Voddie Responds to Plagiarism Scandal: The good, the bad, and the ugly
Voddie Baucham responds to the plagiarism scandal.
Tom Ascol and Jared Longshore of The Founders Ministries’ The Sword and The Trowel podcast interviewed Voddie Baucham regarding Joel McDurmon’s charges of misquoting, mischaracterization, and plagiarism in Voddie’s bestselling book, Fault Lines.
Before I get into the weeds of this response from Voddie and friends, I want to lay out a few things.
First of all, this is absolutely Voddie and friends. These hosts are about as sympathetic towards Voddie as can be. This isn’t wrong, by any means, but it should be made clear from the outset.
Next, neither Voddie nor his hosts mention where their listeners can find the arguments they are refuting. In addition, there are no links provided to McDurmon’s original work nor links to the many journalistic articles that went into great detail on this scandal. As I said elsewhere, typically it’s considered a minimum of gentlemanly virtue to provide a link to or even mention where to find the arguments you’re discussing. Let the listeners/readers decide for themselves.
In the spirit of that gentlemanly virtue, we encourage our readers to give this episode a listen. We already linked above, but here’s it again. Also see,
Joel’s original work outlining the charges.
Washington Post report on the scandal. Includes publisher’s response.
A follow up article on the publisher’s bizarre response.
Another on Delgado’s response, Neil Shenvi’s calculated analysis, and an important clarification from McDurmon.
This is a relatively brief and incomplete analysis of the podcast episode. If you haven’t listened to the episode, much of this commentary may not make sense without greater context. I don’t respond to everything and long discussions on critical theory will have to be saved for another day (I don’t hold to CRT and also see significant deficiencies in the ideas). These are my “off-the-cuff” responses, but I do think several of these bullet points warrant serious consideration.
Lastly, I provided some rough time stamps. They are not precise, so apologies for that. Bolds throughout are mine and I removed some “umms” from quotes.
Without further ado…
[~3:00] Voddie uses block quotes throughout his book in the same formatting style. Is the burden on the reader to know the secret intent of the author, or is the burden on the author to make things clear?
[~4:45] “I’m giving a heading, that’s not Delgado’s heading.”Voddie Baucham (henceforth VB). But how do we know that it’s not Delgado’s heading? Some of Delgado’s actual words are in quotes, some aren’t. How do we know which is which?
[~5:20] “There are some structural and formatting issues there that are unfortunate. That are unclear.” VB. This is good to admit. It’s also important to remember as we move forward in the episode.
[~6:00] “It was not meant to be presented that way, to be understood that way, or to be read that way . . . did that, I presented it that way.” VB. Good to know it wasn’t intentional. Good to own that portion of the problem.
[~7:00] “If you read this, it’s pretty obvious that this is not direct quotations.” VB. Frankly, not a lot obvious with this extremely sloppy formatting. Voddie just said it was unclear. Is it unclear or is it obvious? I’m not sure if it can be both.
[~8:00] Now onto what Joel said about mischaracterizations/fabrications/etc.There is a difference between saying that the words are not in Delgado’s book and saying that those particular words are misrepresentations. Let’s not equivocate on what McDurmon is saying. There are absolutely misrepresentations of Delgado in these passages, but no one is saying every last line is. Some lines are fabricated (from someone). Some lines are mis-cited. Some lines are misrepresentations. Some lines are a mix.
[~10:00] Regarding plagiarizing James A. Lindsay, it doesn’t matter if it’s a direct quote, it can still be plagiarism. The exact phrasing was a copy. Further, Lindsay’s opinion is irrelevant on the matter.
[~12:00] To be clear, plagiarism does not need to be intentional and we have made that very clearly known here. No one is saying that Voddie is “hiding” or trying to keep his associations with James A. Lindsay secret. That’s not the argument and never was the argument.
[~12:30] The exact turn of phrase that Voddie used is not ubiquitous in the literature and Neil Shenvi makes this clear.
[~12:50] (James A. Lindsay) “They’re just trying to discredit people who are upsetting their racket. It looks desperate.” (Tom Ascol) “And I think this is a very good analysis of this.”
Tom Ascol enthusiastically agrees with James Lindsay’s “analysis” of the situation when Lindsay is merely defaming McDurmon’s motives and assuming the worst about our hearts and our integrity. Lindsay’s personal slight, repeated by Ascol, also applies to anyone else who sees McDurmon’s charges as legitimate.
[~13:20] Jared Longshore then makes a surprising comment on McDurmon’s article and the basis of this whole episode. "I'm not even gonna take time to read it because I agree with what both you men [Tom and Voddie] have said about it."
[~13:30] At this point, Voddie appears to suggest that you can’t plagiarize a fabricated quote or plagiarize a misquote. However, although it’s a bit out of the ordinary, it’s very possible to plagiarize false quotes. It’s not as confusing as presented in this section.
[~14:35] I’m personally not a huge Litton supporter and I wouldn’t have voted for him. I also don’t support or excuse his own problems. But let’s not minimize our own mistakes while then immediately pointing to someone else. As believers, we are not “owning” anything when we expend all sorts of energy on minimizing the problem before we “own” the problem. Doing every last thing you can to minimize ethical failings (such as misquoting and plagiarism), pointing at other people’s failings to make favorable self-serving comparisons, while saying you’re “owning” the failing is a politician’s move, not a Gospel minister’s move. This section in particular is very troubling.
[~17:30] “That is not Delgado’s statement. . . unfortunately, what I have done is that I have read that statement, the way it is in the book, without making a clear distinction between where that footnote is and where I’m making a clarification. . . I regret doing that.” VB
I really want to highlight the last two quotes from Voddie. Earlier Voddie said that it was “obvious” that he wasn’t quoting Delgado, and now he’s explaining how his poor formatting even confused him and caused him to read that section as if it were a direct quote.
I want to commend Voddie for saying that he regrets misquoting Delgado. However, I’m fairly certain Voddie and the hosts aren’t catching onto how that the way Voddie explains his mistake shows how easy it is for others to read the sloppy portion just as Voddie did; that is, as a direct quote of Delgado.
[~18:30] “it’s clear that’s what I’m doing. . . It would have been much clearer. . . Not only does that lack of clarity show up in terms of what people are reading, but it’s also showed up in terms of me reading that same thing. I’ve read that. I’ve read that as though that was Delgado and it wasn’t. That’s my comment.” VB. Very mixed messages from Voddie.
[~19:00] Regarding Tom Ascol’s “teaching moment”, owning up means not minimizing and deflecting. It also means not besmirching the character of the men (McDurmon, Shenvi, Mason, myself, and others) who pointed out the mistake that Voddie made.
[~19:35] I’m very glad that critical race theorist, Richard Delgado, is being gracious and I’m also glad that Voddie wants to apologize to him. This graciousness from a critical theorist who is being demonized is remarkable. It stands in stark contrast to how Voddie’s critics are being treated (particularly by Ascol). The CRT leader being more gracious than the Southern Baptist Founders Ministry leader is quite the teaching moment.
[~21:30] Keep in mind that in Fault Lines this section is introduced with “according to Richard Delgado.” If this is how Wallis, Kendi, or whoever talks, then fine. But that’s not what Voddie wrote.
[~21:45] To be fair to VB regarding “on the streets” CRT, it is true we should answer both. But we should also make distinctions and be clear about who we’re talking about.
[~22:30] Note that implications of an entire movement are usually not introduced by “according to this specific author” or implications of a completely different author. Drawing implications are fine, but this is far more than that.
Delgado strongly disagrees with, and disproves, the claim that white people are incapable of righteous action regarding race.
[~29:00] The “McDurmon” sale code is juvenile, but whatever.
[~30:30] It’s very disappointing that Tom Ascol closes the episode with another “teachable moment” by encouraging listeners to judge the secret motivations of Voddie’s critics and assume the worst in them. Scoring points for the “culture war” is not worth encouraging this lack of charity.
To review, I believe Voddie Baucham is being honest when he says he was not intentional in the misquotes. Lamb’s Reign made it very clear that we were not making a judgment on his motives here and at this point I’m very happy to believe him. However, I reject the idea that he’s adequately “owning” the situation. We received some very mixed messages in this podcast where he went back and forth about whether or not he was being clear and revealed how easy it would be for others to attribute his own words to Delgado. Throughout the episode, both Voddie and his hosts minimize the significance of what Voddie did actually admit to, but there was only denial on the plagiarism and mischaracterization charges. These denials and minimizations were done with little serious or careful analysis of the claims.
I’m not making any promises, but I hope this is the last article I feel the need to write about the Voddie Baucham plagiarism scandal. At this point, it has become clear that the very serious allegations won’t be taken seriously by those involved.
Lastly, I’m grieved that this episode is being highlighted as a good example for how leaders should handle these situations. I agree with Voddie that it is unfortunate [~32:30] and disheartening how some of these conversations have gone. There was never any need to become cruel or opportunistic regardless of the truthfulness of charges. It was never appropriate or Christlike to assume the worst motives in anyone involved. But I must say that some of that disheartening, unfortunate, and unChristlike behavior is found in this episode.
*Article based very loosely on my earlier Twitter thread.