The sermongate scandal of Ed Litton made plagiarism a front and center issue in Evangelicalism when the newly elected President of the Southern Baptist Convention preached the same exact sermon as the outgoing president JD Greear. The theological liberals, AKA apostates, sought to strike back with accusations that Voddie Baucham both plagiarizes and misquotes Richard Delgado, a Critical Race Theorist, in his popular book Fault Lines.
Voddie Baucham is a shining star in grassroots Evangelicalism, and one of the most prominent critics of Critical Race Theory, who actually wants to destroy the ideology, unlike Neil Shenvi. Joel McDurmon, a theological liberal, has levied accusations that Voddie Baucham plagiarized James Lindsay and misattributes words to Richard Delgado, which he believes are a strawman argument about Critical Race Theory.
According to McDurmon, everything he highlighted in red is not an original quote. The fault in McDurmon’s logic is that after each quote is a citation, indicating four different quotations. McDurmond is correct in arguing that blockquotes are universally understood to be reserved for words not attributed to the author, and that they should not contain commentary. But he is wrong to use Baucham’s poor formatting as grounds for sin.
James Lindsay has already come out and pushed back on the claim that he was plagiarized by Baucham which almost exonerates Fault Lines as a work from the sins that it has been attributed with. However, did Durham incidentally stumble into a real issue?
Multiple clips have surfaced showing Voddie Baucham attributing words to Richard Delgado that were not published, in the same work that he is citing in Fault Lines. In other words, where the quote stops in his book, is not where Voddie Baucham stops the quote during his lectures. Baucham has on video attributed his own commentary to Richard Delgado. This is wrong in that he is baring false witness to bolster his own argument. Unlike the misuse of block quotes, this is a sin issue.
Analysis
In particular, it is a lie and distortion of CRT that it teaches “whites are incapable of righteous action on race,” and that “Storytelling/Narrative Reading is the way black forward knowledge vs. the Science/reason method of white people.” These are complete and utter falsehoods for which Voddie needs to be held accountable.
Joel McDurmon is using this as an excuse to defend Critical Race Theory by stating that Baucham’s commentary about “whites being incapable of righteousness” is a slanderous characterization of Critical Race Theory’s teaching. But having reviewed the Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, McDurmon is speaking lies. And Voddie Baucham fueled these lies with both his unwise formatting and evident lying himself during lectures. Critical Race Theory is wicked enough. We do not need to falsely attribute word it it’s academics. Especially since this fight is not in academia, it’s in the church.
