Students’ concerns over plagiarism by Tennessee Temple University President Danny Lovett ultimately led to his resignation from the school.
But Lovett, while acknowledging that he plagiarized some passages in his book “Jesus is Awesome,” said he was leaving the university anyway.
*source-http://bit.ly/lfDvIG
See that little mark that says *source right above this text? And see how the words above it are in a blockquote format? That means I got them from somewhere else…acknowledging I didn’t come up with them myself. That apparently was too much to ask for my former professor and Dean of Liberty Seminary Danny Lovett.
You see, I read the book in question, I had to for my CHMN class…(Church Ministries…it has since been renamed EVAN 101) , a class I took in Fall of 2004…(picture of my transcript below)
Firstly, the book itself is awful…it is written in a sing-songish style manner one would expect out of a sixth grader forced to do an essay project. Secondly, …honestly I could bash this book all day, let’s move on…
In keeping with tradition of former Dean’s of Liberty Seminary (if you recall the most recent dean, Dr. Ergun Caner was forced to resign after it was found out he lied on numerous occasions from the pulpit regarding his past..he was allowed to keep his job as a professor at Liberty, but eventually left to become Vice-President of a small Baptist college in Texas) Danny has resigned in disgrace after it was proved his book was filled with passages from other books yet nary a credit or citation was found.
I seriously don’t get why anyone would hire these clowns. One is a vice-president of a college and one is going to be a head pastor of a church…really? Are we so desperate for good men that we are using men who have clearly abused power before?
Perhaps it is time for these men to serve in non-leadership positions. The book of Timothy warns us to flee from this sort of corruption and temptation…clearly these men are tempted by power and control. They have proven they cannot handle it and should spend time seeking out another course for their lives.
I fear instead they are attempting to preach the gospel for personal, fiscal gain…and we all know how God feels about his word being used for that sort of evil…
For all my non-Liberty friends reading this…the title is an allusion to both Danny’s book and a phrase we all said at the start of class…he would yell “JESUS IS WHAT???” to which the class would reply “AWESOME!”…
And Jesus is still Awesome…no matter how much Danny Lovett, Ergun Caner or anyone else tries to drag Him down.
For Further Reading:
A Baptist Message board (click here) announcing the resignation of Danny Lovett as Dean of Liberty back in the day and the promoting of Dr. Ergun Caner as the new dean. Both these men failed us…look how excited the first poster was about the change…
