Theology and Religion

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Profiles in Plagiarism: Theology and Religion

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Lawrence Biondi

"[V]isionary" leadership at St. Louis University toward establishing it "as the finest Catholic university in the United States"; various awards including being made a "Knight of the Italian Order of Merit by the president of Italy . . . one of St. Louis' 'Citizens of the Century' . . . 1999 . . . Humanitarian of the Year Award . . . "(St. Louis University website)

Ever come across liturgical language lifting? Priestly plagiarism? Rabbinical recycling? Synogogical synonymy? How about other forms of pulpit theft, textual transgression, and ministerial mimicry? Does your pastor/priest/minister/rabbi/religious leader download his or her sermons from www.desperatepreacher.com, www.sermons.org, Preachit.org, sermons.com, preacherstudy.com, SermonCentral.com or other websites where numerous homilies are offered gratis, with even more available from sermon databases on a fee basis?

Many religious leaders would appear to be forsaking time actually spent in the Word in preparing their own sermons, and instead resort to web downloads and other forms of homiletic pilfering--leaving their debts unacknowledged (adding new meaning to "Our Father in Heaven . . . forgive us our debts . . . "; "It is more blessed to give than to receive . . ." !).

It doesn't appear that the Reverend Lawrence Biondi downloaded his 2005 Mass of the Holy Spirit homily delivered at the beginning of the new academic year at St. Louis University. But as reported by St. Louis Today, Biondi did borrow about a third of his homily word for word from a homily delivered in 2004 by Rev. Stephen A. Privett at the University of San Francisco's Mass of the Holy Spirit. As noted by Tim Townsend and Kavita Kumar,

The blocks of text Biondi lifted from Privett's homily were mostly expository, woven between the anecdotes common to sermons, and had to do with such topics as the mission of a Jesuit university and the responsibilities of its students, God's spirit and the pursuit of truth ("He borrowed words, but is it plagiarism?")

Allegedly, Biondi and Privett have an agreement whereby they regularly exchange such homilies. Other religious figures chimed in with their own views on such dubious homiletic practice, calling such plagiarism "lazy", "wrong", "fraudulent", "irresponsible", and downright "lousy preaching". According to Townsend and Kumar, others took a more self-effacing view as did Aquinas Institute of Theology "Preacher of the Year" Joseph B. Kempf: "Anyone could quote anything I've ever done without giving me credit . . . I don't care - as long as it helps the message of Jesus get out."

For the faithful, it can be quite a downer to discover that someone in such a position of leadership has done little more than download an inspirational sermon verbatim from the Internet. It's no secret for many denominations that a sort of Sermon Central Command exists, denominational administrative entities which dictate the topics and themes to be covered each week, including illustrations and anecdotes which a minister might use.

But outright theft of another individual's actual words--modes of homiletic linguistic expression--is unequivocally condemned by professors such as John McClure, professor of preaching at Presbyterian Theological Seminary: "This is God's word . . . It requires the utmost integrity in its proclamation. How dare you lie in the pulpit?" ("'Sermon stealing' making its way into pulpits").

As Biondi himself said in a 2004 statement on academic integrity, "After all, isn’t that [integrity] what we expect from our students? Do we not dedicate ourselves to ensure that our students not only lead successful lives, but also live lives guided by the principles, ethics and values of a Judeo-Christian education? Indeed, it’s the Jesuit philosophy of educating the 'whole person' – mind, body and soul – which should guide all of us in our everyday lives" (L. Biondi, "Remarks: Academic Integrity Forum" 2004). Yeah, right! Would that include a Mass of the Holy Spirit homily?

One has to wonder whether John Barry of Turnitin.com plagiarism detection reknown has explored the potential for cheat detection products in the ecclesiastical market?

Sermon-check.org maybe, or Is-it-lifted.com ? Or perhaps something like homily-guard.org or safe-preach.com? There's certainly a market for sermon downloads--why not a market niche for detecting blatently un-original, Internet-dependent sources of homiletic inspiration?



References

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Robert C. Hamm

Blue: Guarded Risk

Serving as senior pastor from 1989-2004

An article in The Christian Century, "Pastor Resigns After Admitting Plagiarism" reported on the case of Robert C. Hamm, formerly Senior Pastor of the Keene United Church of Christ in New Hampshire.

Evidently, Hamm had found sermons on the Internet too much of a temptation to resist, and he downloaded these homilies for use in the pulpit as if they resulted from his own theological insight.

A fellow pastor noticed Hamm's lack of inspiration and reported him to church officials who confronted him over his downloading of sermons for use without acknowledgement. According to the article in The Christian Century, Hamm "was very, forthcoming and clear that it was an improper thing to do. He asked for forgiveness."

The congregation's feelings were mixed, some believing that their pastor had done nothing wrong in using the downloaded sermons. Others, "including educators at the secondary and collegiate levels, were concerned their pastor had violated a tenet of integrity."

References

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Martin Luther King, Jr. (& L.H De Wolff)

Red: Severe Risk

Civil Rights Activism and Leadership, Recipient of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, Famous Speeches and Political Influence on behalf of African American Rights

When Coretta Scott King donated the academic papers of her late husband, nominating Clayborne Carson to serve as the Chief Editor of the King Papers Project, little did anyone realize that these papers--many of them from King's college and graduate school days--would ignite a controversy which continues to this day.

That Martin Luther King was a great man and an important historical figure is not in dispute. His reputation as a leader in the American Civil Rights movement and his labors to achieve equal rights have rightly secured his place in American history books.

But even the greatest of men remain mere mortals, subject to weaknesses which are a birthright of humanity. As the King Papers Project progressed, word leaked out that King had plagiarized in many of his college papers, including his doctoral dissertation, and also including a number of speeches made in the course of his political career.

It was the British press which first broke the news with regard to King's plagiarism, an indication of just how sensitive an issue this was for American newspapers. An article in the December 3rd (1989) edition of the Sunday Telegraph by Frank Johnson asked, "Martin Luther King--Was He a Plagiarist?"

But it was not until November 9, 1990 that a major U.S. media outlet released the story on King's plagiarism--even though this story had been known for over a year in the newsrooms of major newspapers. In the U.S., The Wall Street Journal was the first to go public with a front page article entitled, "To Their Dismay, King Scholars Find a Troubling Pattern--Civil Rights Leader was Lax in Attributing Some Parts of His Academic Papers".

This story was definitely a hot potato--too hot to handle for the same institutions which had "lionized" and deified a mere mortal.

The response of academia was particularly appalling:

"They lied, they told half-truths, they made up fables, they did everything they could but address facts. In the face of their own university's rules against plagiarism, Boston University's academic authorities and professors somehow found excuses for King's plagiarism. They found extenuating circumstances . . . they compromised their own university's integrity . . . [and] called into question the very standing of the university as a place where cheating is penalized and misrepresentation condemned" (Jacob Neusner, in the Foreward to Theodore Pappas' The Martin Luther King, Jr., Plagiarism Story).

There were scores of responses written after these discoveries of verbatim theft by King, basically in defense of plagiarism. As Neusner notes, "To defend King's plagiarism, plagiarism finds itself cleaned up and made a virtue of blacks". Authors such as Keith Miller used the black preaching tradition and "oral culture" as an excuse for King's somehow having been held to a lower academic standard than what might have been expected of whites at a place such as Boston University in the 1950s.

Critics such as Barry Gross delivered a scathing indictment of the scholarly incompetence at Boston University which led to King's receiving a PhD awarded for a dissertation containing extensive amounts of plagiarism. Compounding the incompetence, the plagiarism in King's dissertation on "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman" was from another theology student (Jack Boozer) who had had the same advisor as King just three years previously, namely Professor L. Harald De Wolff.

Gross delivers some pretty damning speculations as to why De Wolff never noticed or responded to King's plagiarism of Boozer:

"So how did King's plagiarism get by? Well, there are three possibilities: Professor De Wolff neglected to read either or both theses, in which case he was incompetent, or Professor De Wolff read them both and failed to notice the plagiarism, in which case, also, he was incompetent, or Professor De Wolff noticed the plagiarism but did not think it serious enough to mention, in which case, too, he was incompetent. There is a fourth hypothesis that is possibly even more damning: that Professor De Wolff noticed the plagiarism but did not think it mattered for a black man destined to be a preacher to be held to a rigorous scholarly standard" (From Gross's review of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Plagiarism Story).

The final hypothesis mentioned by Gross seems to be quite plausible since Theodore Pappas alludes in his work to rumours suggesting that King had, in fact, been advised by his dissertation committee to cite his sources according to academic convention. Quite unfortunately, he did not do this, and his dissertation committee never followed up to see if their advice had been heeded, if, in fact, such advice had ever been given.

Shortly after the stonewalling and coverup attempted by those overseeing the King Papers Project (Clayborne Carson of Stanford University, and Ralph Luker of Emory University), two important books were published by Theodore Pappas: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Plagiarism Story and Plagiarism and the Culture War. In the years since the discovery of King's plagiaries, a number of other excellent research projects have resulted in dissertations and reports on different aspects of the plagiaries of Martin Luther King, Jr.

What this ongoing research seems to most clearly portray is not just the shortcomings of Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, but the failures of academia in confronting intellectual fraud and in holding scholars to high standards of academic integrity whatever their racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds.

Had the truth become known in his lifetime, Martin Luther King, Jr. himself would have probably answered many controversial questions which remain. As Jacob Neusner observed, "I believe Martin Luther King, Jr., was a man of conscience and character--but flesh and blood, like the rest of us. Those who thought to protect his name through deceit have traduced the man's own highest ideals, and did so, by excusing the inexcusable, in a way that ultimately diminished the stature and impoverished the heritage of a great man."

References

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Osama bin Laden

Red: Severe Risk

Declaring war on the US, fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, inspiring resistance against Western imperialism

Shortly after 9/11, the New York Times Book Review ran an article by Judith Shulevitz on “Plagiarism: Osama bin Laden and a Poem by Yusuf Abu Hilalah”. Shulevitz began that article by questioning, “Should we inscribe the name of Osama bin Laden in the ever-lengthening book of famous plagiarists?” At that time, the Famous Plagiarists project did not yet exist in its current form, although the need for such a work was acknowledged by such a question.

Now that such a work does exist, the answer to Shulevitz’s question is a definite “Yes, we should inscribe Osama bin Laden’s name in the book of Famous Plagiarists.” There are many descriptive words and phrases which apply to bin Laden—murderer, terrorist, Islamo-fascist, and also . . . plagiarist.

By his own culture’s views on plagiarism and Arabic poetic theory, bin Laden is a plagiarist. But this is not to say that his crime of plagiarism is as serious of a matter as it might be for someone in the West holding a similar situation of high politico-religious standing. If anything, the cultivation of his image as a Bedu warrior-poet has only increased his popularity in the Arab world.

Views on plagiarism differ from culture to culture, and what might be seen as acceptable borrowing in one cultural context might be considered outright theft in another.

Across the cultural spectrum represented on planet earth, different cultural groups will have different ways of thinking and representing concepts and ideas, and this includes the concept of plagiarism. Gustave E. von Grunebaum expressed this notion as follows with regard to “The Concept of Plagiarism in Arabic Theory”:

"The line between literary theft and legitimate appropriation of a motive or a phrase in Arabic poetry does not run where we should be inclined to draw it, but it is firmly engraved on the consciousness of the Arabic author and critic. This line does not seem to have always been maintained at exactly the same place, but the unwritten—and later the written—rules were as well kept as the unpedantic and somewhat casual manners of the day would permit."

As Grunebaum explains, the concept of plagiarism is one which exists—and has for a long time existed—in Arabic poetic theory, but the lines between acceptable and unacceptable uses of another author’s work would probably not be drawn in the same place by someone from outside the particular cultural contexts of Arabic literary genres.

Although the concept of plagiarism is one which is generally common to both Western and Middle Eastern literary theory, it must be noted that there are other concepts which do not transfer so easily from the Arab-Muslim world to the West and vica versa. How, for example, can the Western mind conceive an accurate understanding of the suicide-martyr culture which has been fostered among Arab youth across the Middle East through a constant barrage of media images glorifying intifada, suicide bomb belts, and jihad against infidels, Christians, and Jews? And more recently, against fellow Arab-Iraqis in the continuing insurgency with suicide bombings being used with devastating effect.

And what of the Quranic injunction to “slay them [infidels] wherever you find them”? How does the Western mind, with its deep-rooted collective cultural memory of the Holocaust conceptualize an Islamo-fascist culture which reveres Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, lauding its author as a “good” person?

On the other hand, from a possible perspective of someone from within the Arab-Muslim world, how difficult is it to conceive of the “promiscuous” liberties of the West? (This is not to say that vice and immorality are not present in Islamic cultures. These are just hidden better under a cloak of societal religiosity. In fact, all of the so called evils of the West are present in Islamic societies to a rather surprising extent inclusive of drugs, prostitution, pornography, and other social ills. “The Islamic World is in a mess” as many Muslims see it. Some would blame the *pernicious* Western influence, while others realize that just scape-goating the West for the problems of the Muslim World is dodging the problem rather than addressing the issues). Particularly the perceived immoral and sinful liberties which are punished severely in countries such as Saudi Arabia where public beheadings are still practiced today. In countries where strict Islamic law (shari’a) is the norm, adultresses are stoned to death for the same sins of their female Western counterparts, and the religious police rigorously enforce prayer five times a day, the veiling/cloaking of women, and a strict no alcohol policy (although shari'a is unevenly enforced and qadis, or religious judges, vary greatly in their theological and jurisprudential training and background).

More to the point in the case of Osama bin Laden, is it possible to understand the thinking which led to 9/11? Is it possible to understand the twisted sense of religiosity which underlies not only bin Laden’s way of thinking, but also the thought processes of the thousands who have gone through the Al Qaeda training camps, and the hundreds of thousands and more who have been directly and indirectly influenced by Al Qaeda-type propaganda? In answer to these questions, an analysis of bin Laden’s appropriation of a Jordanian poet’s work will demonstrate that such an understanding is potentially within reach.

Bin Laden was a plagiarist and pasticheur, following in a *noble* tradition of emulating his predecessors in word and deed, and then eulogizing himself, boasting about his accomplishments in traditional Bedu genres of poetry such as Fakhr (boasting), and Madih (praise/eulogy), and continuing all the while to insult his enemies using another established genre, namely, hija' or the lampoon/satire genre.

The backround for this case of plagiarism begins with the early days of Islam, a sort of “Golden Age” which Islamists look back to as their source of inspiration. The present conditions of people across the Muslim World, with few exceptions, are characterized by poverty, tyranny, and widespread perceptions of subjugation by the West. Globalization and the West’s scientific and technological achievements are a source of envy and suspicion. This state of things represents somewhat of a reverse of fortunes for Islamic civilization, for at one time it was Europe which was poor and scientifically unenlightened.

Moreover, when Islam is proclaimed to be the final revelation, the superior and perfect religion to replace all others, it becomes easier to understand the disillusionment with the present state of things across the Muslim World. Why is it Western civilization, Western technology, Western science which has advanced humanity to the frontiers of knowledge? If Islam were the “true” religion, should not Islamic civilization have maintained the acsendency over the nominally Christian West? Particularly given that the politico-religious system (s) of Islam are believed to be from Allah himself, revealed in what is believed by Muslims to be the most perfect, elevated form of language—Arabic, the very language of Allah?

The restoration of rightful Islamic rule, both within and without the Islamic World, is seen by Islamists as the way to improve the currently desperate situations which prevail. Within the Islamic World, tyrannical and unjust rulers usurp the role of Islam. Take, for example, the country of Saudi Arabia, the hub of Islam and location of Makkah (Mecca) and Medina—and also one of the worst examples of corrupt governance and restriction of basic freedoms and human rights.

Bin Laden’s quarrel is not only with the Western—particularly American—presence in the hub of Islam, but also with the ruling House of Saud whom he holds personally responsible for permitting the infidel’s presence since the first Gulf War. After being exiled from Saudi Arabia, what Bin Laden and the Taliban sought to recreate in Afghanistan was a “true” Islamic state modeled on the precedents set by Mohammed and the first four rightly guided Caliphs. Living according to the precepts of Mohammed in a restored caliphate would begin with Afghanistan. From there, it would extend throughout the Islamic World according to the the vision held by bin Laden and his “students” or Taliban as they are called in the Arabic language.

This vision of a return to the “Golden Age” of how things ought to be, and how they could be if only Muslims would submit themselves properly to Allah and the true teachings of his prophet, is a vision with profound influence among many Muslims, for the vision hearkens back to the founder and Prophet of Islam. As Mohammed surrounded himself with his helpers, Ansar, as they are known to Muslims, bin Laden surrounded himself with faithful devotees, some tens of thousands having passed through his Taliban training camps in Afghanistan. There they were infused with the same vision for restoration of Islamic rule according to the Qu’ran, for combating the ascendancy of the West, and for removing the infidel’s presence from the heart of the Middle East.

Bin Laden’s Transmogrification, the Declaration of War on America, and 9/11-- Osama bin Laden had a very privileged upbringing in one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. Other than this privileged upbringing, his background would seem to be rather un-noteworthy up until the time of a religious transformation in his life which would set him on a course toward notorious infamy in the West, and toward widespread adulation in the Arab World. Like many young men of Saudi Arabia in his time—according to some reports—bin Laden went through a period of dissolute living in Lebanon, going on rounds of binge drinking and frequenting Beiruit bars with known prostitutes. Some experts have speculated that bin Laden’s religious transformation might have been precipitated by Lebanon’s destructive civil wars and the fiery sermons in Saudi Arabian mosques interpreting this as the judgement of Allah.

It was against the Soviets that bin Laden first gained a reputation as a member of the mujahideen, (holy warriors) with his leadership in the resistance of the Afghans against Soviet occupation. Bin Laden brought the expertise and resources of his family’s construction enterprise, and he returned to Saudi Arabia as a hero once the Soviets had pulled back from Afghanistan.

Throughout their fight against Soviet occupation, the mujihadeen received financing from the USA in their struggle against the Soviets, and the CIA now refers to the transmogrification of bin Laden into its greatest enemy as “blowback” by which they mean an unintended effect or result of their previous support for bin Laden and the Afghan mujihadeen.

After the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and a threatened invasion of other Gulf sheikhdoms, the leaders of Saudi Arabia rejected Bin Laden’s offer of the expertise he had gained in Afghanistan. Bin Laden was quite the man with a plan to fight Saddam Hussein without American assistance. But his rejection by the House of Saud—due mainly to the Saudi fears of Iraqi WMDs— set in motion bin Laden’s eventual exile from Saudi Arabia to Sudan, and from Sudan back to Afghanistan.

This period of exile is an extremely important phase in bin Laden’s religious transmogrification, for bin Laden saw this as spiritually equivalent to the Prophet Mohammed’s flight to Medina, or the hijra as it is known in Arabic. In the hijra the Prophet Mohammed had left Mecca with his closest followers, regrouping for the warfare over the next eight years which would lead to the conquest of Mecca. As Peter L. Bergen put it, “This was the model bin Laden planned to follow in his jihad against the West. And Afghanistan, in his mind, was the Medina of the twenty-first century.” From his mountain refuge in the quasi-Medina of Afghanistan, like the assassins of old, bin Laden declared war on America with his “Declaration of Jihad on the Americans Occupying the Country of the Two Sacred Places [Saudi Arabia]”.

What has happened since then is now history—September 11, the declaration by the US of the “War on Terror”, the liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban, the liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime. As of the date this profile was created, bin Laden remained at large, most likely in the lawless, tribal regions along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. His influence remains a potent source of incitation to terrorism, attracting new recruits by the swarms to Al Qaeda and inspiring independent acts of jihad against the West.

Bin Laden Image-Spin in the Arab-Muslim World--
In a poll conducted by Saudi national security consultant Nawaf Obaid in 2003, it was found that nearly half of all Saudi citizens held favorable views toward Osama bin Laden. Quite clearly, the influence of bin Laden in the Arab-Muslim world is of a different sort than the notoriety and infamy it has inspired in the West. Given the barbaric atrocities committed on 9/11, his popularity in the Arab World is rather unsettling to say the least. Yet his message strikes some sort of common chord in the Middle East. Namely, resistance to Western imperialism—specifically the US “infidel” presence in the Hub of Islam. Language replete with religious imagery and poetic allusions are employed by bin Laden to enhance his image—the general equivalent of spin doctoring by politicians in the West.

It is commonly reported in the media, and it is often heard from the mouths of politicians that the number of Islamic fundamentalists after bin Laden’s ilk represents only a “minority” who have tried to “hijack” Islam, yet one can only wonder if this is truly the case given the enduring popularity of a man responsible for such heinous, barbaric atrocities in the name of a modern brand of Islamo-fascism.

If this is merely a hijacking of Islam, why are so many followers attracted by bin Laden’s message? Why is the replication of the early days of Islam and restoration of the Caliphate so closely intertwined with modern day terrorism?

To forward-looking Westerners, being permanently stuck in reverse gear thinking is somewhat hard to comprehend. Yet for adherents to a religion whose civilization has passed its age of glory, what could be more natural than looking backwards in time to the Prophet whose visions and message so radically transformed the politico-religious landscape of his time?

After the carnage of 9/11, a videotape surfaced in which Osama bin Laden invoked poetic language to celebrate his “success” and to warn America of further attacks to come. Bin Laden fancied himself as a skilled poet after the Arab Bedu tradition, celebrating exploits and commiting them to the collective cultural memory through the time-honored medium of poetic expression. There is a long history of poetry among the Bedouin of the Arabian Peninsula, and a skilled composer-orator of traditional Arabic poetry has historically been highly regarded.

But in more than just a few ways, something was not quite right with bin Laden’s poem heard on the videotape released by the Pentagon. The recitation of the poem followed a pleasant bantering and exchanging of congratulatory remarks concerning 9/11. To Western observers, the use of religious imagery in celebration of the 9/11 attacks was nearly incomprehensible. Absolutely revolting to the civilized mind:

. . . we thank Allah for you [bin Laden] . . . This is the guidance of Allah and the blessed fruit of jihad . . . Thanks to Allah . . . they [9/11 terrorists] accepted the fiqh [doctrine] that Muhammed brought . . . Allah be praised . . . After a little while, they announced that another plane had hit the World Trade Center. The brothers who heard the news were overjoyed by it . . . We are thankful to Allah . . . I was happy for the happiness of my brothers . . . Fight them, Allah will torture them, with your hands, he will torture them . . . No doubt it is a clear victory . . . We hit her [America] the first . . . By Allah it is a great work . . .

The next phase of the celebratory 9/11 discussion illustrates the looking-backward thinking of bin Laden and his followers to the early days, or the “Golden Age” of Islam for which they yearn and sought to re-create in Afghanistan:

By Allah, who there is no god but him. I live in happiness . . . . like the days of the prophet Muhammad. Exactly like what’s happening right now. . . . And the day will come when the symbols of Islam will rise up and it will be similar to the early days of Al-Mujahedeen and Al-Ansar (similar to the early years of Islam). . . like the old days, such as Abu Bakr and Othman and Ali . . . In these days, in our times, that it will be the greatest jihad in the history of Islam and the resistance of the wicked people.

Bin Laden then delivers his poetic oratory, portions of which appear below:

I witness