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Bob Jones University (BJU) is a private non-denominational Protestant university in Greenville, South Carolina, known for its conservative cultural and religious positions. It has approximately 2,800 students, and is accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. In 2008, the university estimated the number of its graduates at 35,000. The university's athletic teams compete in Division I of the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) and are collectively known as the Bruins.
History of Bob Jones University
During the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the 1920s, Christian evangelist Bob Jones, Sr. grew increasingly concerned about the secularization of higher education and the influence of religious liberalism in denominational colleges. Children of church members were attending college, only to reject the faith of their parents. Jones later recalled that in 1924, his friend William Jennings Bryan had leaned over to him at a Bible conference service in Winona Lake, Indiana, and said, "If schools and colleges do not quit teaching evolution as a fact, we are going to become a nation of atheists."[4] While he himself was not a college graduate, Jones grew determined to found a college, and on September 12, 1927, he opened Bob Jones College in Panama City, with 88 students. Jones said that although he had been averse to naming the school after himself, his friends overcame his reluctance "with the argument that the school would be called by that name because of my connection with it, and to attempt to give it any other name would confuse the people."[5]
Bob Jones took no salary from the college and helped support the school with personal savings and income from his evangelistic campaigns. Both time and place were inauspicious. The Florida land boom had peaked in 1925, and a hurricane in September 1926 further reduced land values. The Great Depression followed hard on its heels. Bob Jones College barely survived bankruptcy and its move to Cleveland, Tennessee in 1933. However, Jones's move to Cleveland proved extraordinarily advantageous. Bankrupt at the nadir of the Depression, without a home, and with barely enough money to move its library and office furniture, the college became in thirteen years the largest liberal arts college in Tennessee. With the enactment of GI Bill at the end of World War II, the college was virtually forced to seek a new location and build a new campus.[6]
Though he had served as Acting President as early as 1934, Jones' son, Bob Jones, Jr. officially became the school's second president in 1947 just before the college moved to Greenville, South Carolina, and became Bob Jones University.[7] In Greenville, the university more than doubled in size within two years and started its own radio station, film department, and art gallery—the latter of which eventually became one of the largest collections of religious art in the Western Hemisphere.[8]
During the late 1950s, BJU and alumnus Billy Graham, who had attended Bob Jones College for one semester and received an honorary degree from the university in 1948,[9] engaged in a controversy about the propriety of theological conservatives cooperating with theological liberals to support evangelistic campaigns, a controversy that widened an already growing rift between separatist fundamentalists and other evangelicals.[10] Negative publicity caused by the dispute precipitated a decline in BJU enrollment of about 10% in the years 1956–59, and 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.[11] When, in 1966, Graham held his only American campaign in Greenville,[12] the university forbade any BJU dormitory student from attending under penalty of expulsion.[13] Enrollment quickly rebounded, and by 1970, there were 3300 students, approximately 60% more than in 1958. In 1971, Bob Jones III became president at age 32, though his father, with the title of Chancellor, continued to exercise considerable administrative authority into the late 1990s.[14]
Although BJU had admitted Asians and other ethnic groups from its inception, it did not enroll Africans or African-American students until 1971. 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. In 1975, the University Board of Trustees authorized a change in policy to admit black students, 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.[15] However, in May of that year, BJU expanded rules against interracial dating and marriage.[16] In 1976, the Internal Revenue Service revoked the university's tax exemption retroactively to December 1, 1970 on grounds that it was practicing racial discrimination.[17] The case eventually was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982. After BJU lost the decision in Bob Jones University v. United States (461 U.S. 574)[1983], the university chose to maintain its interracial dating policy and pay a million dollars in back taxes. The year following the Court decision, contributions to the university declined by 13 percent.[18] In 2000, following a media uproar prompted by the visit of presidential candidate George W. Bush to the university, Bob Jones III dropped the university's interracial dating rule, announcing the change on CNN's Larry King Live.[19] In the same year, Bob Jones III drew criticism when he reposted a letter on the university's web page referring to Mormons and Catholics as "cults which call themselves Christian".[20]
In 2005, Stephen Jones, great-grandson of the founder, became BJU's president on the same day that he received his Ph.D. from the school. Bob Jones III then took the title Chancellor. In 2008, the university declared itself "profoundly sorry" for having allowed "institutional policies to remain in place that were racially hurtful".[21] That year BJU enrolled students from fifty states and nearly fifty countries, representing diverse ethnicities and cultures, and the BJU administration declared itself "committed to maintaining on the campus the racial and cultural diversity and harmony characteristic of the true Church of Jesus Christ throughout the world".[22]
In 2011, the university became a member of the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS) and reinstated intercollegiate athletics.[23] In 2013, it replaced the "BJ" logo that had been used since 1967 with a new shield logo based on the university crest.[24]
In December 2011, Jones announced that the board of trustees of the BJU was forming a committee, and would hire an independent ombudsman, to review its sexual abuse policy and its application.[25]:8 The action came in response to "national media reports of the mishandling of sexual abuse".[25]:8 BJU commissioned an independent group called GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) to serve as the ombudsman and investigate the charges. In his interview with GRACE, Jones said: "I know you are aware of the situation with Chuck Phelps's church[26] and Chuck Phelps was on the board {of BJU}. When all that came out in November [2011], that made us look at our policies."[25]:8
In 2013, Jones resigned for health reasons, and the following year, Steve Pettit was named BJU's president, the first unrelated to the Jones family.[27]
The December 2014 GRACE report said that the "heart of the investigation centered on BJU's response to known cases of alleged sexual abuse".[25]:28 Among the respondents to GRACE's survey (all of whom were anonymous), 47.5% called BJU's response to their discussion of past sexual abuse very or somewhat hurtful, 48% said BJU personnel directed them not to report the abuse or discouraged them from reporting it, and 57% said that the response was blaming and disparaging.[25]:28[28] In March 2015, President Steve Pettit responded that on "behalf of Bob Jones University, I would like to sincerely and humbly apologize to those who felt they did not receive from us genuine love, compassion, understanding, and support after suffering sexual abuse or assault. We did not live up to your expectations. We failed to uphold and honor our own core values. We are deeply saddened to hear that we added to the pain and suffering.".[29]
Political involvement
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 electe
Republican powerhouse
Both Ronald Reagan (left) and Strom Thurmond (right) played influential roles in the political life of BJU
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 with unfortunate short-term political consequences, but 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.)[35] In the 1990s, other Republicans such as Dan Quayle, Pat Buchanan, Phil Gramm, Bob Dole, and Alan Keyes also spoke at BJU.[36] Democrats were rarely invited to speak at the university, in part because they took political and social positions (especially support for abortion rights) opposed by the Religious Right.
2000 election
On February 2, 2000, George W. Bush, as candidate for President, spoke during school's chapel hour.
J] 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 Joseph 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."[38] 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).
Withdrawal from politics
Although the March 2007 issue of Foreign Policy listed BJU as one of "The World's Most Controversial Religious Sites" because of its past influence on American politics,[41] BJU has seen little political controversy since Stephen Jones became president. When asked by a Newsweek reporter 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. In October 2007 when
Bob Jones III, as "a private citizen," endorsed Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination for president, Stephen Jones made it clear that he wished "to stay out of politics" and that neither he nor the university had endorsed anyone. Despite a hotly contested South Carolina primary, none of the candidates appeared on the platform of BJU's Founders' Memorial Amphitorium during the 2008 election cycle. In April 2008 Stephen Jones told a reporter, "I don't think I have a political bone in my body.
Renewed political engagement
In 2015, with the school's earlier racial positions (in the words of a Greenville News reporter) "ancient history," BJU reemerged as campaign stop of significance for conservative Republicans. Ben Carson and Ted Cruz held large on-campus rallies on two successive days in November; and BJU president Steve Pettit met with Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, and Scott Walker. Chip Felkel, a Greenville Republican consultant, noted that some of the candidates closely identified "with the folks at Bob Jones. So it makes sense for them to want to be there." Nevertheless, unlike BJU's earlier periods of involvement in politics, Pettit said he would not endorse anyone.