I am not sure just how derogatory the material was, I just see a good work being undone I see the opportunity to reach into the lives of men in an honest manner destroyed.
Now while the situation is remedied and a handful of people (it would be interesting to know just how many ppl were offended) are appeased, there are men our there that were reaching for connection that are now left floundering.

I'm a white man, and I was raised to downplay ethnicity and race. I've since come to learn that many in ethnic minority communities have a much more profound connection to their ethnic heritage. I'm glad that Zondervan chose to pull the book from their shelves and reframe the content. It's great content, and doesn't deserve to be housed in what was (unintentionally, I'm sure) offensive packaging. It was absolutely the right move. Was it their "right" to keep the book on the shelves? Sure, maybe in the legal sense. But in the kingdom of God we listen to one another, and if one part of the body is hurt, we all are hurt. I'm grateful for such soft-hearted people who were involved in this matter.

I want to encourage people to read Eugene Cho's post on the situation. I thought it was a great balance of grace and honesty:

http://eugenecho.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/deadly-vipers-mike-foster-jud-wilhite-soong-chan-rah-chuck-norris-joyluck-club-angry-asian-man-wanna-be-ninjas-and-everyone-else/

I'm glad to see it was pulled.

Once more political correctness strikes, but this time in the realm of Christian free speech. If you are a Christian you are neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female, but all one in Jesus Christ. How foolish that some place their race and culture above their eternal heritage. We belong to Jesus, not asia or africa no caucasia, whereever the heck that is. I pray that Christians wake up to this great truth and quit dancing to the world's magic flute.

@Phillip Gibb: There is more to a message than just what is intended. If the content is tainted by offensive racial stereotypes, if it serves to perpetuate an incorrect and oversimplified understanding of another culture, then the message is also polluted. And how can we tell if our message offends people from another racial or ethnic group? Well, if people from that racial or ethnic group tell us that we are offending them. It's as simple as that. We don't have to (and in some cases can't) fully understand why what we have said or done is hurtful. The best response, in my opinion, is to apologize and then strip away from our message what was deemed offensive. I agree with you when you call the authors' work an "honest" one. However, honest isn't necessarily the same as good.

No, it was not the right move. Bowing to the forces crying for censorship is never the right move. When those cartoons were published that offended Muslims, how many of us Christians basically said, "Get over it. Here in the West we worship free speech so we can print whatever we like". Now we've just shown ourselves to be the hypocrites that non-Christians have always made us out to be.

censorship? political correctness?

leaving off ham-handed and offensive depictions of cultures is bad?

working toward that by appealing to the publisher is sinister and a betrayal of Scripture?

really?

that's where we're at?

i wonder how high-minded people would be if we developed a curriculum that effectively portrayed all Anglo-Americans as bare-foot rednecks from appalachia...

oh yeah, that would be fine...that's part of the pro-american parts of the country...

sheeesh.

Zondervan exhibiting some class and grace should be a non-issue. It should only be expected.

moving on...

I'll be honest, I don't know how this can even be a question for a thinking Christian to ask...

Of course we should try to apologize when we offend people. Of course we should try to redress the issue where possible, but when the people we offend are a marginalized subgroup, then it is not merely a 'try' but a scriptural mandate...

How anyone can think it appropriate for Zondervan to do anything other than pull content that has caused pain, and contributed to the further marginalizing and alienating of a whole people?

Those of us who are shrill in our contempt for politically correct attitudes are simply knocking down straw men in an attempt to cover up their complicity in cultural privileges that they enjoy at the expense of the very people they are commanding to 'get over it.'

@David Buffaloe: Political Correctness has nothing to do with it. And neither does "Christian free speech;" James 3 is just one passage that tells us that the First Amendment won't get us very far when we stand before God to give account of what we've said and done. And telling others to "get over it" is neither a humble nor a loving response. When the Jewish Christians were upset that the Gentile Christians ate food that had been sacrified to idols, Paul did not tell the Jewish Christians to "get over it." Instead, he told the Gentile Christians to refrain from eating food sacrificed to idols for the sake of their Jewish brothers and sisters. Our response should be the same in this situation.

In your comment you implicitly suggest that Christians should remove culture and race from their worldviews. There is no such thing as a culture-free, Christian worldview. Our culture will always affect our understanding of the gospel message, and to think otherwise is foolish. That fact is part of what makes reducing other people groups to simplistic stereotypes unacceptable. Each people group sees the gospel from a different perspective, and as a result no one culture has a complete understanding of everything God would have us know. When we stereotype others, we essentially depreciate the significance of what they have to offer to our understanding of God. The rich, cultural diversity we see in the world is not a result of sin, but is instead part of what God created. And He never intended for His church to ignore or try to erase the differences that he deliberately wrote into our lives.

Url: thanx for bringing attention to this issue to a wider audience. Regardless of how people feel about it, something needed to be said sooner or later.

People continually say things like "some place their race and culture above their eternal heritage" which is a way of downplaying and ignoring some big problems in society. Whether folks agree or not, it's important to talk about dimensions of race in the Christian dialogue.

I think above all this should be an example of how disagreements & conflict should be handled. The offended people didn't just go to the publisher; they actually spoke to the authors to work on the issues. Sure, we could label this as political correctness, & we can quote scripture about "neither Greek nor Jew..." but here's another biblical idea. If you do something that offends another brother, the gracious thing to do would be to not do it. I don't see this as PC, I see this as believers working out a disagreement in a healthy way

Hi,

I find this amazing. I have some skin in this conversation, and this is no way offensive.

I can imagine someone saying that we should apologize to trees because we make toilet paper out of them.

Tim

because there's any correspondence between a tree and a human being?

URL, I would characterize your title quite misleading. The book is not being put to death. As you have listed in your own reporting, Zondervan is pulling its "current form" from the shelves.

Get it right.

Why are we still talking about this? The real issue is not the persons involved, but how everyone went for blood. Blogs,tweets,etc. It was chaos. And it some cases it was sensationalism and gossip.
On another note, look for People of the Second Chance...

If someone publishes something about the people of my heritage or the subculture I'm a part of, I may be offended. But as a Christian, I don't demand to be treated with with love by all.

However, now in the politically correct world, as a straight, Euro-American (not white, that's a racist term), man and christian, I am of the only group it's okay to belittle, mock and deride. So, perhaps I should speak up. If all goes correctly, Ray Bradbury will be correct in Fahrenheit 415, words will always offend somebody unless you make them so plain and meaningless nothing of value can be said.

Just as I tolerate my subculture and heritage being mocked, and I love those who do it, so ALL Christians of ALL stripes should do the same.

Get over yourselves!

@kontributor

Being a straight, Euro-American Christian male will not get you beaten, mocked, or killed in the United States or most countries of the world.

Being Asian, African-American, Hispanic, or of many other ethnicities will get you beaten, mocked, or killed in many parts of America.

When are people going to get over the fact that the controversy is not about the actual content of the book, but the way they chose to deliver that content?

It's great that you love those who mock your subculture and heritage. If you really love them, then you would gently correct those misconceptions through your words and your lifestyle and your actions.

Isn't the story this: that while the imagery of the book was offensive to some, Mike and Jud lived up the CONTENT of their book by the way they responded to the criticism. I, for one, think that was an excellent testimony to their character.

@kontributor

it's funny how you describe your experience as being "mocked belittled derided" - because that's exactly what the protest seems to be all about.

I am a HUGE fan of the mission and concept of the DV guys and I can easily see how the they weren't being malicious in their usage of Asian sub-culture for their book. They were simply using the same imagery that you would find in many Martial Arts movies written, produced and performed by those within the Asian community. And within the Asian culture, that genre is more an honoring of their heritage than a mocking.

On the flip side, we are in 21st century America and there is no other race or ethnicity that they could have used and it have been deemed acceptable: American-Indian, African-American, Hispanic, Middle-Eastern, etc...all would have been obviously wrong from the beginning to stereotype within a book or ministry concept.

I think that the Asian-American community has traditionally been the least vocal in the racially-insensitive use of their culture over the years, which is probably why it seems so weird that they are making a big deal of this now. When you think about it in the big picture of following Christ, becoming all things to all people and Biblical race relations, it makes sense to not use an a stereotype that would offend another culture, even if it is socially acceptable in the world's eyes and there is no malicious intent. The Christ-follower's road should always be a higher one than that of the world.

Good call by Zondervan.
No foul on the DV guys.
Soong-Chan Rah did the right thing.

There's a very fine line between what the world calls "politically correct" and what we call being Missional in our approach to other cultures. Let's make sure we don't confuse our terminology and mission with that of the world's.

I am glad to hear that Zondervan pulled Jud Wilhite's “Deadly Viper” book. I have attended Central Christian Church in Las Vegas (Jud Wilhite’s church) on numerous occassions over the past 4 years. I have found that Church also makes fun of other ethnic groups, the Latinos and Italians, in their videos. During one of the Christmas videos (before Deadly Viper came out), they even portrayed Italians tieing up one of their family members, duck taping his mouth, and throwing him the truck of a car. They were portraying them as mafia. I tried to address the issue with the powers that be at Central. All I got was a backlashing from them, or a “go away” attitude from them. All they did was started laughing, I don’t think God is laughing!

During the services, Jud tries to sell Christianity as a product instead of a deep personal relationship with God, our creator.

They play secular music at Central which in no way worships God. They are worshipping themselves for being able to play the songs (such as I Want To Hold Your Hand, Rocking Around the Christmas Tree, and Don’t Stop Believing - trying to reinact the TV show "Glee"). I truly believe that those songs do not belong in a church. They are just showing that Central is part of this world and not part of God’s Kingdom. It is very rarely that you hear Jesus’ name mentioned during the service.

Needless to say, I no longer associate myself with Central. After attending there, it’s hard to believe that there is a God who loves and cares for you.