Category: plagiarism

Mark Driscoll Claims Credit for the Work of Mars Hill Church Women

You will probably think you’ve heard this story before.

In 2013, Mars Hill Church published a study guide on the New Testament book of James. Mark Driscoll wrote the Introduction to the book but did not claim authorship. In fact, much of the book was written by women in the women’s ministry. Here is an email describing a document provided by Driscoll to guide them thematically (most names redacted).

From: “h****@marshill.com” <h****@marshill.com>
Subject: James research
Date: August 23, 2013 at 1:34:36 PM CDT
To: Marci Turner <m***@*******.com>, “g****@marshill.com” <g****@marshill.com>,  <j******@hotmail.com>, “d*****@a.com” <d****@aol.com>, <s*****@mn.com>,  <l******@gmail.com>, <k****@s.edu>,  <*****@i.com>
Hello James team:

Below is some great information that Pastor Mark has prepared regarding the approach he will take to the James series.

So, put on your theological thinking caps – this is good stuff.  As always, and as indicated below, please do not share this.  I’m praying for you and hope this is helpful to you, as it was to me, as we learn to discern well and trust God for his truth to be revealed to us as we write for his glory.

Thanks!

H

Director of Women’s Ministry
Mars Hill Church
www.marshill.com

While I don’t have all of the work done by all of the women, I do have the work done by Marci Turner. First, I will post the Introduction where Driscoll wrote in 2013 about who is responsible for writing the study guide. Then I will post the same page from the 2021 book, titled Faith Works.

The attribution accurately credits Mars Hill staff, Docent Research, and faithful volunteers. Those faithful volunteers were women, some of whom were not considered trustworthy by Mark Driscoll at various stages of Mars Hill’s existence. However, Driscoll and the boys thought it okay to use them to anonymously write copy.
…then the description of authorship.

The book now is a “group effort” if by that Driscoll means he added to material written by others and then he put his name on it. To me, a group effort is a group of people working on something, and they all get credit. In this case, the actual source of the material is even more vague than in the first edition.

In light of my reporting over the years, as well as the recent Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, I am not surprised Driscoll didn’t acknowledge the women. However, he should have and he still should. For one, Marci Turner isn’t happy that her work has Driscoll’s name slapped on it. However, there isn’t much that can be done about it since Driscoll was allowed to buy the Resurgence material when he left.

Nonetheless, there are substantial amounts of material that female members of Mars Hill wrote that Driscoll has put his name on. Here is just one example from Marci Turner.

The material in the red rectangle is in the new Faith Works edition. See below (see also the side by side comparison link below):

And here’s another instance:

There are other examples, but I think this makes it clear that the materials supplied by the “faithful volunteers” have now been retooled by Mark Driscoll. And it can now be known that those faithful volunteers were women of the church who couldn’t be trusted with much, but could give the man of god some copy for his content management system.

Below is one side by side comparison:

Side by Side

According to Sutton Turner, all of these study guides were partially written by the Women’s Ministry.

Liberty University Brings Back Tim Clinton

After rushing in 2018 to tell me that Tim Clinton was no longer with Liberty University, the school has brought him back to lead a right wing initiative.

When Clinton was fending off allegations of plagiarism in 2018, I mistakenly wrote that he was on the faculty of Liberty U. Len Stevens from LU sent an email with the following message:

Liberty University leadership wants you to know that Tim Clinton resigned from Liberty University following the Spring Semester of 2018 for reasons unrelated to the allegations detailed in your article. Liberty University has no further comment.

Recently, I heard that Clinton had rejoined the school and wrote to ask Stevens if LU had done an independent investigation of the plagiarism allegations. I have received no response.

Also, back in April, former LU faculty member Karen Swallow Prior had this to say about Clinton’s most recent book:

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.

The new intiative is called the Global Center for Mental Health, Addiction and Recovery and references mental health issues provoked by the pandemic. One of the board members is Sam Rodriguez who last night at the AACC conference joked about the pandemic:

 

Karen Swallow Prior Calls Out “Egregious Plagiarism” in Tim Clinton’s New Book

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:

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.

More Apparent Plagiarism in Christian Books

Even though publishers infrequently acknowledge plagiarism in their books, some readers want to know which authors borrow from others and which authors do their own work. Hence, I continue to bring plagiarism news to light.

This is an easy post for me to write because I am citing other people. Notice how easy that is. I find material that is informative and I bring to my readers with a citation so everybody knows who did the work. I don’t need to claim it as my own. I point you to the source. That’s how you avoid plagiarism. See, easy.

Only One Life

First, let’s take this Twitter thread from Jill Hicks-Keeton. She demonstrates that the work of Museum of the Bible co-founder Jackie Green and Lauren Green McAfee in their book Only One Life about Rosa Parks is remarkably similar to Joyce Hanson’s biography of Rosa Parks. Hanson’s book came first.

Here are the tweets:

More Tim Clinton

Now comes Dr. Aaron New with yet more material from Tim Clinton. Aaron has a lengthy thread with all of the apparent plagiarism involving Clinton and various co-authors. I will let Aaron explain the recent finds.

If you click through the images, you will see a pull quote from Chris Thurman in The Quick Reference Guide to Biblical Counseling. However, there is nothing in the book that identifies Thurman as the source of the rest of the material highlighted by Aaron. Clinton and Hawkins cite Thurman’s Soul Care Bible article in the recommended resources list but don’t use any quotes to designate the verbatim use of his material.

In the remainder of the thread (go here to read it all, it is very long), you will find numerous instances where material has been taken from Soul Care Bible authors and use without citation in The Quick Reference Guide. Let me show just two more that Aaron provides in his thread:

No quotes are used for Norman Wright’s and Miriam Stark Parent’s words which come verbatim from the Soul Care Bible. In the Loss and Grief chapter of The Quick Reference Guide (the second book), Clinton and Hawkins included a Norman Wright book in their resources but there is no way for the reader to know that much of the chapter was quoted directly from Wright in the Soul Care Bible.

In the case of the material lifted from Miriam Stark Parent’s Soul Care Bible entry on Loneliness and Personal Growth, Clinton and Hawkins give her an unsourced pull quote but that is all. In the recommended resources, Stark Parent doesn’t get a mention. Clinton recommends three of his books, but readers have no way to know that much of the chapter they just read was originally written by Mirian Stark Parent.

To see more posts on citation problems in Tim Clinton’s work, click here. To see more posts about plagiarism and citation errors in general, click this link.

To follow me on Twitter, click here.

Dale Partridge Liked Other People’s Work So Much He Used it as His Own

I don’t have much to say about this story but I want to link to it.

Dale Partridge, Christian ‘influencer’ and church planter, haunted by plagiarism claims

Dale Partridge is a hip social media influencer, pastor type who has been lifting other people’s words and using them to make himself look good. Cue Bob Smietana:

Discouragement, he said in a now deleted Instagram post, is a temptation that needs toughness and tenderness to overcome.

“But in any case, discouragement is not to be tolerated or wallowed in,” his post read. “It’s to be fought.”

This spiritual advice, typical of Partridge, can stand with the words of the best religious thinkers.

Perhaps because, it turns out, his advice came from two top religious thinkers.

The above sentiment about discouragement was borrowed nearly word-for-word from DesiringGod.org, a website founded by the widely read evangelical author and preacher John Piper. The “not guilty” line comes from the late author and theologian A.W. Tozer. (A post on the Relearn Church website was later updated to include the correct attribution and link to Piper’s site.)

A review of Partridge’s writings shows that the plagiarism in these posts is not a one-time mistake. According to critics who have tracked his tweets and Instagram posts, Partridge has commonly passed off quotes from celebrities, musicians, fellow entrepreneurs, authors and public figures including Ricky Martin, John Wooden, Ron Finley and Martin Luther King Jr. as his own. Partridge’s habit of plagiarizing quotes even inspired a “Fake Dale Partridge” Twitter account, which reposted Partridge’s tweets from October 2014, along with the correct attribution.

Go read the rest if you want to learn more about how hip influencing is done. I just can’t see how this stuff appeals to people but since I warn folks about this kind of thing, I thought I should post it.