After I pointed out that it is illegal in Missouri to claim an earned PhD when you don’t have one, mega evangelist Joyce Meyer has changed the description of her Life Christian University doctorate. Here is what she used to claim:
She claimed that she had “an earned PhD in theology from Life Christian University…”
Now she accurately refers to the degree as honorary.
David Barton referred to his Life Christian University degree as earned but where it is illegal to do so, Joyce Meyer changed the description.
Month: November 2016
Update on a Spurious Bonhoeffer Quote: Not to Speak is to Speak, Not to Act is to Act
In late August, I published an examination of a popular quote commonly but incorrectly attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.
The quote cannot be found in Bonhoeffer’s writings and no other primary source has been found. The first appearance of the entire quote I can find is in a 1998 American Interfaith Institute newsletter. The newsletter reported on a museum exhibit featuring Bonhoeffer. The quote was placed on the Bonhoeffer exhibit with quotation marks as if Bonhoeffer said it but without any citation. The quote has been popularized by Eric Metaxas who still attributes the quote to Bonhoeffer even though he has refused to provide a primary source for it.
Today, I want to present a source for part of the quote which is earlier than 1998. In Robert K. Hudnut’s 1971 book, A Sensitive Man and the Christ, he makes a case that even a sensitive man must act when the need arises.
There are two aspects of this passage which may link it to the eventual misattribution to Bonhoeffer. One is Hudnut’s challenge for the church not to be silent in the face of social evils. The second is the reference to Niemoller and resistance to the Nazis. Through the frailty of memory and lack of citation, someone could have reworked this into a quote about the church not being silent and attributed it to Niemoller’s colleague, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
For “Not to act is to act” by itself, one can go back to 1945 when Francis McPeek said church inaction was a form of political action in an essay titled, “Not to Act is to Act.”
For “God will not hold us guiltless,” one can find many references to that sentence by going to Google books and entering the sentence in quotes. The links returned go back to 1681.
The Hudnut quote was pointed out to me by a Twitter user. I would like to thank him but I can’t find the tweet. If my helper is reading, please identify yourself in the comments.
UPDATE: Found! See below:
@wthrockmorton https://t.co/L5H6QFjeao
1972
— jmaddington (@jmaddington) October 8, 2016
Michele Bachmann and David Barton: God Rigged the Election
Those are my words, but that’s about what she is saying. Yesterday, Michele Bachmann and David Barton produced a chart showing Trump’s chances of election were increasing as Clinton’s chances were decreasing. The lines crossed at about 8:30pm eastern time and Barton and Bachmann credited the Daystar prayer requests for the victory. Watch:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzlebECUOIg[/youtube]
Many polls were closed at that time. Perhaps God engaged in vote tampering.
Although it is true that many polls were open, millions of votes had already been cast before the broadcast.
I think it is sadly true that evangelical Christians are partly responsible for electing a man that most of them wouldn’t have supported for school board. However, I don’t believe Bachmann’s evidence of divine election rigging holds up.
President Donald Trump and White Evangelicals
White evangelicals: You broke it, you bought it.
Apparently, I am in the 1% who voted for “other.”
Election Day 2016 Live Blogging and Open Forum
Fellow Grove City College professor Michael Coulter (Political Science) and I will be blogging through the day and evening regarding the election. Feel free to comment via the Live Blog feature and/or here on this post. In the comments section, please include links, news, etc, which interest you about the most bizarre election season in my lifetime.
Live Blog