Safe and sound with nothing left to send

• Good Bob Smietana piece from RNS on plagiarism in the pulpit: “‘If you have eyes, plagiarize’: When borrowing a sermon goes too far.”

The problem here is not that a bunch of pastors are essentially cover bands, delivering others’ material. The problem is that they’re cover bands who claim and pretend that they wrote these songs themselves. This is, as Gary Stratton says in the piece, “mind-boggling” — because there’s nothing stopping any preacher from preaching anybody else’s sermon, just as long as they acknowledge that’s what they’re doing.

And this sermon-stealing gets particularly sleazy when the plagiarizing preacher appropriates someone else’s personal anecdotes, presenting them as their own.

In my opinion, the greatest sermon in American history is Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” If I had to preach, there’s no way I could prepare anything anywhere near as fierce and true and important as that sermon. So I might just get up there and read Douglass’ words. That would be edifying for the congregation — unless, of course, I were foolish and prideful and stupid enough to try to pass those words off as my own.

The most egregious case in the story involves a guy who’s been doing beat-for-beat rip-offs of Mark Driscoll sermons for years — at two different churches. There are two sins in this guy’s case: 1) stealing, and 2) not stealing better stuff.

• Speaking of sanctimonious stealing and pious plagiarism — it seems that Tim Clinton, a Liberty University professor and a big player in the “Christian counseling” movement — has (again) “written” a book that includes huge chunks of uncredited material stolen from other books.

Among the passages foisted off as Clinton’s own writing were chunks from two of George Foreman’s books (God in My Corner, and Fatherhood by George). In his defense, though, those training to become patriarchal “Christian counselors” will probably enjoy reading Tim Clinton’s first-hand account of his second-round knockout of Joe Frazier in 1973.

• “It’s not political at all,” he said. “I’m not a politician; I’m a prophet.”

Pastor Tony Spell then made for himself horns of iron, and he said, “Thus says the Lord: With these you shall gore the Arameans until they are destroyed. Go up to Ramoth-gilead and triumph.”

General rule: If you’re wondering if someone might be a prophet, hearing them say “I’m a prophet” is a really big clue that they’re not.

• Theology professor Christopher Schelin notes that so-called “cancel culture” seems “a lot like old-fashioned church discipline.” What he describes as the “quest for moral accountability” in communities is as old as, well, communities. And so is resentment of such accountability by those who believe they’re entitled to impunity.

• For all the right-wing noise about supposed “cancel culture,” how many examples are there of people who actually were, in any way, “canceled”? Mostly it’s the sex predators — Cosby, Weinstein, Spacey, etc. — and I’m not sure arguing that those guys should be living consequence-free is something most people would find convincing.

Apart from them, the ranks of the “canceled” consists mostly of people who lost their jobs for the same reasons that people lost their jobs 50 or 70 years ago. Former Cincinnati Reds broadcaster Thom Brennaman wasn’t chased off the air by an angry “woke mob” — he lost his job for breaking broadcast regulations and slurring his audience as there’s a deep drive into deep left field by Castellanos and that’ll be a home run. And so that’ll make it a 4-0 ballgame.

• Somehow this song is now 37 years old.