolves, deceivers, anti-Christs, evil men, seducers, lovers of self, foolish and unlearned men, just to name a few.
And to be clear, I’m talking about John MacArthur.
After 55 years of using the church to promote his own power, John MacArthur, the Wicked Warlock of the West, is dead. As BNG Executive Director Mark Wingfield wrote in 2023, “There is no single pastor who has been more influential on young theological conservatives in the last 50 years than MacArthur. Not Billy Graham. Not Adrian Rogers. Not Charles Stanley. Not John Piper. MacArthur has been the gold standard for conservative and Reformed theology not only through his preaching but through his books, his commentaries, his study Bible, his podcasts, his videos, his conferences, his public appearances.”
And while his minions across the world commit the pastoral malpractice of singing his praises, it would be an act of journalistic irresponsibility to miss this opportunity to highlight how MacArthur, according to his own words, was a false teacher who abused the least of these and thus deserves to have a millstone hung around his neck and be cast into the sea.
In other words, he was a racist, sexist, conspiracy theorist who protected abusers. That’s it. That’s the real obituary.
One Last Thought – Cult vs Church, what is the difference?
If you can come and go as you please, it’s a church. If they are controlling and dictating to you, it’s a cult.
It’s a blurry line, and as a non-religious person myself who was once part of a cult, I’m really not a fan of any organised religion, principally because none of it is either factual or true. However, where there is authoritarian control, and practices that involve the very explicit manipulation of members emotionally, financially, or psychologically, then I have absolutely no hesitation in calling it what it is – Grace Community is not a Church, it’s a cult.
So there is one rather positive bit of an insight here. John MacArthur has actually made the world a better place … by leaving it.