Saturday Special: The Ed Litton Sermon Plagiarism Scandal

Welcome to a Saturday special edition of When We Understand the Text.

Looking at current events and responding to them with a solid understanding of scripture. Visit our website at www .utt

.com Here once again is Pastor Gabe. The Ed Litton Sermon Plagiarism Scandal.

Pastor Gabe's blog for December 15, 2021. In 1

Timothy 6, 13 -15, the Apostle Paul said to his protege Timothy, I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and to Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our

Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time, he who is the blessed and only

Sovereign, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. I have been asked to provide an orderly account of the

Sermon Plagiarism Scandal involving Dr. Ed Litton, pastor of Redemption Church in Sarah Land, Alabama, and the current president of the

Southern Baptist Convention. I published a guest article in July from Toby E. Smith, pastor of Memorial Baptist Church in Newcastle, Indiana.

You can still find that article here, but I had yet to chronicle my own account of these events in which

I have been involved. The student handbook of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary defines plagiarism as, quote, the use or theft of intellectual property without attribution, both a moral and educational transgression, unquote.

Of this transgression, Dr. Litton has yet to repent, and Southern Baptists have done little to hold him accountable.

Will Southern Baptist churches, seminaries, and other ministries obey the call to keep the counsel of God unstained and free from reproach?

The following account contains links to all sources, including videos that demonstrate

Litton's plagiarism of the sermons he stole. If you listen to the audio of this article, you will hear more broad examples of Litton's plagiarism and the dishonest ways he has attempted to cover himself.

I have also included trustworthy words from other teachers commenting on the matter.

As an aside, lest anyone say that I have a responsibility to contact Dr. Litton first, I attempted to open a dialogue with him privately on July 8th.

There were two witnesses to this engagement. Dr. Litton did not respond. I have no personal beef with Dr.

Litton. This is not an act of rancor or spite. Rather, my commitment is to the stewardship from God that is by faith.

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

1 Timothy 1, 4 -5 The Birth of a Scandal On June 15th, 2021,

Dr. Ed Litton was elected president of the Southern Baptist Convention at the annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee.

Leading up to the meeting, Litton received criticism for letting his wife preach at Redemption Church, where Litton is pastor.

In this series that we've been doing for five weeks, this is our last sermon. Thank you, Jesus, okay? I had written an article entitled,

Women Pastors Are a Fundamental Problem for Southern Baptists, published on June 7th, which mentioned that Litton has had his wife preach sermons on Sunday morning.

This is contrary to what the Bible says and our statement of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000.

Article 6 says, while both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastors is limited to men as qualified by scripture.

Upon being elected president of the SBC, it was soon discovered that Redemption Church had a heretical sounding statement on their website concerning the

Trinity. It was literally the first statement under what we believe. Pastor Alan Nelson of Perryville, Arkansas, highlighted the problem in a tweet shared on June 16th, the day after Litton was elected president.

The statement read, quote, God is the creator and ruler of the universe. He has eternally existed in three persons, the

Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These three are co -equal parts of one

God, unquote. This is called partialism, which Athanasius wrote was condemned at the

Council of Nicaea. God is without parts, he said, lest it be assumed that the

Father, Son and Spirit each make up a third of the triune Godhead. The error on Redemption Church's website was likely a mistake.

Not that Litton actually believes something heretical about the Trinity. Nonetheless, it was still wrong.

And when it was rightly criticized on social media, the church's what we believe page was scrubbed without explanation.

This way of responding to criticism would come up again. On June 21st, a friend of mine had told me that Ed Litton preached a sermon on Romans 1 at the start of 2020.

And in the sermon, he said that the Bible whispers about sexual sin. This is the same thing

J .D. Greer had said to his church when he preached on Romans 1, a chapter of the

Bible that very loudly condemned sexual immorality, especially homosexuality. The Bible says loud and clear, flee from sexual immorality, 1

Corinthians 6, 18, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous,

Hebrews 13, 4. Here are the clips of Greer and Litton saying that the

Bible whispers about sexual sin. Jen Wilkin, who's one of our favorite Bible teachers here and who's actually leading our women's conference.

She said, she said, we ought to whisper about what the Bible whispers about. We ought to shout about what it shouts about.

And the Bible appears more to whisper when it comes to sexual sin compared to its shouts about materialism and religious pride.

In the Bible, sexual sin is whispered compared to the shout

God makes about greed and judgmentalism. I shared the Litton clip on Twitter and said twice in a row, the

Southern Baptist Convention has elected a president who teaches that the Bible whispers about sexual sin.

Wouldn't you think that appointing leaders who preach that the Bible whispers about sexual sin is the wrong way to fight sex abuse?

That following Thursday evening, I received an email from a listener of my podcast, sharing with me a video he made comparing

Greer and Litton sermons on Romans 1. They were so alike, it looked like Litton had plagiarized

Greer. I asked the creator if he was OK with me sharing the video on social media, and he said that was why he made it.

The next morning, June 25th, I tweeted the following. A viewer named Jacob saw my tweet where Ed Litton says

God whispers about sexual sin, just as J .D. Greer taught a year before. He edited both

Greer and Litton's sermons together, and they're really, really close. Watch.

And I linked to the video entitled, Litton and Greer, Borrowing or Plagiarism?

Here is a portion of that video. We'll give you a warning here that this might be the toughest week that we will have in the book of Romans.

This may be one of the toughest passages we face in the book of Romans. So, in fact, let's just sort of loosen things up right now.

Everybody turn right now to your neighbor. Look them in the eyes. If you know them, put your hand on their shoulder and say, this is going to be a really tough week for you,

OK? And tell them, say, I'm praying for you to have the faith and humility to receive this word.

I want you to turn to your neighbor right now, and I want you to say, I know this sermon is going to be really tough for you, but I'm here praying that you will listen and obey whatever

God says. Go ahead, do that right now. But y 'all, we believe that God's word is good, do we not? You see, we believe that God's word is good.

I compared it to if the earth were to say to the sun, I am sick and tired of you being in the middle of the solar system.

If the earth were to ask the sun in our solar system, I'm sick and tired of floating out here in nothingness, surrounding you constantly.

I want to be the center of this solar system. The sun might just say to the earth, all right, have it your way.

The earth is 30 ,000 times smaller than the sun and would not have the ability to keep all the planets in orbit.

And so the solar system would begin to unravel simply because the sun gave to the earth what it asked for.

Folks, our entire solar system would fall apart. Why? Because the earth doesn't have the power of light, and it doesn't have the power of gravitational force to hold this solar system in existence.

Oh, sexual disorder. That was the first thing. Verses 26 and 27. Now we've got economic disorder.

There's economic disorder. Look at verse 29. Social disorder. He says there's social disorder.

Social disorder. Just think Facebook. That's just on Facebook. Then you've got spiritual disorder.

There's spiritual disorder there. You could think of that as family disorder. And there's family disorder.

They disobey their parents. You see, there are three ways I see us really going wrong with this in the church at large.

I'm going to tell you three ways I think we've gone wrong. Number one, we believe that God doesn't really care about this.

It's that we don't think God cares about this issue. The gospel message is not let the gay become straight.

The gospel message is let the dead become alive. And the gospel message is not let the gay get straight.

The gospel message is let the dead come to life. Which leads me to the second way that I see us going wrong here.

Number two, we think it's the worst sin. Here's the second thing I think we do, we go wrong.

And that is thinking homosexuality is the worst of all sins. The tweet and the video exploded and quickly exposed a scandal.

That same day, more people started looking into Lytton's sermon archive. And it turned out that he had plagiarized multiple sermons by Greer.

The videos that came out revealed that Lytton had done more than plagiarized Greer's teaching. He was even making

Greer's personal experience stories his own personal experience stories.

Listen to this. You know, when I took driver's head, I was thinking about this the other day. Because my daughters are about this age where they're getting into this.

And driver's head, I had, I don't, I think they still do it. But the car that I took driver's head in had the guy sitting next to me had this big old brake.

That's all he had. Do you all have this? The big old brake coming out. And it meant that he could stop that car anytime he wanted. In fact, he did it like after we'd been out about five minutes just to show me that he had it.

So I wanted to turn and he just like slammed on that brake. You know, slam in there. And what he was showing me was, you think you're in control of this car.

And I'm letting you drive, but I can stop this car anytime I want to. I took driver's head in high school.

That was a trip. I'll never forget the guy who was teaching me. I noticed he had a strange thing over just underneath the glove box.

There was this brake. And when I first pulled out of the parking lot, he stomped on it to show me who really boss was.

And I'll never forget that. When you come to Christ, you didn't come, you basically turn over the brake.

And you're like, because I would describe probably some of our spiritual lives that way. As if Jesus is speaking to you.

And you're like, yeah, yeah, let's do that. Let's go over here. That sounds awesome. I'll do that. But every once in a while, you're like, nope. You push that brake in.

And the car comes to a halt because you've never actually surrendered it to him. You've kept that brake right in place.

To be surrendered to Jesus means you take the brake away. Many of us see our relationship to Christ that way.

And I'm not talking about you're the student driver. You're the guy with the brake. And to come to Christ and to surrender to him means that you give him the steering wheel.

But you need to uninstall that brake, dude. You need to stop slamming on it every time God starts moving in your life.

But ultimately, he had the veto power. He had not surrendered the car to me. Until you surrender your brake to the

Holy Spirit of God. Friend, you're vetoing God. Who do you think you are? Sometimes when

Greer would quote someone like Charles Spurgeon, Lytton would quote it too. But he wouldn't reference the quote as being from Spurgeon.

So he was taking quotes from other preachers and repeating them as if they were his own words.

Listen to these two examples. Tim Keller outlines this passage.

He said this basic passage basically divides into three sections. He said verses 7 through 13 are going to describe a battle that you can't win.

Verses 14 through 25 describe the battle that you can't lose. And then verses 1 through 6 is going to give you an analogy that shows you how to make the transition between the two.

Between the battle that you can't win and the battle that you can't lose. I'm going to kind of follow that general breakdown of the passage.

I'm going to read verses 1 through 6 first simply because they come first in the chapter. But I'm not really going to comment on them until the very end.

Because they're really just Paul's answer to the dilemma that he sets up. Paul tells us about this battle within.

One you cannot win. And another one you cannot lose. That's really the two points of the message today.

There's a battle you cannot win, Paul says. And there's a battle you cannot lose in Jesus Christ.

Now verses 1 through 6 we'll come back to at the end to show you. Because his illustration makes a bridge from those who cannot win the battle to those who cannot lose the battle.

And that's where God wants you and I to be. John Newton is expressing this as the pastor.

And he says, here's my conclusion. My conclusion is that growing in grace in this life means getting, we think, excuse me.

He said, I always assumed that growing in grace meant that I would get to a place where I no longer felt like I needed that much grace.

He said, what growing in grace actually is on this side of the resurrection means growing in our awareness of our need for grace.

In fact, if you want to write this down, these are my words but I'm summarizing what he says. Growth in grace means growing in your awareness of your need of it, not getting to a place where you no longer feel like it's necessary.

Whatever my struggle with sin is. I want you to look at this statement.

Growing in grace means you grow in your awareness of your need for grace.

Not that you've arrived at a place that you will no longer need grace. The growth of a scandal.

Redemption Church responded the way they did to the faith statement controversy. They began scrubbing their website.

Scores of sermons were either deleted or hidden from public access. On Saturday, June 26, the very next day after the plagiarism scandal broke,

Lytton released a 400 -word statement explaining his actions. The statement was published on the church's website.

Yesterday, some questions arose about a sermon I delivered in January 2020 on Romans 1 addressing the sin of homosexuality,

Lytton said. Specifically, there were concerns about similarities with a sermon delivered by J .D.

Greer a year earlier. Lytton said that he used Greer's sermon with his permission.

He went on to say, Attempting an apology, he said,

I felt it was important to address this in order to provide the truth and to take responsibility for places where I should have been more careful."

Greer received Lytton's statement as gracious and humble words. Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, said to Lytton, Thank you, my friend.

I appreciate your humility, transparency, and integrity. The scandal made

Newsweek magazine. In a story they published the following Monday, June 28, I was quoted in the article saying,

The following Thursday, July 1, The Washington Times reported that a new statement appeared on Redemption Church's website.

It said, However, when

Lytton was asked about this, Lytton told the Washington Times his congregation had removed dozens of his old sermons from its website over issues of web hosting capacity and a hosting transition.

Redemption's attempt at covering for their pastor was all for naught. Most, if not all, of the sermons had already been downloaded, and more plagiarism videos were published in the coming weeks.

Beyond plagiarizing one series of 46 sermons, which is bad enough, it turns out that Lytton had been plagiarizing

Greer since at least October 25, 2015. And Greer was not the only pastor

Lytton plagiarized. He and his wife, Kathy, preached a sermon together in May of 2012, plagiarizing a sermon that Tim Keller had preached on marriage back in 1991.

Lytton's plagiarism goes back nearly a decade. Listen to these sermon clips between Tim Keller, the first voice that you'll hear, and Ed Lytton, and you'll also hear his wife

Kathy. Tonight I want to get to the third.

And the first two are the power of marriage and the definition of marriage.

We're going to recap the last two messages, the power of marriage, the definition of marriage, and the priority of marriage.

The essence of marriage is a covenant, a legal, legal commitment. The essence of marriage, we said last week, is a legal commitment, a binding covenant with one another.

What is a legal, what makes a marriage a marriage? What makes a marriage a marriage? A priest can marry, a minister can marry, a justice of the peace.

Marriage is marriage. It doesn't matter whether it's a captain on a ship. It doesn't matter whether it's a justice of the peace.

Some people say, well, I mean, I got married by a priest. Do I get married by a pastor, a justice of the peace, a judge, or a sea captain?

I mean, does it matter where you get married? I don't think that it matters who performs the ceremony.

What is it that makes you married? What makes you married is this, a permanent and exclusive public legal commitment to share your lives together, all aspects of it.

It's got to be permanent, and it's got to be exclusive. Really, what is marriage? It is a permanent, exclusive, legal relationship.

Some people say it's time to have renewable contract marriages. You get married for three years, and you have an option for three more.

You've heard that. Now, that might be interesting, but that's not a marriage. What's actually happening with the Y generation, and it's quite frightening, is that we're now hearing suggested that what marriage needs to be now defined as is maybe a three -year contract with a three -year option.

In other words, a three -year contract with a three -year option for good behavior. That's not biblical marriage.

What absorbs it? What absorbs it is the servant heart. And let me give you three constituent parts to it. The ability to hear criticism without being crushed.

There are three things that reveal whether or not we have a servant's heart, and these are three important statements.

And the first one is the ability to hear criticism and correction without being crushed. We know that we have a servant heart.

Secondly, the ability to give criticism without crushing. The second indicator is the ability to give criticism and correction without crushing.

Thirdly, the ability to forgive people without residual anger. And the third feature that reveals whether or not we have a servant heart is the ability to forgive without lingering anger.

That's what I mean by a servant heart, the ability to take your mind off yourself. A servant heart is the ability to take your mind off of yourself.

In November of 2020, Ed Litton did an interview with Sermonary about healthy sermon preparation.

You can't make this stuff up. Litton said in the interview that he used to lie to people when he talked about his sermon prep time.

To be very honest, I used to lie. I used to tell people, you know, 24 hours of sermon, you know, you can spend too much time.

You're dorking around doing something else with your head. And by the way, let me say this too.

When you're younger, it's going to take longer. The older you get, and it's not that you're pulling up old stuff, but there is a resource of material, and there's connectivity there that will come.

But I would say eight to 10 hours average, eight to 10 hours.

And not all of that is some of this exegetical work getting in the dirt. Some of it is organizing the thought.

Later in the interview, he did a segment on storytelling, and he shared an example of a story that he came up with for a sermon.

Listen to this. Yeah, it's interesting. I preached a sermon recently where I opened up. I think this may have been the one you were talking about, but I opened it with a story of a

Roman soldier that I made up. And what I took is some ideas that I know are true, and he encounters this boy outside of Nazareth, and the boy, he's with a gaggle of Jewish boys, and when they see that he's a

Roman, they start throwing rocks at him, but not this kid. And he wants to get one of them to carry his backpack one mile, because he could do that.

That's the rule of the Roman road. And this one kid volunteered. He talks, asks him questions about himself, is interested in his life, talked to him about God.

They're on this trip, and he goes to the first mile marker. He thinks he's going to drop his backpack, and the kid doesn't. He keeps walking.

He goes the second mile, third mile, fourth mile, fifth mile. Finally, the guy stops and says, go home. Anyway, it makes an impression on this young Roman soldier.

Twenty years later, he's a centurion. And he gets a note that he has to go do an execution, goes up there, and I talked about his eyes.

He sees something in his eyes, and he sees a smile on his face, believe it or not, even while he's being executed.

And it stirs that memory, and he begins to consider it. And then he says, obviously, this was the son of God.

So that was an introduction tool. Sorry.

And that sounds like somebody needs to buy the movie rights to that. If someone did make a movie out of that story, they might need to give credit to OS Hawkins, who imagined a similar story in Chapter 34 of his book,

The Joshua Code. You can still find the interview Lytton did with Sermonary, but you cannot find those two portions of the interview

I just played, the part where Lytton said that he used to lie about his sermon prep time, and the part where he tells the story taken from Hawkins.

Sermonary scrubbed them from the interview. I have an ear trained for audio editing, and I can tell you exactly where the edits are in the interview.

Sermonary tried to hide these segments, but I still have them. Props to Pastor Tom Buck for the reference to the

Hawkins book. The response to the scandal. While Lytton's friends were willing to help him hide his offenses, his tactics turned to deflection and blame.

On July 6th, WKRG, a CBS affiliate in Alabama, did a feature on Lytton as the new president of the

Southern Baptist Convention. The plagiarism scandal was brought up in the interview. Listen in.

Lytton is also seeing how brutal things can be as the leader of the largest Protestant group, less than two weeks after becoming president.

You've been charged with plagiarism. Allegations Lytton lifted passages in sermons from his predecessor at the convention,

J .D. Greer. In a statement, Lytton said he had permission from Greer to use those passages, and Greer agreed.

And where did those charges come from? Do you know? No, they're unnamed. That's part of the problem. So unnamed sources are presenting these things, which should make everybody take a pause.

That is just a lie. Those sources are not unnamed, and they never have been.

My name has been on those charges from the very first video. My friend Justin Peters did a video which has been viewed nearly 100 ,000 times.

Tom Askell, James White, Jim Osman, Josh Bice, Phil Johnson, dozens of others, have tested and reproved

Lytton over plagiarism. That aside, even if the sources were anonymous, why should that matter?

Is a liar not a liar until someone calls him a liar to his face? No, he's a liar because he tells lies.

This is nothing but a deceptive deflection. Lytton is attempting to say that he's not the dishonest one.

His examiners are. In a September episode of Mortification of Spin, Dr. Carl Truman, professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College, said that Ed Lytton has become a laughingstock.

Listen to this segment of that program between Dr. Carl Truman and his co -host,

Pastor Todd Pruitt. Anybody following recent events in the Southern Baptist Convention will know that the newly appointed president of the convention,

Pastor Ed Lytton, has been engulfed in a plagiarism scandal that, to put it politely, has made him a laughingstock,

I think. There have been a series of videos that have come out online where his sermons have been interspliced with the sermons of among,

I think the most prominent one is the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, J .D.

Greer, where repeated sections of sermons have been taken virtually word for word from the sermons of Greer.

And it raises an interesting question because Todd and I were talking before the program and both of us agreed that, and this will come as no surprise to our listeners or anybody who's ever heard us preach, that neither of us has ever actually had an original thought in a sermon whatsoever.

All of our sermons are profoundly dependent upon the wisdom of others.

But there is a difference between building your sermon on the wisdom of others, using commentaries, listening to other people's sermons, seeing how they've handled the text, getting insights into what the biblical authors meant or what applications might be useful to draw from a particular passage.

There's a difference between what I would regard as competent and appropriate sermon preparation to make sure that what you present to your people is worth hearing and straightforward, to use the

English vernacular, knocking off somebody else's sermon to save you some prep time during the week.

Todd, take us through why plagiarizing sermons is so egregious.

Well, you know, this thing with the recently elected president of the Southern Raps Convention is really,

I mean, it's embarrassing. He ought to be deeply humiliated. I'm sure he is humiliated.

I'm sure he is embarrassed, although he's not stepping down. And as you mentioned, this was not some unattributed quote in one sermon.

These are entire sermons, entire sermon series that were just lifted from another preacher.

And and that's as you suggested, that's entirely different from the normal work of sermon preparation, where we are hopefully researching numerous commentaries, both newer and older, seeking to find the best wisdom from past generations of Bible interpreters and preachers as we because one of the things a preacher does not want to do, at least a good preacher doesn't want to do a faithful preacher, doesn't want to come up with an entirely original interpretation of a scripture passage.

Now, those are usually bad. Those are usually bad sermons. There's a reason why nobody's thought of it.

Exactly. And one of the reasons why good preachers do consult numerous commentaries is to to make sure that we're not being sinfully innovative, that we're not inventing new doctrines or taking the scripture far afield from what the church has historically affirmed.

But that's not plagiarizing. That's making sure that we are continuing to pass along the faith that was once delivered.

What we're seeing with, for instance, Pastor Lytton and and others who have done this is straight up sermon stealing.

You know, if you're knocking off somebody else's sermons and presenting it as your own, that's dishonest.

This is outrageous. It speaks of, well, it speaks of matters of honesty.

It speaks to matters of laziness. I think it also speaks to matters, I would say here, of stupidity.

If you're going to plagiarize a sermon, why plagiarize a sermon from somebody who's online and high profile?

Exactly. You know, it's if you're going to plagiarize and I'm not recommending that, by the way, if you are dishonest, but not stupid and you steal from a source where it's not going to be easy to trace.

Exactly. Don't steal from Tim Keller or David Platt or J .D. Greer or Mark Driscoll.

Don't don't steal from those guys. Steal, steal from me or Todd. People that nobody listens to.

Dr. John MacArthur agreed. A pastor who steals someone else's sermons is lazy and incompetent.

Listen to what Dr. MacArthur had to say. Talk about getting your own sermons. What do you think when you heard all that stuff about about plagiarism by these pastors?

So why does a pastor plagiarize? Why does he use someone else's sermon? Why does that happen and how is it he's lazy and incompetent?

Well, besides that, I'm going to go third point and unsanctified.

OK, I think you become a showman at that point.

You're you're an actor. You're you're playing a part. You're playing a role. You know, the one thing that expository preaching does.

That the that is apart from the congregation is it sanctifies the pastor. The relentless study of the word of God is how

God sanctifies and protects the pastor. So when you're just opening your iPad and reading somebody else's sermon, you've never been exposed to the sanctifying work of the word to say nothing about the fact that you're playing a role.

And you're an actor. You're not a true messenger from the Lord. I think for many men in ministry, there's an unwillingness to be disciplined at that point.

Because being an expositor is work and it's relentless work because you got to keep doing it week after week after week after week.

And but it's the most rewarding thing. It's there's no honesty in a man who does that, that that's there's no honesty.

That's that's fraud, ministerial fraud. Not only is there reluctance to be disciplined, there's reluctance to do any disciplining.

Most of the rebukes have come from outside Southern Baptist leadership. But those outside the

SBC can't do anything to discipline Lytton. It has to come from inside the SBC. More to the point.

It should come from his own church. Where is the discipline? No Southern Baptist seminary would ever allow a student to commit even a fraction of what

Lytton has done. According to SBTS, his student handbook. It doesn't matter whether a student has permission to use someone else's work or they steal it.

Without proper attribution, plagiarism is both a moral and educational transgression.

If it amounts to theft, the handbook calls this breaking the Eighth Commandment. You shall not steal discipline for plagiarism includes reprimand or probation for a first offense or getting expelled for repeat offenses.

Yet the Southern Baptist seminaries have done little to call the president of the SBC to correction.

On June 26th, Danny Aiken expressed his unconditional support of Lytton. On July 5th,

Jason K. Allen, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, denounced pastors who preach other pastors sermons, though he didn't say anything about Ed Lytton by name.

It took until September 1st for Dr. Albert Moeller, president of SBTS, to address the scandal directly.

And it was in response to a question a student had during a live president's forum. A preacher should not be preaching manufactured sermons or someone else's sermons,

Dr. Moeller said. This is a grave issue and a frontline issue, he said.

A doctorate was once rescinded by SBTS when an offense of plagiarism was uncovered.

With regards to Lytton specifically, Dr. Moeller said, We were in an election together and he won.

The Southern Baptist Convention elected Dr. Lytton as president. And no doubt because of his many gifts.

And this is an issue that I have to leave between the

Southern Baptist Convention and its president. Two weeks after Dr. Moeller's comments,

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary hosted Lytton in a chapel service for a live conversation with President Adam Greenway.

About seven minutes of the one -hour discussion focused on the sermon plagiarism controversy.

Leading into that part of the interview, Greenway said the following. Dr. Lytton, you've been our

SBC president since your election in June. Three months. And I think it's fair to say that it has been fairly dull, boring, and uninteresting for you since you became

SBC president. That's a joke in case you were wondering out there. There's been a lot of conversation, controversy, claims have been thrown around.

Particularly as it relates to your preaching ministry in the context of your service at Redemption Church in Mobile where you've been the pastor now for many, many years.

Talk to us about that because there have been all kinds of statements and claims.

You can imagine that when I posted on social media that we were hosting you for this conversation, there was a lot of snark that came back, particularly from the anonymous social media accounts that proliferate these days.

Like Lytton had done, Dr. Greenway belittled the integrity of Lytton's examiners.

It became evident from the start that Dr. Greenway's objective was not to test Lytton and certainly not to admonish him.

Lytton would also say in this interview that his examiners have been saying all manner of evil against him.

Greenway went on to ask Dr. Lytton. But I'd like for you to just talk about, particularly in light of what has come to be known in the common parlance as the sermon plagiarism controversy.

And I'd like to even hear, do you accept the term plagiarism to describe your actions in terms of your preaching ministry?

Yes or no? Why? Just help us understand for the benefit of our seminary community the issue here.

The audio is a little messy here, as you can probably tell, but I think you'll still understand

Dr. Lytton's answer. He starts by talking about his commitment to faithful preaching.

And then he says the following. The situation we find ourselves in today is that a series of messages we did last year on the book of Romans, which

I want to just be honest with you, was intimidating for me. I've preached Romans before, but a lot of things have changed in my life in the last 10 years that I may get to in a moment.

But when I approached that, I noticed that I had my commentaries.

I bought new commentaries preparing for that series. We actually plan our preaching about two years in advance.

And in that particular case, I started listening to J .D. Greer, who had done a series just previous to this.

And I was really moved by the way he handled some very challenging passages in Romans.

So I called J .D. and I asked him, I said, first of all, would you mind sharing with me how you broke down the book of Romans to do it in one year?

He sent me a spreadsheet with all that information. That was very helpful. So as a part of the preaching planning.

But then I said, there's material here. Do you mind if I use this material? He was very gracious.

And I think he even quoted Adrian Rogers, if my bullet fits your gun, shoot it. And I said, that's fine.

And I appreciate it. So there are, in a couple of particular cases, times where I made statements that others have been able to line up with statements that from the same text, the same passage that J .D.

used. So to answer your question, I don't consider that plagiarism. Well, if that's all that Lytton had done,

I probably wouldn't consider that plagiarism either. This was not a couple of particular cases, merely lining up statements from the same text in the same passage, as if Greer and Lytton had come to the same conclusions about a

Bible verse. This was a years long pattern of ripping off other preachers sermons, word for word, even making their personal experience stories, his own personal experience stories.

Lytton went on to say, let me tell you where my sin was. My sin was I did not credit him to my church.

What? If Lytton says he did not plagiarize, then how can it be a sin to not give

Greer credit? Lytton goes on. The problem was I did not credit him.

And I have repented of that to my church. I have repented of that to our leadership. And quite frankly, we're in a process of changing some things.

I'm fasting from listening to preaching right now. Because it turns out I have a capacity to remember statements that are made in an audible sermon that I hear.

That's a little too good. And sometimes it gets mixed up. But the truth is, yes, the truth is really

Lytton gets so mixed up that he remembers others personal experiences as if they were his own.

The other absurd thing about this explanation is that if you've ever seen a sermon from Ed Lytton, he preaches from a manuscript.

If his memory is so good, why is he reading his sermon word for word?

This interview was on September 14th, almost three months into this scandal. It is inexcusable for Greenway to be so ignorant of Lytton's offenses and allow him to use

Southwestern Seminary's platform to downplay and deflect. What an embarrassment.

While the seminary presidents would not call Lytton to resign, two seminary professors did.

About a week after Lytton's appearance with Greenway, the leadership of Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky wrote a letter for their congregation summarizing the plagiarism scandal.

Kenwood's elders include Denny Burke and Jim Hamilton, who teach at SBTS. The elders said that Lytton was unfit for the office of pastor and called for Lytton's resignation as convention president.

Quote, We believe that Dr. Lytton would do well to resign voluntarily. His credibility as a leader and a preacher has been too compromised for him to continue.

He may choose to muddle through the next convention or two, but we believe that would be a mistake. He should resign.

Unquote. The Reflection to the Scandal I agree with the elders of Kenwood, who have done more than most in calling

Dr. Lytton to account. Not only should Lytton resign his appointment as president of the Southern Baptist Convention, he should resign from his position as pastor and be disciplined by his church.

Among the qualifications of a pastor, he is to be above reproach, self -controlled, respectable, and able to teach.

Dr. Lytton does not meet these qualifications. Moreover, it says in 1 Timothy 3 .7,

he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.

Dr. Lytton is not well thought of by outsiders. Secular publications have reported on this scandal.

He is, as Dr. Truman said, a laughing stock, and he has made the seminaries that cover for him a laughing stock.

He has fallen into disgrace, and because of the men who have not held him accountable but have helped him cover his lies,

Lytton has become ensnared by the devil. He will continue lying.

He will not stop. That's the worst part of this scandal. It's not the plagiarism itself.

It's the lying. The church is the household of God, which is the church of the living

God, a pillar and buttress of the truth, 1 Timothy 3 .15. But how much of the

SBC has become a pillar and buttress of lies? With scandal after scandal shrouded in lies, when we tell the world the truth, will they believe us?

Along with the lies is the false teaching. The sermons that Lytton swiped weren't even good sermons.

Again, we've had two consecutive SBC presidents say from their pulpits that God whispers about sexual sin.

Secular news outlets have reported that these men have preached this, that God whispers about sexual sin.

It is an egregious lie. Just ask Sodom and Gomorrah. It is to call sexual sin, sin, and then say, but it's really not that big a deal.

My heart is broken for my fellow Southern Baptists. May God grant us repentance, that Southern Baptist churches would once again guard the deposit that has been entrusted to us, the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge, for by professing it, some have swerved from the faith.