Mark Driscoll’s latest publishing scandal*

There is a famous — and, in many Christian quarters, infamous — pastor in the Seattle area by the name of Mark Driscoll. The Rev. Driscoll leads the megachurch Mars Hill, and he has an uncanny knack for surviving scandal. Indeed, lesser men have been swallowed whole by mistakes that pale in professional comparison.

You might recall me mentioning him in the fall, when “>I explained to Religon News Service's Jonathan Merritt). But Driscoll blamed others and came out effectively unscathed. His reputation among his followers remained in tact; his reputation among his critics couldn't get much worse.

But then last week “>a lengthy takedown of Driscoll's latest authorial misdeeds and the absurd excuses and equivocations that have come from his camp.

This is toward the end:

So today Mark Driscoll admits, in an interview in Charisma, the scheme was cooked up and a bad idea… but, of course, he’s not to blame. Nope. He explained that “outside counsel advised us to use ResultSource.” So those pesky outside counselors are to blame, like that pesky unnamed research assistant who plagiarized is to blame. Not Mark. Not the guy with his name all over stuff. Huh-uh. Instead, his board made a statement that they appreciate his “endurance through false accusation.” Um… excuse me, but what exactly was the FALSE part? His book contains the un-cited work of another writer, which his own publisher acknowledged was inappropriate  He had clearly plagiarized materials with his name on it. A company was paid a pile of money to pump his book and dishonestly get it onto bestseller lists. Those are all facts. What exactly is the “false” part? Well, except for the part where Mark claims he actually wrote any of this, I mean. I’m fairly certain that part is false.

What’s wrong with buying your way onto the bestseller list? It’s an expensive, short-term ego stroke for the lazy and dishonest, and it excludes real writers from actually making the list.

Read the rest “>Warren Throckmorton notes that the apology Driscoll circulated among the Mars Hills community yesterday sounds many familiar notes to a 2007 sermon he delivered on humility. Throckmorton doesn't say Driscoll plagiarized himself — er, is an