Tag: Mark Driscoll

More Citation Problems in Mark Driscoll's Book Real Marriage; Leland Ryken's Worldly Saints and More

In addition to issues already raised about Mark & Grace Driscoll’s book, Real Marriage, I have found other instances where material was not cited, cited with errors, or recycled from other books. Today, I want to examine pages 115-117 from Real Marriage.  First I provide the sentence from the Driscolls’ book and then the apparent source. The sentences in Real Marriage are provided in the order they are written in the book. I have provided screen caps of 2012 Real Marriage and Leland Ryken’s 1986 book Worldly Saints at the end of this post. Much of this material appears to come from Ryken’s book published by Zondervan without citation. Driscoll is aware of Ryken’s book. He recommended Worldly Saints in a 2002 sermon and on the Resurgence website just last year. Other books are also used without citation which I point out below.

From page 115 of Real Marriage:

Tertullian (AD 155– 220) and Ambrose (AD 340–397) were said to prefer extinction of the human race to continued sexual intercourse.

On page 40 of Worldly Saints:

Tertullian and Ambrose preferred the extinction of the human race to its propagation through sin, that is, through sexual intercourse.

From Real Marriage (p. 115):

Origen (AD 185– 254) was so convinced of the evils of sexual pleasure that he not only allegorized the Song of Songs but also took a knife and castrated himself.

From Worldly Saints (p. 40):

Origen took Matthew 19:12 so literally that he had himself castrated before being ordained.

Real Marriage (p. 115):

Gregory of Nyssa (AD 335– 394) taught that Adam and Eve were created without sexual desire, and if the fall had not occurred, the race would have reproduced itself by some harmless mode of vegetation.

Worldly Saints (p. 41):

Bishop Gregory of Nyssa claimed that Adam and Eve had originally been created without sexual desire, and if the Fall had not occurred, the human race would have reproduced itself by some harmless mode of vegetation.

Real Marriage (p. 115):

Chrysostom (AD 347– 407) said that Adam and Eve could not have had sexual relations before the fall.

Worldly Saints (p. 41):

Chrysostom said that Adam and Eve could not have had sexual relations before the Fall.

Real Marriage (p. 115):

Jerome (AD 347– 420) threw himself into thorny brambles to overwhelm himself with pain when he began to desire a woman sexually. He also beat his chest with a stone to punish himself for feeling sexually tempted.

From S. Drury, Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics, and the Western Psyche, (see image) (p. 96):

St. Jerome beat his chest with a stone to drive away the evil desire he had for a dancing girl he saw in Rome…Saint Benedict stripped himself naked and rolled around in thorny bushes to chastise his body for its lusts.

While I can’t be dogmatic about it, I can’t find a story about Jerome in the thorn bushes. However, there are multiple sources which describe Benedict’s naked roll in the thorns. For instance, an account from Legends of the Monastic Order as Represented in the Fine Arts by Anna Jameson has Benedict sending temptation away via his painful ordeal:

Real Marriage (p. 115):

And he (Jerome) believed that a husband was guilty of adultery if he engaged in unrestrained sexual passion with his wife. 17

There is a footnote here which points to William Cole’s 1966 book Sex in Christianity and Psychoanalysis and published by Oxford University Press. Cole refers to a catechism which cites Jerome as follows:

A wise man ought to love his wife with judgment, not with passion. He will govern the impetuosity voluptuous impulses, and will not be hurried into indulgence. There is no greater turpitude than that a husband love his wife as an adultress.

While Driscoll’s interpretation of Jerome is fair, a fuller reading indicates Jerome’s grudging approval of marital sex, within reason:

It is disgraceful to love another man’s wife at all, or one’s own too much. A wise man ought to love his wife with judgment, not with passion. Let a man govern his voluptuous impulses, and not rush headlong into intercourse.
There is nothing blacker than to love a wife as if she were an adulteress. Men who say they have contracted marriage and are bringing up children, for the good of their country and of the race, should at least imitate the brutes, and not destroy their offspring in the womb; nor should they appear in the character of lovers, but of husbands.

Real Marriage (p. 115):

Augustine (AD 354– 430) was sexually active before his conversion and later decided that sex within marriage was not sinful, though the lust and passion associated with it was sinful. Because of this, he often commended married couples for not engaging in sex and referred to it as a form of animalistic lust. 18

This sentence is footnoted appropriately.
Real Marriage (p. 115):

Saint Francis made women out of snow and then caressed them in order to quiet the lust that burned in him.

From Drury’s Terror and Civilization (p. 96):

Saint Francis tried to cool the lust that burned within him by caressing figures made of snow.

As noted by this blogger (who contacted Driscoll to find his source with no reply), this telling of the Saint Francis legend appears to be incorrect. There is a legend involving St. Francis and snow figures but the story is different in very important ways. An important source of St. Francis legends is the work of Bonaventure who quoted from Celano. The legends of St. Francis as recorded by Celano are here. The story involving snow figures is as follows:

How the devil, calling to Francis, tempted him with lust, and how the saint overcame the temptation
116 At the hermitage of the brothers at Sartiano, he who is always envious of the children of God, presumed to do the following against the saint. For seeing the saint continuing to increase in holiness and not neglecting today’s profit for yesterday’s, he called to Francis at prayer one night in his cell, saying three times: “Francis, Francis, Francis.” He answered, saying: “What do you want?” And the other: “There is no sinner in the world whom the Lord will not forgive if he is converted; but whoever destroys himself by harsh penance will not find mercy forever.” Immediately the saint recognized the cleverness of his enemy by a revelation, how he was trying to bring him back to lukewarmness. What then? The enemy did not stop short of inflicting upon him another struggle. For seeing that he could not thus conceal his snare, he prepared another snare, namely, the enticement of the flesh. But in vain, for he who had seen through the craftiness of the spirit could not be tricked by the flesh. The devil therefore tempted him with a most severe temptation of lust. But the blessed father, as soon as he noticed it, took off his clothing and beat himself very severely with his cord, saying: “See, brother ass, thus is it becoming for you to remain, thus is it becoming for you to bear the whip. The tunic belongs to the order; stealing is not allowed. If you want to go your way,
117 But when he saw that the temptation did not leave him in spite of the scourging, even though all his members were marked with welts, he opened his cell and went out into the garden and cast himself naked into a deep pile of snow. Then gathering handfuls of snow, he made from it seven lumps like balls. And setting them before him, he began to speak to his body: “Behold,” he said, “this larger one is your wife; these four are your two sons and your two daughters; the other two are your servant and your maid whom you must have to serve you. Hurry,” he said, “and clothe them all, for they are dying of cold. But if caring for them in so many ways troubles you, be solicitous for serving God alone.” The devil then departed quickly in confusion, and the saint returned to his cell glorifying God. A certain spiritual brother, who was praying at the time, saw the whole thing by the light of the moon. But when the saint found out later that this brother had seen him that night, he was greatly distressed and commanded him to tell the thing to no one as long as he lived in this world.

While I am not an expert on St. Francis, my research into this story leads me to believe that both Drury and Driscoll are wrong about the story (and it is a story with no way to know if it is true). In this case, Driscoll’s copying seems to have led him into presenting a false picture of the St. Francis legend.
Real Marriage (p. 115):

Thomas Aquinas (AD 1225– 1274) taught that sex was only permissible for purposes of procreation. Aquinas saw sexual intercourse as duty alone. Anything beyond this was immoral. He wrote, “For if the motive for the marriage act be a virtue, whether of justice that they may render the debt, or of religion, that they may beget children for the worship of God, it is meritorious. But if the motive be lust . . . it is a venial sin.” 19

The footnote here goes to an online version of Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. However, the section in Real Marriage looks very much like this section from this book:

Real Marriage (p. 115)

Early in the sixth century, Pope Gregory the Great wrote that although marriage was not sinful, “conjugal union cannot take place without carnal pleasure, and such pleasure cannot under any circumstance be without blame.” 21

This sentence is appropriately footnoted.
Real Marriage (p. 116):

The Church eventually began to limit the days on which sex was permissible and continued adding days until half the year or more was prohibited, with some priests going so far as to recommend abstinence from five to seven days a week.

Worldly Saints (p. 41):

The Church kept multiplying the days on which sex was prohibited for married people until half the year or more was prohibited, with some writers going so far as to recommend abstinence on five of the seven days of the week.

Real Marriage (p. 116):

The Catholic Church’s view through the Middle Ages was that sexual love, both in and out of marriage, was evil.

Worldly Saints (p. 40):

The dominant attitude of the Catholic Church throughout the Middle Ages was that sexual love itself was evil and did not cease to be so if its object were one’s spouse.

Real Marriage (p. 116):

By the fifth century priests were forbidden to marry, which has, at least in part, resulted in a global scandal as sexually unhealthy and unholy men entered pastoral ministry.

Worldly Saints (p. 40):

By the fifth century clerics were prohibited from marrying,

I am going to stop there because I think this is enough to indicate the nature of the problems. While this is a relatively short section of Real Marriage, it seems clear that at least Leland Ryken and Shadia Drury should have been cited. Some of the material matches up exactly with the sources I have supplied while other information is included without any sourcing. In at least two cases, copying appears to have compromised the facts.
Worldly Saints – Image pages 40-41; reference to sources on church history (Although Ryken did not footnote each sentence in his book, he supplied his sources for the discussion in a footnote)
Real Marriage – Image pages 115-116
 
 
 

Anti-Plagiarism Campaigner Says Mark Driscoll Did Not Adequately Cite The Work Of Peter Jones

Yesterday, I highlighted the work of the American Copy Editors Society against plagiarism. I learned about their work from Neil Holdway, treasurer of ACES and editor of Chicago area paper Daily Herald (incidentally, where Janet Mefferd once worked. Holdway was her boss there). I asked Holdway about the Mark Driscoll controversy and specifically about the initial allegations of his old colleague regarding Mark Driscoll’s use of Peter Jones’ work. In his response, Holdway took issue with the results of Tyndale House’s investigation, saying

I disagree with Tyndale’s assertion that Peter Jones was adequately cited in the 14 pages called into in question in “A Call To Resurgence.” As written in our task force’s e-book on fighting plagiarism in journalism, “Telling the Truth and Nothing But“:

“We broadened our definition of plagiarism to cover the realm of ideas, encouraging practitioners throughout the industry to more generously and forthrightly cite the seminal, distinctive work of others from whom they draw inspiration in creating their own original works.”

Specifically, Holdway disagrees with the following claim in the Tyndale statement:

Pertaining to his Tyndale book, A Call to Resurgence, Tyndale believes that Mark Driscoll did indeed adequately cite the work of Peter Jones.

On page 320 of A Call To Resurgence, Driscoll includes this footnote:

See, for example, truthexchange.com or Peter Jones, One or Two: Seeing a World of Difference (Escondido, CA: Main Entry Editions, 2010).

According to Holdway, this one citation wasn’t adequate to give credit for the 14 pages of material which relied heavily on Jones’ writing and ideas.
Holdway also addressed Tyndale’s findings regarding Driscoll’s intent by citing the following passage in the ACES ebook:

“An unavoidable complication in any discussion of plagiarism is intent. Was the plagiarism deliberate? Was it inadvertent? Any effort to define journalistic standards must, in our view, consider the recipients of the journalism, not just the producers. Plagiarism harms the creator of the original material, our craft, our industry — but just as crucially, it is a violation of the audience’s trust. Whatever the motivation, the outcome is the same: Everyone suffers.”

Holdway added:

The controversy could have been avoided so easily with more, well-placed, what I would consider proper attribution — saying the outline was “inspired by Peter Jones” or “presented by Peter Jones,” for example, or of course in a footnote as he had done elsewhere. Again, as the e-book on plagiarism says:

“Journalists might understandably start the conversation with a question: How much information — a word, a phrase, a sentence — can be copied without committing plagiarism? That’s the wrong approach. It is more productive to look for reasons to attribute information more often, more clearly, more generously.”

In my opinion, Tyndale’s statement is inadequate in at least three other ways.
The extent of the problem was not addressed adequately by Tyndale or Mark Driscoll. Neither Driscoll nor Tyndale addressed the many other instances of plagiarism and recycling which have come to light. The closest the statement came to such an acknowledgment was a vague reference to a review of other books.
Driscoll did not take direct responsibility for his books (“mistakes were made” – see also). According to the statement still up on the Mars Hill website (click Downloads), responsibility for the “citation errors” in the book on the Apostle Peter was assigned to a research assistant and a team of people. However, Driscoll’s name is on the label as the author. Furthermore the Tyndale statement refers to a review of Driscoll’s books that involve others:

We are also making changes to our content development process to avoid these mistakes in the future. In addition, we are working with all of our past publishers to review other books we have published. If other mistakes were made, we want to correct them as soon as possible.

What is a “content development process?” Is that the same thing as authoring a book? How many people are involved and what are they doing? If anything, this statement leaves unanswered many questions about ghostwriting and authorship by committee.
In my opinion, Tyndale’s investigation should have involved independent scholars/experts. When Jonah Lehrer was being investigated by Wired magazine, an independent scholar reviewed the allegations as well as other columns written by Lehrer. The independent investigation turned up many instances of plagiarism and recycling of previous material. For understandable reasons, Tyndale House had an interest in cleaning up the situation as soon as possible. They have financial interests in A Call to Resurgence and future books by Driscoll. Even with the best of intentions, these factors make objectivity difficult to achieve.
From a public relations standpoint, Tyndale House’s December statement may have helped quell media interest in the story, it did not adequately address the scope of the matter. It seems to me that there are still important questions to explore.
Next week, I intend to provide additional instances of inadequate citation and recycling without disclosure in the Driscolls’ book Real Marriage.
To see the material in A Call To Resurgence compared to Peter Jones’ work, click here.
For all posts on this topic, click here.

American Copy Editors Society: Leading The Charge Against Plagiarism

When Tyndale House first responded to allegations of plagiarism in A Call to Resurgence by Mark Driscoll, the publisher claimed that Driscoll’s citation of Peter Jones was proper and conformed to “market standards.” Many people disagreed with Tyndale which has raised questions about what “market standards” should be.
I learned yesterday about one effort to address the question of standards. I spoke to Neil Holdway, treasurer of the American Copy Editors Society (ACES) and an editor with the Chicago area Daily Herald. In April, 2013, ACES joined with nine other associations of journalists for the National Summit on Plagiarism and Fabrication which was a part of ACES annual conference. As a component of their efforts to raise awareness and suggest standards, the groups, along with 24 media and educational organizations, released an ebook about plagiarism titled Telling the Truth and Nothing But (download here).
I spoke with Neil about the Driscoll controversy, but in this post, I just want to raise awareness of the association’s efforts to address plagiarism in media. In the ebook, plagiarism is defined as

…presenting someone else’s language or work as your own. Whether it is deliberate or the result of carelessness, such appropriation should be considered unacceptable because it hides the sources of information from the audience. (p. 5)

The report also deals with recycling material.

The practice of reusing previously published material raises an intriguing question: Can one self-plagiarize? Perhaps a better way to frame the discussion is to consider the term “recycling material without disclosure,” as discussed in a Poynter Institute post about Jonah Lehrer’s serial reuse in The New Yorker and Wired of material he had previously written for other publications. By any name, what Lehrer did was wrong: In no case should journalists copy material they have written for previous employers. (p. 13)

Although the exact situation of recycling in material from book to book is not addressed by the ebook, Holdway told me that the principles about recycling which are outlined in the book could be applied to the case of Driscoll’s use of material from past books in newer ones. Perhaps with the efforts of ACES and like-minded groups, a consensus will develop relating to market standards on recycling.
Among many other questions, I asked Neil what his thoughts were about the allegations of plagiarism directed at Mark Driscoll. I will have his response on that subject in at least two future posts.  For now, I hope you will check out the ebook and related resources from ACES.

Writing Recycling: A New Wrinkle in the Mark Driscoll Plagiarism Controversy?

In 2012, journalist Jonah Lehrer came under fire for self-plagiarism.* Lehrer eventually lost his job due to recycling and inventing material, notably attributing false quotes to Bob Dylan. While writing for the New Yorker, Lehrer posted a column which began in nearly the same manner as a column published by the Wall Street Journal during the previous year. Jim Romenesko first reported Lehrer’s recycled material. To see how similar they are (nearly identical), you can go to Romenesko’s blog and/or compare the Wall Street Journal article with the New Yorker version. A lengthy description of recycling is provided by the Reluctant Habits blog.
Once the New Yorker learned of the reuse of material, the editor posted the following statement:

Editors’ Note: The introductory paragraphs of this post appeared in similar form in an October, 2011, column by Jonah Lehrer for the Wall Street Journal. We regret the duplication of material.

Eventually, it was learned that Lehrer had double dipped on other occasions. Although some complained about the term, “self-plagiarism,” his conduct was of intense interest to his peers. Lehrer eventually said about his actions, “It was a stupid thing to do and incredibly lazy and absolutely wrong.”
In summary, the publishers involved took the recycling seriously, they made readers aware of the duplication, and Lehrer said what he did was stupid, lazy and wrong.
It is unclear to me how the Christian publishing world regards recycling material when multiple publishers are involved. In this post, I am simply going to point out an occasion of recycling in Mark Driscoll’s books. I have been reading several of them, and I can tell you there are more instances. For now, I will stick with the case of Driscoll recycling material from Religion Saves: And Nine Other Misconceptions published by Crossway Books in 2009 into Real Marriage published by Thomas Nelson in 2012.
First, both books contain a description of pornography. They are nearly identical.**

In both books following the description of porn, Driscoll provides a summary of the aspects of pornography.  In Real Marriage, it comes on page 143.

As an aside, no experts are cited and I haven’t figured out where he got that list.
Now, here is the same material from Religion Saves published earlier by Crossway Books.

The passages are identical. Perhaps there is some undisclosed arrangement between the publishers, but I can’t find any permission or acknowledgment in Real Marriage that this material comes from a book published by Crossway.
In Real Marriage on page 113, Driscoll writes:

The life of a prostitute is incredibly dark: 62 percent report having been raped in prostitution. In one study, 75 percent of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide; prostituted women comprised 15 percent of all completed suicides reported by hospitals.

On page 140 in Religion Saves, the same opening sentence is written (“The life of a prostitute is incredibly dark”) with the same statistics, albeit with a few additional stats.
On page 112 of Real Marriage, Driscoll writes:

The sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s radically altered the sexual landscape of our nation, so that today sex before marriage and viewing pornography are the culturally accepted norm.

The identical sentence can be found on page 130 of Religion Saves.
Much of chapter 5 in Religion Saves is recycled in Real Marriage. In both, Driscoll cites Jim Dobson on the story of Ted Bundy, and Patrick Carnes on sexual addiction. He recycles the material on sexual addiction with the same sexual addition criteria list from Carnes. He has identical statements about pornography and lust. Much of the same ground is covered in both books with no mention in Real Marriage of the exact same material being first published by Crossway in 2009.
Jonah Lehrer found that recycling material (and other misdeeds) caused quite a stir among journalists and led to publishers pursuing vigorous public actions to protect their interests and reputations.  To me, the situations seem quite similar. It remains to be seen how Christian publishers will view extensive recycling of material from one publisher’s book to another by the same author.
 
*I first learned of the Lehrer story from Jake Dockter at The Great White Whale. In his piece Dockter asked many pointed questions based on what was known at the time. Many of those questions remain unanswered.
**I added this image as an update to the original article.

Mark and Grace Driscoll's Real Marriage Compared to Justin and Lindsey Holcomb's Rid of My Disgrace

Near the end of December, Becky Garrison wrote a piece in Religion Dispatches about the Mark Driscoll plagiarism controversy. In her piece, she referred to a book by Justin and Lindsey Holcomb titled Rid of My Disgrace:

And again, portions of Rid of My Disgrace (2011, Re:Lit), penned by Justin and Lindsey Holcomb, can be found in this book. (Chapter 7 of Real Marriage, contains unattributed passages from pages 16-17 and 27 of Rid of My Disgrace). In an ironic twist, the Resurgence store still sells this book even though Driscoll tried to blame Holcomb for the plagiarism found in the Trial book.

Yesterday, I noted that the Kindle version of Real Marriage has been slightly (but insufficiently) modified to mention the Driscoll’s use of Dan Allender’s work in The Wounded Heart. I wonder if the next Kindle correction will be a more adequate reflection of the debt the Driscolls owe to the Holcombs.
This case is an interesting one in that Real Marriage mentions the Holcombs many times. The Holcombs are mentioned in the Acknowledgments and their book is cited in the end notes. However, this situation demonstrates how an author can cite a source and still not give adequate credit. As I will show, Real Marriage needs to be corrected to properly and completely cite Rid of My Disgrace.
Probably the best way to do this is to provide a passage from Real Marriage followed by the source material from Rid of My Disgrace.
From page 125 in Real Marriage:
Page 27 in Rid of My Disgrace:

Here the Driscolls quote the Holcombs after they reword the section from the Holcomb’s book on definition of sexual assault. Note that the Holcombs footnote this section since they are reporting information and facts they gleaned elsewhere. The Driscolls simply rework material from the Holcomb’s book without attribution.
On page 126 of Real Marriage, the Driscolls cite Martin Luther:
The footnote #6 in the text does not go to the Holcomb’s book but instead to the original Martin Luther source, implying that the Driscolls located the quote.
The source of the Luther quote appears to be from page 17 of Rid of My Disgrace:

This is the same quote and it is hard to escape the suspicion that the Driscolls did not find the Luther quote independently but rather lifted it from Rid of My Disgrace. One can see from the footnotes that the source is the same. Note that the Holcombs appropriately cite the source where they found the quote.

Let me hasten to add that it is clear that the Driscolls appreciate the Holcomb’s work. The Holcombs are thanked in the Acknowledgments and they are quoted with appropriate citations in the same chapter where they are not cited adequately.  Given that the Holcomb’s book is sold by Mars Hill, they probably want people to buy it. Nonetheless, even though this may not have been intentional plagiarism, it is a matter that should be corrected by the publisher.
Given the scope of the issues I’ve reported here and in other posts, I think it is time for a more robust statement from Driscoll, Mars Hill and, in this case, Thomas Nelson. There appears to be a pattern. It may not be intentional. Not having Driscoll’s purported “gift of discernment,” I have no way to divine his motives. However, passing off other’s people work as your own is a serious matter and should be more seriously addressed.
For all posts on Driscoll and Mars Hill, click here.