Tips For Spotting Evangelical Frauds Like Ravi Zacharias Ahead Of Time (Part 2): Doctors Without Credentials

In my experience there are three kinds of people who might have a “Dr.” before their names:

(1) People in hospitals or clinics who wear lab coats and have stethoscopes around their necks and they treat your diseases.

(2) Wicked-smart individuals with earned PhDs from real universities who typically teach college students.

(3) Evangelical preachers who don’t have the chops to be either of the above but who are desperate to be honored with the title “Doctor.”

Don’t trust anybody in category 3. They are scandals waiting to happen. I’m just letting you know ahead of time. A preacher who calls himself “Doctor” is a good candidate to burn you like Ravi Zacharias did.

Mr. Zacharias claimed to be a doctor for many years before atheist Steve Baughman began calling him on it in 2015. Zacharias’ bios even said that he had three doctorates, but neglected to mention they were all honorary. (Honorary doctorates are nice baubles but do not count). In response to mounting pressure Zacharias finally scrubbed the title “Dr.” from his bios and books and promotional materials. But had he not been exposed he would have been “Dr. Zacharias” to his dying day.

There are of course some preacher-scholars (or scholar-preachers) with genuine Phds from real institutions of higher learning. Here's a few: D. A. Carson (Cambridge), Kevin DeYoung (Leicester), Scot McKnight (Nottingham), John Piper (Munich). Though these men have real credentials to match their sharp minds, none of them (as far as I have been able to determine) ever present themselves as “Dr. So-and-so.” When the title “Dr.” appears before their names it looks like it's someone else’s doing. For decades I have noticed again and again that worthy individuals who actually earned the title never seem to use it.

Contrast that with the stampede of lesser souls and smaller minds in Evangelicalism who pop up on Christian radio saying, “Hi! This is Dr. John Smith...”. Let that phrase trip the “Fraud Likely” sensor on your spiritual antennae. I guarantee you will not find a meaty dissertation under that man's name on file at a place like Princeton or Duke. Rather, a little digging will typically reveal that his doctoral claim is misleading, wispy thin, or just laughably false.

For example:

(1) “Dr. David Jeremiah” of Shadow Mountain Community Church does not have a Phd. His website says, “Completing additional graduate work at Grace Seminary, he was granted the Doctor of Divinity degree from Cedarville College in 1981,” which is technically true. But his bio neglects to say that the degree was honorary. Again, honorary degrees are flattering, but they are ceremonial trinkets and do not give the recipient any right to call himself a doctor for the rest of his life.

(2) “Dr. Mark Jobe”, president of Moody Bible Institute, actually has a doctorate of sorts, but it’s in “Transformational Leadership for the Global City,” which you’ve never heard of and which sounds an awful lot like a spoof degree concocted by the satirists at Babylon Bee. But that is in fact what it is called at Jobe’s alma mater, Bakke Graduate University. If you look up BGU, you might soon find yourself laughing out loud at your computer screen the way I did yesterday.

Bakke is a self-named institution (there’s a warning sign! See last week's essay about eponymous organizations) created by the Bakke family in 2003. Of the 12 individuals listed as faculty, only two have Phds, and one of those lives in France. Of the remaining 10 faculty members, seven got degrees from BGU itself. Among the 17 additional adjunct faculty there is only one more Phd, but 14 more Bakke grads. How does Mark Jobe get a Phd (as he claims to have on his Linkedin page) from a university that hardly has any Phds on its own faculty - and that tends to find instructors from its own ranks? A friend of mine familiar with Bakke protested to me that it does indeed carry on a legitimate ministry, and that I am glad to hear. But whether it should be issuing advanced degrees is another story. As an educational institution it frankly wafts the aroma of a degree mill. I put this one in the category of not technically fraudulent, but still awfully paper thin.

(3) The poster child for Evangelicalism's doctoritis is Bryan Loritts. The facts concerning his fraudulent degree are covered in detail at the Julie Roys website. Here’s a summary:

Loritts calls himself “Dr. Loritts” on his website, Instagram and Twitter. He got his doctorate from “St. Thomas Christian University,” which does not exist, but is simply a front for a con artist who charges people $1500 for a cap and gown and a certificate that calls them doctor. And that’s all there is. It’s a 100 percent sham from beginning to end. To me it is inconceivable that anyone who knows these facts would ever want to hear a sermon from Loritts or read anything he wrote. But somehow he is still getting interviewed on WMBI where he offers his wisdom and promotes his latest book, and he was recently hired as an associate by megachurch pastor and Southern Baptist Convention president J. D. Greear.

Oy. Oy vey.

The funny thing is Jesus himself addressed the issue of delighting in titles. In Matthew 23 where he condemned scribes and Pharisees, he mentioned among their sins the fact that "they love...being called 'rabbi' by others." (See verses 6 and 7). Substitute our cultural equivalent "doctor" for "rabbi," and you will see why I am warning you not to trust these people.