As If I Needed Another Reason

It's not like I needed another reason to dislike Bishop Eddie Long who just seems like a total slime ball to me. Now we find this man is surfing up sermons on sermons.com? He's a charlatan I tell ya!

Two days after the Virginia Tech shooting, Bishop Eddie Long walked before the congregation of his Lithonia megachurch and said the Holy Spirit had a message for them.

The senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church preached a sermon he called "Act of Man or Act of God?" He talked about a "misguided, twisted" student who murdered 32 people before killing himself. He invoked the book of Job and punctuated his delivery with dramatic sighs and anguished grunts. The congregation was shouting by sermon's end.

Few, if any, knew the inspiration for Long's sermon wasn't confined to the Holy Spirit. It also came from sermons.com, a preaching Web site that offers pastors prepackaged sermons for a fee. Long's words matched large portions of a Virginia Tech sermon with a similar title ("Acts of Man and Acts of God") posted on the site. A Google search revealed that at least three other pastors — including one in Alpharetta — had preached long passages from the Internet sermon.

Parishioners who dwell on the meaning of their pastor's words now face the question: Is the sermon an act of man or an act of the Internet? Sermon borrowing — called "pulpit plagiarism" by critics — is spreading among the nation's clergy.

I think I need a new career. I can surf and spout too!

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