A reader here directed me toward this story.
Who could have ever imagined a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints elder would be quoting a splinter group leader from Armstrongism! I never had that on my COG Bingo Card!
Religion News Service had this article up by Bob Smietana
"(RNS) — A leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints appears to have plagiarized a portion of his address at a national church gathering, passing off the words of an obscure religious teacher as his own.
During the church’s recent General Conference, held Saturday and Sunday (Oct. 1-2), Elder David Bednar, a former university president and a member of the body known as the Quorum of 12 since 2004, preached to church members about a well-known New Testament parable about a king who throws a wedding for his son, only to have none of the invited guests show up."
The article goes after describing the story and then has this:
"What the former university president did not tell those listening is that the interpretation of the parable was not entirely his own. Instead, his analysis was taken, often word for word, from a 2016 article about the parable written by John O. Reid, a leader in a little-known sect referred to as the Church of the Great God.
Bednar also read several quotes from Reid and from Elder James E. Talmage, an LDS leader who died in 1933, crediting some, but giving the impression that the ideas were his own. Footnotes to Reid’s article and Talmage’s work, as well as other sources, do appear in the published version of Bednar’s talk — but material from both appears without quotation marks."
RNS then has this:
"Religion News Service first contacted church leaders about Bednar’s address on Wednesday (Oct. 5). At that time, the transcript had only one footnote mentioning Reid and no quotation marks around material taken from his work, according to screenshots of the transcript and an internet archive of the page. That single footnote and the only mention of Reid appeared after several paragraphs of material lifted from Reid with no attribution."
Read the complete article here: LDS elder — a former college president — may have plagiarized General Conference talk
8 comments:
Elder Bednar was President of BYU-Idaho before he failed upward to the LDS Quorum of the Twelve. There are five more senior LDS Apostles ahead of him to succeed the current President, but two of those are members of the LDS First Presidency. When the current President dies there will be someone else appointed into the First Presidency, and Bednar won't move higher in the succession unless he is the one appointed to that vacancy... which after this misstep seems unlikely.
To Bednar's credit, though, although BYU-Idaho is a pretty mediocre college, admitting 99%+ of applicants, it is a real college, unlike what any of the ACOGs offer to their young people.
Wow. John O. Reid's only clim to fame! Hey, no worries, John. See, you've also got some good press from the fine folks at Banned!
One cultist steals from another. HWA created a whole new "church"/"religion" borrowed from Adventism, Mormonism and Judaism, among others. One bad turn begets another!
I do believe John Reid died a number of years ago.
The original article by Reid is not necessarily very profound, or revelatory, and there is indeed credit given in the footnotes.
There are no fantastic new ideas around, and nearly all sermons are bits and pieces of what the presenters have cobbled together from previous years of sermons, talks, books and the like. The Plagiarism claim is a bit overdone here IMHO. I dont view this event as coming close to "scandolous" in the least.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 even says
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Generally, plagiarism amongst teachers of Christianity doesn't even register amongst Christians. They view it as just more people picking up and spreading the gospel. Christianity does not hold itself to the same standards as academia. Certainly we with Armstrongish pasts above all people know this by now!
Several years ago, I heard a UCG Pastor (who died last year) quote at length in a Spring Holy Day message from a David Jeremiah "Turning Point" radio sermon - doing it without attribution.
I found out because I heard Dr. Jeremiah on the radio driving home, using the very words I'd heard in church hours earlier!
I emailed the UCG Pastor about it. He seemed to brush it off. Then I reported it to UCG Home Office, which began an investigation.
It ended with the Pastor apologizing to me privately - but never mentioning it publicly to the congregation. Don't know if UCG ever disciplined him for it at all.
When I use to watch the televangelists, it was a common experience to hear an occasional good sermon, and have parts of it parroted by other denominations shortly afterwards. They all "steal" from one another. Several times I've heard ACOG ministers parrot back word for word, including the body language, of some televangelist expression. Which means that ACOG ministers don't get their material exclusively from the bible.
Btw, I've noticed that the ACOG splinter, Church of the Great God has criticized my comment that the nobleman going to a far country means personal responsibility and freedom from a lording ministry. So they also read this blog.
You can actually obtain books of boiler plate sermon outlines at your local Christian bookstore in the section with pastoral materials. All an enterprising ACOG elder would need do is to revise and tailor the sermon to include Armstrongite beliefs. I don't doubt for a minute that the most prominent of televangelists have staffs of writers who ghost their sermons for them.
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