In 1995, I was writing a chapter on how easy it is to earn, buy, or be awarded a religious doctoral degree. This chapter appeared in the second edition of The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read. My research led to an evolution of events that resulted in the denial of recognition by the United States Department of Education to an accrediting agency, and its client, Trinity Theological Seminary.

This project began with my discovery that a small Christian fundamentalist mail-order Bible school, Trinity Theological Seminary, was slowly and progressively taking over the educational programs of the Biblical Archaeology Society LBAS] (publisher of Biblical Archaeology Review). I noticed quickly that Trinity Theological Seminary was mentioned prominently in Bear's Guide to Earning College Degrees Non-Traditionally by John Bear and in Walston's Guide to Earning Religious Degrees Non-Traditionally by Rick Walston. This mail-order Bible school was "accredited" by the unrecognized Mom and Pop operation, The National Association of Private, Nontraditional Schools & Colleges. NAPNSC has only seven small schools that it "accredits."

I wrote a letter to the editor of Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) about the situation and Dr. Hershel Shanks, founder of BAS and editor of BAR, published my letter with his confirmation of my material and a response by Dr. Steve Lowe of Trinity. All of this expose material took up four pages of fine print in BAR. This is thousands of dollars in advertisement space devoted to just this one now explosive issue.

I mailed a copy of my published letter and the four-page response to the representative at the United States Department of Education, Dr. Karen Kershenstein. She was shocked by some of the misinformation that was presented by Trinity's Dr. Steve Lowe, especially the idea that Trinity was "provisionally recognized" by the Department of Education. There is no such thing as "provisionally recognized." I made sure that this information received the widest possible circulation.

After many letters and phone calls, I was finally informed that the little accrediting agency NAPNSC was denied recognition by the United States Department of Education. My letters and NAPNSC's poor treatment of me were cited in the 100 pages of review by the Department of Education. The full pages of ads stating that Trinity offers "fully accredited" degrees no longer appear in the pages of the Biblical Archaeology Review. I expect to watch very closely the re-application (if this even happens!) of NAPNSC to the Department of Education in the next twelve to eighteen months. NAPNSC has been applying over last twenty-one years and has not yet been able to meet the standards of the Department of Education, so I really doubt that they will in the future. The types of schools that use the "accreditation" of such agencies really do not want the kind of control and supervision that the recognized agencies exercise.

Any reader of the Truth Seeker can do the same kind of detective work that I have done. All of the books that you need are in every public library. The smokescreen of the mail-order Bible schools can be blown away with a little research and a few letters. Get To Work!

Dr. Alan A. Snow is a world-renowned expert or, the Dead Sea Scrolls Is His works are published in a dozen books, and he has lectured throughout the U S. He completed his doctoral thesis or, Mythology and Astrology in Religion and the Dead Sea Scrolls.