{"id":655,"date":"2007-12-17T20:56:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-17T20:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.arkansasfreedom.net\/?p=655"},"modified":"2007-12-17T20:56:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-17T20:56:00","slug":"hucksters-theology-degree-now-says-aint-necessarily-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/?p=655","title":{"rendered":"Hucksters theology degree? Now says ain’t necessarily so"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n


\nhttp:\/\/www.worldnetdaily.com\/news\/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59222<\/a>
\n 
\n<\/span>Huckabee’s
\ntheology degree? Now says ain’t necessarily so
\nCampaign admits candidate doesn’t have claimed religious credential<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/strong>
\nPosted: December 14, 2007
\n7:20 p.m. Eastern<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a9 2007 WorldNetDaily.com <\/p>\n

\n<\/span>Former Gov. Mike Huckabee
\n<\/span>Republican
\npresidential candidate Mike Huckabee told the Christian Broadcasting Network he
\nhad a theology<\/a>
\ndegree, he told voters in Iowa he had a theology degree, he repeated the claim
\nin last month’s CNN YouTube debate … but, his campaign now says, it was not
\ntrue.
\nHuckabee’s claim began unraveling following his offhanded comment about
\nMormonism in a New York Times interview last weekend.
\nReporter Zev Chafets wrote: “I asked Huckabee, who describes himself as
\nthe only Republican candidate with a degree in theology, if he considered
\nMormonism a cult or a religion. ‘I think it’s a religion,’ he said. ‘I really
\ndon’t know much about it.’
\n“I was about to jot down this piece of boilerplate when Huckabee surprised
\nme with a question of his own: ‘Don’t Mormons,’ he asked in an innocent voice,
\n‘believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?'”
\nIn the interview, Huckabee’s account of his education made no mention of his
\nhaving earned a theology degree.
\nChafets wrote: “If young Mike Huckabee was ever rebellious or difficult,
\nthere’s no record of it. He preached his first sermon as a teenager, married
\nhis high-school sweetheart and went off to Ouachita
\nBaptist University<\/a> in Arkadelphia. There he majored in speech and
\ncommunications, worked at a radio station and earned his B.A. in a little more
\nthan two years. He spent a year at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in
\nFort Worth, Tex., before dropping out to work for the televangelist James
\nRobison, who bought him his first decent wardrobe and showed him how to use
\ntelevision.”
\nWhile Huckabee apologized personally to fellow candidate and Mormon Mitt Romney
\nfor his remarks, Chafets’ characterization of the former Arkansas governor and
\nordained Baptist pastor as a seminary dropout who did not seem well-versed in
\ncomparative religion, drew the attention of political bloggers.
\nNational
\nReview’s Jim Geraghty cited Huckabee’s claimed theology degree<\/a><\/span><\/u>
\nwhen criticizing the candidate for telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer he had been
\ntrying to avoid talking about the subject with Chafets but the reporter was
\n“comparably well-schooled on comparative religions.”
\n“I’m going to call horsepuckey on Huckabee’s claim that a New York Times
\nreporter knew more about comparative religions than [a] guy with a theology
\ndegree,” Geraghty wrote.
\nThat prompted Joe Carter, Huckabee’s research director, to respond<\/a>
\nto Geraghty by e-mail. <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Jim, <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Governor Huckabee doesn’t have a
\ntheology degree. He only spent a year in seminary. <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Also, it’s not surprising that he
\ndoesn’t know much about the specific beliefs of the LDS church. There aren’t a
\nlot of LDS members in Arkansas; they comprise just .007 percent [sic] of the
\npopulation (about 20,000 out of 2,810,872 people). Most Southern evangelicals
\ndon’t have much exposure to that particular religion. Even in seminary you’re
\nnot likely to study the LDS faith unless you take a class on apologetics. <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Joe
\n<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Carter
\nmade a math error \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 0.7 percent of Arkansas’ residents are members of the
\nChurch of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints.
\nToday, following a news conference announcing that former Reagan confidante, Ed
\nRollins, has become Huckabee’s national campaign manager, the candidate was
\nasked about a PowerlineBlog
\nstory<\/a> that he did not have the theology degree he had claimed.
\n“I have a Bachelor
\nof Arts<\/a> in religion and a minor in communications in my undergraduate
\nwork,” Huckabee answered. “And then I have 46 hours on a master’s
\ndegree<\/a> at Southwestern Theology Seminary. So, my degree as a theological
\ndegree is at the college<\/a>
\nlevel and then 46 hours toward a masters \u00e2\u20ac\u201c three years of study<\/a>
\nof New Testament Greek, and then the rest of it, all in seminary was
\ntheological studies, but my degree was actually in religion.”
\nSpeaking in Iowa in October, Huckabee
\ntold a sympathetic crowd<\/a>, “Anytime you have been a person who was
\nidentified as a pastor and you’ve got a seminary education<\/a>
\nand theology degree, people tend to worry about you.”
\nIn November, while appearing on the Christian
\nBroadcasting Network, Huckabee said<\/a>, “People look at my record and say
\nthat I’m as strong on immigration, strong on terror as anybody. In fact I think
\nI’m stronger than most people because I truly understand the nature of the war
\nthat we are in with Islamofascism. These are people that want to kill us. It’s
\na theocratic war. And I don’t know if anybody fully understands that. I’m the
\nonly guy on that stage with a theology degree. I think I understand it really
\nwell. And know the threat of it is absolutely overwhelming to us.”
\nLast month, during the CNN
\nYouTube debate<\/a>, Huckabee responded to a question to the candidates about
\ntheir belief in the Bible: “Sure. I believe the Bible is exactly what it
\nis. It’s the word of revelation to us from God himself. … And as the only
\nperson here on the stage with a theology degree, there are parts of it I don’t
\nfully comprehend and understand, because the Bible is a revelation of an
\ninfinite god, and no finite person is ever going to fully understand it. If
\nthey do, their god is too small.” <\/p>\n

\nGod<\/span> Bless<\/span> A<\/span>m<\/span> e<\/span>r<\/span> i<\/span>c<\/span> a<\/span>!<\/p>\n



\n

\n<\/span><\/span><\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/www.worldnetdaily.com\/news\/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59222   Huckabee’s theology degree? Now says ain’t necessarily so Campaign admits candidate doesn’t have claimed religious credential Posted: December 14, 2007 7:20 p.m. Eastern \u00c2\u00a9 2007 WorldNetDaily.com Former Gov. Mike Huckabee Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told the Christian Broadcasting Network he had a theology degree, he told voters in Iowa he had a … Continue reading Hucksters theology degree? Now says ain’t necessarily so<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-huckabee-shameful-record","category-presidential-candidates"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansasfreedom.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}