Christian Encyclopedia Causes Scholarly Stir
By Kimberly Winston -- Publishers Weekly, 2/25/2009 9:06:00 AM
A major scholarly encyclopedia that took many years and pots of money to produce is the book of contention in a battle between what some involved are portraying as an “anti-Christian” publishing house and the work's “committed Christian” editor-in-chief.
The four-volume, 3,000-page Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization was to have been published by Wiley-Blackwell in July, but the house ceased its promotion in November when some members of the work’s editorial board raised concerns over its merits.
Chief among the critics is Bernard McGinn, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a well-respected author in his own right. McGinn contributed three articles to the encyclopedia and was a member of its editorial board until resigning. He became concerned it contained errors of historical fact, misleading and inflammatory statements about Islam and an overall tone of “Christian triumphalism” that he described as inappropriate for a scholarly work.
The encyclopedia’s editor-in-chief is George Thomas Kurian, an independent scholar with several major encyclopedias on his editorial résumé. In an e-mail he sent to the work’s 400 contributors, he dismissed the concerns of McGinn and others and blamed the canceling of the work on “the devil” who “struck in the form of a wrecking crew... of malcontents.” Kurian describes himself as a “committed Christian” and has said he made his personal faith clear to Wiley before beginning the work.
In a prepared statement, Wiley officials said Kurian failed to send any material to the encyclopedia’s editorial board for review—standard operating procedure for works of this type. “We acknowledge that we should have been aware of the shortcut Mr. Kurian took in his editorial process sooner,” the statement reads, “but that does not change our responsibility to rectify the situation now.”
Kurian, who could not be reached for comment, said in his e-mail to contributors that the encyclopedia was being pulped, but Wiley says that is untrue. Wiley’s statement describes the work as “delayed” to allow further review.
