Recently there has been some dialogue about the credentials of the new president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Johnny Hunt, and whether or not he ought to be called Dr. Hunt. My reaction is that I do not have a dog in that race so I do not care to comment one way or the other
It did cause me, however, to remember my father, G. W. Bullard, and his struggle with the same issue about himself.
Dad's crowning ministerial achievement before he retired back to North Carolina was to serve his last six years as Executive Director-Treasurer for the Baptist Convention of Pennsylvania-South Jersey. The first year in that new role he was also Second Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention. Dad had a lot of positions like these where people assumed he had to be a Dr. to be in that position.
The truth is that Dad had neither a college nor a seminary degree. He attended college some at North Carolina State University. He moved my mother and two older sisters to Texas during World War II and did the two year diploma program at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He had already served as pastor of Gibson Avenue Baptist Church in Wilmington, NC before he went to seminary.
When he left seminary he became an associational missionary for the Roanoke Baptist Association [it had not divided into North or South yet]. He served on the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina staff for five years, and then as the first pastor of Temple Baptist Church in Raleigh before we moved to Baltimore. When we left Raleigh in 1957 he was president of the BSCNC General Board.
Within two years after we arrived in Baltimore, he was the president of the Baptist Convention of Maryland-Delaware. About that same time Chowan College back in North Carolina began considering him for president, but backed off when they were shocked to discover he did not have a college degree.
Dad was also generally known as one of the best parliamentarians around.
Dad never called himself Dr. Others insisted on calling him Dr. In private, as appropriate, he would correct them. In 1972 when Dad was moving from Philadelphia to Harrisburg to become the chief executive for Pennsylvania-South Jersey, an unaccredited African-American university called Miller University in Philadelphia awarded him an honorary Dr. in appreciation for his work with African-American churches in the Philadelphia area.
Dad hung that diploma in his office at home and said that he would try not to apologize any more when someone called him Dr.
Often in religious work, Dr. is an honor of position and authority bestowed on a person by others, and not always an earned degree. I have generally felt that anyone who insists on being called Dr.--regardless of whether or not their degree is earned or honorary--probably does not need to be called Dr. You can just call me George, even though I have an earned Dr. Friends on a first name basis is the most cherished concept anyway.
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