Effeminacy condemned on Desiring God

But Wedgeworth wasn’t the author of the DG piece. So just to be clear, as I said before, I’ll say again, I don’t think anybody is plagiarizing. And lots of Wedgeworth’s content was from outside sources as well.

Having said that, I do have personal experience with Wedgeworth ignoring me, not when I wanted acknowledgement but when I had a simple question he was in a position to answer.

Also, I hope I am wrong, but I took it as a personal dig at us when he said the following in his previous article about Revoice and the Spiritual Friendship movement:

They have been rather badly misunderstood by some critics for quite a long time and yet they continue to persevere with an irenic disposition.

and

They have demonstrated a much more sophisticated theological and philosophical framework than many of their critics.

Perhaps I’m allowing personal animus to color my opinion of him too much, but critics of those movements are few and far between.

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Okay, that makes sense, and I do agree that it’s quite lame to point out how “unsophisticated” the other nameless “critics” are before making a criticism yourself. Throwing teammates under the bus to build cred with your opponents is all kinds of bad and foolish, and that remains true even when/if your teammates do have problems.

A solid amen to both of these statements. I just want to be sure that if we publicly accuse someone of stealing ideas (through a refusal to cite their true origin) that we have a solid reason for doing so. I have not been satisfied that such a reason has been presented as of yet. God bless.

There’s some more I want to say on this, but I’m afraid it will be a number of hours in coming. Good back and forth. Thank you, Joseph and Mr. Miller. Love,

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No worries. I’m busy myself, so apologies in advance if I engage in fits and starts.

Dear Mr. Miller,

My concern has never been stealing ideas, but rather expressing gratitude. And from that, directing one’s readers to good sources one has benefitted from.

Reformed men truly concerned about effeminacy and Revoice will direct those they lead to read the men who have done the heat-of-the-midday work on both. They will not hide their dependence on them because their thankfulness for the work will take precedence over their… I won’t finish that sentence not wanting to be accused of a host of pseudo-sins that come to mind.

I myself have a substantial history of defending Doug and others against false charges of plagiarism. Against theft of ideas. It’s my conviction that each of us is standing on the shoulders of others in our teaching, preaching, and writing, and should relish the opportunity to say so—thus our footnotes in our texts. Yes, footnotes online are cumbersome and can be viewed as pedantic when print publishing aches for them.

Does this explain things better, dear brother?

With love,

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Dear Pastor Bayly,

That does help, although I’ll admit it still leaves me unsure as to what to think. If I understand the problem you and @jtbayly are driving at, it’s less about high-school level plagiarism, and more about a kind of inappropriate aloofness where there should be open, public concord. To try to summarize, the Revoice struggle is not happening in a vacuum. The reformed world is small, and in an ongoing, hot fight, combatants should recognize the work being done by other allies, especially if those allies were doing that work first (“heat-of-the-midday work”). In that case, you are necessarily building on their work, even if you aren’t using their arguments directly.

So when someone comes along, speaks into an ongoing conversation, does not acknowledge prior work being done by allies, and even casts shade on prior, nameless “critics,” one might suspect something like snubbing or distancing is happening. Is this a fair representation?

Assuming it is, I’ll just admit that I don’t quite know what to make of it. That’s largely due to two things. First, to do a Bookening-style baggage check I probably should have done earlier, I’m probably more inclined to trust Wedgeworth than some. This is not because I’m actually very familiar with him or his work, but because I have friends who think he’s a good man. Thus far that element.

Second, I’m unfamiliar with the politics of the reformed world as a layperson. The argument against him outlined above relies on the assumption that Warhorn Media contributions are a big enough element in the room to be un-ignorable. It’s not too hard (for me) to imagine that he simply isn’t very familiar with or aware of what you all are doing, and so decided not to reference or speak to it.

Mind you, I’m not saying that’s what happened, and I don’t think your suspicions are unreasonable. I just find myself torn between different authorities (some of my friends and y’all), both of whom I’m inclined to trust. On a point like this, someone is right and someone is wrong, but I’ll probably just land on “innocent until proven guilty” applied to both arguments for now.

Finally, I do want to reiterate one point. Throwing nameless allies under the bus, and praising the Revoice folk for being “irenic” in the face of “unreasonable criticism” is objectively lame. Of course the wolves have developed a “much more sophisticated theological and philosophical framework” and have presented an “irenic disposition”- they’re trying to pull a fast one on the church! As Chesterton put it, “To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence.” In praising them for any of that, Wedgeworth is answering a fool according to his folly and is in real danger of becoming like them himself.

Apologies for that being so ridiculously long as I’m finding this difficult to think through. And also, thanks again for all your work on this front. When the chips are down, academics are a dime a dozen, but your (and other’s) clear, pastoral tone in response to this dumpster fire of lust is what is desperately needed in the larger, spine-challenged church.

God Bless,

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Dear Chris,

I’m more than satisfied with your summary. Also think your final paragraph is an important point—matter of fact, before reading it, I’d tweeted on same subject.

Thanks for the iron-sharpening.

Warmly in Christ,

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