In mid-December, I wrote about Mark Driscoll’s use of Dan Allender’s material in Driscoll’s book Death By Love. Others have written about the lack of citation of Dan Allender’s work in Mark and Grace Driscoll’s book Real Marriage. In short, Allender refers to styles of relating often used by women who have suffered abuse — tough girl, party girl, good girl — in his book The Wounded Heart. The Driscoll’s use the same scheme to describe abuse victims in their book Real Marriage, but without attributing the terms or concepts to Allender. Wenatchee the Hatchet established that Grace Driscoll, at least, was familiar with Allender’s work prior to writing Real Marriage. However, in the print book, no reference to Allender can be found.
In contrast, the Kindle version being sold now does mention Allender. The Kindle edition adds Allender’s name and book title to the Acknowledgments section of the Kindle edition of the book:
We want to thank Dan Allender, whose book, The Wounded Heart, has helped shape our thinking about the effects of abuse.*
Here is an image of the print edition from Google books:
There is no mention of Allender on pages 221-222, and if you search the book, Allender does not turn up in the search results.
Now on the same page in the Acknowledgments section in the Kindle edition*, it looks like this:
Now Allender is mentioned between the Driscoll kids and the church planters.
I purchased Real Marriage on January 3, 2014, long after the lack of citation had been publicly discussed. Ebooks are very easy to change. However, making changes in the print edition is another matter. We may never know if this change was the result of conversations between NavPress and Mark Driscoll but the alteration does seem to be tacit acknowledgment that Allender’s work should have been cited. In any case, the gesture is nice, but insufficient. Allender’s book should be cited with a footnote where the material is used.
Given what I have found thus far, I suspect there will be more Kindle corrections.
*Driscoll, Mark; Driscoll, Grace (2012-01-03). Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together (p. 221). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
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