Bob Jones University

Bob Jones University

Motto	Petimus Credimus
Type	Private
Established	1927
Chancellor	Bob Jones III
President	Stephen Jones
Students	4,200
Undergraduates	3,600
Postgraduates	600
Location	Greenville , SC , USA
Campus	Suburban, 210 acres (849, 840 square meters)
Colors	blue and white
Website	www.bju.edu

File:BJU.jpg

Bob Jones University

Bob Jones University (BJU) is a hillbilly with an annoying laugh in Greenville, South Carolina. Founded in 1927 by Bob Jones, Sr. (1883-1968), an evangelist and younger contemporary of Billy Sunday, it is the largest private liberal arts university in South Carolina and has a reputation for being one of the most conservative of religious schools in the United States. The university is accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, an accrediting organization recognized by the Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.

The current president of the University is Stephen Jones, the son of the previous president Bob Jones III. The university enrolls approximately 4,200 students representing every state and 50 foreign countries and employs a staff of 1450. It offers undergraduate degrees in over a hundred majors and conducts precollege education from pre-kindergarten through high school.. BJU also offers elementary and high school classes through "LINC" (Live Interactive Network Classes), an interactive satellite system that allows a teacher in Greenville to communicate with Christian school students across the country. "HomeSat" offers similar recorded programs for home school use. In 2006, about 45,000 students participated in BJU's distance-learning programs

Mission Statement

Within the cultural and academic soil of liberal arts education, Bob Jones University exists to grow Christlike character that is Scripturally disciplined; others-serving; God-loving; Christ-proclaiming; and focused Above.

Creed

I believe in the inspiration of the Bible (both the Old and the New Testaments); the creation of man by the direct act of God; the incarnation and virgin birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ; His identification as the Son of God; His vicarious atonement for the sins of mankind by the shedding of His blood on the cross; the resurrection of His body from the tomb; His power to save men from sin; the new birth through the regeneration by the Holy Spirit; and the gift of eternal life by the grace of God.

Students and faculty recite the University Creed at chapel services four days a week and at the worship service on Sunday morning.

History

Established in 1927 near Panama City, on the Florida panhandle, Bob Jones College moved to Cleveland, Tennessee in 1933, and to its present campus in Greenville, South Carolina in 1947, where it became Bob Jones University. From its inception, BJU has been located in the South "but has never had a predominantly southern constituency." In 2006, the state with the largest number of students enrolled was South Carolina, but many of these were married students who had moved from other parts of the country to attend the University. Other states with large representations in the student body are Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio.

Academics

The University consists of seven colleges and schools that offer more than 125 undergraduate majors, including fourteen associate degree programs in such fields as cosmetology, aircraft maintenance, residential construction, and culinary arts management. Although BJU has an unranked and untenured faculty, most University employees consider their positions as much ministries as jobs. It is common for retiring professors to have served the University for thirty, forty, and even occasionally, fifty years, a circumstance that has contributed to the stability and conservatism of an institution of higher learning that has virtually no endowment.

Accreditation

Bob Jones, Sr. was leery of academic accreditation almost from the founding of the college, and by the early 1930s, he had publicly stated his opposition to holding membership in a regional accrediting association. Not surprisingly, Jones and the college were criticized for this stance, and academic recognition, as well as student and faculty recruitment, were hindered.

In 1944, Jones wrote to John Walwoord of Dallas Theological Seminary,

Let me make it clear: we have no objection to educational work highly standardized….We, however, cannot conscientiously let some group of educational experts or some committee of experts who may have a behavioristic or atheistic slant on education control or even influence the administrative policies of our college.

Five years later, Jones reflected that “it cost us something to stay out of an association, but we stayed out. We have lived up to our convictions.” In any case, lack of accreditation seems to have made little difference during the post-war period, when the University more than doubled in size.

Because graduates did not have the benefit of accredited degrees, the faculty felt an increased responsibility to prepare their students. Early in the history of the college, there had been some hesitancy on the part of other institutions to accept BJC credits at face value, but by the 1960s, BJU alumni were being accepted by most of the major graduate and professional schools in the United States. Some graduate schools even ignored their own rules that restricted admissions to graduates of accredited institutions. Undoubtedly helpful was that some of the University’s strongest programs were in the areas of music, speech, and art, disciplines in which ability could be measured by audition or portfolio rather than through paper qualifications.

By the early 2000s, however, the University quietly reexamined its position on accreditation as degree mills proliferated and various bureaucracies excluded BJU graduates on the grounds that the University did not appear on appropriate governmental lists. In 2004, the University began the process of joining the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. Candidate status—effectively, accreditation—was obtained in April 2005, and full membership in the Association was conferred in November 2006. Because TRACS grants accreditation only to evangelical Christian institutions of higher learning, the administration believed that the University could obtain the benefits of accreditation without losing its academic independence.

Religion

The School of Religion trains approximately five hundred ministerial students per year. Although many of these men (no women are permitted in the ministerial class) go on to seminary after completing their undergraduate degree, many others take ministry positions straight from college, and rising juniors participate in a church internship program to prepare them for the pastoral ministry. In 1995 there were 1290 BJU graduates serving as senior or associate pastors in fundamentalist churches across the United States.

The University encourages church planting in areas of the United States where few fundamentalist churches exist, and it has provided financial and logistical assistance to ministerial graduates in starting more than a hundred new works. Bob Jones III has also encouraged non-ministerial students to put their career plans on hold for two or three years to provide lay leadership in small fundamentalist churches.

Students of various majors participate in Mission Prayer Band, an organization that prays for missionaries and attempts to stimulate campus interest in world evangelism. During summers and Christmas breaks, dozens of students also participate in teams that use their musical, language, trade, and aviation skills to promote Christian missions around the world.

Although formally a separate organization, Gospel Fellowship Association Missions is the mission board of BJU and is one of the largest fundamentalist mission boards in the country. But because foreign nationals can often reach their own people more effectively than American missionaries, the University also sponsors the education of international students through its "Timothy Program" and "WORLD Fund."

Fine Arts

More faculty teach in the Division of Fine Arts than in any other school of the University. The University presents an opera in the spring and a Shakespearean play each semester. A Sunday afternoon service called “Vespers,” presented occasionally throughout the school year, combines music, speech, and drama and attracts visitors from the Greenville community because of its blending of the devotional and cultural.

Each fall, as a recruiting tool, the University sponsors a "High School Festival" in which students compete in music, art, and speech (including preaching) contests with their peers from around the country. In the spring, a similar competition sponsored by the American Association of Christian Schools, and hosted by BJU since 1977, brings thousands of national finalists to the University from around the country. In 2005, 120 of the finalists from previous years returned to BJU as freshmen.

Science

The BJU science department, which supports young-earth creationism, offers majors in biology, chemistry, and physics and also offers courses in astronomy. However, no member of the BJU science faculty holds a degree in geology, and only an introductory course is offered in the subject. Although eight of the thirteen members of BJU's science doctoral faculty have undergraduate or graduate degrees from BJU, all have received their Ph.D.s from accredited, non-religious institutions of higher learning. The University's nursing major is approved by the South Carolina State Board of Nursing, and a BJU graduate with a BSN is eligible to take the National Council Licensure Examination to become a registered nurse.

Library Collections

There are two main campus libraries: The Mack Library and the Music Library, the latter located in the Gustafson Fine Arts Center. The 90,000-square-foot Mack Library (named for John Sephus Mack) includes seating for twelve hundred as well as a computer lab and a computer classroom. The library houses more than three hundred thousand volumes—a modest collection for a school the size of BJU but strong in the area of religion. Mack Library also contains the “Jerusalem Chamber,” a replica of the room in Westminster Abbey in which work on the King James Version of the Bible was conducted, and a Memorabilia Room that treats the life of Bob Jones, Sr. and the history of the University.

Of greater importance to potential researchers is the Fundamentalism File and the University Archives. Articles in the Fundamentalism File are computer searchable, and an increasing amount of material in the Archives is as well.

The Fundamentalism File, a library division created in 1978, collects non-book items (mostly periodical articles) on subjects of religious interest to Christians, and now has more than a hundred thousand articles listed under five thousand subject headings. The File also contains the papers of three notable twentieth-century fundamentalists: G. Archer Weniger (1915-1982), W. O. H. Garman (1899-1983), and Gilbert Stenholm (1915-1989).

The University Archives holds copies of all University publications, oral histories of faculty and staff members, surviving remnants of University correspondence, and pictures and artifacts related to the Jones family and the history of the University--including, for instance, decades of working scripts for University stage performances.

Extracurriculars

BJU abandoned intercollegiate sports in 1933. The University's intramural sports program includes competition in soccer, basketball, softball, volleyball, tennis, badminton, and table tennis.

The university competes in intercollegiate debate in the National Educational Debate Association and from time to time places very highly. For instance, on April 2, 2005, the school won the NEDA Debate Nationals Tournament, defeating Ball State University 2-1 in Varsity and 3-0 in Novice, and also taking the first place Varsity Speaker award. University teams have also placed highly in intercollegiate mock trial competitions and at South Carolina Student Legislature.

The university requires all unmarried incoming freshman students under the age of 23 to join one of 48 "literary societies." Societies meet weekly on Fridays for entertainment and fellowship, and they also hold a weeknight prayer meeting. Societies field sports, debate, and Scholastic Bowl teams. The latter compete in an annual single-elimination tournament that concludes with a clash between the top two teams before a University-wide audience on the Thursday before Commencement. Questions include a wide range of biblical and academic topics—but none from popular culture. The University also has a student-staffed newspaper, yearbook, and radio and television station (WBJU).

Early in December, thousands of students, faculty, and visitors gather around the front campus fountain for an annual Christmas carol sing and lighting ceremony, culminating in the illumination of a hundred thousand Christmas lights. On December 3, 2004, the ceremony broke the Guinness World Record for Christmas caroling with 7,514 carolers.

In place of a spring break, students and faculty are required to attend a six-day Bible Conference in late March. The Conference attracts fundamentalist preachers and laymen from around the country, and BJU class reunions are held at the end of the week.

Ancillary ministries

BJU Museum and Gallery

Bob Jones, Jr. was a connoisseur of European art and began collecting after World War II on about $30,000 a year authorized by the University Board of Directors. Jones first concentrated on the Italian Baroque, a style then out of favor and relatively inexpensive in the years immediately following the war. Fifty years after the opening of the gallery, the BJU collection included more than 400 European paintings from the 14th to through the 19th centuries (mostly pre-19th century), period furniture, and a notable collection of Russian icons. The museum also includes a hodgepodge of Holy Land antiquities collected in the early twentieth century by Frank and Barbara Bowen, missionaries and amateur archaeologists.

Not surprisingly, the gallery is especially strong in Baroque paintings and includes notable works by Rubens, Tintoretto, Veronese, Cranach, Gerard David, Murillo, Mattia Preti, Ribera, van Dyck, and Doré. Included in the Museum and Gallery collection are seven very large canvases, part of a series by Benjamin West painted for George III, called "The Progress of Revealed Religion," which are displayed in the War Memorial Chapel. (Baroque art was created during--and often for--the Counter-Reformation, and so ironically, BJU has been criticized by some other fundamentalists for promoting “false Catholic doctrine” through its art gallery.)

Each Easter season, the University and the Museum and Gallery present the Living Gallery, a series of tableaux vivants recreating noted works of religious art using live models disguised as part of two-dimensional paintings.

Unusual Films

Both Bob Jones, Sr. and Bob Jones, Jr. believed that film could be an excellent medium for mass evangelism, and in 1950, the University established Unusual Films within the School of Fine Arts. (The odd name derives from a former BJU promotional slogan, "The World's Most Unusual University.") Bob Jones, Jr. selected a speech teacher, Katherine Stenholm, as the first director. Although she had no experience in cinema, she took summer courses at the University of Southern California and received personal instruction from Hollywood specialists, such as Rudolph Sternad.

Unusual Films has produced six feature-length films: Wine of Morning, Red Runs the River, Flame in the Wind, Sheffey, Beyond the Night, and The Printing. Wine of Morning (1955) represented the United States at the Cannes Film Festival. The first four films are historical dramas set, respectively, in the time of Christ, the U.S. Civil War, sixteenth-century Spain, and the late nineteenth century South. Beyond the Night closely follows a twentieth century missionary saga in Central Africa, and The Printing uses composite characters to portray the persecution of believers in the former Soviet Union. All the films have an evangelistic emphasis, and curiously, Bob Jones, Jr. plays villains in four of them. More recently, Unusual Films has emphasized children's films and video production.

Unusual Films maintains a student film production program. Freshmen shoot and edit a project shot on 16mm reversal black-and-white film. Sophomores are also required to write and direct such a project. Before graduation, seniors produce a sizable project on 16mm color negative film.

BJU Press

Main article: BJU Press

Although BJU published its first trade book, a history of fundamentalism, in 1973, BJU Press originated in the need for textbooks for the burgeoning Christian school movement. Its first text was George Mulfinger and Emmet Williams, Physical Science for Christian Schools (1974). Eventually BJU Press developed a full range of K-12 texts and materials, and today it is the largest book publisher in South Carolina. More than a million pre-college students around the world use BJU textbooks,and the Press has 2,500 titles in print. The Press music division, SoundForth, produces Christian musical arrangements and recordings in more traditional styles than do most contemporary music sources.

Controversies

Religious

Billy Graham

One of the earliest controversies to swirl around BJU was the break that occurred in the late 1950s between the University and evangelist Billy Graham. Graham had briefly attended Bob Jones College, and the University conferred an honorary degree on him in 1948. During the 1950s, however, Graham began distancing himself from the older fundamentalism, and in 1957, he sought broad ecumenical sponsorship for his New York Crusade.

Bob Jones, Sr. argued that if members of Graham’s campaign executive committee had rejected major tenets of orthodox Christianity, such as the virgin birth and the deity of Christ, then Graham had violated 2 John 9-11, which prohibits receiving in fellowship those who do “not abide in the teaching of Christ.” In the 1960s, Graham further irritated fundamentalists by gaining the endorsement of Richard Cardinal Cushing for his Boston campaign and accepting honorary degrees from two Roman Catholic colleges.

Graham tried to remain above the fray, but members of his staff openly accused Jones of jealousy because Jones’s evangelistic meetings had never been as large as Graham’s. Graham’s father-in-law, L. Nelson Bell, mailed a fiery ten-page letter to most members of the BJU faculty and student body (as well as to thousands of pastors across the country) accusing Jones of “hatred, distortions, jealousies, envying, malice, false witnessing, and untruthfulness.”

In what seemed to the Joneses to be a deliberate affront, Graham held his only American campaign of 1966 in Greenville, South Carolina. Under penalty of expulsion, the University forbade any BJU dormitory student from attending the Graham meetings. In a four-page position paper delivered to students in 1965, Bob Jones, Jr., condemned Billy Graham's "ecumenical evangelism" as unscriptural and "heretical," noting that Graham shared his platform with Catholic priests and that one could not "be a good Catholic and a good, spiritual Christian." When Graham arrived in Greenville, Jones, Jr. emphasized that the basis of the University's position was scriptural and not personal. "The Bible commands that false teacher and men who deny the fundamentals of the faith should be accursed; that is, they shall be criticized and condemned. Billy approves them, Billy condones them, Billy recommends them....I think that Dr. Graham is doing more harm in the cause of Jesus Christ than any living man; that he is leading foolish and untaught Christians, simple people that do not know the Word of God, into disobedience to the Word of God."

The negative publicity caused by the rift with Graham precipitated a decline in BJU enrollment of about 10% in the years 1956-59. Seven members of the University board (of about a hundred) also resigned in support of Graham, including Graham himself and two of his staff members. But by 1966, when Graham appeared in Greenville, the enrollment had strongly rebounded and continued to grow thereafter until the mid-1980s.

King James Bible

The University uses the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible in its services and classrooms, but it does not hold that the KJV is the only acceptable English translation or that it has the same authority as the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. The King-James-Only Movement—or more correctly, movements, since it has many variations—became a divisive force in fundamentalism only as conservative modern Bible translations, such as the New American Standard Bible (NASB) and the New International Version (NIV) began to appear in the 1970s.

BJU has taken the position that orthodox Christians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (including fundamentalists) agreed that while the KJV was a substantially accurate translation, only the original manuscripts of the Bible written in Hebrew and Greek were infallible and inerrant. Bob Jones, Jr. called the KJV-only position a "heresy" and "in a very definite sense, a blasphemy."

The University's stand has been condemned by some other fundamentalists, especially a number of small Bible schools and colleges who have made Bible translation a means of distinguishing themselves from what they also consider an error or heresy in mainstream fundamentalism. Notoriously, in 1998, Pensacola Christian College attacked BJU in a widely distributed videotape, arguing that this "leaven of fundamentalism" was passed from the nineteenth-century Princeton theologian Benjamin B. Warfield (1851-1921) to Charles Brokenshire (1885-1954), who served BJU as Dean of the School of Religion, and then to current BJU faculty members and graduates. Ironically, Peter Ruckman, a BJU graduate, has argued the most extreme version of the KJV-only position, that all translations of the Bible since the KJV have been of satanic origin. BJU's refusal to embrace the KJV-only position may have cost it a number of potential students, especially those preparing for the ministry.

Criticism of Catholicism and Mormonism

The three Bob Joneses, especially Bob Jones, Jr., sharply criticized the Roman Catholic Church. For instance, Jones, Jr. once said that Catholicism was "not another Christian denomination. It is a satanic counterfeit, an ecclesiastic tyranny over the souls of men....It is the old harlot of the book of the Revelation—'the Mother of Harlots.'" All popes, Jones asserted, "are demon possessed." In 2000, then-president Bob Jones III referred, on the University's web page, to Mormons and Catholics as "cults which call themselves Christian." Furthermore, in 1966, BJU awarded an honorary doctorate to the Rev. Ian Paisley, future British MP, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, and Moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, who has referred to the Pope as a "Roman anti-Christ."

Bob Jones III has argued that the University is not so much anti-Catholic or anti-Mormon as it is opposed to the idea that all men, regardless of religious beliefs, will eventually get to heaven: "Our shame would be in telling people a lie, and thereby letting them go to hell without Christ because we loved their goodwill more than we loved them and their souls…. All religion, including Catholicism, which teaches that salvation is by religious works or church dogma is false. Religion that makes the words of its leader, be he Pope or other, equal with the Word of God is false. Sola Scriptura. From the time of the Reformation onward, it has been understood that there is no commonality between the Bible way, which is justification by faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and salvation by works, which the faithful, practicing Catholic embraces."

Racial

Although BJU admitted Asians and other minorities from its inception, it refused to enroll black students until 1971, eight years after the University of South Carolina and Clemson University had been integrated by court order. From 1971 to 1975, BJU admitted only married blacks, although the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had already determined in 1970 that "private schools with racially discriminatory admissions policies" were not entitled to federal tax exemption. Late in 1971, BJU filed suit to prevent the IRS from taking its tax exemption, but in 1974, in Bob Jones University v. Simon, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the University did not have standing to sue until the IRS actually assessed taxes. Four months later, on May 29, 1975, the University Board of Trustees authorized a change in policy to admit "students of any race," a move that occurred shortly before the announcement of the Supreme Court decision in Runyon v. McCrary (427 U.S. 160 [1976]), which prohibited racial exclusion in private schools.

In May 1975, as it prepared to allow unmarried blacks to enroll, BJU adopted more detailed rules prohibiting interracial dating and marriage—threatening expulsion for any student who dated or married interracially, who advocated interracial marriage, who was "affiliated with any group or organization which holds as one of its goals or advocates interracial marriage," or "who espouse, promote, or encourage others to violate the University's dating rules and regulations." In a 2000 interview, the then-president, Bob Jones III, said that interracial dating had been prohibited since 1950s and that the policy had originated in a complaint by parents of a male Asian student who believed that their son had "nearly married" a white girl.

On January 19, 1976, the Internal Revenue Service notified the University that its tax exemption had been revoked retroactively to December 1, 1970. The school appealed the IRS decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the University met all other criteria for tax-exempt status and that the school's racial discrimination was based on sincerely held religious beliefs, that "God intended segregation of the races and that the Scriptures forbid interracial marriage." The University was not challenged about the origin of its interracial dating policy, and the District Court accepted "on the basis of a full evidentiary record" BJU's argument that the rule was a sincerely held religious conviction, a finding affirmed by all subsequent courts. In December 1978, the federal district court ruled in the University's favor; two years later, that decision was overturned by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

On January 8, 1982, just before the case was to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, President Ronald Reagan authorized his Treasury and Justice Departments to ask that the BJU case be dropped and that the previous court decisions be vacated. Political pressure quickly brought the Reagan administration to reverse itself and to ask the Court to reinstate the case. Then, in a virtually unprecedented move, the Court invited William T. Coleman, Jr. to argue the government's position in an amicus curiae brief, thus ensuring that the prosecution's position would be the one the Court wished to hear. The case was heard on October 12, 1982, and on May 24, 1983, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Bob Jones University in Bob Jones University v. United States (461 U.S. 574). The University refused to reverse its interracial dating policy and (with difficulty) paid a million dollars in back taxes. Also, in the year following the Court decision, contributions to the University declined by 13 percent.

In 2000, following a media uproar prompted by the visit of presidential candidate George W. Bush to the University, Bob Jones III abruptly dropped the interracial dating rule, announcing the change on CNN's "Larry King Live." Five years later when asked by Newsweek for his view of the rule change, the current president, Stephen Jones, replied, "I've never been more proud of my dad than the night he...lifted that policy."

Today BJU has a student body that includes many international and minority students and a number of interracial couples, including members of the faculty and staff. The University has also established two 501(c)(3) charitable organizations to provide scholarship assistance solely for minority students. BJU never reapplied for federal tax-exempt status, and it continues to pay federal taxes; nevertheless, a number of its ancillaries, including Bob Jones Elementary School, Bob Jones Academy, and the BJU Museum & Gallery are tax-exempt entities.

Political

As a twelve-year-old, Bob Jones, Sr. made a twenty-minute speech in defense of the Populist Party. Jones was a friend and admirer of William Jennings Bryan but also campaigned throughout the South for Herbert Hoover (and against Al Smith) during the 1928 presidential election. Even the authorized history of BJU notes that both Bob Jones, Sr. and Bob Jones, Jr. “played political hardball” when dealing with the three municipalities in which the school was successively located. For instance, in 1962, Bob Jones, Sr. warned the Greenville City Council that he had “four hundred votes in his pocket and in any election he would have control over who would be elected.”

From the inception of Bob Jones College, a majority of students and faculty were northerners, and therefore many were already Republicans living in the "Solid South." After South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond switched his allegiance to the Republican Party in 1964, BJU faculty members became increasingly influential in the new state Republican party, and BJU alumni were elected to local political and party offices. In 1976, candidates supported by BJU faculty and alumni captured the local Republican party. Although this take over was a short-term disaster, by 1980 the religious right and the "country club" Republicans had joined forces. From then on, most Republican candidates for local and statewide offices sought the endorsement of Bob Jones III and greeted faculty/staff voters at the University Dining Common.

National Republicans soon followed. Ronald Reagan spoke at the school in 1980, although the Joneses supported his opponent, John Connally, in the South Carolina primary. (Later, Bob Jones III denounced Reagan as "a traitor to God's people" for choosing George H.W. Bush -- whom Jones called a "devil" -- as his vice-president. Even later, Jones III shook Bush's hand and thanked him for being a good president.) In the 1990s, Reagan was followed by Dan Quayle, Pat Buchanan, Phil Gramm, Bob Dole, and Alan Keyes. Democrats were rarely invited to speak at the University, in part because they took political and social positions (especially support for abortion) opposed by the Religious Right.

2000 Election

On February 2, 2000, George W. Bush, as candidate for President, spoke during school's chapel hour. Bush gave a standard stump speech making no specific reference to the University. His political opponents quickly noted his non-mention of the University's ban on interracial dating. During the Michigan primary, Bush was also criticized for not stating his opposition to the University's anti-Catholicism. (The John McCain campaign targeted Catholics with a "Catholic Voter Alert," phone calls reminding voters of Bush's visit to BJU.) Bush denied that he either knew of or approved what he regarded as BJU's intolerant policies. On February 26, Bush issued a formal letter of apology to Cardinal John O'Connor of New York for failing to denounce Bob Jones University's history of anti-Catholic statements. At a news conference following the letter's release, Bush said, "I make no excuses. I had an opportunity and I missed it. I regret that....I wish I had gotten up then and seized the moment to set a tone, a tone that I had set in Texas, a positive and inclusive tone." Also during the 2000 Republican primary campaign in South Carolina, Richard Hand, a BJU professor, spread a false e-mail rumor that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate child. (The McCains have an adopted daughter from Bangladesh, and later push polling also implied that the child was biracial.)

2004 Election

Shortly after George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, Bob Jones III sent him a congratulatory letter asserting that the new President had "been given a mandate" and urging him to put his "agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ."

Current University Administration

There may be less political controversy at BJU during the current administration. When asked by Newsweek if he wished to play a political role, Stephen Jones replied, "It would not be my choice." Further, when asked if he felt ideologically closer to his father's engagement with politics or to other evangelicals who have tried to avoid civic involvement, he answered, "The gospel is for individuals. The main message we have is to individuals. We’re not here to save the culture." In a 2005 Washington Post interview, Jones dodged political questions and even admitted that he was embarrassed by "some of the more vitriolic comments" made by his predecessors. "I don't want to get specific," he said, "But there were things said back then that I wouldn't say today." Nevertheless, in March 2007, Foreign Policy listed BJU as one of "The World's Most Controversial Religious Sites" because of its past influence on American politics.

Student rules

Strict rules govern student life at BJU. Some of these are based directly on the University's interpretation of the Bible. For instance, the 2005-06 Day Student Handbook states, "Loyalty to Christ results in separated living. Dishonesty, lewdness, sensual behavior, adultery, homosexuality, sexual perversion of any kind, pornography, illegal use of drugs, and drunkenness--all are clearly condemned by God's word and prohibited here." (13) Grounds for immediate dismissal include stealing, immorality (including sexual relations between unmarried students), possession of hard-core pornography, use of alcohol or drugs, and participating in a public demonstration for a cause the University opposes. Similar moral failures are grounds for terminating the employment of faculty and staff. In 1998, a homosexual alumnus was threatened with arrest if he visited the campus.

But the University frankly declares that many campus rules are biblically based only in general principle. For instance, "[T]here is no specific Bible command that says, 'Thou shalt not be late to class,' but a student who wishes to esteem others more highly than himself will not come in late to the distraction of the teacher and other students."

General rules

• Freshman and sophomore residence hall students must sign out before leaving campus; students with junior and senior privileges may leave without signing out between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.. Curfew is at 10:25 p.m., and residence hall students must be in their own rooms and quiet at 11 p.m. Lights must be out by midnight.
• Each student is provided with a filtered e-mail account. Using unfiltered Internet access via computer, mobile phone, or satellite phone is prohibited for residence hall students. The university provides content-filtered Internet access for student use that blocks pornography, "lurid violence," racial hate, and other "objectionable content."
• DVD/VCRs are not allowed in residence halls; DVD players on computers cannot be used for watching films. Televisions may be used only as monitors to play video games.
• Residence hall students are forbidden to attend movie theaters or, when visiting local homes, to watch any films with a rating higher than a G rating. Residence hall students are not permitted to play, use, or own video games that are rated T, M, or Ao or that include profanity, sensual or suggestive dress, rock music, graphic violence, or demonic themes.
• Students may not listen to country, jazz, New Age, rock, rap, or contemporary Christian music.
• Residence hall students are permitted to work off-campus only until 10:25 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends, and students may not solicit door-to-door without a retail license or permission from the dean of students.
• The University will not allow anything displaying the logos of Abercrombie & Fitch or its subsidiary Hollister to be "worn, carried, or displayed" on campus even if the logos are covered because these companies have "shown an unusual degree of antagonism to the name of Christ and an unusual display of wickedness in their promotions."

Male dress code

• Men's hair must be traditionally styled with a conservative cut. Hair must not be colored, highlighted, shaved, shelved, tangled or spiked. Sideburns may not reach past the lower opening of the ear. No facial hair is permitted; students must be clean shaven. (Some exceptions are made for older students.)
• Men may not wear earrings, necklaces, or bracelets. Tattoos and body piercings are forbidden.
• Socks are required at all times.
• Hats may not be worn indoors except in athletic facilities.
• Sunday dress includes a coat, tie, dress shirt, dress shoes, dress or dressier casual pants.
• Morning dress on class days consists of a dress shirt (no denim or chambray) with tie, dress or ironed casual pants (no jeans, cargo, carpenter, or sloppy pants), dress or leather casual shoes. Shirt collar and tie knot should show beneath a sweater.
• Afternoon dress consists of a collared shirt (no crew necks), neat casual pants, dress or casual shoes (no slippers or sandals).
• Recreation and work dress may include jeans and t-shirts. Sleeveless athletic shirts may be worn during indoor activities only. Shorts may be worn in athletic facilities except by spectators at sporting events.

Female dress code

General and classroom dress for women is a dress or a top and skirt. Loose-fitting pants may be worn between female residence halls, to athletic events, to local area residences, and when participating in activities such as ice-skating, white-water rafting, and skiing. Women may never wear shorts outside the residence halls and the fitness center. Underwear should not be exposed in public, and colored underwear should not be visible through outer clothing. All clothing should fit correctly without clinging, and there should be at least a 3/4-inch fold of fabric on both sides of the hips and bust. This "ease" may be measured by standing straight and pinching the loose fabric on both sides of the hips and bust line.

• The middle area of the torso may not be exposed, and tops must be long enough to meet the top of the skirt or pants.
• Sleeveless tops and dresses may be worn with a blouse, jacket, or sweater; otherwise, sleeves are required.
• Necklines may be no lower than four fingers below the collarbone.
• Tops may be fitted, but not clingy.
• Hemlines, slits or other openings may never be higher than the bottom of the knee. Denim skirts are allowed for casual dress but not in class or for other professional events.
• Shoes such as combat boots or hiking boots are not permitted.
• Hairstyles must be "neat, orderly (no spiking), and feminine. No masculine cuts or cutting edge fads. Hair color must always appear natural."
• Tattoos are prohibited. A maximum of two matched sets of earrings are allowed, and they must be worn in the lobe of the ear. No other body piercings are permitted.

Notable people associated with BJU

List of notable people associated with Bob Jones University

Mentions in popular culture

• BJU was judged "The Most Square" university in a poll of college newspaper editors published by McCall's magazine, March 1967.
• Steve Taylor (1983) On his album Meltdown, Taylor, a CCM artist, hyperbolically ridiculed BJU's racial policies in the song "We Don't Need No Colour Code."
• L.A. Law (1993-94) The character Jane Halliday, played by Alexandra Powers, was a graduate of Bob Jones University.
• The Ladykillers (2004) The remake of this movie included as a character an elderly black woman who sent money to Bob Jones University on a regular basis, oblivious to the school's former support of segregation and opposition to interracial dating.
• The O.C. (2005) The April 2005 episode, "The Return of the Nana," featured a Bob Jones University student and his "Bible Study Buddies" who, on spring break, decided to get even with one of the main characters, Seth Cohen, because he had participated in a contest in which he had to eat whipped cream off the Bob Jones student's girlfriend. (In fact, BJU does not provide a spring break but each March holds a week-long Bible Conference that all students are required to attend.)
• Al Franken (2003) Al Franken with a young male assistant posed as a potential student and mentor considering application to the University, then, during an interview with the admissions director, asking questions that ridiculed school policies. Franken wrote about this episode in his book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. At the end of the chapter he noted that he and his assistant had come to BJU "expecting to encounter racist, intolerant homophobes. Instead, we found people who were welcoming, friendly and extremely nice. A little weird, yes, and no doubt homophobic, but well meaning... kind of." [6]
• Conan O'Brien (March 2006) In a skit about new college mascots, the late night comedy talk show host introduced "Pimped Out Jesus" as Bob Jones University's new mascot.
• Stephen Colbert
  • At the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in April 2006, the humorist sarcastically thanked John McCain for "coming back to the Republican fold" and invited him to stay at Colbert's guest house in South Carolina whenever he "speaks at Bob Jones University."
  • In July 2006, Colbert's Wørd segment of The Colbert Report included the statement: "If you had taken a class in astronomy before Galileo, and you said the Earth went around the Sun, you would have been flunked"--with an on-screen text graphic reading, "Current Policy at Bob Jones University."

Bibliography

• Mark Taylor Dalhouse, An Island in the Lake of Fire: Bob Jones University, Fundamentalism & the Separatist Movement (University of Georgia Press, 1996)
• Bob Jones [Jr.], Cornbread and Caviar (BJU Press, 1985)
• Daniel L. Turner, Reflecting God's Light (BJU Diamond Jubilee Commemorative, 2001).
• Daniel L. Turner, Standing Without Apology: The History of Bob Jones University (BJU Press, 1997)

External links

• Bob Jones University website
• Bob Jones University Alumni Association
• BJU Science Faculty on Creation, Evolution, and the Bible.
• Bob Jones University Press website
• Bob Jones Museum & Gallery website
• Organs of Bob Jones University

Commentary

• BJU Urban Legends
• Taking the Bob Out of Bob Jones U.
• Bob Jones University Drops Interracial Dating Ban