In early 2019, Dave Ramsey, the finance guru and national radio host, began to think that he’d made a terrible mistake.
For months he and other leaders at Ramsey Solutions had been backing Chris Hogan, a bestselling author and speaker for the Franklin, Tennessee, media and publishing company, in a dispute with Hogan’s wife, who had accused him of adultery.
Ramsey had learned of the allegations against Hogan in the fall of 2018, on the eve of a major tour planned for Hogan’s “Everyday Millionaire” book. For Ramsey Solutions, the allegations presented a particularly thorny problem. Founded by Ramsey in1992, the company offers financial advice — famously, stern warnings to avoid debt — with a Christian foundation. Much of its revenue comes from the personal finance courses and books it sells to churches and from his daily radio show.
The biblical ethic extended to Ramsey Solutions’ employees: Ramsey personally enforced the company’s “righteous living” rules,…
