Degrees Disputed

Investigations by several newspapers have resulted in charges that a tiny, unaccredited Canadian Bible college is merely a degree mill for doctorate-hungry students. The New York Times discovered several degree-holders from Philathea College in London, Ontario, holding high academic positions and teaching emotionally disturbed persons in New York City.

The college, already under investigation by the Ontario Department of University Affairs for overstepping its charter, grants doctorates in philosophy. Under the Ontario charter it is allowed to grant only licentiates in theology. College president Benjamin Eckardt, self-styled “bishop” of Ontario under the Free Protestant Episcopal Church, calls the charges, first raised by articles in the London Free Press, “a bunch of nonsense.” Nevertheless, he admits, the furor has forced him to drop the doctoral program, which he claims leads to a doctorate in religious education and is within the scope of his charter.

The Times quotes New York State Psychological Association director Morton Schillinger as calling the Philathea degrees a “serious professional and ethical hazard.” One degree-holder was the founder of a Long Island school for gifted children while another was director of a city-financed drug program.

Eckardt claims the association should have checked out the degrees. If it had, he says, it would have found out that the doctorate was theological in nature and not psychological. If former students are using the degrees to qualify for positions in non-religious areas, they are doing so without college authority, he said in an interview.

Eckardt claims he is a Church of Christ minister as well as a Free Protestant Episcopal Church bishop. The latter group is not listed in the Yearbook of American Churches, and officials in both the National Council of Churches and the Episcopal Church say they’ve never heard of it.

According to Chicago Today, the church was founded in the 1860s. Its present head is Bishop-Primate Charles Dennis Boltwood, 80, an Englishman who also has interests in a string of unaccredited Bible colleges and seminaries in Britain under the general name of St. Andrew’s. The American leader is a Lutheran layman. Albert Fuge of New York City, an ex-Army colonel whose title is “bishop-primate-designate.” According to the newspaper. Fuge claims his powers as bishop-primate in his “authoritarian, fundamentalist” church are superior to those of the pope in the Catholic Church. The church has perhaps a dozen congregations scattered from black ghetto areas on Long Island to white communities in the South and in Canada.

George Kerr, minister of university affairs in Ontario, told the provincial legislature that Philathea was treated as a “joke” in academic circles in the London area and vowed its charter would be revoked if it has misrepresented its degree in any way.

Philathea’s reach also extends into Indiana, where Gordon DaCosta, president of Indiana Northern University—another unaccredited college claiming thirty to forty students on its Gas City campus—has a string of honorary degrees, some of them from Philathea. DaCosta identifies himself as archbishop of Indiana in the Free Protestant Episcopal Church. The Chicago newspaper questioned the links between DaCosta and Philathea, suggesting that the university (its “campus” consists of one administration building, a barn, some outbuildings, and a few trailers) was set up for personal profit, with the Philathea connections providing an academic veneer. (Eckardt in turn has an honorary INU degree.)

Philathea, claiming 200 students, charges $600 for courses leading to a bachelor of religious education and $1200 for doctorates. All students, Eckardt says, work hard for their degrees and must write and defend a thesis before one is conferred. “We don’t sell degrees,” he bristles. “We are not a degree mill.” Doctoral candidates must have a master’s degree from an accredited college before they can be admitted to Philathea, he says.

Meanwhile, a mail-fraud scheme involving two Orthodox Jewish rabbis and a ficticious New Jersey university was broken up by postal authorities in New York City. Rabbis Bernard Fuchs, 22, and Gershon Tannenbaum, 23, pleaded guilty to mailing brochures and soliciting fees for the phony Marlowe University. Postal authorities estimate the pair defrauded prospective students of nearly $200,000. Many of those who were bilked are overseas students who answered Marlowe ads in American magazines. Maximum sentence on the charge is a five-year prison term and $1000 in fines.

The brochures claimed Marlowe offered courses similar to those of regular universities that could be completed in months by mail. Respondents were told to send a $100 deposit with the application and another $300 to $400 when they completed a thesis. Apparently the pair never handed out any degrees.

The Spreading Flame

Follow-up of converts in a recent Cambodian revival has been hampered by communications problems. Newspaper ads announcing post-crusade rallies failed to get the expected results, and many converts gave less-than-exact addresses, according to crusade officials.

The Phnom Penh crusade, led by World Vision’s Dr. Stanley Mooneyham, resulted in a total attendance of 10,000 and 2,000 altar-call responses—potentially tripling the Protestant community in less than a week (see May 26 issue, page 32).

American missionaries on the scene say correspondence courses have nevertheless been sent out to more than 1,000 people who made crusade responses and whose addresses are known. Despite the lack of success in contacting many of the new converts, the missionaries claim the crusade and its revival spirit marked a significant turning point in the history of Christian work in the Asian country.

Missionaries in Viet Nam report that despite war revival continues to spread in the central highlands, and in the Philippines missionaries say national revival may be on its way there.

The Lutheran Generation

A Study of Generations, published by Augsburg, complements—but doesn’t explain—the membership report released by the Lutheran Council in the U.S.A. The Augsburg report is “the best piece of religious research ever done,” according to a Catholic religion researcher.

The 416-page volume surveys a cross-section of Lutherans from the three largest Lutheran bodies: the Lutheran Church in America, the American Lutheran Church, and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The research team, headed by Dr. Merton P. Strommen of Minneapolis, found that a majority of Lutherans believe in the biblical miracles, in life after death, and in a personal devil.

The study differentiated between the two in five “works-oriented” Lutherans who are tied to “religious legalism” and the three in five “Gospel-oriented” Lutherans who “reflect an awareness of a personal God who cares for them in Jesus Christ.” The latter hold fewer social prejudices than their more law-bound brothers.

Significantly, Lutheran union received strong support: 71 per cent in the LCA, 70 per cent in the ALC, and 62 per cent in the LCMS. The only thing the study didn’t cover is why Lutheran membership is on the decline.

The Lutheran Council reports that for the third consecutive year overall Lutheran membership dropped. The LCMS, however, gained nearly 9,000 members, partly through merger with the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches. The LCA and ALC denominations lost three million and 21,000 members respectively. The ultra-conservative 383,000-member Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod was the only other group to increase.

Good For The Heart

Church-going is not only good for your soul—it’s also apparently good for your health. A study of male residents of western Maryland found that frequent attendance at church—any church—was associated with a much lower death rate from heart attacks and hardening of the arteries.

The study, conducted by Dr. George W. Comstock of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, was presented at a scientific symposium recently. Comstock found that those who attended services infrequently had nearly twice as many heart attacks as those who attended every Sunday. He called the results “most surprising.” But, said he, the number of variables for white middle-aged males dying of heart attacks is so great that it is almost impossible to interpret results.

An earlier study of Seventh-day Adventists in California showed similar results among the men, who neither smoke nor drink, eat less meat than others, and use coffee and tea sparingly. According to the survey, Adventist men live an average of six years longer than non-SDAers while the women survive an extra five years.

GLENN D. EVERETT

A Low Blow

A young Mormon missionary from America working in Thailand created one of the worst international incidents in recent memory there after a photo of him perched atop a Buddha statue was published in Thai newspapers.

Joseph K. Wall, 20, was jailed with fellow missionary Kimball J. Larson on charges of “desecration and sacrilege.” Larson snapped away as Wall draped his feet over Buddha’s face. A young Thai photo developer, incensed by what he saw on the film, sent print copies and letters of protests about the “foreign dogs” to Thai newspapers.

The predominantly Buddhist Thais are normally known for their religious tolerance. But they were outraged over Wall’s “ultimate insult” to the national faith: his “low feet” had touched Buddha’s “high head.”

After a waitress at Nakorn Sawan identified Wall as the offender in the photo, protesters in a caravan of 100 taxis snaked back and forth through the provincial capital seeking him—intending to lynch him. But the police reached him and Larson first.

Amid the rising outcry nationally, foreign-missions personnel scurried to press conferences to dissociate themselves from Wall and the Mormons. Diplomats and others in the foreign community poured out their apologies to suddenly hostile neighbors. Mormon leader Paul Morris explained to reporters that Wall’s act was not intended as an insult. Mission executives voiced fears that the incident would provoke a governmental guilt-by-association move that would harm their work. (Government pressure against Christian publishers continued for years after the publication of a Jesuit book attacking Buddhism.)

Wall and three other missionaries ran a Sunday school and taught English in Nakorn Sawan (Mormons have been active in Thailand for nearly a decade). Wall and Larson are now serving a six-month sentence, and they face possible deportation, but they could have been jailed for years.

BILL BRAY

Constantinople Compromise

“I confess to fear in accepting this burden, but I pray that the Holy Ghost will support me.” With these words Metropolitan Demetrios, 58, became the 269th archbishop of Constantinople and titular leader of world orthodoxy, succeeding Athenagoras I, who died ten days before. Demetrios had become an archbishop of two tiny Turkish islands only five months earlier.

Demetrios I vowed to continue the Athenagoras tradition, advancing toward Christian reunion “in the spirit of pan-orthodox unity.” Pope Paul sent two top envoys to Istanbul for the enthronement of Demetrios; the pontiff declared in a cable that “you will always find the Bishop of Rome desirous of continuing to progress toward the day … when our refound unity will be sealed.”

Observers say that Demetrios, a compromise candidate (he has been uninvolved in political issues), was first choice of the powerful Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon in Turkey, who was rejected by Turkey as a candidate for the high office “for political reasons.” Meliton presumably will serve as the new archbishop’s close advisor.

A news release of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America complained that the Turkish government “presumed … to take the authority to determine who is acceptable or unacceptable to become the next Ecumenical Patriarch of World Orthodox Christianity.” The office is chosen by the fifteen-member holy synod, but the Turkish government has the right to veto the synod’s choice.

The same communique explained why Archbishop Iakovos of New York (both he and Meliton were considered prime candidates for patriarch) was denied entrance into Turkey for Athenagoras’s funeral. Iakovos, outspoken in his criticism of religious discrimination in Turkey, was declared persona non grata.

Return To Sudan?

The Sudanese government has told evangelical mission officials that mission aid in rehabilitating the country after the bloody seventeen-year civil war there is most welcome. In light of Muslim ascendancy, many missionaries had all but written off their former field in the south as a closed door.

Dr. Kenneth Tracey, representing his own Sudan Interior Mission as well as Africa Inland Mission, Sudan United Mission, and Missionary Aviation Fellowship, has been commissioned by the four groups to seek ways to assist recovery efforts. Dr. Tracey headed up SIM relief efforts in Nigeria following the civil war there. Government officials told him the Sudanese welcomed such help.

Tracey reported that refugees are flocking back to the southern region of Sudan. Approximately 280,000 fled into Ethiopia, Uganda, and Zaire while another half million were displaced by the war and live a nomadic existence.

Urgent needs exist for reconstruction of hospitals, schools, leprosariums, and even entire towns, say government sources. Also needed are doctors, teachers, builders, engineers, agriculturalists, and supplies.

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