July 21, 2016 (Thursday)
R.G. Lee was famous for his sermon, “Payday Someday,” which he preached more than 1200 times. I heard him at a convention about 50 years ago, at which he made reference to a sermon of his. He then said, “I’ve never preached it.” Then he added, “I’m not saying it has never been preached; it’s been published.” It was an obvious remark about plagiarism.
I’m sure some preachers have preached R.G. Lee’s published sermons, but it’s not plagiarism if the preacher gives credit to the author and gets permission to use his material. I think most preachers are careful about this when publishing articles and sermons, but in all probability whenever we are preaching, quoting portions of a another preacher’s sermons, we just verbally give credit and go on with our sermon. Sometimes we get careless about this.
J.D. Grey, pastor of the First Baptist Church of New Orleans before his retirement many years ago, spoke at a convention and jokingly declared to his audience of preachers, “All originality and no plagiarism makes for many a dull sermon!”
I wrote a piece for the Baptist Standard, and later saw it reproduced in a church newsletter as an “anonymous” article. Later I saw that one reproduced under someone else’s name. While I was glad to see the article in circulation, I was not happy with the plagiarism.
This week we have had a “tempest in a teapot” about a speech at the Republic National Convention. The portion of the speech that was supposedly plagiarized was simply a collection of well-known platitudes. As a matter of fact, I had said one of those things the previous Sunday myself. Was I plagiarized? No way. The whole flap was political, stirred up by media.
Genuine plagiarism is theft of intellectual property and is not practiced by honest people. It can be serious and people can be sued over it. If you ever write something, make sure it’s your own. If it is not, then be sure to clear all the legal hurdles before you publish it.
Incidentally, the word, “plagiarize,” has Latin roots, dates from the 1500s and originally described kidnapping. You can quote me on that, but you may want to check my facts to make sure I’m not quoting an unauthorized guess.