Christianity Today Revisits the Ethics of Using ResultSource to Score a New York Times Best Seller

Tonight, Christianity Today’s Ken Walker posted an article on the ethics of buying a spot on best seller lists. The coverage, which is also in the January print edition, links to the ResultSource contract I posted here.  Although I am surprised the views of Crossway executive Justin Taylor were not included, this is an important article with reaction from numerous industry sources. Most publishers who commented took a dim view of the methods used by ResultSource.
Some surprises from the article:
Eric Metaxas doesn’t see a problem with using a ResultSource like scheme. I wonder if he used them to help out with the Bonhoeffer book.
David Jeremiah’s book Captured by Grace was once listed on the ResultSource website as a part of the ResultSource portfolio. Back in November, I wrote about the mention of Jeremiah’s right hand man Paul Joiner in a Mars Hill Church memo on Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage campaign. Repeated contacts with Turning Point Ministry have gone unanswered. I plan some additional work on David Jeremiah’s approach to publishing best seller, possibly as early as tomorrow. It now appears that he has been using ResultSource to move his books up the lists since 2007.
ResultSource may not be doing much business since the secret sauce was revealed.
One thing not surprising is that the authors involved, ResultSource’s CEO Kevin Small, and Jeremiah’s current and Driscoll’s former agent Sealy Yates did not provide information or comment to CT.
 
 
 

Should Historians Read Providence in Historical Events?

In a word, no.
Although I am sure about what I think, providence is an issue of importance to religious historians. To explore the issue, Justin Taylor at the Gospel Coalition published a helpful post yesterday on the subject which teases out some of the issues and players.
He examines the views of six historians which believe Christian historians should describe God’s hand in human events and those who don’t.
If you enjoy the history posts here, you will want to read the entire post.
For what it’s worth, I am in the Carl Trueman-John Fea camp.
Today, Taylor follows up with more from David Bebbington and others on how the Christian historian should write for a secular audience.  Since I don’t believe the Christian historian is omniscient and can tell what God is doing, I don’t think the writing is much different when providing an accurate historical narrative.
I really appreciate this series because it brings attention to some of the issues at stake with David Barton’s fractured history. Barton writes as if he understands the providence of God and claims that historical facts validate his view. However, to get to his position, he takes history hostage and tortures it until the hostage supports his religious view of the events.  Having a providential mindset in advance of the facts can easily set up the historian to find what he wants to find, or more accurately, what he believes he needs to find in order for his religion to seem true to his audience. In my belief system, God does not need that kind of help from me.