John Fea, a professor of American history and chair of the history department at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, has been a vocal critic of David Barton and the misinformation that he tries to pass off as history.

Barton, predictably, has not taken too kindly to Fea calling him out for his shoddy work and vowed earlier this week to strike back at those “Christian college professors who are very, very bad at what they’re teaching” and singled Fea out by name.

The focus of Barton’s ire was a piece that Fea published recently titled “Why the Founding Fathers wanted to keep ministers from public office,” in which he explained that “the founders who crafted the original state governments … thought it was a good idea for ministers to stay out of politics,” so much so that several state constitutions “banned clergymen from running for office.”

This historical fact obviously conflicts with Barton’s entire narrative of American history, so he felt compelled to release a rebuttal to Fea’s piece yesterday titled “No Professor Fea, The Founders Did Not Want Ministers to Stay out of Politics.”

We’ll let Fea and Barton fight over the historical details and instead simply highlight one rather odd thing from Barton’s reply:

Notice that Barton is billed as “Dr. David Barton” despite the fact that his own biography states that he “holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oral Roberts University and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Pensacola Christian College.”

This is now the third time in recent weeks where Barton has suggested that he has a Ph.D. despite having admitted earlier this year and last year that he doesn’t have a Ph.D.

Has Barton earned a Ph.D. or not? Or, more likely, is he simply using the honorary doctorate that he received from Pensacola Christian College to justify passing himself off as “Dr. David Barton” in order to try and boost his credentials because his “scholarship” is coming under attack?

This seems like a very simple question that Barton ought to be more than willing to answer in order to put the issue to rest.