Did you know that pastors can commit serial plagiarism now and just get away with it?
It’s true! If a pastor steals someone else’s intellectual property and falsely passes it off as his own, over and over again, it’s now just the equivalent of accidentally bumping into someone in a McDonald’s line. Harmless! You just say, “Oops! Didn’t mean to do that!” And that’s all you really need to do. You certainly wouldn’t get in any kind of real trouble for plagiarism under this new rule configuration.
How do I know pastors can plagiarize now without consequences? Because a number of Top Conservative Christian Men, including several “conservative” Southern Baptist leaders, have declared that this novel approach to dealing with a straight-up biblically disqualifying sin is now subculture celebrity-approved. And it’s all coincidentally inspired by the recent actions of their fellow Top Man, Southern Baptist pastor and former G3 Ministries board member Tom Buck.
Now you may find this novel idea to be insane, as I do, but that’s only because dinosaurs like us head-scratchingly believe that when 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 state that pastors are to be “blameless” and “above reproach,” then that’s what those passages literally mean. You may even believe that God laid out character requirements for pastors in order to protect His sheep from morally disqualified shepherds, but that seems rather harsh, doesn’t it?
Or you may say, “Hey, isn’t plagiarism a violation of the 8th, 9th and 10th commandments? After all, it is lying and stealing and rooted in the sin of coveting the honor that someone else rightly earned by writing something that’s better than what the plagiarist could write.” Silly you. That almost sounds like you expect the guy to fully repent and step down from the ministry! Or worse, get fired. But get with the times. That can’t happen if you’re a Top Conservative Christian Man!
So with that all in mind, from now on, if you’re a pastor who finds himself in hot water for stealing a lot of other people’s material out of books and sermons and presenting the material as your own, and people get wind of what you’ve done, I am pleased to present to you these new and improved action steps to save your own hide -- now endorsed by Top Conservative Christian Men and plagiarists everywhere!
Keep quiet as your church leaders “examine the matter” privately by consulting with “respected pastors outside the church,” because really, those biblical commandments against lying, stealing and coveting that God gave us and those clear-cut character requirements for a pastor that are listed in the New Testament need some shoring up with the opinions of Other Important Top Men who aren’t even in your congregation.
Breathe easier as your church excuses your actions by allowing you to define deviancy down (source for that famous phrase: Daniel Patrick Moynihan) by accepting as true your made-up and inaccurate definition of plagiarism – that verbatim plagiarism from Bible commentaries is acceptable-- which is totally at odds with any long-established, official plagiarism definitions recognized by either major American universities or news organizations.
Smile broadly as your church, which has now given you just a little tap on the wrist, coordinates your online PR with an Internet hack who has no journalism credentials but majors in regurgitating completely biased and one-sided propaganda narratives from Top Conservative Christian Men, just so he can feel like a “player” and get clicks on a shameless gossip site founded by a notoriously scandal-ridden and thoroughly disqualified pastor who is now an open white supremacist.
Watch and cheer as aforementioned Internet hack praises your church for letting you off the hook, while intensely attacking the Georgia church elders who chose to send out a dossier anonymously from another state, with detailed documentation of all your plagiarism, out of concern that you’d create an online firestorm against them if they identified themselves openly.
Hope people won’t notice that the reason the elders did this was because your own church gave you a pass, and the elders rightly noted that your ministry extends far beyond your local church walls into Top Conservative Christian Men circles and as a pastor who has spoken to many other Christians — who deserve to be informed of your moral failing — at outside ministry conferences.
Whoop as the Internet hack chastises the elders as hypocrites because they’d once ousted a ministry head for criticizing others via anonymous accounts online, all while the same hack completely minimizes all the documented evidence of plagiarism you committed, which is the entire story in the first place.
Pray no one remembers that the Internet hack himself was investigated by police for sending anonymous letters to school board members, complete with creepy pictures he took of all their homes.
Say nothing at all publicly about your scandal, and definitely don’t apologize for anything (that would be a bridge too far!). Simply emerge to thank your Top Conservative Christian Men pals on X — in what a cynic might suspect was a coordinated plan, but we all know that couldn’t possibly be — for posting that you’ve “repented” and that your plagiarism basically was no big deal, but boy, those evil elders who exposed you “egregiously” sinned!
Above all, draw no public attention to the fact that you’ve regularly condemned plagiarism committed by other people, and that a mere five years ago, you publicly thanked some writers for asserting that former Southern Baptist Convention president Ed Litton should resign … for committing plagiarism.
This whole thing is a fiasco in the truest sense of the term. And yet, if there is any silver lining, perhaps it might be the continued relegation of "Christian conference culture" to where it should be: ancillary but never substitutionary for the local church.