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and Bob Jones University would give that impulse a sacralized spin. The universitys mishandling of sexual abuse allegations made national headlines, a fundamentalist canary in a pre-Me Too coal mine. For decades, upon entering the campus administration building, you would be confronted with a painting of Bob Jones Jr. dressed in the regalia of Shylock from the Merchant of Venice. But he quickly became disenchanted with its strict religious doctrine and social policies and transferred to Florida Bible Institute. of Baroque religious art outside of the Vatican, with a particular focus on the Old Masters and Counter-Reformational paintings! The students at Bob Jones University are almost all, like me, white. Societies sponsored annual formals. He has "I love you" written in ink on his hand and she has "I love you" written in ink on hers. Fundamentalist-style heterosexual "dating" at Bob Jones University and other such institutions rarely even involves casual touching, let alone any other more intimate physical contact. In so doing, we failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandment to love others as ourselves. Such ambiguity is not acceptable. But on campus, behind the chain-linked, barbed-wire fence, in the cream-colored buildings, where the 6,500 students of Bob Jones University go about the Lord's work, such worldly concerns matter little. This represented quite a change from the old days, when the studentbody was more denominationally diverse. Like. It wasn't discussed at my school. Student enrollment had gone from decline to rout. Schools are ranked according to their performance across a set of widely accepted . That's 40% growth. .\}5o`3zMG"Sfy7Ke /T$oUEU=ZkSY,&i+-q)}> }.O [I endstream endobj 721 0 obj <>>> endobj 722 0 obj <. She is an assistant prayer captain in her dorm, responsible for leading the nightly prayer meetings and keeping an eye out for worrisome deviations, a junior majoring in elementary education. The trip will cost her $900, and already she has received $500 in anonymous contributions from fellow students who have heard of her trip and know that she cannot afford to go without help. Jones Sr. himself had come from Methodist and Primitive Baptist stock, neither of which send many students to BJU today. The war between the flesh and the spirit is always with us. During his tenure he bestowed honorary degrees on George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, and Lester Maddox. . He makes pleasing small talk. And so the students of Bob Jones preserve a fearful innocence; they have found a way to postpone childhood's end, to keep safe. The Jesus People were not welcome at BJU, and the school formalized strict rules targeted at keeping the longhair hippies out, eg. to Pettits mandolin. That was really the major issue that got us all involved.. I don't want to face those disgusted looks again. Wheatons arch-conservative president in the 1930s, J. Oliver Buswell, told parents of prospective students that the fact that Bob Jones College put on plays and operas was evidence that the Joneses were leading young people into a worldly life of sin.. (Someone fire up Midjourney, asap!) The rules, says Laura Wood, "set us apart. It became eligible to receive federal financial aid in 2006 and just announced plans to regain its tax exemption in March. She whispers sweet nothings in my ear. The board as it then existed was large, unwieldy, and packed with family friends and professional acquaintances, turning it into a rubber stamp for the wishes of the Joneses. But by selling to homeschoolers looking for conservative curricula, the BJU Press turned into a cash cowproducing textbooks, video tapes, and, later, in-home satellite coursesand bailed out the otherwise tuition-dependent university. Sen. John McCain was quick to condemn the appearance because of the school's intolerance toward Catholics and its policy that forbade interracial relationships. Then, for a 30-year period, interracial dating was prohibited. But before I go, I want to get some student quotes. Bob Jones Sr., the university's founder During the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 1920s, Christian evangelist Bob Jones Sr. grew increasingly concerned about what he perceived to be the secularization of higher education and the influence of religious liberalism in denominational colleges. ", Now he would like to be a preacher, saving the lost souls of southern California, and to that end Salinas is enrolled in the preacher boy classes, and spends his weekends practicing his ministry. Theres a lot to unpack in that sentence. There is temptation here, there is temptation everywhere. . of Bob Jones Sr.: There is no difference between the secular and the sacred; all ground is holy ground, every bush a burning bush. All truth is Gods truthexcept if it comes unshaven, unshorn, or with a little too much funk. President Jones stated, For almost two centuries American Christianity, including BJU in its early stages, was characterized by the segregationist ethos of American culture. At The World's Most Unusual University, as they like to call it, although the world is allowed precious little to do with it, God's young soldiers march at a measured pace, out of time and toward eternity: The present can be such a desperate place. Remember, in the late-19th and early 20th centuries, moral self-improvement was la mode urban clerks scribbling away in, , mass attendance at educational lectures on the lyceum circuit and in Chautauqua. So Bob Jones Sr., a fiery preacher who once shared a stage with Billy Sunday, in 1927 established the first Bob Jones University in the Florida panhandle to refurbish the fundamentalist image. The personal charisma and extensive connections the family maintained within a broad network of fundamentalist churches gave the school leeway when it came to (mildly) pushing the envelop for a (limited) fundamentalist cultural engagement. It began when President Reagan rescinded his support for a tax exemption that earlier had been denied on the grounds that the school was racist; that sent young Dr. Bob, as he is known, out to such heathen forums as the "Donahue" show and People magazine to talk darkly, if in somewhat unaccustomed terms, of how the civil rights of born-again Christians were being denied. "Bob Jones University takes seriously its obligations under Title IX as it relates to all students, faculty, staff, and volunteers," Randy Page, chief of staff for the office of the president . --Jeremiah, 17:9. Rules of the Game. Many of your remember the Dating/Social Parlor during your time at BJU. It brings into sight a centurys worth of cultural change and class contest. And though many of its followers are more affluent now, it protects them still, not from the hardness of life and its difficulties but from an infinitely more complicated despair. Wheaton Collegewhich now fashions itself as the Harvard of Christian schoolswas then locked in a competition with the newer Bob Jones College for fundamentalist supremacy. Bob Jones refused to fly the flag at half-mast for more than a few days when John F. Kennedy was killed, and this stunt made the South Carolina papers. In 1946, Bob Jones College awarded an honorary doctorate to. My interests include staying up late and taking naps. For decades, upon entering the campus administration building, you would be confronted with a, of Bob Jones Jr. dressed in the regalia of Shylock from the. Bob Jones University is a private institution that was founded in 1927. Ironically, the structural changes that enabled a board revolt against Pettit were a result of reforms pushed by Pettit himself. It was a near total corporate welfare loop: one could be born in the university hospital on one of the most comprehensive healthcare plans outside of the VA; schooling was free (but compulsory) for faculty children; there was subsidized on-campus housing; attendance at Sunday morning church services was mandatory; and the university operated a radio station, dairy farm, and retirement home. In 2019, the university got 3,869 applications from prospective students for its freshman class. What we believe and practice represented mainstream Christianity at the time of the school's founding, and for many years thereafter. Under the new leadership, the University expanded many facets of its ministry. He was saved after his cousin Jesse, an alcoholic drug addict, came home sober one day and "shared with me that I was a sinner, I was lost and I was going into a Christless eternity." You could get whiplash, one moment listening to sermonizing about the incipient dangers of worldlinessthe sinful spirit of lying in waitand then seeing, emblazoned over a classroom chalk board, a popular. But placing cultural education on the same plane as religious education was always controversial in fundamentalist circles. Functionally, this meant that a fraction of the total boardjust six members on the executive committeehas the power to unilaterally change board rules, and the chairman possesses an unparalleled power to make board appointments without executive input. Although Bob Joness ban is history, it left a significant imprimatur on the religious right. The school had been organized along the lines of a New South mill town, a place in which everything was owned and operated by the company. Ninety years after Bob Jones University opened its doors in the Florida panhandle in 1927, Bob Jones University President Steve Pettit said the importance of BJU is as great as ever. It was one of the most dunderheaded choices in the history of Christian higher education. The Counted Blessings. y_Z;tn HzMa"`f>cK@)W7j WtjlRCja%i9b>c_A There is sin in the touch of lips in the moonlight, in songs of love lost or longed for, in rhythms that make the blood course faster. When he entered what is now Birmingham-Southern College, he caught a glimpse of the way college education could open a door to middle class status and social respectability. The last Jones was eased out as the university board jonesed for a fresh face. Sitting on a bench in the sunlight are Dickson Beam and Lori Jerby, bright with love. But the boards action sparked an unprecedented backlashfor BJU, at leastfrom an ad hoc alumni group organized on Facebook. He is gregarious, charming -- why, downright neighborly. Dating Parlor BJU Part 2 - YouTube the conclusion of "dating" at bob jones universitymy friends were both having to go to Bob Jones University which is really strict about dating. (A platform which, ironically, was blocked on campus when I was a student because it might expose us to worldly influences. Their appearances didn't have the same fallout as when presidential hopeful George W. Bush made it a stop on his campaign trail. "It's not like we're racist or segregationist or make people sit at a different table," says Darren, an auto-diesel major who is sitting with his girlfriend, Sarah. The lips of the girls rushing from one class to another glisten red and ripe, their long nails are painted every possible shade of passion. But there is also this: "The world always looks kind of run down," explains Dickson Beam, and when you leave the neat, prim campus of Bob Jones University, the world does indeed look tired and weary and down at the heels. "The rules are here for our own good," says Ronda Blackburn, a preacher's daughter, pale and pretty, saved when she was 4. Scary-looking men are coming at me from all sides, but I can't distinguish the adults from the students. Indeed, the fact that the denomination with the second largest student contingent was the Southern Baptist Convention is interesting given that Steve Pettits willingness to reach out to local Southern Baptist churches was proffered by the hardliners as proof of his theological compromise. The game begins, and the team members play with great enthusiasm, if less than perfect skill; the crowd cheers "We Believe! In a more rural America, it was a religion for hard times, practiced in small country churches whose members dug a living out of an unyielding earth, by the faithful who found little to live for in long harsh days that drained the youth from their women and the high spirits from their men before they had reached the noon of their lives, who had to believe in deliverance from this life in order to go on with the living of it. This was a product of founder Bob Jones Sr.s upbringing in rural poverty on the wiregrass frontier of Alabama. ", The rules, says Dr. Bob, "are like a mold a sculptor would make--you pour the liquid into it and keep it there until it hardens and then you can take the props away; it's like a hothouse for a tender young plant.". But the universitys finances are still such that, as a former board member noted, even a sustained, 10% decline in student enrollment could be enough to bankrupt the university. All residents must check out before leaving campus, they must be in their rooms and quiet by 11 p.m., and all lights must be out by midnight. daily hair checks at chapel, no women in pants, no contemporary christian music, and so on. Jones, a writer for the . hbbd```b``"'H`,~ L~a`v2 &@${XWb>`Y50 "7`H2%*y46$2 endstream endobj startxref 0 %%EOF 775 0 obj <>stream So Denise and I push it up a notch and hold hands. The last Jones was eased out as the university board jonesed for a fresh face. (Someone fire up Midjourney, asap!) The aspirations and fears of fundamentalists past continue to haunt those who remain at what truly is the worlds most unusual university. The mind boggles. And in 1999, there are 24 blacks (out of a total student body of 3,500). Though no known antagonism toward minorities or expressions of racism on a personal level have ever been tolerated on our campus, we allowed institutional policies to remain in place that were racially hurtful.. Touching was not allowed and kissing was strictly prohibited even if the couple was engaged to be married. The size of the board was pared back, making it a more efficient body, but the powers of the board, and especially the board chairman and the executive committee, were not simultaneously reformed. . Daniel Kraus is the director of the award-winning film "Jefftowne.". Unfortunately the comments quoted in The Journal article leave room for doubt regarding the sincerity of this attempt. As of June 22, the university had 5,403 applications for the 2022-23 school year. We Believe!" In 1970, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) changed its formal policy to adopt a district court decision that prohibited the IRS from giving tax-exempt status to . The Joneses exercised near total control over the university day-to-day, messaging, and policy. When Bob Jones III assumed the presidency of the institution in 1971, male students were required to wear jackets and ties to classes. Bob jones university dating parlor. Indeed, the Michigan connectionshared by other hardline board members including. Well, two things, really. Going to the movies was not allowed, but attendance at Shakespearean playsoften featuring the Bob Joneses themselveswas mandatory, and the university would eventually start its own movie-studio to produce epic period pieces. 24 blacks ( out of a total student body of 3,500 ), like me, white ( out a! Got 3,869 applications from prospective students for its freshman class almost all, like me, white impulse sacralized. Into sight a centurys worth of cultural change and class contest comes unshaven, unshorn, or with little! Got 3,869 applications from prospective students for its freshman class more denominationally diverse interracial. Sparked an unprecedented backlashfor BJU, at leastfrom an ad hoc alumni group organized on Facebook Baptist,... In fundamentalist circles but placing cultural education on the wiregrass frontier of Alabama worlds..., the university board jonesed for a 30-year period, interracial dating was prohibited as of 22! 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