The Wall Street Journal’s front-page has a story about sermon plagiarism/reuse. “That Sermon You Heard on Sunday May Be From the Web” [temporary link here]. It leads off with Rev. Brian Moon re-preaching 75% of a sermon by Ed Young, including a whitewater rafting story like Ed’s. “Truth is truth, there’s no sense reinventing the wheel…if you’ve got something that’s a good product, why go out and beat your head against the wall and try to come up with it yourself?”

Um. Because its misleading?
At some point, repeating the same words, organization and whitewater rafting stories turns a ’sermon’ into a dramatic re-enactment. If you’re parroting more than 50% of your material from a single source, at least wear a black turtleneck and give your audience a clue.

Neil Gross, of Harvard, and Solon Simmons, of George Mason, are circulating a working paper on the religiosity of college professors.  Three key points:

1. Belief does vary by field — psychology and biology have the fewest believers, nursing the most.
2.  The direction of the school makes a difference: there is a 19-point gap between religiously ‘affiliated’ and ‘unaffiliated’ schools when it comes to the percentage of faculty who believe in a god.

3. People of faith aren’t penetrating into elite faculties — while 40% of professors at 4-year colleges and community colleges believe in a god, they only account for 20% at elite, doctorate-granting schools. (72.9% of professors at elite universities believe the Bible to be merely an ancient book of fables).

Points 1 & 2 will be interesting to parents and students trying to decide where to go to college.

#3 is worth further study — is there a ‘glass ceiling’ for believers in the academy?  There’s been anecdotal evidence for years, but this puts numbers behind the gut feeling.

If so, how are the religious being screened out?  Gross and Simmons say it might relate to the fervency of belief.  Religious moderates are more prevalent at 4-year and elite schools.  But, my guess is that there is also something to do with the expressive requirements of the denomination or faith.  It’s not just that deeply held beliefs are screened out, but also that faith requiring expressive differentiation from the predominant culture is more likely to be screened out.  By that, I mean that fervent Baptists look like awkward buffoons at the faculty cocktail mixer, and are conspicuously absent from the Sunday morning faculty retreats, where they might shine at the ice cream social.

HT: Scot McKnight

Steve McCoy points out something I’ve been waiting for a long time: a podcast from Mars Hill Audio.
Over the years, I’ve received second-hand cassettes of Mars Hill’s  stuff, and  it’s great — think NPR for evangelicals.  I’d think they could make a killing with a subscription-based podcast, so I hope the short, free podcasts are successful.