Alisa Harris, at the World Magazine blog, writes about the ethical question of pastors cribbing sermon outlines—sometimes whole homilies—from online sermon caches.
As an aside, she links to an article from bnet, about the use of ghostwriters in Christian publishing.
Such things are common in the industry. When my first novel, Erling’s Word (fair warning—you don’t need to buy that book if you have The Year of the Warrior. TYOTW incorporates it entirely in a double volume) was published by Baen, it came out the same month as the “first novel” by an actor who’d worked in a very famous science fiction TV series. Everybody knew, I think, that this actor hadn’t really written the book. Probably hadn’t even contributed much. A fledgeling author was listed as co-author, but it was understood that she’d done the real work, while the actor had contributed the considerable market value of his name.
The same sort of thing happens in Christian publishing. You’ll see a lot of books published under the names of prominent Christian figures. Often these are very articulate people perfectly capable of writing a book on their own. Many of them have done just that more than once. But they’re busy. They have ministries to run, public appearances to make. Writing books is time-consuming and lonely work. It demands chunks of times that often just don’t fit such people’s schedules. So they “co-write.” The person who does the dog-work usually gets lower billing, in a smaller font, at the bottom of the front cover.
Sometimes they aren’t even credited at all. These writers are called “ghost-writers.” They agree from the outset that, in return for whatever cut of the profit their contract provides for, they will give up all public credit for their work.
Is this honest? I have a hard time defending it, especially in Christian publishing. It involves the celebrity taking credit for work he didn’t do. I hope I would never agree to have a book ghosted in my name.
Would I agree to ghost a book? Here comes the hypocritical part. I think I would. I’d be thrilled by the opportunity to work with the celebrity, and giddy at the thought that something I wrote would sell more than 3,000 copies. I’d hope that if I did good work, I’d get the chance to peddle something to that publisher that I would get credit for.
A couple times when I was with Jim Baen, he floated the idea of teaming me with one of his big-selling writers to do a collaboration. (This is different from ghost-writing, of course, as explained above—though in some cases, I’ve heard, it’s not all that different in terms of actual work). I was eager to do it, but somehow Jim always seemed to drop the idea.
Maybe he was repelled by the fact that I had no professional self-respect at all.
It wouldn’t be good to depend upon pre-written sermons all the time, but the point of a sermon ultimately isn’t to be creative, but to deliver the water of life to souls dying of thirst, in whatever vessel works, whether a lovely goblet or a dixie cup.
(I’m alluding to something I read years ago, in the infamous Wittenburg Door magazine. A columnist was commenting on his invitation to submit a sermon to a sermon contest. He declined, saying that a sermon was not a fancy goblet to be put on display, but a dixie cup for serving the water of life to souls dying of thirst.)
The great Lutheran theological novel The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz includes an episode in which a preacher, after a harrowing, life-changing night of ministry, has no time to prepare a sermon and ends up preaching a sermon verbatim from a book of sermons by a famous preacher. He himself learns new things about grace from the sermon while he is reading it. A parishioner recognizes the sermon, but also sees that the pastor’s own heart was changed by it, and that “Jesus only” was ultimately behind it, regardless of who penned the words.
Okay, now I have to stop you. You are being totally unfair to yourself. When Jim Baen died there was a lot of stuff about the way he operated and how he nurtured newer writers by teaming them up with more established personalities. It was a formula for success with Baen. And sometimes they did it to help out the older writer, who might be tapped out but still had a valuable name. He was talking about a helpful thing, not testing your moral fiber.
What about ghost-writing ghost stories?
You can’t ghost-write ghost stories because readers would see right through it.
Jim Baen’s collaboration idea sounds like it was awesome! (But, really, I just want more Lars Walker novels out in the world.) Ghost writing itself, though, not so much. Particularly Christian stuff. Web sites such as DesperatePreacher.com seem a bit beyond the pale to me.
In terms of books, there seems to be a simple honesty issue that shouldn’t be that difficult, it seems to me.
In terms of sermons–I don’t know. There is, as Michael notes, a tradition (at least among Lutherans) for sermons to be read from a book in some situations. But it was all open and aboveboard, with no pretense of originality. I knew a pastor once (not in my present church body, let it be noted) whose sermons were pretty much lifted bodily from “Pulpit Helps” magazine every week.
The actor wouldn’t go by the name “Shat,” would he?
No. Not that one.
It was everyone’s friend Dirk Benedict.
No, it wasn’t.
I think it’s the “all open and aboveboard” part that makes it okay. It isn’t plagiarism if you properly attribute.
It is misleading to ghost-write, and I don’t think I would do it or use such services. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with priest’s downloading sermons though… assuming they make sure that there is nothing in them that is objectionable before they go to read it. Not everyone can write good homilies.
On this note there are many textual critics who think that parts of the new testament were not written by the people to whom they are traditionally attributed to, and they think that they were written by others who simply credited it to those original authors. However, there isn’t really an awful lot of evidence supporting this conclusion, despite what we may hear otherwise.
God Bless,