Why I Take Plagiarism in Christian Institutions so Seriously

Hey guys, John from the Conversations That Matter podcast. It's a trail talk edition today. I am in the Catskill Range climbing Mount Sherrill. It's kind of a bushwhack, but there's sort of a trail because so many people have done this, but you may see me walking over trees and rocks as we go.

So I'm taking you along for this journey. This is what it looks like up here. It is a beautiful day. It's kind of a misty, overcast, mysterious, enchanting day. And when that crisp, cool air and that morning mist keep going through the afternoon, I don't know what it is about this range in particular, but it just, there's something haunting about it.

So you'd have to live here and climb these mountains to understand, I think what I'm talking about a little bit, but, but you can kind of see, you can kind of see. So I love it. It's one of those days where you climb a mountain, you go back and get some, some mint hot chocolate or something.

Why Plagiarism Matters in Christian and Secular Institutions

But we're gonna talk about plagiarism. So not the thing you really think about when you're in nature, but I thought that there's, there's been some talk online. I entered the fray a bit and you could even say, maybe I started some of the, I didn't really start it, but I, I accelerated some of the conversation over this topic over the weekend.

And some people were asking me to give more clarification. So I'm going to give more clarification to why I'm so against plagiarism. And it, part of it does have to do with the fact that I came from an academic setting, or I've been in many academic settings, and it is the low bar.

It is the cardinal sin. It is the, the thing that you are not supposed to do, even in secular, atheistic, God-hating places. So let me rewind. Let me explain a little bit about why it's so important for us to maintain standards in Christianity and why this is kind of one of the last vestiges of an older Christian order that we must maintain.

You've heard me talk about the book, Ideas Have Consequences by Richard Weaver, and that was written in 1948. He has a whole chapter in that book on private property. And he essentially argues that private property is the last vestige still recognized in our society of an older Christian order.

And it, it compels people to respect boundaries that God has put into place. And we've lost these boundaries in so many other arenas, but not in the realm of private property. Now, if he looked around today, maybe he would say something different.

Maybe he'd say, eh, we don't really even have that anymore. I don't know. With AI, with eminent domain, with all the things that have threatened private property. But I would like to add to that, and I'll say this.

Plagiarism and rules against and penalties for plagiarism is the last vestige of private property in our society. It's the last thing to go. And one of the reasons I say this is because when you have God-hating atheists who respect this one boundary, but they don't respect hardly any other boundaries, you know that this is the older echoes of a Christian order that we are trying to hopefully strengthen and maintain as much of it as we can as possible.

Because it doesn't make sense for them to care so much about this. I mean, sexually speaking, especially there, they could be violating every kind of standard, but this one they keep, this one they, they care about.

Why is that? I mean, I can gander at a potential answer. I think part of it has to do with the older elite. And I mean, by this, not in a pejorative sense, not in a negative sense. I mean, those who lead our society, we're going to have leaders.

One of the ways they maintained their hierarchy, their respect, their unique ability, and the justification to be where they were at was the fact that they had a character, or at least they should. They should have virtue.

And what undermines virtue, at least one of the big things that undermines virtue more than anything else is plagiarism, because it's not just that you're stealing something or you're lying, which you're doing both.

You are also lazy. You are also showing a unique disqualification. Like your character is bad on many different levels. If you are someone who is marked by this, people do make mistakes at times, but they can cite something without giving credit.

They forgot to put end notes in their bibliography or something. These kinds of things can happen. But I'm talking about more than that. I'm talking about when you blatantly take things that don't belong to you and you pass them off as your own.

And it's pretty obvious for anyone who's been in academics, when you read something. I used to have to grade all these undergrad papers on this. You read someone's work, and especially if they're lifting entire paragraphs and couched between their own sentences without any indication they ever were going to give any attribution.

And it's like, you know, it's an eighth of the paper or something was from someone else. That's plagiarism. It's not the same thing as, you know, you're a builder and you learn the art of building a house and then you go build a house.

You're taking principles you've learned, you're applying them. That's not plagiarism. Plagiarism would be if you learn the art of building and someone gives you a nail they designed specifically for a certain task.

And then you take that nail and you go copy it, mass manufacture it, and say you are the one who came up with that. That's plagiarism. So it's stealing intellectual property essentially. Now in my experience in Christian academia, and I've been to between undergrad and grad school, I guess I had credits from about five different Christian institutions and then also a couple secular.

Christians have a tendency to treat this, in my opinion, lighter. Now maybe that's changed now, but when I was going through all this, they have a tendency to treat this with less seriousness than those in secular academia.

We have, honestly, in many arenas our standards are much looser. Much. And I think a lot of Christians do not understand this, especially about their seminaries. It's a surprise to them. They think their pastor has been really vetted and gone through a rigorous process.

Some have, but there's many. I'm just telling you, they don't know what's up and what's down. And their grad school was more on the level of a high school. It was not a rigorous environment. This is a problem because we need elites who can not just maintain our doctrines and so forth and defend them against those who would contradict them.

We need those who are going to be virtuous and respectable enough to actually form an alternative leadership class because we don't like the leadership class that exists now. And if Christians are going to get into these positions, they're going to need to be challenged.

They're going to need institutions with real standards. And the low bar is they cannot ever think that plagiarism is something that is acceptable in any form. Or, let me put it to you this way, their standards for treating plagiarism should be beyond the standards of secular academia.

It doesn't mean there's forgiveness. It doesn't mean there's not, or I should say there's not forgiveness. It doesn't mean there's not repentance. It doesn't mean there's not restoration. It means though, you don't have trust for someone who's committed this.

Now look, there are people out there who have been thorns in the side of conservatives for years. There are professors, there are presidents of Ivy League schools, and they have all kinds of skeletons in their closet.

No one can do anything about it unless someone finds out that they plagiarized. And if that happens, unless they're like MLK Jr. and have died already, they're gone. That's it. Game over. You're not coming back.

And that's just how it is. It's always been like that in academia. And I got to explain this, I think, more than anything to people who, and it's not, it's not your fault. It's just, if you haven't been in those environments, this may be a surprise to you.

So I'm just informing you that in every syllabus, I think, that I had in secular undergrad, plagiarism was an offense that got you expelled. You risked your entire academic career when you took someone else's material and lifted it and claimed it as yours.

Now I'll just briefly say this. I don't even know if I, people are going to guess. Should I just say what school? I'll just say it. When I was at Liberty University, which I love, I'm a graduate of Liberty University.

I noticed something though when I was there. Okay. Not saying anything about what it is now. The history department had some rigor. It was hard for me. It was challenging at times. It was beneficial. I think I learned more there about how to even study scripture than I did in seminary.

But their seminary, which I took, I remember I took a class from them on campus when I was there. It was like on a ninth grade level. And I was shocked, absolutely shocked. I could easily get an A in that class without studying or really doing much of anything.

And I asked some folks who would know about this, why that was. And it seemed like it was common knowledge. Like everyone knew that. And the reason I was given, or at least a potential reason, was that Christians have a lot grace.

Christians are very forgiving. Christians understand that you make mistakes, that you need to repent, move on. And they treat that repentance as sincere when you say it. And so no black marks on your educational record.

It's true. And in the world, in the secular arena, in academia, it's not treated that way. When you mess up in this way, it is a very serious thing. Now you may survive the first time. You're an undergrad.

You just forgot to cite something. It's a small, it's not, there was no intent. When you have intent though, and you're lifting other people's ideas blatantly and it's obvious, it's game over. It's the kind of thing that can make you, it can challenge you even if you're tenured.

Like it's hard for me to not emphasize how much of a sin this is considered in academia. And again, you can have Christian grace and mercy, but it doesn't mean you trust someone, right? Someone could be stealing for years, stealing from you even.

And then they repent and they say, look, I'm not stealing anymore. And let's say they do a do it. And then they repent again, right? I mean, you can do this seven times 70 and keep saying, I forgive you.

Like Jesus Christ forgives you. It's a sin. But do you let that person be your pastor? Do you let that person be the president of a seminary? Do you let that person be a professor? And this is, this really gets to the heart of, I think, why some people might not understand why I was kind of hard on Dale Partridge recently.

And it really, it all, it all started with Michael Foster. For those who don't know this part of it, it's just, think of it as an example of what I've been talking about. It's okay if you don't know the online drama.

It's probably better if you don't know the online drama, but I'll explain it a little bit, at least as much as is necessary. Michael Foster, who's a pastor, put out some material last week showing that another pastor, who's also the president of a seminary, Dale Partridge, had plagiarized material from the Gospel Coalition on his website from an article published in 2019.

Now, maybe, you know, you could say, oh, that was, I think when you look at the article, it's obvious this wasn't just forgetting to put in a citation or something, but let's just say it was. Let's just assume that.

All right. Even if that's the case, the problem is this particular individual has a history of this kind of thing. And in the recent past, this is a guy who embellished his own academic credentials and even put people as professors at his seminary on his website that didn't know that they were put there and weren't teaching courses that, you know, like three credit or two or even one credit courses.

Some of them had just come in and maybe given a lecture. And now they're, without their knowledge, their good name is being used to endorse the seminary. There are professors here, right? There was, I mean, that's the most recent example, but there is a whole kind of like complicated and windy past of which this individual has even admitted they've had problems in this area.

Okay. Now here's the thing. The guys who are very defensive of Dale Partridge, including Dale Partridge himself, really have one thing to say about this, which is he's repented, he's moved on, and that should be the end of the story, right?

As Christians, we don't hold that against someone. And I actually agree with that, but here's the thing. That's not what Michael Foster, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about everything I just talked about.

I'm talking about when someone does that, you don't then let them retain their position as the president of a seminary. They've broken trust on such an egregious level. And it's not about one article.

Like I said, this is a pattern that went back in multiple ways, taking shortcuts, using other people's platforms, passing stuff off, embellishing your own record, passing stuff off as yours when it wasn't yours.

I mean, all of this pieced together shows a character, and that's not the character you want in someone who's a pastor or who's leading a seminary. So I actually do think that repentance is a valid thing to bring into this, but you're talking about someone who retained their position, leading a church, kept working and writing articles for their website, kept articles on the website that apparently some of which, or at least one, had plagiarism in it.

And then after a year, just kind of like continued the seminary thing, president of the seminary still, accepting applications to the seminary. I'm telling you, in the non-Christian world, this is appalling, absolutely appalling.

And I think some people don't understand that, but it is because the standard is so high for academics. If someone like that, if someone, let's say someone has a past that's just, they have habits of whatever the sin is, we'll take lying since this is the issue we're talking about, they get saved and then they still have these habits and they're rooted out in the process of sanctification and that person repents, you want to give that time, right?

You want to give like years you're talking about, like years of not being in leadership positions, like years of just like, like put it this way, if you don't have the foresight, like if you are in the position of you have lied so much, you can't remember what you've lied, what you've stolen from people, like you don't know who you've said what to because it was such a part of your life, that you have stuff on your website that is stealing and you don't even remember because you just did it so much or that was part of who you were, then that's a really good argument for shut it down, man.

Like shut the books down, shut the website down, the material you put out when you were doing this kind of thing, it's all sus, that's I think the proper response to this, shut it down and you have such a deep character flaw here, like start at the bottom, man, like you're not fit to lead at this point, your character must be shown, it must be proven and that takes time, you don't just retain your positions, which is the problem I see and I think it goes under the guise of this like Christian grace and mercy and forgiveness and it's the wrong category for it, it should be in the category of trust, you ask yourself, do you trust this person, is this the kind of person who has this mired past, you want leading of all places, an institution that trains pastors, like we're thin on institutions, we need good institutions, we need, I actually have tons of respect for guys who are willing to start an institution for that but if we're going to have like rigorous institutions that train pastors, then we have got to make sure that we have qualified men leading them, we've got to make sure that they're gonna be able to go toe to toe with those who contradict the good doctrine and this is the kind of thing that gets laughed at in the secular arena and for the right reason, it's not because of any like an antiquated moral code, it's because they still retain the same moral code that we should have, they think stealing is really bad and people, there should be huge disincentives for those in leadership positions, especially in academia where that's like you had one job, right and like you just can't be known, you can't have that as part of your character, so that's really all I wanted to say and that's my explanation, people have been emailing me all or messaging me all kinds of stuff like I know this guy, he's such a good guy, he's so nice, on one side and then I got guys on the other side who are emailing me like did you see this about this pastor and did you see what he did here and it's bad and like here's the thing, like I don't care about any of that really, I'm not saying like I don't care like in this sense, like I'm glad he's nice, like I'm glad you know and if he's got all these other issues, like I hope he gets those resolved, I hope the best for him, I hope he repents, I hope he has repented if that's the case and like is truly, but it could be severe ignorance too, it could be just like someone's leading a seminary who just does not understand the level of like egregious behavior that he's been conducting himself in, I don't know but all that stuff is so secondary to me, the main thing is I realize especially in my book Against the Waves, Christian Order in a Liberal Age, I wrote about this that we have a leadership class that must be replaced by virtuous men and it's not going to be replaced by virtuous men, we're not going to have people leading the institutions that need to be there if we are light on this stuff, doesn't mean you don't forgive people, it doesn't mean in the future they can't even have a chance to start getting back into leadership positions but this is something that you have to really keep an eye on and it's a matter of trust, it's not a matter of forgiveness, it's not a matter of taking someone's repentance seriously, I can take that all seriously, I mean I do have questions about like what are you thinking, to what extent are you repentant if you are still like you've stolen so many things but you're not like you can't even remember what you've stolen and where it is because it was such a part of your character but you're not shutting stuff down, that does make me wonder like where's your head at but like I want to take things in the most charitable light I possibly can, let's just say this person has ignorance and that is a he is repentant, he's a good guy otherwise like he's growing in the grace, if that's true some real Christian brothers need to say this is not the institution you want, this is not the kind of pastoral leadership you want right now, you got to take it, take a break you know, go do something else to support your family while trust can be built up again, real trust and we should have honestly I think standards that match or go beyond where the secular arena is on this stuff if we're going to have rigorous and a good education system, so that's where I'm coming from and maybe some of you think well that's John and he's he's you know got the sort of academic bug and he's bringing that to this and yeah that could be but I feel strongly about it, I mean this is stuff that was drilled into me for good reason I think and it's one of those, it's a tradition that we've had for such a long time that we should retain, it's one of the vestiges of a Christian past that I'm afraid if we lose it we've lost a lot more than just it, so hopefully that helps you guys, I got to make this summit, God bless.