Ergun Caner's Lies Catch Up To Him, Part 2

AKA Ergun Can't Claim His Th.D is A Ph.D AND Ergun Can't Hide From His D.Min By Saying It's "Honorary"

Section 1: Ph.D, Th.D? Is there any difference?

Returning to Ergun's July 2009 Q&A:

QUESTION: WHAT DEGREES DO YOU HAVE, AND FROM WHERE?

ANSWER:

Another favorite question! Since my life is education, I love getting these, especially from young people who are wondering whether they should continue on in their education. PLEASE DO! I went to college basically out of curiosity. Since I was not raised in church, I wanted to study the Bible. So, I went to a college to do so. Every degree I have gotten since, I earned out of sheer curiosity. Do it. You will never regret it. So, here you go- the long form:

Here I've cut out four degrees (one BA and three Master's degrees), because they're not relevant to our discussion.

DOCTOR OF THEOLOGY
From: University of South Africa
Location: Pretoria, South Africa
Year: 2001
Thesis: Bellum Justum vs. Bellum Sacrum. I examined the apolgetics of the “Holy War” and “Just War positions in Church History, and the ethical considerations.
NOTES: I get asked often about UNISA (the abbreviation for University of South Africa), because it is a British-system University. The Th.D. at UNISA is the equivalent to the Ph.D., according to the World Education Service (WES). The requirements are the same. Many people attend this school by distance, but I chose to travel there for a series of intensives. Frankly, I loved my experience at UNISA. It was inexpensive, and my promoter (like a mentor) was a great man. I lived in a region called Brooklyn, and truly loved their culture. The university is massive, and the library is amazing. The Pauw Building houses all the Theology faculty, for both the Ph.D. and the Th.D. programs. The British system of post-graduate work is focused on the dissertation, and is called a “thesis.” Quite a few professors in the United States have been graduated from UNISA, and around the world.

Folks, this just makes me livid to read. Not because the Th.D isn't a serious degree (it is) and not because the University of South Africa isn't a serious university (it is, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu are both graduates) but because of this red herring:

The Th.D. at UNISA is the equivalent to the Ph.D., according to the World Education Service (WES). The requirements are the same.

What Ergun doesn't tell you is that World Education Service is "a not-for-profit organization specializing in foreign credential evaluation." This is done for the benefit of American universities and employers who want to know what if a degree from UNISA is of the same equivalency as one from, say, the University of Texas at Arlington. It DOES NOT mean that you can swap your Th.D credential from UNISA into an American Ph.D credential. That's not what it's supposed to be used for, but Ergun doesn't tell you that.

Additionally, this line of discussion is totally bogus because UNISA also grants the Ph.D. If Ergun had wanted a Ph.D from UNISA, he could have gotten one in the appropriate department. Then he could have WES evaluate it to get its equivalency to an American Ph.D. But, again, he can't swap out his UNISA Th.D for an American Ph.D based on the WES evaluation. In fact, if you look at the portions of university catalogues that list faculty and their credentials, you'll see all sorts of different degrees from universities all over the place, such as in this graduate school catalogue from University of Texas at Arlington. (I'm picking on UTA because Emir Caner got his Ph.D from there.)

In addition, none of this excuses the fact that up until the issue of his degrees was brought to his attention last month, Ergun spread around that he had a Ph.D, not a Th.D. You can still see traces of it on the Internet, even if not on his website. If Ergun was so incredibly sure that he could swap out his Unisa Th.D for an American Ph.D (keeping in mind that Unisa also awards the Ph.D), he would have stuck to it. But instead he changed his website (as noted here).

Ergun is exhibiting a palpable lack of honesty here.

I find all this rather mindboggling, considering that Ergun is supposed to be the head of a graduate school and theological seminary. How is he supposed to evaluate the degrees of applicants if he can't even be honest about the degrees he has? Maybe that's why he got caught up on the periphery of the Steven Flockhart scandal back in 2006.

Section 2: Is It Butter or Parkay? (Ergun's Allegedly Honorary Degree)

HONORARY DEGREES

In the world of evangelical ministry, honorary degrees abound. The founder of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell, received a number of them. In fact most public speakers get them. I have two- a Doctor of Ministry from one school, and a Doctor of Sacred Theology I received last year.

This is yet another example of what is turning into a whole net of Ergun's red herrings. Here Ergun would have you to believe that the D.Min that I've talked about previously is an honorary degree.

He would be lying about that, folks.

First of all, let us note this tidbit in an article from Baptist Press when Ergun moved from Criswell College in Dallas over to Liberty University:

After receiving a B.A. from Cumberland College, Caner received the M.A. from The Criswell College, M.Div. and Th.M. from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and completed a D.Min. at Emmanuel Baptist University and a D. Theol. at the University of South Africa.

Here's the pertinent page from the Baptist Press website.


News reports usually don't mention honorary degrees. Especially combined with the word "completed." Usually what you see is something like, "President Obama was not awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Arizona State University because the university believed he had not done enough to earn it." (I can pick on ASU, as I live on the same street as them and I pay taxes that fund ASU.) If Ergun's D.Min from Emmanuel Baptist University had been an honorary degree, it either would not have been mentioned (more likely), or mentioned as an honorary degree. It would not have been mentioned as "completed a D.Min at Emmanuel Baptist University."

Plus, if you simply go to the Emmanuel Baptist University's website, you come away with the distinct impression that this is not a place that hands out honorary degrees. They'll give you a degree, all right, but it will be in exchange for cold, hard ca$h. I don't know why one might come away with that idea, but I suppose this popup might actually explain it:

Right. These guys are going to hand out a honorary degree.

Ergun goes on to say:

In the evangelical academic world, you will have to ask yourself two questions, as it pertains to teaching and preaching:

1. What do I want to do? and


2. In what field?

The DOCTOR OF MINISTRY (DMIN) is usually a 30-36 hour degree, with a project that you must present and defend. This project is usually very practical in nature, and is designed to offer solutions in ministry to a specific need or question.

This is rather odd. He first says that his D.Min is honorary, and then he puts this up. So which is it, Ergun?

The DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY OR THEOLOGY (PHD or THD) is a two-three year program, or more, with a dissertation that must be written, approved and defended. This is a research driven degree.

If you get the DMIN degree, and you want to teach in a college, university or seminary, you can only teach in the PASTORAL field, because it is the terminal degree in that area.

If you get the PHD or THD, you can teach in the area of your major field. Since my area was Historical Theology and Apologetics, that is my field. I never wanted to teach in the “Pastoral” field, so my DMIN degrees do not count academically. They DO matter, however, to the schools that offer them, and to their alumni and friends! Sometimes when someone introduces me before I speak at a church, they mention them, and other times they do not. I am not embarrassed by them, in fact I consider it an honor that I received them!

Of course you'd consider it an honor. You considered it such an honor that you listed it among your ACADEMIC degrees in the 2008-2009 Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and Graduate School catalogue on page 116.

Come on, Ergun, the jig is up, guy.

Section 3: Let's Try Some More Sleight of Hand and Red Herrings!

ONE FINAL NOTE: Regardless of your field of study, or what you eventually want to do, remember that if you want to teach anywhere, the institution from which you graduated must be accredited. Accreditation is a controversial subject, because there are many agencies, but not all are academically recognized. All of the institutions I attended were accredited, and UNISA is internationally recognized, much like the Free University of Amsterdam, University of South Wales, etc. LIBERTY UNIVERSITY is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). There are regional equivalents in the US. Another accrediting agency is called TRACS.

He's absolutely correct on this, but again, he's got his red herrings out and he's frantically throwing them around to distract his readers. The only reason he's mentioning this is because of that pesky D.Min degree from Emmanuel Baptist University. Ergun's trying desperately to distance himself from this degree, saying it's "honorary," but as I've shown, he has had no problem claiming it as an earned degree in the not-too-distant past. It wasn't until Emmanuel Baptist University was shown to be, uh, less than accredited that he started saying the D.Min was honorary.

Let's remind everyone of the accreditations that Emanuel claims:

And the comment from Steve Levicoff, who wrote a book about Christian degree-granting outfits called Name It and Frame It:

"Claiming recognition by the American Accrediting Association of Theological Institutions and the American Accrediting Educational Association of Christian Schools, neither of which are legitimate agencies, the University of Biblical Studies (UBS) was originally founded in 1955 as "Modular Education." Their 22-page catalog states, "Participating colleges award Associate's, Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctor of Ministry Degrees," but they do not name the participating colleges."

As I noted previously, the third accrediting group, Southern Association of Christian Schools, doesn't seem to exist outside of the schools that name it as a credential.

Section 4: Conclusion

People are probably wondering why I have gone to so much trouble to document Ergun Caner's academic credentials, as well as point out in passing that the things he says about his "Islamic youth" have holes so big you could drive a Mack truck through them. This is why:

Ergun has presented himself as an expert on Islam, based on his childhood experiences. He is called upon by certain segments of the news media as an expert on Islam. However, Ergun's shown himself to be less than truthful when it comes to his academic credentials. Additionally, he claims his father built the Islamic Center in Columbus, Ohio, which is simply not true (the building was constructed in 1903). He doesn't know the difference between surah Al-Fatihah and the Shahada, which is pretty fundamental in Islam.

If Ergun can't be honest about his degrees and what his father did and did not do, and doesn't know the difference between Al-Fatihah and the Shahada, should we trust the other things he's saying about Islam?

No. We should not. And he shouldn't be a press resource either or put himself out within his Christian world as some sort of expert. He's shown himself to be untruthful. He's shown that when pressed, he'll erase things from his Facebook, his YouTube and his own personal web site, in an attempt to cover his tracks.

However, his faithful followers (and he's got thousands) will most likely ignore what is written here. After all, Ergun's doing "God's work" by "exposing the evils of Islam." His syncophantic acolytes on Facebook prove that every single day. They'll take Ergun over the truth any day of the week (but especially on Sundays).

But suppose Ergun is just wrong about Islam?

Coming this weekend, part deux

Ergun Caner's answered a batch of questions related to his (former) practice of Islam as well as about his degrees. Unfortunately, his answers are almost all craptacular lies, half-truths and red herrings. I'll be going through this document and exposing it this weekend as I have time.

Stay tuned....

Ergun Caner update 07.19.09

Ergun Caner has changed his website bio. (Read the original story here.)

On July 11, 2009, he claimed the following degrees:

BA, MA, MDiv, MTh, PhD

As of today, July 19, 2009, his degrees have changed again.

B.A., M.A., M.Div., Th,M., Th.D.

That's a direct copy from his website and you'll see that the same error is still there, in that his Master of Theology is still referred to as a Th,M (should be ThM or Th.M).

However, Caner has not, as far as I can tell (by going around to the sites) let those places where he's going to speak know that (a) he doesn't have a Ph.D but a Th.D (a perfectly good degree awarded by a reputable institution and (b) he has a D.Min from a, shall we say, less than reputable outfit. In fact, a search on Ergun Caner and D.Min finds a lot of places that have that little alleged credential. A similar search finds similar result for the non-existent Ph.D.

I've got much more important things to do in my life, such as learning Arabic. But I can spare 15 or 20 minutes once a week to search out and see where Ergun has changed his biography. And, by the way, how can Ergun claim that he was "[r]aised as the son of a Muslim leader in Turkey," when it's apparent from other remarks Ergun has made on video and elsewhere that he was raised for the most part in the United States? This sentence gives the impression that Ergun was raised in Turkey when I'm pretty sure that's not the case (but of course, I'm willing to change my mind based on evidence.)

Ergun Mehmet Caner (B.A., M.A., M.Div., Th,M., D.Min., Ph.D.) - You are SO busted!

(July 19, 2009 Update here)

This is going to be a very long post, with lots of pictures, but none of those kinds of pictures, so get your minds out of the gutter! You might want to get a soda or a cup of coffee for this one.

I. The Background

Ergun Mehmet Caner is the president of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, based out of Lynchburg, Virginia. Yes, it was founded by Jerry Falwell. Caner had hovered around the periphery of my thinking since about 2001. That's when he found some fame and fortune in evangelical circles by promoting himself as a former Muslim and so-called expert on Islam in the wake of 9/11. In particular, Caner is the author of Unveiling Islam: An Insider's Look at Muslim Life and Beliefs (now in a revised and expanded edition!), which has this not-at-all provocative cover:

(No, not provocative at all. Basically, what we're seeing here is not hijab and it's not niqab. It's a fanciful Evangelical Christian view of what the Mysterious Heathen East looks like. If you want to see how real Muslimahs dress, go here and here for starters.)

As a result of this book, and others, Ergun Caner has been called on by our press corpse to offer his opinions on various and sundry matters relating to Islam. But if you read the reviews on Amazon.com, you'll come away with the conclusion that Ergun Caner really doesn't know what he's talking about.

II. Catching My Eye

Last month, as I was surfing around the web, Ergun (and I'm using his first name here to distinguish him from his brother Emir, who also is involved in some sort of evangelism to Muslims) popped into my consciousness when I happened upon several videos on YouTube that basically accuse Ergun and his two brothers of being "fake Muslims." (See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.) While that is a lot to digest, and some of it is outright mockery (for which you have to be in the right mood), if you watch the first few minutes of Part 2, you'll get the gist of it.

In the first clip, Ergun says, "I was a devout Muslim." In the second clip, Ergun tells John Ankerberg, "...that Jesus was speaking of the Messenger. So that's why the shahadah, the central confession of Islam, bismillahir rahmanir rahim, alhamdullah [?] rahim, there is only one God, Allah, and Mohammed is his final prophet, his greatest prophet." As the video goes on to point out, what Ergun was quoting (and mangling, by the way) was the first two verses of Surah al-Fatihah:

1:1	In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
	Bismi Allahi alrrahmani alrraheemi

1:2	Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds;
	Alhamdu lillahi rabbi alAAalameena

(Click here for one of the thousands of recitations of Surah al-Fatihah on the web. Let's just say that Ergun wasn't reciting it with tajweed.)

But, and to return to my point, what Ergun was NOT reciting was the testification of faith, or the Shahadah, even though he claimed he was. Here is the Shahadah for comparison:

أشهد أن لا إله إلاَّ الله و أشهد أن محمد الرسول الله

transliteration: ʾašhadu ʾanna laa ilāha illa Allāh, wa ʾašhadu ʾanna Muḥammad ur-rasūl Allāh

which means: "I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah."

It's not "bismillahir rahmanir rahim, alhamdullah [?] rahim," which is what Ergun said in the video.

It's hard to underplay the enormity of this mistake. If you're a devout Muslim (and Ergun claimed he was), you are praying (salat) five times a day. In each salah [session], you are repeating Surah al-Fathihah two to four times, depending on the number of rakats you are praying. Not only that, as part of the prayer, you are also repeating the Shahadah once. It's hard to give a cross-religion comparison. I would imagine that for Catholics it'd be like mixing up the "Our Father" and the "Hail Mary," while for Protestants it'd be like mixing up John 3:16 with the Beatitudes. Really, though, there is no comparison.

In short, if Ergun was as devout a Muslim as he claims to be, he wouldn't have made this kind of basic, elementary mistake. But he did. One might be tempted to excuse it as a slip-up, except that his brother Emir made a similar boneheaded mistake in Part 5 (starting at 4:47) of confusing an ayah (or verse of a surah) with an entire surah (or chapter) of the Qur'an. Again, it'd be like someone claiming to be an evangelical Christian saying that John 3:16 was an entire chapter in the New Testament.

III. Looking Closer

This was all very amusing and I was pretty sure that the compiler of the YouTube videos had caught yet another evangelical basically trying to fleece the gullible flock with a story of being an ex-Muslim who found Jesus. In these post-9/11 days, in days when churches think it's Perfectly OK to put up signs that say "Islam is of the devil," yes, you can dine out (and more!) on your conversion.

After looking at the videos, it's my thought (and I'm willing to be corrected) that Ergun Caner and his siblings were raised in a mixed-religion household (his father was Turkish and mother Swedish) and religion probably wasn't discussed much beyond, "What religion am I?" "Oh, you're Muslim." "Oh. Thanks, Dad!" In other words, I doubt there was much in the way of prayer and Qur'an study. I can be fairly confident in saying that, if only because of the boneheaded errors described above.

However, I found this hard to believe because I also noted that Ergun has a raft of university degrees. In fact, his website claimed that he had the following: Ergun Mehmet Caner (B.A., M.A., M.Div., Th,M., D.Min., Ph.D.) Oddly enough, though, when I went digging around, I could find no record of where these degrees were earned, so I sent him an e-mail in June asking about it, care of his website. I heard nothing back.

A few weeks later, I noticed that Ergun's YouTube debunker was back with a couple more videos and that Ergun had set up his own YouTube channel. So I posted my question as a comment on Ergun's channel (here's a screenshot since Ergun is removing comments and may remove this one in the future--click to see larger):

Ergun replied with the following in the comments on my YouTube channel (again, click to enlarge):

This is what Ergun says his degrees are:

1989 - Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies, Cumberland College (BA)

1992 - Master of Arts in History, Criswell College (MA)

1994 - Master of Divinity, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (MDiv)

1995 - Master of Theology, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (ThM)

2001 - Doctor of Theology, University of South Africa (DTh),

His dissertation is called Bellum Sacrum vs. Bellum Justum

(For those of you who don't speak Latin or are not familiar with theological terms of art, what that means is "Holy War versus Just War.")

So, in a row, that's BA, MA, MDiv, MTh, DTh.

Ok, that's fine, except for one thing. That's not what he's claiming today, Saturday, July 11, 2009. Instead, he's claiming: BA, MA, MDiv, MTh, PhD (again, click to make larger)

And this is different from what he has claimed in the recent past, as can be shown by this Google search, conducted July 11, 2009. The letters are: BA, MA, MDiv, MTh, DMin, PhD

(click to make larger)

What you'll notice if you look at this carefully is that the top item lists Ergun's degrees as BA, MA, MDiv, MTh, DMin, PhD. However, the second link has them as BA, MA, MDiv, MTh, PhD. And, if you attempt to click on the screenshot, you get a 404 error as the PDF file that used to contain Ergun's very short biography has vanished.

However, once it ends up on the Internet, it's pretty much there forever. I can testify to that. And, in fact, you'll note in the same search other sites that have copied Ergun's old bio. For example, at this Worship Expo 2009 site we find:

It's the old bio, with the Campbell's Alphabet Soup of Educational Letters (BA, MA, MDiv, MTh, DMin, PhD)!

Here's another one, just to show that this is the biography that is currently being sent out. This Acts 1:11 conference is scheduled for Nov. 12-13, 2009 in Lawrenceville, GA and Ergun is a featured speaker. Here's his bio:

Again with the same OLD set of letters! (BA, MA, MDiv, MTh, DMin, PhD). In fact, you can tell they're just cutting and pasting the bio from Ergun's website, because it has the same error (Th,M instead of Th.M or ThM).

I decided to see what I could learn from Liberty University (ha ha). A bit of Google-Fu brought me to the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and Graduate School Catalogue. There, on page 116, we find yet another set of academic letters after Ergun Caner's name: BA, MA, MDiv, ThM, DMin, DTheol.

There's that DMin degree again but here's the first real mention, outside of the YouTube comment, of the Doctor of Theology (DTh) degree. And there's neither hide nor hair of the PhD Ergun's been claiming all this time. Is it possible this is the correct list of degrees?

Here's another piece of evidence. Back in 2003, when Ergun pulled up stakes from Criswell College to go to Liberty, Baptist Press ran an article which contained the following information:

After receiving a B.A. from Cumberland College, Caner received the M.A. from The Criswell College, M.Div. and Th.M. from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and completed a D.Min. at Emmanuel Baptist University and a D. Theol. at the University of South Africa.

There's that pesky DMin! From an outfit called "Emmanuel Baptist University." Interestingly, when I Googled this institution of higher education, the first thing that popped up was "Is Emmanuel Baptist University real?" Uh hunh. That gives me real confidence in this institution of higher "education." And, when I finally got to the "university's" website, I received the following pop-up:

I don't know about you, but this just about screams "watch OUT!" to me. This next screen with the history of the university, doesn't comfort me in the least:

And then there's the tuition, a bargain at $100 per credit hour!

Then there are the degrees, the process of which is measured out in "years," and in six "years" a person can have a terminal doctoral degree.

This is suspicious. Anyone who has done graduate-level work in the average American university knows that while one can usually predict that getting a Master's degree is going to take one year beyond the BA, that is by no means certain. And getting a PhD can take the better part of a decade, depending on the amount of work and writing one does on one's dissertation.

For example, a friend of mine spent a combined 10 years in classwork, fieldwork, exams, writing the thesis and the dissertation and finally defending the dissertation. I haven't asked him, but I suspect he might look askance at the idea that one could get a Doctor of [Some Religious Thing] one year after completing a Master's AND after the payment of $3,200, plus additional fees as required.

And finally, there are those accrediting agencies, which look to be about as reputable as a "university" that measures out time to completion of a degree in "years."

It appears that the first two "accrediting organizations" are fake. Here's what Steve Levicoff, who wrote a self-published book about fake Christian degree-granting outfits called Name It And Frame It?, had to say:

"Claiming recognition by the American Accrediting Association of Theological Institutions and the American Accrediting Educational Association of Christian Schools, neither of which are legitimate agencies, the University of Biblical Studies (UBS) was originally founded in 1955 as "Modular Education." Their 22-page catalog states, "Participating colleges award Associate's, Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctor of Ministry Degrees," but they do not name the participating colleges." [emphasis added, but there's more at the link!]

There doesn't seem to be anything on the third outfit, the Southern Association of Christian Schools, in a search on the web, beyond schools that claim its accreditation. I suspect it's as bogus as the first two accrediting outfits.

If Caner got his DMin from an institution that promises credit for life experience, charges tuition far underneath what is the going rate for graduate education (if you've checked lately, even public universities are expensive!), grants a "doctorate" after one year's study beyond a master's degree and has bogus accrediting agencies, then I could see why he might want to hide this fact. However, let me be clear: I am not saying that Emmanuel Baptist University is a "diploma mill." However, it is apparently an unaccredited institution of something.

But what concerns me more is that Caner continues to claim that he has a PhD. As far as I can tell, he does not. He does have a ThD from the University of South Africa (Unisa), which is a distance university of many years' standing and which has graduated some highly distinguished alumni, including Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. I'm not sure why Caner claims the PhD instead of the ThD. He can't make the argument that they are equivalent degrees, even if they are both academic degrees, because Unisa awards both the PhD and the ThD. If the intention was to get a PhD, then he could have gotten one there in the appropriate department. Instead, he got a ThD, and the information in the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary catalogue reflects that.

IV. Conclusion

Now that we've come to the end of this trek, what have we learned?

o Ergun Caner has a raft of degrees. Three or four more than me, as a matter of fact.

o All the sources on the web, the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and Graduate School catalogue and the information Ergun himself provided agree on the following four degrees: BA, MA, MDiv, ThM. It's after this point that Ergun's degrees diverge.

o Ergun claimed in his comment on my YouTube channel that his terminal degree is the ThD.

o Ergun currently claims on his own website that he has a PhD and there is no mention of the ThD.

o Additionally, up until earlier this week, Ergun claimed a DMin in the bio on his personal website. That has since disappeared.

o The 2008-09 Liberty catalogue says that Ergun's terminal degrees are the DMin and the ThD.

o I learned that Ergun received his DMin from Emmanuel Baptist University and I did some additional digging around. I found the following:

• There's some question as to whether or not Emmanuel is a real university.
• Emmanuel offers credit for life experience, which is usually a sign of a "diploma mill."
• Emmanuel charges well below the market rate for graduate education. In fact, its rates are the same for graduate and undergraduate education.
• Emmanuel will award a doctorate in a whole raft of disciplines (Ministry, Biblical Studies, Theology, Divinity, Sacred Theology, Christian Education, Religious Education, as well as three alleged PhDs in Religion, Biblical Studies and Christian Education) after one year of study beyond the Master's degree.
• Emmanuel's accrediting agencies are bogus.

Here are my suggestions to Ergun Caner:

1. You need to publicly acknowledge your true academic credentials. This includes correcting them on your website to reflect reality. In short, you need to stop saying you have a PhD when you do not. Your terminal degree is the ThD and you should be proud of it.
2. You need to contact the groups that you're planning to speak to in the future and provide them with an up-to-date curriculum vitae.
3. You should disavow that DMin, as it looks like it comes from a non-accredited institution of, uh, something. That includes letting your employer, Liberty University, know that the degree is not what it appears to be so it can be removed from the school catalogue, school website, shiny wall plaques in the school, etc.

To conclude this little exercise, I'd like to point out that Ergun Caner knows very well what happens when someone fakes his academic credentials. He was peripherally involved in the fall of one Steve Flockhart, who resigned in 2006 as pastor of the First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach, FL, apparently because he had lied about his academic degrees.

Here are the pertinent parts from the story, which appears to have been sourced from a story in the Palm Beach Post:

The announcement came the same day the Post ran a story about Flockhart's résumé, which said he graduated from Columbia International University and earned degrees from two other respected schools. In reality, he received bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees through correspondence classes from non-accredited Covington Theological School in Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., the story said.

[clip]

The résumé also said Flockhart was obtaining a second master's from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, although the Post reported that officials at the Wake Forest, N.C., school denied the claim.

[clip]

According to the Post, one part of Flockhart's résumé was true: his plans to begin working on a doctorate at Liberty Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, Va. The school was founded by Jerry Fallwell as part of Lynchburg Baptist College.

According to the Post, Liberty officials said Flockhart paid registration fees directly to seminary president Ergun Caner because Caner personally recruited him, said Ron Godwin, Liberty's executive vice president and CEO.

According to the Post, Godwin said Flockhart and Falwell are friends. Falwell is the school's chancellor.

(Here is a copy of the Palm Beach Post article from Religion News Blog. It is not available on the Palm Beach Post website.)

Caner claimed in an article on his own website (in a link which now mysteriously goes to a 404 page) that the Palm Beach Post egregiously misquoted him. He was very upset about the alleged misquoting, going so far as to say in an e-mail to the Post writer (this is from a copy that was dug out and saved from Google cache):

Your “quote” (highlighted in bold) was, in fact, the exact OPPOSITE of what I said. I noted, over six times, that we would allow admittance only as far as his accredited degrees would allow. We would NEVER waive prerequisites. This is not only unethical, it is not the method of an accredited institution.

This would not be a “misunderstanding,” but in fact, an outright invention by you, and ignoring my repeated statements to the contrary. We do not, and will not, waive any entrance requirements stipulated by SACS accreditation.

I am sorry you chose to ignore my repeated statements. I ask that you print a correction immediately.

I've yet to find that a correction was printed.

I have a cached copy of that page, but I find it interesting that it's now gone. Wonder why? (Oh, and by the way, Ergun, you really shouldn't be taking advice from Bill "Falafel" O'Reilly on anything.)

The ball is now in Ergun Caner's court. Let's see what he does next, shall we?

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(For the record, I hold a Bachelor of Arts in Government from the University of Texas at Austin and a Juris Doctor from the University of Houston Law Center. In my current employment, I am neither involved in government nor law.)