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.

Kindle Edition of Mark Driscoll’s Real Marriage Adds Dan Allender to Acknowledgments

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.
For all posts on Driscoll and Mars Hill, click here.

At Least One Fan Of Todd Starnes Is Not Happy With Alan Noble

Recently, fellow Patheos blogger Alan Noble wrote a post at Christ and Pop Culture titled, Todd Starnes Sold Us A War On Christianity. We Bought It. It has created a bit of a fuss among fans of Starnes, leading to, among other things, this love tweet from radio talk show host, Kevin McCullough:


and then


This tweet was directed to Mediaite editor Andrew Kirell who posted this article today supporting Noble.
Here is the opening to Noble’s article:

The media is filled with lies and liars. We all know this, so there’s no need for us to point out every lie told online. But some lies and some liars need to be called out. And when a liar identifies with my community–conservative evangelicals–and tells lies to my community repeatedly and without apology, influencing hundreds of thousands of people, that needs to be addressed.
Last week, Todd Starnes at FOX News published two articles on anti-Christian discrimination at Veterans Administrations hospitals this Christmas season. In both reports, Starnes lies and tactfully omits facts in order to deceive his audience, creating the impression that the government is at war with Christmas.

From there, Noble delivers a take-down of Starnes’ claims relating to Christmas and the Veteran’s Administration. In this case, Starnes did what he has done before, cite only part of an official statement when he had access to the entire statement. The part he cited fit his war on Christians narrative. The part he left out would have weakened his case significantly.
McCullough must like Starnes’ narrative but that does not give him grounds to attack Noble’s faith commitment. Noble used strong words to disagree with Starnes but he did not say Starnes was not a Christian. I know this attack; it is similar to the one David Barton used against me when his book, The Jefferson Lies, was pulled from publication in August, 2012. McCullough should advance some evidence if he thinks Noble is wrong. My guess is he won’t do it because he doesn’t have it.
Starnes unnecessarily and unhelpfully fuels the fears of Christians who are worried about their religious liberty. There are sufficient concerns to address without making things seem worse than they are. Given Starnes’ track record, one should not take his columns at face value. Starnes’ fans (and his network) should turn their frustration on the source and not on the people who provide the whole story.
Previous columns on this topic:
Todd Starnes and the Pentagon Still Not Together on the Facts
Air Force Statement on Religious Proselytizing and Religious Materials on Desks
On the Military and Religious Proselytizing: Military Spokesman’s Original Comments Used Out of Context
Is the Military Preparing to Court Martial Christians?

Dreamweaver: The Visions of Mark Driscoll

Although cooling off some, the controversy surrounding Mark Driscoll’s publications is not over. Over the last 10 days, two more publishers disclosed that reviews of Driscoll’s books are in progress. I’ll have more to say about another Driscoll book soon.

Late last week, Driscoll was briefly in the news for another reason. The New York Times ran a story identifying him as one of a new breed of megachurch leaders who embrace the teachings of John Calvin.  While I understand that Driscoll’s teachings on redemption appear to be consistent with Calvinist doctrine, I was surprised to see him in the list of exemplars for two reasons. One, the Gospel Coalition seemed to declare him to be outside their camp via Jared Wilson’s December call to repentance. And two, Driscoll’s teaching on demons and spiritual gifts seems outside the Calvinism mainstream (and as I will show below, his stories don’t always match up).  I think he could be called a Calvismatic.

I should mention that I don’t consider myself a student of religious movements and don’t know that much about who is on what Christian team. I am not making a scholarly statement here. Rather, as an evangelical for just over 40 years, I speak from my experience with those who proudly wear the label Calvinist. I can’t think of anyone, other than Driscoll, that embraces both Calvinism and what appear to me to be apostolic spiritual warfare teachings at the same time. There may be many, but in my narrow experience, I can’t think of others. I feel sure my readers will educate me if I am incorrect.

With that said, I will introduce a video that really bothered me when I first saw it last week. Still bothers me. This is Driscoll teaching on spiritual warfare (you can review the transcript at this link):

This video was posted to You Tube by Phillip Johnson in August, 2011. The teaching was originally recorded at Mars Hill in early 2008 as a part of a series on spiritual warfare and as far as I can tell first discussed critically at Here I Blog on August 4, 2011.

In the video, Driscoll says he tells people that they have been abused. The people may have no memory of any such event but Driscoll says he can see it happening. Furthermore, he says that, at times, he sees the sins, specifically sins involving sex and aggression, of his congregation and others who cross his path. In this clip and elsewhere, Driscoll doesn’t claim to always be correct but is clear about his belief that his visions are from God and therefore true.  He said he sees the actual acts of others as if on a screen in front of him that others can’t see.

On many levels, I find this problematic and more troubling than the plagiarism controversy. The potential for error, trauma and false reports of assault is great. He even tells his audience that some of them can do the same things he can do. As a psychology prof, I cringe at this video as well as the other similar material I have found on the Mars Hill website.

In my experience, intuitive people do seem to have insight into feelings of others. However, when making interpretations, they respond to non-verbal cues and make inferences from little bits of material presented by clients. It is a natural process, even if not well understood. When pressed, intuitive therapists can tell you what they saw and heard which led to amazing guesses about the actions and feelings of another person. Such experiences happen with Christians and non-Christians alike; one does not need to invoke angels or demons as explanation.

The skeptic in me really wants to meet some of the people Driscoll describes.  In his sermons, there are several other illustrations of what Driscoll sometimes calls the gift of discernment, sometimes the gift of prophetic dreams. In November 2013, the blogger Wenatchee the Hatchet described two of Driscoll’s prophetic dreams,  both involving worship leaders at Mars Hill. The post raises questions about how both dreams could be true.

Sometimes the accounts differ significantly. For instance, in 2005, Driscoll said that in the early days of Mars Hill, an Asian family drove all night to visit Mars Hill Church because God told them to ask Driscoll what they should do about their current church. Here is the account from the 2005 sermon:

I had one occasion where I actually did interpret a guy’s dream. It was the strangest dream. It was at the old building. We had six services, and I was between services. And this guy drove – he came into the church. And he was an Asian guy from Canada. He had his wife and a few kids. They all looked very, very tired. He came up to me. He said, “I really need to meet with you right now.” I said, “Man, I just preached three. I gotta get a bite to eat. I gotta preach three more. I really can’t leave right now.” He said, “No, we just drove all the way from northern Canada. We haven’t slept all night.” Apparently God’s not in Canada. God has to come down.

So, I tell this guy. I’m like, “All right, cool. We’ll do that. Now tell me your story.” So, he tells me his dream. And his wife’s literally falling asleep. His kids are exhausted. They’ve been up all night driving. It was the weirdest thing cause I don’t know how or why. I just told him. “Well, here’s what it means, and here’s what God’s gonna do. And you need to quit working at this church. God’s gonna have you hired at this church. And these people are hard hearted. And God doesn’t want you to serve them anymore because he’s gonna judge them, but he wants to take care of you and your family. So he wants to move you on before he judges.”

And I just talked for about 10, 15 minutes. And he’s like, “How do you know that?” I was like, “I have no idea.” I never met this guy. I don’t know this guy. I don’t know anything about him. And he says, “Well, then that’s the interpretation.” His wife gave me a big hug. She’s crying. She says, “You know, that’s what we needed to hear.” They get in the car and leave. They go back to Canada. I never heard from them again.

In a 2006 sermon, Driscoll tells the story again, but this time he knows how things turned out.

I had another one, when we were over at the old building. The church was just starting to grow. We had a couple services and I remember I did one of the morning services and I was getting ready to do the other one and this Asian family walks in and they all look exhausted and they’re all tired and the kids are kinda falling asleep on mom and she looks tired and dad’s there and he says, “I – we need to meet with you right now.” I said, “I can’t meet right now, dude. I just got done with one service. I’m doing another service. I don’t do meetings right now. I just got, like, a little bit of time between the services.” He says, “God told us to come to you. We need the word from a prophet.” I was like, “Well, if you find one, you know, tell him I said ‘Hi!’ and send him over. I got stuff I wanna ask him, too. I don’t got anything for you, man. I’m not the prophet.” He says, “No, God said you’re the prophet and you have the word for us.” I said, “Well, where are you from?” He said, “We drove all night from Canada.” Apparently there are no prophets in Canada, so they had to come down. I said, “Okay.” I said, “You drove all night?” He said, “We drove all night,” from somewhere up in central Canada. I said, “Okay, so that explains why you all look so tired. You’ve been in the car all night.” So I didn’t know anything about this guy. I said, “Well, I’ll meet with you for a few minutes, pray for you. I mean, least I could do, you drove all night with your family.

Sat them on the couch. Prayed. Looked at them. Then went off on this whole rant. I said, “Look, the church you’re in is a Godless church. They have a hard heart. Some of the leaders have hidden, unconfessed, unrepentant sin. They are just not participating with God. God needs to judge those leaders, remove them, cleanse and purify the church, then if they are repentant, he will grow it. If not, he will shut it down. You’re in the same situation as Revelation 2 and 3. You, however, keep holding on to the church, trying to salvage it and save it and make it work because you’re being proud and you think that it’s a reflection of you. It’s not a reflection of you, it’s a reflection of Jesus. You need to get out of the way. Quit your job. Jesus has another job for you at this other church. You take that job. He’ll bless you there. Get out of the way. Let him deal with this church. That’s what his word is to you. You’re a pastor, right?” I mean, I didn’t know. I gave him this whole thing and I’m like, “Are you a pastor?” He’s like, “Yeah.” I was like, “Then that’s what it is.” So – and he gives me a big hug. He says, “Okay. That’s what we’ve been wrestling with. We didn’t – I want to leave but I didn’t know if it was me or the Lord that was moving me on and I needed confirmation.” His wife’s crying. Gives me a big hug. She says, “In my heart, I knew that’s what God had for us, but I didn’t wanna tell my husband because I wanted him to hear from God. Thank you so much.” I pray for them.

They go home and I see them a few years later at a conference. He said, “Everything happened just like you said. I’m at the other church. We’re happy. It’s growing. God’s blessing it. Massive sin came out in the leadership of the other church. They now are in the process of either repenting or not and the church is gonna live or die. It’s teetering on the edge, just like you said.” I’m like, “Okey dokie. Okay.” You know, I don’t understand this all the time.

In the first account, the man has a dream which Driscoll interprets. In second, Driscoll doesn’t mention the dream but instead provides a prophetic word. More significantly, in the first account, Driscoll says he never heard from them again. In the second, he says he saw them “a few years later” and got confirmation that his prophecy was correct. Which account is true?

Perhaps there is an innocent explanation for the differences. Perhaps, Driscoll’s memory failed him in 2005 but he remembered more of the details when he retold the story the second time. It seems unlikely that one would forget such a thing but I can’t take any position on motive or accuracy. However, I can point out that memory is subject to bias and misinformation and Driscoll’s differing stories provides a caution about relying on the dreams and visions of others. How does one know when he is getting it right or not?

During the controversy over repressed memories during the 1990s, many therapists told clients that the depression, anxiety or other symptoms were probably related to and could be explained by experiences of child abuse. Even though clients had no memory of such events, therapists pressed on confidently with the narrative. Some clients “remembered” horrible abuse and some had great confidence in their “memories.” Some, like the woman in the video below, lost families over faulty narratives derived from a therapist’s efforts to read their minds.

Even though bloggers and others have raised these concerns previously, I can’t see where they were ever addressed by Driscoll or Mars Hill Church. The sermon material remains live on the Mars Hill website so it seems fair to believe Driscoll and the church still approves it. It is hard for me to see how this teaching can be considered mainstream.

For all posts on Driscoll and Mars Hill, click here.