Faithlife: Is There a Policy Concerning Censoring Offerings?
I would like to know if Faithlife has a clear policy concerning which resources are deemed offensive vs. simply offering differing opinions. I certainly understand that things get through and people get up in arms on either side, but there should be a clear policy as opposed to simply listening to some vocal critics of a particular offering.
I give the following examples (I'M NOT SAYING THEY SHOULD OR SHOULD NOT BE OFFERED OR THAT WE NEED TO DEBATE THEM; THEY ARE SIMPLY EXAMPLES):
The recent book Still Stace: My Gay Christian Coming of Age Story which was pulled (I'm pretty sure this one slipped through because of the automated process). Was this book pulled because it deals with homosexuality? Because it was, seemingly, marketed to children? What about academic books dealing with homosexuality in the Bible or ANE or Greco-Roman world that could be considered offensive to some?
Books by Bart Ehrman. I think we should have all of his works, if for no other reason than apologetics, but many find him offensive, but he is a legitimate Bible/textual scholar who happens to write popular level works. Should he be disallowed because he questions the authority of the Bible so publicly? Then what about people like Julius Wellhausen, who must be considered in Old Testament scholarship, but many disagree with his source approach. Where does Faithlife draw the line?
The Satanic Bible would be great for apologetics concerning humanism and dealing with modern Satanists/humanists, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that MANY would not want it in Logos.
Dracula is an old example that was pulled.
I am not saying we should or should not offer any of the above, but I would like to know that Faithlife has a reasonable stance on which books to pull and which ones to keep. I personally understand pulling the first one, but I would offer the others, but my opinion should not be the deciding factor on what Logos offers.
So my question is, what is the deciding factor on potentially controversial resources Logos offers?
Disclaimer: I hate using messaging, texting, and email for real communication. If anything that I type to you seems like anything other than humble and respectful, then I have not done a good job typing my thoughts.
Comments
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Agree. Customers need to know what kind of store it is.
I was surprised I had so many Kindle Old Testament volumes, and don't know if that's FL's 'doing' or not.
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A question which not only concerns moral or cultural matters but also touches on Bible and theology matters ... for example: "Preterism" materials, "Non-Trinitarian (Unitarian)" materials.
Wolfgang Schneider
(BibelCenter)
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Wolfgang Schneider said:
A question which not only concerns moral or cultural matters but also touches on Bible and theology matters ... for example: "Preterism" materials, "Non-Trinitarian (Unitarian)" materials.
Preterism and other “-isms” are a must to learn different points of view. I don’t agree and don’t like futurism but I can learn what it teaches to refute it. Same goes for other doctrines. We cannot do fair research if we only use resources that we like. Besides, we already have preterist and unitarian resources in Logos.
DAL
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Robert M. Warren said:
I don't think that's wrong - I suspect doing this well requires a great deal of judgement and discretion. My thought experiment would be to imagine myself as the purchasing manager for a scientific bookstore. Would I include books on the psychology of why people believe in conspiracy theories? Absolutely. Books on the history of conspiracy theories? You betcha. Would I have a shelf full of books promoting the latest conspiracy theories? Nope.
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It is my observation that three topics come up for censorship - sex, vulgarity, and the occult - with very idiosyncratic definitions of the latter. It is also my observation that the individuals asking for censoring rarely have any direct knowledge of the content of the book. An example is a book objected to solely based on its title: A Review as promised in "Vulgar title on prepub" - Faithlife Forums (logos.com) and Vulgar title on prepub - Faithlife Forums (logos.com)
My opinion is that Faithlife should NEVER remove a publication based on forum traffic - it gives the perception of favoritism - theological or personal. Rather, FL should offer a standardized way to request the removal of a book that requires that the person making the request show actual knowledge of the content of the book and show that their request is based on broadly accepted Christian principles not denominational eccentricities. The book may be temporarily removed pending review, with a note that it is pending review. Other users should then be able to build a case for retention with FL providing the basis of their final decision.
My new aphorism: knee-jerk reactions occur only on jerks.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:
The book may be temporarily removed pending review, with a note that it is pending review. Other users should then be able to build a case for retention with FL providing the basis of their final decision.
I don't think even it should be temporarily removed pending review. All of the burden of making the case to remove it should be on the person who thinks it should be removed. FL shouldn't remove anything unless something slipped through via automation that violates its own clearly stated policies or AFTER someone has demonstrated that it should be removed.
I specifically think that FL should allow books with differing perspectives on sexuality, marriage, race, and other social topics within the context of current Christian discussion and debate since those are important topics that Christians of different perspectives want to read about. If an author or a book calls themself/itself Christian (like the gay christian title that was recently pulled), FL should give it the same benefit of the doubt of other christian titles in the store, including ones I don't remotely recognize as Christian but nevertheless have not requested that they be pulled. There are Christians with differing views on these topics and they should all be allowed to be heard by those who wish to hear.
Let us choose what we want to buy/read and stay out of the book-banning business.
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Kiyah said:
I don't think even it should be temporarily removed pending review. All of the burden of making the case to remove it should be on the person who thinks it should be removed. FL shouldn't remove anything unless something slipped through via automation that violates its own clearly stated policies or AFTER someone has demonstrated that it should be removed.
My initial thoughts agreed with you but when running use cases through my head, I could find cases where immediate removal seemed wise. Most cases it would not. Therefore, I qualified my statement with "may" so that that others would not attack me based on the few outlier cases.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:Kiyah said:
I don't think even it should be temporarily removed pending review. All of the burden of making the case to remove it should be on the person who thinks it should be removed. FL shouldn't remove anything unless something slipped through via automation that violates its own clearly stated policies or AFTER someone has demonstrated that it should be removed.
My initial thoughts agreed with you but when running use cases through my head, I could find cases where immediate removal seemed wise. Most cases it would not. Therefore, I qualified my statement with "may" so that that others would not attack me based on the few outlier cases.
Gotcha.
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AMEN!!! M>J>
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Joseph Turner said:
So my question is, what is the deciding factor on potentially controversial resources Logos offers?
One option: Let the market - i.e. the Logos customer base - decide the value of potentially controversial resources. Make them available and accept the judgment of Logos users.
I understand that Faithlife is a business intent on making money. I therefore don't expect Logos to publish every available Christian resource on its platform. But neither do I expect Faithlife to make publishing decisions based on forum poster protests, especially not on topics such as homosexuality, which are as controversial within the Church as they are in society writ large.
Logos declares its mission to be to "use technology to equip the Church to grow in the light of the Bible." Within the modern Church, people of good faith disagree with each other, often strenuously, on the issue of homosexuality. In pursuit of its mission, Logos should not withhold resources such as as the "Still Stace..." book from people on any side of controversial issues simply because people on the other side(s) disapprove.
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I support Faithlife's "right" to offer for sale whatever it both can and wants to, with or without explanation, and I lobby Faithlife via the Faithlife Feedback site to carry books I want it to carry. I also do appreciate explanations when it does not offer whatever books for sale, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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SineNomine said:
I support Faithlife's "right" to offer for sale whatever it both can and wants to, with or without explanation, and I lobby Faithlife via the Faithlife Feedback site to carry books I want it to carry. I also do appreciate explanations when it does not offer whatever books for sale, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.
Amen!
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DAL said:
Preterism and other “-isms” are a must to learn different points of view. I don’t agree and don’t like futurism but I can learn what it teaches to refute it. Same goes for other doctrines. We cannot do fair research if we only use resources that we like. Besides, we already have preterist and unitarian resources in Logos.
I agree with you on the "are a must to learn different points of view". Otoh, I haven't found resources promoting non-trinitarian/unitarian positions, same for non-futurism preterist positions in Logos.
This could be simply because I don't know how to use the search function on Logos website effectively when trying to "search all books"?Wolfgang Schneider
(BibelCenter)
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Wolfgang Schneider said:
I agree with you on the "are a must to learn different points of view". Otoh, I haven't found resources promoting non-trinitarian/unitarian positions, same for non-futurism preterist positions in Logos.
This could be simply because I don't know how to use the search function on Logos website effectively when trying to "search all books"?Wolfgang ... I enjoy your comments. But yes, FL does quietly not choose for its shelves, works not compatible with late 2nd and early 3rd century theology. That's why I view 'modern Christianity' as largely a churchman construct, complete with theologies, and system-this's and that's. Modern day copyists. It's Logos!
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I agree that Faithlife's choice to include a book or not should not be forum driven though it could be forum informed. "I know it when I see it" applies. I doubt that FL is looking for forum members to create rules by which the company must operate.
I respect that FL chooses what is appropriate as they see fit, case by case. We live in a world with reason gone amuck and I am refreshed that some Christians can still make sensible choices.Once again, FL, thank you for your good sense.
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FL may opt to sell all kinds and types of books... But they can never dictate what I buy and when they start doing that in their packages and such ... well... I'm done... and gone.
xn = Christan man=man -- Acts 11:26 "....and the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch".
Barney Fife is my hero! He only uses an abacus with 14 rows!
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Here is the original thread from 2015 when Bob was wrestling with offering a larger selection of titles.
The problem is that there is no longer a secular store, so all ebooks show under ebooks.faithlife.com. Now the ebooks store does have the statement on the front page that "Faithlife Ebooks is designed specifically to help you grow in the light of the Bible." That does complicate the issue when it comes to offering all books from publishers. You can still select from ebooks.noet.com, but there is no store front.
Disclaimer: I hate using messaging, texting, and email for real communication. If anything that I type to you seems like anything other than humble and respectful, then I have not done a good job typing my thoughts.
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Here are some of the major statements from Bob concerning these issues (keeping in mind that people can change their minds over time, so not trying to hold Bob to any previous statements as prescriptive for all times; these are just here to show the thought process from the past):
Bob Pritchett said:If there’s one adage businesses follow, it’s “Avoid discussing religion and politics.”
Alas, this people-pleasing path of non-offense is not available to a Bible software company. Not one of the thousands of books available for Logos Bible Software is wholly acceptable to all of our customers. And that includes the Bible: every modern translation has critics who believe it corrupts the truth, and every edition of ancient text is likewise considered suspect by some Christian brother or sister.
It’s been 20 years since the leadership of Logos first confronted the question of whether or not we would make available an electronic book that we didn’t personally agree with theologically. We decided that we would; we believed that our users were interested in personal study, and that they could evaluate each book, author, and publisher on their public statements and reputation, and that it was unnecessary for us to add another theological filter which only reflected our personal positions.
And we discovered there were even some theological disagreements between the three company founders. To sell only what all three of us could recommend without reservation would be to offer few tools at all.
In the years that followed Logos Bible Software grew from a small tool with a few Bible translations into a digital library of wide scope. And it seems like someone has called to complain about every single thing we’ve made available, up to and including the English dictionary. (There are vulgar words in the dictionary, and the mother who called me wanted us to remove them so children couldn’t encounter or look them up.)
I’ve taken angry calls from people who I respect as leaders and teachers. I’ve taken calls from people who I think espouse heresy. And I’ve taken calls from people whose positions simply strike me as silly.
All these people who have objected to content Logos sells have been sincere, passionate about God’s Word and His truth, and wanted nothing but to keep others from inducement to error. I can’t help but respect that, and I am the same way.
I want to speak up for the truth. I want to challenge those who are in error, to call out false doctrine and poor teaching, and to be unashamed of the Gospel. And I am: in my home, in my church, and in one-on-one conversations. Were I called to preach, I would do so with boldness and authority.
But I am called, for now, to an office, not a pulpit. And in this office we create, sell, and support a library. And I believe that a library is a useful thing, and that it is useful even when it contains error, heresy, the silly and the sacred. Because students and teachers alike need access to resources to learn, to grow, to be encouraged and challenged and corrected, and even to refute.
There is room for a church on every corner, and for a book to be published expounding on each theological distinction. It is possible for us as individuals to live and teach without compromise on even the smallest point; we can even maintain a church united in a specific understanding of the truth. But a library can rarely grow beyond a single book without some compromise, and we’d all find it frustrating if each library (or digital library tool) was restricted to one viewpoint.
Are there no limits then? Can a library contain anything?
Well, yes. In a large enough library (or bookstore) you will find the sacred and the obscene, shelved in equanimity. (Check under “Art” to see them side-by-side.) But in many cases a library takes a label that provides a filter: Medical Library, Law Library, Children’s Library. Or, even more specifically, My Library – we each have one.
Logos offers a Bible Library. If the book references the Bible, is related to the Bible, talks about the Bible, or is of use to people who study the Bible, it fits in our library.
But isn’t Logos a Christian company? I believe X, and I’m okay with your having books from the slightly misguided believers in Y, but the people who believe in Z aren’t even Christians!
True. For many values of Z, I agree with you: they’re beyond the bounds of orthodoxy. But Logos is a library, not a church, and the Z-content relates to the Bible and its study, whether you choose to read it for instruction or in order to refute it.
How can we trust Logos then?
Good question. And here is where, for the first time in 20 years, the answer has changed; there are now two parts:
The historic answer: As an electronic bookseller, Logos Bible Software does not represent any theological filter (and never has). You should not assume that every electronic book we sell represents orthodox Christian belief, or any particular understanding of such. What you can be sure of is that content we sell is labeled with the author, publisher, and other descriptive metadata that will help you identify who is responsible for the content. We trust that our users will exercise discernment in their choice of digital content just as they would when walking through a paper library or bookstore, and we will soon be adding support for user reviews and ratings where you can get and share other perspectives beyond the marketing copy from a book’s dust-jacket.
The new, second part: Recently Logos has become something of a publisher. We create and sell Bible Study Magazine, the Lexham English Bible, HD Commentary, Evangelical Exegetical Commentary, and more. It’s fair to ask what theological perspective is behind these publications. And the answer is “Evangelical Christian.” Logos Bible Software is a member of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, and we subscribe to the Statement of Faith of the Association (http://www.ecpa.org/?page=about_ecpa).
When Logos Bible Software is the publisher, you can expect that the work does not conflict with this statement of faith. In the future we may choose to publish works aligned with even more detailed statements of faith, in which case they will be clearly indicated.
Logos Bible Software exists to serve everyone who studies the Bible. Our offering a large library of content is not an attempt to minimize the importance of theology or right discernment in even the smallest details. It is rather an affirmation of our belief in sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”): as an organization that sells thousands of books we dare not draw a line and say these 10,000 books are orthodox and these 10,000 are not. We don’t have the courage (or the time or wisdom) to make that call. We draw the line at Scripture, and consider everything beyond a resource to be read and considered with discernment.
For many years Logos has sold Jewish works and the Koran, among other obviously non-Christian resources. When I point this out to customers upset that we are selling this or that book containing poor doctrine they explain that the difference is that no Christian will be accidentally misled by the Koran, which missionaries/apologists/researchers have need to reference, but the book they’re worried about “looks Christian.”
Sadly, there is in our world much that “looks Christian” but which represents something other than the Gospel. We must ourselves be discerning; no pastor or editor or Bible software company can relieve us of the responsibility to rightly divide the word of truth.
Logos Bible Software will soon be offering general Christian books in e-book format. We’ll be partnering with Christian publishers to offer all of their electronic titles for our Vyrso e-Book Reader, which is compatible with Logos Bible Software 4. The number of titles offered for Logos will more than double very quickly. In this new, larger catalog I know you will find many books you have long wanted to have available digitally. I also know that there are authors and titles there that both you and I wish had never been published. But that’s the price of a large library, and a consequence of the fact that we might actually disagree on some particulars, even while finding unity in essentials.
Moving forward we at Logos will try to do an even better job helping you understand what’s what among the books in our library. We will continue to publish Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox, and denominationally-specific works. (Along with academic works by atheists and agnostics.) We will, however, make it clear who the author is, who the publisher is, and the faith tradition of the work. Our own publications, however, will continue to reflect an evangelical perspective. (Some technical and academic works from Logos will contain contributions from non-evangelical scholars, but nothing contrary to our statement of faith.)
We hold Scripture in the highest regard and believe in its unique authority. We see it as the job of the Bible student and Bible teacher to interpret and apply God’s Word, and we have intentionally (and consistently) taken the position that as a business we serve Bible study best by offering a large library and powerful tools, rather than a small library reflecting our own (strongly held) theological positions.
I know that some of you agree, but only to a point, believing that this position or that, or this book or that book, are one step too far outside the fold. But I hope that in a world where every modern Bible translation, point of theology, author and pastor has a sincere and thoughtful critic, you can appreciate the value of a library that doesn’t take sides, and come to value Logos Bible Software as a useful tool whose content must still be approached with discernment, like any library, bookstore, radio, television or even the Internet.
I welcome your thoughts and feedback; you can reach me at bob@logos.com or by calling 360-527-1700.
Sincerely,
Bob Pritchett
President/CEO, Logos Bible Software
Bob Pritchett said:I need your advice.
Bottom Line: If we could offer every ebook Amazon offers, but only if we did offer every ebook Amazon offers, should we? And if so, how?
Background:
As more and more schools adopt Logos Bible Software as an essential tool for their students, we're getting request for an even broader range of books in the system.
Our users already want many books to which we don't have the rights, and we keep working to acquire them, but these are usually in or near biblical studies.
Schools see that Logos meets their needs for a biblical library really well -- and once they appreciate the power of the platform, they want that functionality available for all their classes. If students are going to use the Logos platform for biblical studies, why not English literature? Great -- we've got Noet. But what about the physics textbook? The chemistry book? The biography of Bob Dylan for the class on American pop culture?
It's impossible to predict what books we'll need, and the list is changing constantly. Moreover, many of the titles we would need to support a Christian college undergraduate program come from large secular publishers. They are set up to license their books 'all or nothing' in EPUB format, the way we get EPUB titles for Vyrso now. Preliminary conversations indicate that they are willing to license us their books, but not one at a time -- we can take the whole catalog, or not.
Now I love our platform, and would really like to use it for the history, biography, and business books I read on the Kindle (because we don't offer them). But these catalogs are huge -- and include a lot of books I don't want to be associated with.
We decided long ago that we will offer a broad library, and accepted that it would include a lot of heresy and error. That's the cost of being a library. And, at the Noet and Vyrso stores, you'll see we offer a wide variety of genres, including cookbooks. But these are either specifically chosen for academic study (Noet) or from Christian publishers (Vyrso).
What do we do with a publisher's catalog that includes everything from academic biography to erotic fiction? The same massive publisher that has Timothy Keller's Reason for God also publishes 50 Shades of Grey.
What if we can't license one without the other? Should we not take any of the titles then? Or should we create yet another ebook store where we put 'everything' without any particular Christian label or endorsement? Or should we use the Noet storefront for not just 'scholarly' books, but rather everything that isn't specifically from a Christian publisher (Vyrso) or useful for Bible study (Logos).
What do you think?
Bob Pritchett said:Thank you, everyone, for the thoughtful feedback.
Just some notes which may help... if we do 'license everything' these books will come as EPUBs through an automatic feed, like the Vyrso titles. (Logos.com and Noet.com sell 'Logos Editions', which we hand tag and build with extra functionality. Vyrso.com sells 'eBooks' which are automatically derived from the publisher-provided EPUBs, resulting in less tagging, sometimes different formatting, etc.)
There isn't a significant cost to taking in more EPUBs -- all of the publishers involved have automated 'feeds' which release new titles to the distributors; these feeds point to the EPUB files, contain the pricing and descriptive metadata, etc. It's all standardized and automated, to handle (between the publishers) hundreds of thousands (millions?) of titles. This is one of the reasons it's 'all of nothing' -- no one has the time to mess with individual titles (some of which might only sell a few units a year, if any). They just want to treat it as an automated process.
(And, in the cases we're discussing, there is a contractual requirement to offer the whole catalog -- something that's typical in this kind of large scale distribution.)
And, in a way, that's easier on our end, too -- if a publisher has 10,000+ titles available in EPUB format, we don't know what's what, and don't have time to read and evaluate 10,000 books. We wouldn't be putting these things on pre-pub, wouldn't be marketing them individually, etc. -- we'd just be 'taking the feed' and automatically putting them online.
We could still call out a specific title for more and better tagging -- like Keller's Reason for God -- and 'promote' it to a Logos Edition, but for the most part we wouldn't be evaluating books on a case-by-case basis -- the catalog would be like Amazon's, fed every night by automated processes from the publishers' servers.
And finally, for what it's worth, we wouldn't be making much from this at all -- even Vyrso isn't much of a money-maker. It's just a way to expand what we offer so that if you (or a particular class) need this specific book, we have it.
I know it's hard to see how a calculus book gets much from being in Logos format, and I agree. But I like our reader, and our markup tools, and wish I could use it even to read a popular history book. And our users -- both individuals and professors in seminaries and Bible colleges -- ask for all kinds of titles both in biblical studies and general press, and I'd like to be able offer them. ("The Reason for God" is a good example -- I liked it enough to buy 10 copies to give away. But I had to do that with paper, not Logos format, because we don't have it. I imagine there are some professors teaching apologetics courses -- and individual users -- who would like to have it in our system, too.)
If we do create another store front, it can be kept completely out of Logos.com and Vyrso.com (and Noet.com). Your library would only show books you search for, and you could choose when you wanted to visit that site to look for a specific book. We could promote any title we wanted from that store into Logos.com or Vyrso.com, making Vyrso a much larger store of Christian titles, but leaving 'everything' available at the new store.
I am reluctant to have yet another brand / product, but I suppose we could just name a store front and still use Noet or Vyrso as the mobile app...? Or maybe we should brand another suite of apps?
Bob Pritchett said:For those concerned ... we have no intention of abandoning our focus on the church. Ironically, at the very founding of Logos we imagined being a more general consumer software company, and Logos Bible Software was just one of our planned products. (We always intended to do what became NoteScraps!)
We named the company Logos Research Systems, Inc., and thought it would be known as LRS.
Since then we've focused on Bible software (though we did NoteScraps, because I wanted it -- I use it daily!). And within the past year we re-named the company "Faithlife".
I think it's safe to say we're 'not becoming Harvard.' We're focused on serving the church.
With that said... new information: while every publisher has different rules, it looks like we may be able to get a contract if we agree to distribute just 90% of a publisher's catalog. This would let us not offer the 10% least appropriate / most objectionable content. I'm hoping this will solve the problem.
Based on feedback here, I am leaning towards offering the broad library at a completely different storefront. We'd remove the most objectionable content (note: while we'd put in a category filter, if possible, we'd probably end up doing some of this the day after it automatically appeared in the feed) and design the store to showcase the most relevant material to our users. The primary goal, of course, wouldn't even be new customers (unlikely anyway -- Amazon is almost unassailable in the general market). The goal would be to have a pool of resources we could use to meet your needs and requests, and those of the Christian colleges and seminaries we're hoping to serve, ensuring every title a pastor or student could need was available in one platform.
Disclaimer: I hate using messaging, texting, and email for real communication. If anything that I type to you seems like anything other than humble and respectful, then I have not done a good job typing my thoughts.
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Joseph Turner said:
The problem is that there is no longer a secular store, so all ebooks show under ebooks.faithlife.com.
I think the secular store (formerly noet) still exists under general.ebooks.faithlife.com - but FL has blurred the various stores' content somewhat (not only ebooks show under the ebooks store etc).
Have joy in the Lord!
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In principle there has to be a line somewhere. Otherwise FaithLife would accept anything a publisher pushed through, including books promoting white supremacy and eugenics, books promoting paganism, and "50 Shades" style erotica to go along with the Christian romance novels. At that point there would be nothing uniquely Christian about the business, and you'd be left with an Amazon-wannabe with a smaller selection but better software.
The real question is where the line should be drawn. Personally, if it were me, I'd draw it fairly broadly. I also wouldn't "knee-jerk" remove every book that someone complained about in a forum posting. But as a practical matter, it's just common sense to take a second look at something that blows up on the forums - whether it's a program feature, a bug, or a book.
And for myself, as a customer, I do believe that there's value in some level of curation. There's a great little woodworking store in my area. It's small, but has a wonderful collection of high quality tools, books, exotic hardwoods, and shop supplies. The staff are knowledgeable and give great advice. I spend more to shop there, instead of at the "big box" home improvement store I drive past to get there, because I know that I'll leave with a good quality tool that will get the job done. The true value of that store is that they are knowledgeable enough to consistently select high-quality stock that meets the needs of their target customers. That's valuable to me. I don't think it's "advocating censorship" to say that I would personally find it more appealing for FaithLife to take a "specialty store" approach rather than a "big box store" approach to their offerings.
My sense is that FaithLife is trying to split the difference by becoming a big box size specialty store. It'll be interesting to see if they can make that work.
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Joseph Turner said:
I would like to know if Faithlife has a clear policy concerning which resources are deemed offensive
I sympathize with Faithlife. Being a "Library Program" opens up all kinds of expectations for what should/should not be included in the library. And users have to admit there are some titles in the library that they choose not to read.
I muse that there may some sort of "tag" or "label" that could be placed on the product page. I recall my father's pastoral library had some cult/false religion titles that he applied a sticker (skull and crossbones) to the book spine indicating they were dangerous to the uninformed reader.
When I worked for Moody Bookstore during college in the 80's, we carried certain titles literally "under the counter". They (books dealing with the physical element of marriage discussed from medical and counseling perspectives) were available for purchase if requested, but were not on the shelves for wandering eyes to peruse.
Making Disciples! Logos Ecosystem = LogosMax on Microsoft Surface Pro 7 (Win11), Android app on tablet, FSB on iPhone & iPad mini, Proclaim (Proclaim Remote on Fire Tablet).
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EastTN said:
And for myself, as a customer, I do believe that there's value in some level of curation. There's a great little woodworking store in my area. It's small, but has a wonderful collection of high quality tools, books, exotic hardwoods, and shop supplies. The staff are knowledgeable and give great advice. I spend more to shop there,
Good point. Our sewing store survives for the same reason. And I don't expect to arrive home with something that doesn't work. And they take my old machines in trade.
Returning to our favorite bookstore, I have a lot more issues with them on the OL side ... apparently, and this is frightening, they want customers to buy their books. I'm wondering if the seminaries/colleges are slowly dummying down their courses (not really ... ok, really).
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David Thomas said:
When I worked for Moody Bookstore during college in the 80's, we carried certain titles
That's funny. In my more youthful days, I ordered a book, like you're hinting at. Unfortunately my father worked at the Bible college bookstore among his other duties, and my book arrived at his store. There was just no escape.
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David Thomas said:
I muse that there may some sort of "tag" or "label" that could be placed on the product page. I recall my father's pastoral library had some cult/false religion titles that he applied a sticker (skull and crossbones) to the book spine indicating they were dangerous to the uninformed reader.
While I realize it's not what you intend in your point, I find myself wondering if a first step could be linked to finally bringing in denominational tags. If a book is assuming and aimed at a position accepted by a denomination, it could be tagged as such, eliminating fears of a slippery slope of FL banning the views of someone that members of a different denomination view as an error.
I'm thinking of the views—expressed in a different thread that removing the book on homosexuality and Christianity being compatible—that the removal could lead to certain views on Creation in Genesis being removed as well. With denominational tags, those concerns can be eliminated in cross-denominational disputes. It might not solve the problem of disputes within a denomination of course. But it's a start.
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Joseph Turner said:
You can still select from ebooks.noet.com, but there is no store front.
“The trouble is that everyone talks about reforming others and no one thinks about reforming himself.” St. Peter of Alcántara
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Thanks for your feedback and engagement on the question of what content we should and shouldn’t offer on our platform. As everyone can appreciate, it’s a difficult challenge to serve the global church in its various forms and keep everyone happy with our catalog curation choices.
Nearly everyone agrees that there should be a line and that some content shouldn’t be available on a platform that aims to “use technology to equip the Church to grow in the light of the Bible” (our mission) and “increase biblical literacy and accessibility for every Christian around the world” (our vision). Where to draw that line is the challenge.
We sell books from individual publishers who offer a very wide spectrum of content from biblical and theological works all the way to erotic fiction. Many of these books are added to our catalog via an automated process. While we try to filter out certain categories programmatically, it’s not error proof. Most can probably agree that there’s far more harm than good to come from offering erotica, which is why we do our best to make sure all that content is filtered out of our store. It’s not aligned to our mission and vision, so we don’t offer it (and if it ever accidentally makes it into our store, we promptly remove it).
But where should the line be? Is erotica the only category we have no room for? Our current position is that the content we offer should have clear educational or edificational value for the church. If there’s not an obvious case for how a Bible student might benefit from access to content for the sake of their own growth and the growth of others—or the risk of harm to some outweighs the benefits to others—it’s not content we’ll offer in our store.
That means that books containing and even promoting views outside the bounds of historic, orthodox Christianity will usually fall on the “in” side of the line. They’re useful for those studying church history and theology to deal fairly and accurately with unorthodox views and cite them in their own words as they teach and instruct others in the truth.
There’s also a wide spectrum of views within the bounds of historic, orthodox Christianity, and we believe that most students of the Bible are well served by the opportunity to access this diverse set of content on the Logos platform.
We understand that not everyone has the general or spiritual maturity to engage with all content that may have value for most. In the future, we’d like to leverage metadata and filters to help people find age-appropriate and maturity-appropriate content. As a general rule, we’d like to make it easier for people to find content that will help them and harder to find content that won’t. That’ll be challenging to get right all the time, but we’d like the Logos store to be a place you feel comfortable sending your teenage children or a new believer.
These guidelines involve some level of subjective judgment, and not everyone will agree on every decision—even internally. In this particular case, the team decided for now that the book in question—aimed at teens—falls on the “out” side of the line for our collective community. But we’ll continue to discuss how these decisions are made and ensure the line is in the right place to best serve our diverse user base.
Thanks again for your feedback. We’ll keep listening as we seek to grow our catalog with the right content to help each of you study the Bible and the Christian faith more effectively. We’ll get it wrong occasionally, and we hope you’ll continue to extend grace as we try to balance your various concerns and make sure our diverse community of users is well served.
P.S. There may be a good application of Paul’s teaching on Christian liberty and the strong gladly setting aside their freedoms for the sake of the weak that supports a more cautious approach of biasing toward protecting the weaker among us.
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Thank you, Phil, for taking the time to compose a reasonable response to this thread. I have a couple of comments regarding your response - both very minor.
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:If there’s not an obvious case for how a Bible student might benefit from access to content for the sake of their own growth and the growth of others—or the risk of harm to some outweighs the benefits to others—it’s not content we’ll offer in our store.
I would prefer that the measure be a "Christian" rather than a "Bible student" as the former provides more input from those who find reading difficult an so, read only what is directly applicable to their vocation.
Second, much of the discussion centered around the appearance of "allowing one person's objection to wag the dog." In this censorious climate, the appearance of objectivity rather than response to a small number of users is the best path for Faithlife IMHO.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Everything ever published in Religion and Theology available in Logos Bible Software.
Mission: To serve God as He desires.
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Lynden Williams said:
Everything ever published in Religion and Theology available in Logos Bible Software.
Uh? Sounds like an incomplete sentence. What were you trying to say?
DAL
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Lynden Williams said:
in Religion
I recently had an unpleasant experience in a friend's blog with a person who had a definition of religion that was incompatible with some court decisions as well as some dictionaries. No "evidence" was permitted to infect his mind. So poor Faithlife likely runs into difficulties in even consensus on definitions.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
...we try to balance your various concerns and make sure our diverse community of users is well served.
Thank you for quite a judicious and thoughtful summation of a controversial and potentially loaded situation. Wisdom exercised is in such rare quantities today. Eirene
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SineNomine said:Joseph Turner said:
You can still select from ebooks.noet.com, but there is no store front.
Right, but my point is simply that the language is different between searches and the actual store. There is an option in the side bar for ebooks.noet.com, but the actual store front is under the general.ebooks.faithlife.com store front.
Disclaimer: I hate using messaging, texting, and email for real communication. If anything that I type to you seems like anything other than humble and respectful, then I have not done a good job typing my thoughts.
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
But where should the line be? Is erotica the only category we have no room for? Our current position is that the content we offer should have clear educational or edificational value for the church. If there’s not an obvious case for how a Bible student might benefit from access to content for the sake of their own growth and the growth of others—or the risk of harm to some outweighs the benefits to others—it’s not content we’ll offer in our store.
That means that books containing and even promoting views outside the bounds of historic, orthodox Christianity will usually fall on the “in” side of the line. They’re useful for those studying church history and theology to deal fairly and accurately with unorthodox views and cite them in their own words as they teach and instruct others in the truth.
There’s also a wide spectrum of views within the bounds of historic, orthodox Christianity, and we believe that most students of the Bible are well served by the opportunity to access this diverse set of content on the Logos platform.
Thank you for taking the time to reply. This is comforting and addresses my major concern which is whether or not potentially controversial scholarly positions or apologetics resources could ever be censored based on a vocal minority.
Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:These guidelines involve some level of subjective judgment, and not everyone will agree on every decision—even internally. In this particular case, the team decided for now that the book in question—aimed at teens—falls on the “out” side of the line for our collective community. But we’ll continue to discuss how these decisions are made and ensure the line is in the right place to best serve our diverse user base.
Thank you also for this explanation. This thread was sparked by the response to that book, but I'm in agreement that it should have been pulled based on the exact reason given. I would think that offering any books on sexuality aimed at minors is probably outside of the scope of Faithlife's mission and purpose. However, I would always want access to materials on sexuality in the ANE, Greco-Roman, Jewish, and Christian thought, which Faithlife offers from multiple perspectives, and given the explanations above, that doesn't seem likely to ever change.
Thanks for your willingness to interact in the forums in such cases!
Disclaimer: I hate using messaging, texting, and email for real communication. If anything that I type to you seems like anything other than humble and respectful, then I have not done a good job typing my thoughts.
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Thank you for your thoughtful response, Phil.
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
Thanks again for your feedback. We’ll keep listening as we seek to grow our catalog with the right content to help each of you study the Bible and the Christian faith more effectively. We’ll get it wrong occasionally, and we hope you’ll continue to extend grace as we try to balance your various concerns and make sure our diverse community of users is well served.
I particularly like Phil's request that the community extend grace to Faithlife as they try to balance out everyone's concerns. How might that affect how one authors a post on the forums about a particular resource they believe ought not to be in the Logos store?
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
These guidelines involve some level of subjective judgment, and not everyone will agree on every decision—even internally. In this particular case, the team decided for now that the book in question—aimed at teens—falls on the “out” side of the line for our collective community. But we’ll continue to discuss how these decisions are made and ensure the line is in the right place to best serve our diverse user base.
How many times do you, the forum user, recall a teenager posting to the forum? For me, the answer is never. Doesn't mean it's never happened, but the number of times is either never or quite close to never. So, if it's not teens, who is/are FL and the book-banning committee protecting? Anyone or no one?
The part I find so bizarre is that so many Logos users feel like removing the book is some sort of "win". Really, just how, exactly?
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I thought the team basically just kicked the can down the road. If the cancelled author had simply been 8 years older (biographical period), the book would have been ok to them? Don't think so. Just illustrating. And they don't follow the outlined guidance now (eg authors like Ehrman or Fredericksen), so it looks pretty can-kicking-ish. Which is good.
And well written, I think. I was worried they'd kick 'me' out ... I'm pre-Orthodox Christianity, whatever that is. I guess I'm 'historical'.
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Job's three "friends", whom YHWH plainly said spoke "what was not right" about Him, represent nothing if not a generic, "little-o" orthodoxy of then extant YHWH religion. Prophetically, they represent the same today. They were absolutely certain they were defending ':Elohhiym's will and ways, when they really had no clue and were debasing themselves in His sight. 'Iyyohbh explicitly called their apologetic confabulation "defenses of clay". I'm pretty sure that's what's happening regarding this book. All of the discussion is about what "ought not be allowed". I really haven't heard anything at all about how this book represents an opportunity to address the particular issues of Stacy directly as well as broader issues of a similar nature. That said...
Book Banners: "Do you want us to pull up the tares?"
Yeishuua`: "No, lest in pulling up the tares, you also pull up the wheat."
Book Banners: "Roger! Yanking out the tares, coming right up! VICTORY!!!"ASUS ProArt x570s Creator, AMD R9 5950x, HyperX 64gb 3600 RAM, ASUS Strix RTX 2080 ti
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David Paul said:
How many times do you, the forum user, recall a teenager posting to the forum?
One was very memorable - a very nasty troll posting under his father's account. And on the Verbum side there is (was?) curriculum focused on high schools.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:
And on the Verbum side there is (was?) curriculum focused on high schools.
So the teens are coming onto FL and purchasing their own HS educational materials and sticking around to browse?
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"The Unbelievable Work...believe it or not." Little children...Biblical prophecy is not Christianity's friend.
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I don’t know about forum posts (or how much forum posters represent users) but there are absolutely teenagers with accounts accessing the bookstore. I personally recommend to the high school group I lead and encourage others to use it as well. I know of others that are also recommending Logos to teenagers to enhance their Bible studying. 13 year olds can have their own accounts. A parent/guardian does have to agree to the terms and conditions on their behalf but this is because of the contract involved not because of content. With that in mind, no matter what our personal preferences are as adults, generally speaking would you agree there should be a different censoring metric than if it were 18 and older? As has been pointed out on somewhat related threads, even Amazon Kindle has teen and children accounts with content access determined by their DOB. In addition parents have the ability to set restrictions.
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David Paul said:MJ. Smith said:
And on the Verbum side there is (was?) curriculum focused on high schools.
So the teens are coming onto FL and purchasing their own HS educational materials and sticking around to browse?
I assume you've not yet raised teenagers? I suspect the curriculum is purchased by the school with possible reselling to individual students. Students can be reasonably assumed to browse for additional resources for term papers, personal interest, even for ammunition to drive their parents and/or religion teachers nuts . . . My personal favorite was in a Catholic high school where a faculty member's child declared themselves to be Wiccan ... and used a Time-Life series as their primary "Wiccan" resource.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:
I assume you've not yet raised teenagers?
Both of my kids are in their 20s. I can't recall even a single time that either of them significantly disappointed me through their schooling years, except that in approx. third or fourth grade, my daughter had a report card that said she talked too much in class. Not saying they never needed punishing in the process of helping them develop responsible and appropriate emotional control, but I honestly can't say I was ever displeased with any choices they made.
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"The Unbelievable Work...believe it or not." Little children...Biblical prophecy is not Christianity's friend.
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Greg Dement said:
no matter what our personal preferences are as adults, generally speaking would you agree there should be a different censoring metric than if it were 18 and older?
Yes, though if you haven't solidified a kid's choice-making apparatus by 15-16 (sooner, ideally), you've probably missed your window.
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David Paul said:
I can't recall even a single time that either of them significantly disappointed me through their schooling years,
Er... ah... I was thinking of the natural tendency of teenagers to explore and push potential boundaries ...not inappropriate behavior. I rarely had behavioral problems even with foster children who needed major readjustment of their values.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Greg Dement said:
I don’t know about forum posts (or how much forum posters represent users) but there are absolutely teenagers with accounts accessing the bookstore. I personally recommend to the high school group I lead and encourage others to use it as well. I know of others that are also recommending Logos to teenagers to enhance their Bible studying. 13 year olds can have their own accounts.
This is exactly the kind of scenario that I would think reading a book like Stace might come in handy. A majority of kids will come into some sort of contact with people who have the perspective of the author. Pretending the issue doesn't exist and sticking one's head in the sand is leaving the thought and decision response process to "chance". Reading the book and comparing the arguments within to Scripture is a solid way of helping young people comprehend the difference between human circumstance and YHWH's revealed will.
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David Paul said:
Yes, though if you haven't solidified a kid's choice-making apparatus by 15-16 (sooner, ideally), you've probably missed your window.
Many children spend their early years simply surviving - going in and out of foster care or relatives homes, having multiple failed adoptions, or being the parent to the other children in a home with no functioning adults (think mental illness more than drugs) ... and many children are so controlled by their parents that they never have an opportunity to make decisions or recover from the consequences of a poor choice. The ability to positively influence them extends to 30, at least.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. Smith said:
Many children spend their early years simply surviving - going in and out of foster care or relatives homes, having multiple failed adoptions, or being the parent to the other children in a home with no functioning adults (think mental illness more than drugs) ... and many children are so controlled by their parents that they never have an opportunity to make decisions or recover from the consequences of a poor choice. The ability to positively influence them extends to 30, at least.
Yes, this is true. I am well-familiar with such kids since I worked as a Special Education teacher for over 15 years. Some came from good homes and some came from horribly broken homes. I was specifically addressing the kind of scenario where adults are dealing with their own relatively healthy children, as those are the juveniles for whom adults are most likely signing off on purchasing contracts. If parents haven't gotten things under control by a certain point, they aren't very likely to suddenly figure it all out in the 11th hour. There are always exceptions, of course, but it is impossible to address a billion or even a million individual cases; some amount of generalizing is required and inevitable. I don't have the time to spend 20-30 years trying to account for every extant or possible scenario...I'm just trying to type a forum post. Also, because the immediate topic, per Greg's comment, is oversight up to the age of majority, beyond 17 is not a consideration regardless.
A pastor I once knew used to say that what you are doing today is highly likely to be what you are doing tomorrow, so if any change is desirable, it is necessary that it be addressed "while it is today", since in a sense tomorrow never comes. If you don't make the change now, it probably won't happen tomorrow either.
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I still don’t know how to put someone else’s quotes in a blue box [:$]
“This is exactly the kind of scenario that I would think reading a book like Stace might come in handy.“
I intentionally didn’t refer to this specific book and stated “generally speaking”. I was looking for agreement that 13 year olds officially having access creates a different criteria than if it were only 18 and older. As such the challenge for FL is finding balance with our adult perspectives on where the line should be drawn on which books to include/not include. While at the same time doing it with some sort of accountability on access of the aforementioned younger segment, which stirs a similar challenge balancing that line between the adult perspectives of where “that“ line should be. More than one facet for FL to consider.
“A majority of kids will come into some sort of contact with people who have the perspective of the author. Pretending the issue doesn't exist and sticking one's head in the sand is leaving the thought and decision response process to "chance". Reading the book and comparing the arguments within to Scripture is a solid way of helping young people comprehend the difference between human circumstance and YHWH's revealed will.”
I may or may not agree with you on everything here. Even if I did agree with you and feel like I have done a good job of equipping my children because it has been important to me and have intentionally taught them various world views, etc….what works for my family because of the effort we have put in may not apply to other families. Looking at the teenagers in a group I lead. There are some that are solid in their relationship with God, there are some that are very new in their walk. Some that have parents that pour into their children’s relationship, both parent/child and/or child/God. Some that have come to Christ with their friends as a conduit and perhaps the parents are not believers and perhaps the parents have very little involvement with their children‘s lives at all.
With my own children, they have a family structure where they can openly discuss various issues. However, my children, all teenagers, although all have been raised essentially the same way, there are significant differentials in maturity and intellect at age benchmarks. As a result pretty varied ages where as their parent I would feel each child is ready for various subject matter. I do feel this age group is varied and still very formative, it should have some bearing on FL content curation.0
