The Sounds of Fundamentalism is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
According to Evangelical con artist Jesse Duplantis, receving an honory doctorate is better than putting in the hard work necessary to earn a doctorate from an accredited institution. Duplantis, ever a liar for Jesus, said all he has to do is think something and God gives it to him. And that’s exactly what happened. Duplaintis had a thought about how nice it would be to have a doctorate from Oral Roberts University, and sure enough Oral, who said he saw an 800 foot Jesus, granted him an honorary doctorate in 2007.
Listen as Duplantis ‘splains why his doctorate from Oral Roberts is superior to the doctor you spent 7-10 years of your life earning.
Please read IFB Doctorates: Doctor, Doctor, Doctor, Everyone’s a Doctor for my take on honoray doctorates.
Bruce Gerencser, 68, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 47 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Hey Bruce, yes everybody’s a Doctor. Even me. Doctor of Jurisprudence. I’m not allowed to do surgery or write prescriptions but I’m a Doctor nevertheless. What a grind it was to get it. It never occurred to me to just ask Oral Roberts for an honorary. Yeah it wouldn’t be evidence of any real qualification, though, would it?
Exactly. In secular schools, degrees designate a certain level of academic achievement and competency. Sadly, in Evangelical schools, advanced degrees are often substandard. I’ve met more than a few preachers sporting advanced degrees who were dumb as a brick — unable to understand and defend basic theological concepts and Bible teachings. These so-called men of God had advanced degrees, but their starting point (undergraduate) lacked intellectual rigor. So their advance degrees are more of the same. “Dr.” David Tee is a prime example of this. Here’s a 70 year old man with a religion-based doctorate who can’t explain and defend basic theological concepts.
I have three years of post-high school education. I knew early on in the ministry that my education was lacking. I spent the next 25 years educating myself, trying to fill-in the holes in my academic understanding of Christianity and the Bible. It would have been preferable for me to attend a seminary, but I had no time for that since I was already pastoring churches. So I spent countless hours reading and studying. I also pastored people with advanced theological degrees. One man had a PhD from Westminster Theological Seminary. He and I spent countless hours talking shop. He told me one time that he was impressed by my understanding of theology. I was able to competently converse with him on theology without showing a lack of formal education. That said, there were holes in my understanding—especially in the original Hebrew and Greek. But even here I had tools (books and software) that helped remedy these shortcomings.
In my humble opinion, Bruce, education you acquired independently equaled or exceeded whatever you got formally. Desire to learn and ability to reason are super powers of educability. We were told in law school that law is self taught and I found that true in my case. The Profs assigned cases to study and interrogated us in the socratic method. Our independent responsibility was to “brief” cases, explain the facts, issues, and law and apply them.
Preachers lacking training or perhaps of any kind might get by with making up Bible interpretations but BS doesn’t work with law. Those who try getting by on BS are shamed as were the lawyers who damaged themselves by advocating Trump’s crackpot ideas. Disbarment was the lot of such as Giuliani and Eastman and they won’t be the last.
I can recommend the old John Houseman movie “The Paper Chase”. It’s a good depiction of the law school grind.
Years ago, a guy who had been a missionary abroad, joined the baptist church where my husband was a deacon and enrolled his sons in the high school where my hubby taught Physics, so had read that he had a top science degree from a very prestigious UK university. The guy preached his first sermon, as lay folk did regularly, and it seems he’d taken against my poor innocuous hubby. He said to serve jesus, you didn’t need any fancy edumacation, just look at him, he’d got loads of converts without that. After the service, a wiser x-tian said to my bemused, confused hubby, ‘Never let anyone tell you that with jesus in your heart, any old turnip will do for a head.’ That became a family saying for many years and always made us smile!
I personally think an evangelical “Doctor” is like a referee in a WWF professional wrestling match..they certainly look the part and initially go through the motions, but inevitably they always get in over their head and get taken out by a folding chair.
Not sure if this was a great comparison, but it just seems right..just like Jesse Duplantis thinking he is a “Doctor” of anything seems “right” to him.