Donald Miller Responds to Dr. Mark Coppenger - Sort Of

(response) A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Mark Coppenger, professor here at Southern, gave a lecture on Donald Miller's book Blue Like Jazz (currently #133 on Amazon sales rank) which was not well received by fans of Donald Miller. The most succinct critique (IMO) came from Joe Thorn, who assessed that Coppenger was reacting against the book rather than interacting with it. Thorn later shares his disappointment in Coppenger's review which, to him was "superficial" in that it attempted to decipher Miller's motives rather than engage his ideas. (reaction) Other than being an author, Donald Miller also serves as the Director of The Burnside Writers Collective, "a collection of writers and thinkers who form an online magazine." The most recent issue has the pejorative reaction to Coppenger's lecture (called "Mark Coppenger Read Blue Like Jazz and Now He's Mad!) in which Jordan Green poses five issues with statements from Coppenger (in the lecture) and Miller's response. There is nothing substantive here and was intended to be satirical. However, at the close of the post, there is the sentence which says:

"Filed Under: Standing up to a Bully."

Now, this makes sense with regards to the title (Mark Coppenger going mad), for it you click on the bold-faced "bully" link, it takes you here, which is the ABP article which reports of Coppenger being fired from his position as President of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1999 because of inappropriate expressions of anger which caused "irreparable damage" to the seminary. Now, I understand that many feel like Coppenger wrongly addressed the character and motives of Donald Miller in his lecture and critique, but is this subtle, yet seriously retributive attack the way to go about this? Is this to shame Dr. Coppenger for yet "going mad" again as reminiscent of 1999? This can't help but be the case, given that the five "issues" is sandwich between the beginning statements ("Mark Coppenger, former president of a seminary somewhere") and the ending statement ("standing up to a bully"). I don't know what to think about all this honestly. I haven't read all of Donald Miller's books, nor I have kept up on all the conversation happening in recent years. I do know Dr. Coppenger as a professor, although this is in no way to defend him or his lecture. Actually, I tend to agree with Thorn that Coppenger would have a more substantive argument and larger audience had he avoided unnecessary rhetoric ("blue states, blue jello, blue ice, etc.") and stuck with the content of the book. In the future, I presume others will write a review or possibly speak about BLJ (or his other books) in a negative light; in light of this expectation, I hope that both parties will handle the exchange in a more mature and charitable manner.