MinistryWatch: Apologia Church Defamation Lawsuit Moves Forward

By Kim Roberts - Posted at MinistryWatch:

Published June 18, 2026

A defamation lawsuit filed by Apologia Church against a former parishioner and a watchdog blogger will move forward after a judge rejected most of the defendants’ arguments in their motion to dismiss.

In October 2025, Apologia Church Pastor Jeffrey Durbin filed a defamation lawsuit against former church attendee Hailey Merris and her husband Cameron, and against blogger Sarah Leann Young and her husband Joe. Young runs the Check My Church blog.

The complaint alleged that Merris, through her Tik Tok videos, defamed the church when she criticized its leadership for publicly discussing her private affairs — namely, marital difficulties she and her husband were experiencing. The complaint said Merris’s videos wrongly accused church leadership of gossip, abusive behavior, slander, breaches of confidentiality, and implied that leadership “lied to and misled church members.”

It also alleged that Young reported about Merris’ story and the breach of confidentiality she felt Apologia’s leadership had engaged in. The church argued that Young’s article included defamatory statements accusing church leaders of “a cultic pattern of dishonesty, spiritual abuse, gossip, slander, breaching confidentiality, and more.”

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