Recently, psychology professor Aaron New wrote yet again about what he called plagiarism in a new book by American Association of Christian Counselors owner Tim Clinton and writer Max Davis. He showed that Clinton and Davis lifted sizable verbatim portions of books by George Foreman without placing them in quotes or indenting them to show that they came directly from the other books. In fact, they wove the exact quotes in with their own prose to make it appear they wrote all of the material. In the sections in question, there were quotes from the original books by Foreman that did have citations but they were included in such a way as to make it appear that the only material cited was a quote from the original. In fact, copious material was directly lifted from the original works.
Dr. New published his findings in a series of tweets which I reproduce here:
Clinton recently released a new book, “Take It Back.” To be fair, Max Davis is mentioned on the cover, too. But his name gets smaller billing on the cover and Clinton is listed as the author inside the book. pic.twitter.com/fKKJaONSTn
— Aaron New (@DrAaronNew) April 6, 2021
Pic 1 = from “Take it Back” by Tim Clinton in 2021.
Pic 2 = from “God in My Corner” by George Foreman in 2007. pic.twitter.com/hg7oZQ3MaI— Aaron New (@DrAaronNew) April 6, 2021
Pic 1 = from “Take it Back” by Tim Clinton in 2021.
Pic 2 = from “Fatherhood by George” by George Foreman in 2008. pic.twitter.com/qW0gOJfeZS— Aaron New (@DrAaronNew) April 6, 2021
I showed these tweets, along with the new book’s endnotes, to Karen Swallow Prior, Research Professor of English and Christianity & Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and asked if she thought this was plagiarism. Her response is in full below:
In 2018 when the rampant and repeated instances of plagiarism by Tim Clinton were covered by Inside Higher Ed, I emailed Tim about it through his website. Because Tim was a fellow faculty member at Liberty University and is a brother in Christ, I thought it was important to reach out to him directly. I never heard back. When Tim later spoke at my church, I communicated my concerns to one of my pastors.
I am disappointed and grieved to see yet another instance of blatant plagiarism in this new book [Take It Back: Reclaiming Biblical Manhood for the Sake of Marriage, Family, and Culture]. The examples of plagiarism I’ve seen in it are so egregious that if they were committed by a student, I would give that student a failing grade for the class. Christians must do and demand better, especially Christian leaders.
The Inside Higher Ed article was published in 2018 and involved similar issues uncovered by Aaron New.
I contacted the publicist and Max Davis but have not received any answer.
Today, Religion News Service published an article about plagiarism among pastors. I wait to see if anyone takes that seriously. I continue to wait to see if anyone in Christian publishing takes any of this seriously. I know academics like Prior, New and me do, but professional Christians apparently do not. Instead, if any questions are asked beyond this blog post, the Christian celebrity culture response will be to trot out a public relations humanoid with excuses and wait for the forgetting to set in.
Looks like Prior dabbles also in unauthorized and unpublished manuscripts as part of her religio political agenda. No surprises here.
Yet another CHRISTIAN(TM) version of Tom Lehrer’s “Lobachevsky”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXlfXirQF3A
Did these two CHRISTIAN Authors also pay Result Source to juice their book onto the NYT Best-Seller list?
Thank you Dr. Throckmorton for this important coverage.
A better scenario: Upon reading the Bible and discovering Jesus said nothing about “Biblical Manhood,” Tim Clinton proceeds to publish a book of blank pages.
There is no excuse for this. None.
Big Christianity is rife with crooks and frauds..They have to be shamed publicly and dramatically before they are tempted to do the right thing and that rarely happens..