This came to my Rumor Mill e-mail and I felt it is worth sharing:
Notice the bit about "Pastor or a Doctor". Now, we know Bob has been on the up and up regarding this. But what about a 3ABN Board Member, Wintley Phipps? At his Dream Academy website it rightly says that he received an honorary doctoral degree. Read about it here
http://www.usdreamacademy.org/usdreamwintleyphipps.htmlNote that it is not a doctoral degree in religion or theology. It's no degree at all, just an honorary one. No problem here though.
What's the problem? If you received your degree as an honorary one, it is common custom to place the (Hon.) behind your name or title. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorary_doctorate Go to the section Practical Use and read down about halfway.
But as you start to search around the web, you find that he often is referred to as Dr. Wintley Phipps. No "Honorary" distinction is made.
If you go to his church's website
http://palmbaysdachurch.org/ see his title under his photo and look at the header bar, way up at the very very top of the website browser. They both say Dr. Wintley A. Phipps, Pastor. This is a gray area but could be considered a bit fraudulent. He he doesn't have a Doctoral Degree! But he makes people think he does! I wouldn't be surprised that if in some states it is illegal to call yourself "Dr." if you don't declare your degree as being honorary. If only he would put (Hon) or Dr.(h.c.) behind it all would be okay. But to go after Bob for something that a 3ABN board member is doing? Tsk tsk tsk.
For some reason, you can't click past the first page of Palm Bay's website. But here is a direct link to the pastor's page.
http://palmbaysdachurch.org/church/pastor.php Again, "Dr." Phipps. It even has his bio of education. But no mention of the honorary doctoral degree.