Robert Parham has a "Guest Voices" essay up on the Washington Post's website about "The New SBC Leader's Dubious Credentials." Washington is a place where people have some appreciation for earned credentials. They're not likely to lightly dismiss padding resumes.
The SBC, however, seems to have officially sanctioned resume padding. I suspect that is one of the reasons why Southern Baptist seminaries have turned into ghost towns since the Fundamentalists took them over.
Who needs an earned degree when you can procure a "doctorate" for a few bucks with little effort from a diploma mill?
4 comments:
Two points of clarification:
1) The statement, "Southern Baptist seminaries have turned into ghost towns since the Fundamentalists took them over" is completely fallacious. Some experienced a sharp downturn in enrollment during the changes, but they are all continually growing and are some of the largest seminaries in the US.
2) It's also an overstatement to say that the SBC has endorsed milling diplomas by electing Hunt. I'm positive the average messenger had no clue about all this when they were voting. Moreover, other denominational leaders had expressly warned against touting "milled", rather than earned, degrees.
Fundamentalists love to add a lot of initials after their name as if putting a bunch of gibberish there is the same as having a real degree.
Fundamentalists love to add a lot of initials after their name as if putting a bunch of gibberish there is the same as having a real degree.>>
Has a survey been done to prove that they are more prone to this or is this one of those accusatory points?
I've heard that when we point one finger outward, there are four pointing back to ourselves. Mom2
I do not agree with calling yourself "Dr." when you haven't earned the degree in the usual way. That said, the Parham article has several serious problems. For one thing, he completely glosses over the fact that Hunt also has an honorary doctorate from Tennessee Temple University. Apparently some readers are assuming that Hunt has a doctorate from a diploma mill, but Parham doesn't give real evidence that Covington and Immanuel are diploma mills. They're not reputable schools, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're just diploma mills. And the degrees are honorary. It's not like Hunt enrolled at Covington or Immanuel. And he has real Bachelors and Masters degrees from Gardner-Webb and Southeastern Baptist Theological seminary, respectively.
Finally, the Steven Flockhart issue is a real problem for Parham. Info from the Baptist Press (http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=24242) says that Flockhart lied about his credentials, claiming he graduated from Columbia International University and Southeastern. But Parham doesn't mention this; he makes it sound like Flockhart was forced to resign just because he had received his credentials from Covington. Parham also says that Hunt had recommended Flockhart for the pastorate, and claims that this means Hunt supports a Covington education. Of course, since Flockhart was lying about his degrees to his church, he could very well have been lying to Hunt about them too. Parham doesn't get into this, though, indicating he probably doesn't have the evidence to do so.
Can we just stick with the truth? The truth is that Hunt doesn't have an earned doctorate, just honorary ones, but still goes by the title "Dr." That's all there really is to pick on.
No, I'm not a member of Hunt's church, before anyone goes accusing me of bias.
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