(BJU) When I attended BJU, Bob Jones III was the

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Date: Nov 22 2010
Major: Business - Management and Administration (This Major's Salary over time)
When I attended BJU, Bob Jones III was the president and Bob Jr. was chancellor. After I graduated, I had cause to re-evaluate the influence BJU had on me and my fellow grads. I traced the driving influence of BJU back to a chapel pronouncement by Bob Jones Sr. in which he told the university family,

Want to know where a man stands with God? You have only to ask him this one question: 'What does he think of this school?'

And that idolatrous, BJU-centric philosophy was passed from Sr. to Jr. to Bob III to the staff, faculty, and students at BJU. Perceptive, discerning people who evaluate BJU's students and grads will likely be met with a distinctive brand of Jonesian idolatry.

Charles Underwood, the first director of church planting at BJU, wrote an open letter to Bob III outlining Bob's and Bob Jr.'s duplicity, leaven of hypocrisy, deceitfulness, underhandedness, and management by pragmatic expediency. One of the most telling portions of the letter detailed Bob Jr.'s excoriation of a Calvinist who had received all of his theological training from BJU. Underwood noted that BJU's Bible faculty was originally Calvinist, taught Calvinism to the students, and the students embraced that which they were taught. I'm not a Calvinist but after reading this letter it appeared that BJU started out as a Calvinist university and then changed to Armenianism because the Joneses thot that would attract more students. The point is not Calvinism. The point is that BJU's leadership demonstrated a lack of competence, honesty, and consistency in selecting the religious doctrine they were being paid to teach to their customers (students). When it became advantageous to change the religious beliefs being taught to their customers, they fired their Calvinist staff, hired new people who would teach what they taught, and betrayed the graduates to whom they taught the old doctrine.

This sort of duplicity, double-dealing with the truth, and betrayal of their students, grads, and supporters has been a recurring theme of the school. The most egregious example of this sort of duplicity involved the interracial dating ban. When I attended BJU, mixed dating was forbidden. People were expelled for violating the rule. Teachers whose church granted membership to a mixed couple were fired. Mixed-race union grads were shunned by BJU. The rule was defended by BJU, supported by Scripture by the Joneses and their faculty in written pamphlets, and proclaimed to the Greenville News as a uncompromising "Scriptural" principle by Bob III when the US Supreme Court revoked BJU's tax-exempt status back in 1980. A few years ago, Bob III went on Larry King Live to announce the end of the ban. When asked by Larry King about the basis of the rule, Bob Jones III lied by saying BJU had never attempted to support the ban by Scripture; he said they never talked about the rule even though every student read the rule in the Student Handbook every year and signed that they would abide by the ban. BJU's Chancellor, Bob Jones III is not your run-of-the-mill liar. No. He's proven through the years to be a special brand of liar…a religious liar who runs a little religious school by his own rules and by his own brand of duplicity, hypocrisy, and pragmatic expediency.

Everything rises and falls on leadership. Large organizations are shaped over the years by an internal cultural and attitudinal inertia. Honesty and trustworthiness are the foundational building blocks required of an educator. An educator who is dishonest and who cannot be trusted to tell the truth about his religious beliefs is certain to pervert the religious beliefs of those over whom he exerts intellectual and religious influence. Religious hypocrisy is presented by Christ as a ruinous leaven that will infect people and organizations. If you attend BJU, keep in mind that today's religious dogma can be changed on a whim…a whim of a Jones. Are you willing to allow such people to teach you the commands and doctrines of men while maintaining they are teaching you the mind of God? Check out my story on the web by reviewing Charles Underwood's open letter to Bob Jones III. Note the comments to this post from those loyal to the Joneses and to BJU. Evaluate their comments carefully and note that the majority of BJU students/grads/defenders are never bothered by facts and have the ability to dismiss anyone or anything uncomplimentary to the Joneses/BJU. Be sure this is the type of leadership you want before you decide to attend this school.

Responses

I'm glad you also had that experience with JOnes III's lies about the interracial dating ban. I sat in a chapel and heard Dr. Jones Jr. say that they did it because that's what the Bible taught. He outlined clearly why he believed it was a biblical principle. I didn't agree: but I could respect someone doing something out of biblical conviction. When I heard Dr. Jones III saying it was always a cultural or expediency thing and they'd never tried to support it from Scripture, I lost all respect for him and for that school. It was a bald-faced lie, and I was ashamed of my friends who were there at the time who tried to excuse it or tell me I just didn't understand.

Exactly. I watched him lie to Larry King, too. I was at Bjones for 8 years and heard many times from the speaker's platform how the ban was Biblical. Bob Jones and his father were the "dear leaders" of BJones University.

When I was a freshman at BJU, in the 60's, I read a pamphlet entitled "Is Segregation Scriptural?" which was written by Bob Jones Sr. and in which he attempted to defend segregation by taking either Deuteronomy 32:8 or Acts 17:26 out of context, as proof-texters often do. So they did try to defend segregation from Scripture, however poorly. I don't know why the Joneses can't just admit that they were wrong. I will no doubt be considered a disloyal former student, but I believe it is important to be truthful and even to expose the sins of the leaders, who should then repent. What would have happened if Nathan had not exposed David's sin? How David enriched future generations in the Church by writing Psalm 51 after he repented!

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