Hillary Clinton’s pastor plagiarized the work of another minister in a new book that is scheduled for release on Thursday, reports CNN.
The book, Strong for a Moment Like This: The Daily Devotions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, is about the emails that Rev. Bill Shillady wrote Clinton from April 2015 through December of last year. Shillady is a United Methodist minister. He and Clinton — a lifelong Methodist — “formed a spiritual bond” in New York in 2002 and he described his emails as “a way to minister to a candidate in perpetual motion,” writes CNN.
Shillady’s book includes 11 pages of end notes crediting some source material, but it leaves out a blog post by the Rev. Matthew Deuel, from which an “especially emotional devotion” borrowed heavily from.
During an interview with CNN last week, Shillady said he wrote the devotion at 4 a.m. the morning after Clinton lost the presidential election. He made no mention of borrowing material for it.
Clinton is on the cover of the book and also wrote a foreword. In it, she praises Shillady and his writing. She is also supposed to appear at an event next month to promote the book. Her spokesperson did not immediately respond for comment to CNN.
On Monday, Shillady apologized, saying he “was ‘stunned’ by the similarities between his email to Clinton and Deuel’s column.” CNN reports that Deuel said he and Shillady talked on Monday. Deuel has accepted Shillady’s apology.
The similarities were discovered last week when CNN published the email, titled “Sunday is Coming,” that Shillady sent Clinton on November 9. Deuel contacted a CNN reporter to say that some paragraphs in Shillady’s email seemed to be “inspired” by a blog post he wrote in March 2016.
The pastor told CNN that he is “not interested in publicly pursuing anything” because there is so much turmoil in the United States and the world right now. The phrase “It’s Friday but Sunday is coming” is not new to Christian ministers and though Deuel said Shillady could have done things differently, “for me to fire back publicly would be inappropriate and out of line on my part.”
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