Mike Huckabee's Supposed Theology Degree

Baptist minister and Republican Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee seems to either struggle with the truth or has a penchant for exaggeration, Arkansas-style.

After the recent CNN YouTube debate, Mike Huckabee declared in an interview with Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network that he has a theology degree. Huckabee said:

“I’m as strong on terror as anybody. In fact I think I’m stronger than most people because I truly understand the nature of the war that we are in with Islamofascism. These are people that want to kill us. It’s a theocratic war. And I don’t know if anybody fully understands that. I’m the only guy on that stage with a theology degree. I think I understand it really well.”

That's not the first time Huck has made such a claim.

Apparently, Huck is a seminary drop-out. He spent a year at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth before dropping out to work for the televangelist James Robison.

Jim Geraghty of the National Review took Huckabee to task and received the following response from Joe Carter, Huckabee's research director:

Jim,

Governor Huckabee doesn't have a theology degree. He only spent a year in seminary.

-Joe

Back in 2001, the guy in the picture above, former Georgia Tech football coach George O'Leary was hired to coach the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Five days after accepting the job, O'Leary resigned after he was discovered to have lied on his resume. On the resume, O'Leary claimed that he had earned a master's degree from New York University when in fact he only attended the school but never graduated.

Well, Mike Huckabee obviously isn't dropping out of the Presidential race for his theology degree fib. Nor should he. But I guess Huck is quite familiar with the old preacher joke - "Don't mind my facts, I'm just preachin." And of course we know politicians struggle with the complete truth regularly. Nonetheless, it seems that Huckabee has received a complete pass from the media on his little fib.

Rudy G studied theology while in college but you don't hear him claiming that he has a theology degree. You'd think the "secular media" would have jumped all over the Baptist Preacher for stretching the truth on numerous occasions....

Rudy Giuliani & Frank Page - An Ethical Case Study

Check out this EthicsDaily.com story:

The president of the Southern Baptist Convention says he offered to pray with Rudy Giuliani to accept Christ as his savior, but the Republican presidential candidate declined. Frank Page, pastor of First Baptist Church in Taylors, S.C., recently told a group of ministers in Oklahoma the biggest surprise of his 16 months leading the nation's largest Protestant body is the contact it brings with politicians.

Page said he has "met with almost all the presidential candidates" and has pledged that his "singular purpose" in those meetings would be to "tell them about Jesus." "When I spent two solid hours in a private meeting with Rudy Giuliani, I shared Christ with him so much that at the end of that two hours I said, 'Rudy, I'm not going to leave this place unless I give you an opportunity to pray with me to receive Jesus as your savior. Would you do that with me Rudy?'" Page recounted.

"He said, 'No, Frank, I'm not ready to do that. My daddy knows Jesus like that, but I'm not ready for that.'"

Page said he gave the former New York mayor his cell phone number and invited him to call "any time, day or night."

"You just call me, and we'll talk about Jesus, Rudy," Page recalled the conversation. "You're a great leader, Rudy, and you may be the president of our country some day. But you'll never be the leader you need to be unless you have Jesus as the heart of who you are."

I'm not a pastor. Never been to seminary. But I am a Baptist. And I believe that Baptists desperately need ethics.

Pick up any book on ministerial ethics and it will tell you what Frank Page did was both inappropriate and unethical.

Would your pastor go visit a person, ask them to accept Jesus, and then from the pulpit report that the person had rejected the invitation? I don't think so.

It does not matter whether the person is the Mayor of New York or the Mayor of Hewitt, Texas. The conversation between Rudy G and Frank Page was of a very personal and private nature. As a Christian minister, Frank Page shouldn't have shared in a public setting the details of their private conversation. Surely he took a course in ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary?

I really wonder if Rudy G's conclusion is really the same as Frank Page's - that Rudy isn't a Christian??? After Frank Page's ethical breach, I must question his account and Rudy's understanding of the evangelical language that Page was using....

If Frank Page wants to be pastor to politicians like Billy Graham was perhaps he should take a lesson or two in ethics and confidentiality first?

Tony Blair's Journey To Rome & Rudy's Pedophile

According to blogger extradordinaire Andrew Sullivan and The Guardian (UK), outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair is preparing to make the journey to Rome....

Tony Blair will tomorrow travel to the Vatican to meet the Pope in preparation for his conversion to Roman Catholicism as sources in London and Rome said the outgoing prime minister had taken the decision to seek admission to the church.

All that remained uncertain was the timing of the announcement. It was not intended that it should take place in Rome, and might be made either before or after Mr Blair left office next week.

According to informed sources, Mr Blair has been readied for this milestone in his spiritual life by a Royal Air Force chaplain, Father John Walsh, who for the past four years has been quietly slipping into Chequers, the prime minister's country residence, to say mass for the Blair family on Saturday evenings.

Read the rest here.

In other Catholic-related news and much much more troubling - Salon.com has reported that America's Mayor (aka Rudy Giuliani) employs his childhood friend Monsignor Alan Placa as a consultant despite the disturbing fact that a grand jury accused Placa of molestation and his diocese has suspended him!

Giuliani employs his childhood friend Monsignor Alan Placa as a consultant at Giuliani Partners despite a 2003 Suffolk County, N.Y., grand jury report that accuses Placa of sexually abusing children, as well as helping cover up the sexual abuse of children by other priests. Placa, who was part of a three-person team that handled allegations of abuse by clergy for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, is referred to as Priest F in the grand jury report. The report summarizes the testimony of multiple alleged victims of Priest F, and then notes, "Ironically, Priest F would later become instrumental in the development of Diocesan policy in response to allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests."

Five years after he was suspended from his duties because of the abuse allegations, Placa is currently listed as "priest in residence" at St. Aloysius Church in Great Neck, N.Y., where close friend Brendan Riordan serves as pastor, and officially lives at the rectory there with Riordan. In addition, Placa co-owns a penthouse apartment in Manhattan with Riordan, the latest in a half-dozen properties the two men have owned in common at various times since the late 1980s.

Placa has worked for Giuliani Partners since 2002. As of June 2007, he remains on the payroll.

The Suffolk County grand jury report released eight months after Placa's suspension, includes evidence from three alleged victims...

It states that in Priest F's first assignment, "he appears to have made feeble attempts at abusing a boy who was an alter [sic] server. ... He pulled up a chair next to the boy and put his right hand on his thigh. Slowly his hand began to creep up towards the boy's genital area. Alarmed, the boy covered his crotch. … The conduct repeated itself within a week.

"After his first assignment," the report continues, "Priest F was transferred within the Diocese to ... a school. Priest F was cautious, but relentless in his pursuit of victims. He fondled boys over their clothes, usually in his office. Always, his actions were hidden by a poster, newspaper or a book. ... Everyone in the school knew to stay away from Priest F."

And Andrew Sullivan has the money quote:

Why would Giuliani still employ a priest credibly accused by a Grand Jury of abusing boys, described as "cautious but relentless" in pursuing child victims in 2003, a man who was also integral to the conspiracy to protect child abusers from justice or accountability in the upper echeleons of the Catholic church? Because he was Giuliani's childhood friend, best man at his first wedding, baptized his son, smoothed the way for his divorce annulment, and buried his mother. In Giuliani's world, family is family. Loyalty is loyalty. And the children can go to hell.

Loyalty is indeed loyalty. Just like the loyalty of Steve Gaines pastor of FBC Bellevue to minister and molester Paul Williams. But I digress...

Sullivan is correct. The attitude that too often prevails is one that says "to hell with the children." And frankly, I don't think this attitude is acceptable for any elected official and definitely not a potential Presidential nominee....