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Greetings:<br><br>
<i>World Magazine</i> is a large circulation weekly put out by
conservative Christians, and the article below focuses on plagiarized
sermons and also Wilson/Wilkins' slavery booklet. (Scroll down if
you want to see just this part.) I was interviewed for this piece about a
year ago and it's good to finally see it.<br><br>
Just a few points before you read it: 1) The final signature count, while
most Palouse academics were out of town, was 66; 2) Wilkins admits to
doing it; 3) Wilson fesses up more than he did to the local press; and 4)
Wilson claims that he apologized to the authors of <i>Time on the
Cross.<br><br>
</i>I'm still waiting for the publication of <i>The Black and the Tan</i>
and eager to see how much the text has changed.<br><br>
Nick Gier<br><br>
WORD FOR WORD<br>
RELIGION: More and more pastors lift entire sermons off the internet—but
is the practice always wrong? | by Gene Edward Veith<br><br>
Glenn Wagner was a successful mega-church pastor in Charlotte, N.C.,
until one of his elders heard a sermon on the radio that was identical to
one he had heard from the pulpit. Mr. Wagner confessed that he had been
preaching other people's sermons off and on for two years, including some
he broadcast on Christian radio. He resigned from his ministry last
fall.<br><br>
A similar case occurred after members of the National City Christian
Church in Washington, D.C., found on the internet sermons that Alvin
O'Neal, moderator of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and a
celebrated preacher in that denomination, had preached. Mr. O'Neal
apologized for his actions and remains in his ministry.<br><br>
A number of lesser-known ministers across the country have also been
caught stealing sermons. Sometimes it makes the newspapers, but other
times congregations or denominations handle the matter quietly.<br><br>
But is preaching a sermon written by someone else as serious an ethical
lapse as academic plagiarism? Does a sermon really have to be original or
are people overreacting to a common practice in the ministry?<br><br>
Preaching canned sermons has a long history. During the Reformation,
Martin Luther wrote out sermons that were inherited from the medieval
church for the theologically illiterate clergy to preach to their people.
Up through the 19th century, sermons were regularly published, and there
are many accounts of them being preached in other churches. The great
preacher Charles Spurgeon tells in his autobiography about how he was
ministered to by his own sermon when he heard another pastor preach
it.<br><br>
Some pastors argue that there is nothing wrong with preaching another
person's sermons.<br><br>
"The question is whether this pastor is a faithful shepherd
preaching and teaching the full counsel of God," said David Bayly,
pastor of Christ the Word Presbyterian Church in America in Toledo, Ohio.
"Specifically, is what he is preaching true? Does it meet the
spiritual need of his flock at the point at which it is preached? Is it
faithful to the Word? No honest pastor will be quick to criticize a
fellow pastor for being helped at times by the work and words of
another."<br><br>
Other pastors disapprove. "The best sermons are those that are
preached from the heart. People listening to sermons know when they are
hearing a performance and when they are hearing a genuine, sincere,
authentic sermon," said Paul McCain, interim president of Concordia
Publishing House.<br><br>
Preaching borrowed sermons is probably more common than most people
realize. "Pulpit resources" are available to pastors, often
providing full-blown sermons. Stewardship programs, Lenten series, and
promotions for special services (such as pro-life Sundays) often come
with ready-made sermons. Popular authors such as Max Lucado and Chuck
Swindoll—ministers whose books are usually compiled from their
sermons—are regularly plundered.<br><br>
With the internet, whole sermons are online for users to search either by
biblical text or topic. Sermons.org offers Baptist sermons free of
charge. The plaintively titled DesperatePreacher.com charges $39.95 per
year.<br><br>
The largest site, SermonCentral.com, charges $9.95 per month and claims
to be used more than 170,000 times per week. PreachingToday.com, a
venture of Christianity Today, gives subscribers access to a database of
sermon illustrations, outlines, preaching tips, and other resources for
$49.95 a year. Christianity Today also sells full-text sermons at a
sister site, PreachingTodaySermons.com, at $4.95 each. The site lists as
"Top Sellers" sermons by Lee Strobel, Chuck Swindoll, and Bill
Hybels.<br><br>
Craig Brian Larson, editor of Preaching Resources for Christianity Today
International and the editor of PreachingToday.com, said he is concerned
that the service could be abused, with pastors simply downloading sermons
and preaching them as their own. Mr. Larson said the site has posted a
statement saying that credit for the sermons should always be
given.<br><br>
Kent Edwards, president of the Evangelical Homiletics Society and a
professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, cites "the
pressure today's preachers face to be effective communicators" as
the reason some get mired in plagiarism.<br><br>
Many pastors simply do not have the time and lack the homiletical skills
necessary to produce high-quality and culturally relevant sermons, he
said. "They have succumbed to the expectations of their churches to
be omni-competent and omnipresent."<br><br>
Nevertheless, according to Mr. Edwards, "If at the end of a sermon a
congregation incorrectly believes that a preacher authored the sermon,
then the preacher is guilty of deception."<br><br>
Pastors are better off allowing adequate time to prepare a sermon and
getting advanced training in how to create their own engaging sermons,
Mr. Edwards said. "Learning from a master is wonderful. Pretending
that the work of the master is your own is wrong."<br><br>
And before desperate preachers download Sunday's sermon from the
internet, they might consider something their congregations would get
more out of than amusing anecdotes and vivid word pictures: Take a
passage from the Bible and preach that.<br><br>
Doug Wilson and slavery<br><br>
Southern Slavery: As it Was, a booklet defending slavery as biblically
viable, has roused considerable controversy since its release in 1996.
Critics of co-authors Douglas Wilson and Steve Wilkins have added to
their content-driven charges of racism and shoddy history one more
accusation: plagiarism.<br><br>
The text failed 24 times to attribute word-for-word quotations pulled
from the 1974 book Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro
Slavery by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. University of
Washington history professor Tracie McKenzie, who attends a Seattle-area
church connected to Mr. Wilson's Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, easily
recognized the stolen sections because he teaches on the work of Mr.
Fogel and Mr. Engerman.<br><br>
Concerned with both plagiarism and the content of Southern Slavery, Mr.
McKenzie drafted a response pointing out what he saw as poor historical
conclusions and detailing the plagiarized sections.<br><br>
After reviewing Mr. McKenzie's document, Mr. Wilson pulled Southern
Slavery from the shelves in 2003 with the intent of correcting
attribution oversights for a second edition. Now set for publication in
the coming months under the title Black and Tan, the 150-page new edition
reduces Southern Slavery to a single chapter and adds other essays on
slavery, culture war, and Scripture in America. Mr. Wilson told WORLD the
original thesis that slavery wasn't bad enough to justify violent
abolitionism remains prominent.<br><br>
The absence of plagiarism may not quiet opposition. University of Idaho
philosophy professor Nick Gier collected the endorsements of 45 local
academics for a widely circulated flier condemning the plagiarism. Steve
Wilkins, pastor of Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, La.,
admits to authoring every plagiarized section: "It wasn't [Mr.
Wilson's] doing. It was my fault, not his fault."<br><br>
Nevertheless, Mr. Wilson, who edited the booklet, has taken the brunt of
the criticism. The charges fuel an ongoing spat between Christ Church and
the Moscow community, a quarrel to which Mr. Wilson admits his blunt
style has contributed, but one he blames more heavily on community
intolerance: "This is the first issue where we deserve the lump on
our head. There's no question it was wrong and
inappropriate."<br><br>
Canon Press, a ministry of Christ Church and publisher of Southern
Slavery, issued a letter of apology to the publisher of Time on the
Cross, and no legal action appears imminent.<br>
—Mark Bergin —•<br><br>
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<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=1>"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any
system cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and
studying each part by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on
the whole and on the interconnection between the parts. The same is true
of our intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between
science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of
its various parts." --Max Planck<br><br>
</font>Nicholas F. Gier<br>
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho<br>
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843<br>
<a href="http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm" eudora="autourl">http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/home.htm</a><br>
208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950<br>
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO<br>
<a href="http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm" eudora="autourl">http://users.adelphia.net/~nickgier/ift.htm</a><br><br>
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