Bob Jones University: Southern Fundamentalism at its Finest

Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina is an anomaly of today’s culture. It is more of a self-sustaining evangelical community than it is a university. In order to illustrate this, allow me to share with you a few excerpts from the university website. These statements may be found at www.bju.edu/about/mission.html as of today, October 2, 2008.

“Bob Jones University exists as a training center for Christians from around the world. The goal of the administration, faculty, and staff is to equip its students for a lifetime of service to Christ… The founder’s philosophy that BJU is not here just to teach men and women how to make a living, but more importantly, how to live, remains our focus.”

The University Creed, which is recited by every student and staff member every day in Chapel:
“I believe in the inspiration of the Bible; the creation of man by the direct act of God; the incarnation and virgin birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ; His identification as the Son of God; His vicarious atonement for the sins of makind 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.”

The Core Values as identified by the University are “Love for and faithfulness to God and His Word; Unashamed testimony for Jesus Christ, the only Savior; and Edifying love for God’s people.”

Of the nine institutional goals listed on the BJU website, two are related to academic education. All others are explicitly related to sharing the Gospel of Christ.

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Knowing all of this before I visited campus, I must admit I was a little bit nervous. Though I myself am a Christian and have worked in conservative Christian environments before, I wasn’t really sure what the people at Bob Jones would be like. Would they be normal? Would they stare at me?

My fears dissipated almost as soon as my visit to BJU campus began because my tour guide was so friendly. Jeff, a junior from New Hampshire, showed me around the campus with familiarity and fondness. He answered my many questions with a curiosity as to why a senior at Wofford College would be studying Bob Jones. (I later discovered how impressive it was that Jeff had heard of Wofford at all!) After my tour, I viewed the multi-image presentation that Bob Jones presents to prospective students when they visit the campus, which concisely and precisely illustrates Bob Jones University as an institution. I was able to speak with another student during and after this presentation, a senior named Martha from Greenville. I learned much more about Bob Jones from talking with these students than I ever could have from the outside looking in.

When I asked Jeff how he would define the mission of BJU, he told me about Bob Jones Senior. Bob Jones, who was not an educator, realized that young Christians were being presented with a slanted, liberal, secularist world-view when they went to college. He wanted for young Christians to be able to get an education in a biblical environment, and thus BJU was born. Jeff felt that the local community was receptive to BJU’s mission and supportive of its efforts. Though the college was founded in Tennessee and moved to Florida before finally settling in South Carolina, Martha felt that the location of BJU “probably helps with people being receptive to our mission because we’re in the Bible Belt.” Martha also pointed out that many BJU students settle locally after graduation, thus reinforcing the Bob Jones world-view in the community culture.

Neither Jeff nor Martha feel that Bob Jones attempts to explicitly create a parallel culture for students, but they both feel passionately that the biblical environment created within the Bob Jones community is beneficial to them. Some parameters that help to create this biblically-based environment include mandatory daily chapel attendance, strictly separate male and female dorms, strict conservative dress codes, restrictions pertaining to what music students listen to, strict prohibition of alcohol, exclusively intramural athletics, chaperoned group dates for male and female students who wish to leave campus together, single-sex social societies, and a demerit system based on compliance with all of these. Martha said that “it’s easy to forget what it’s like outside. When I go home, I’m always shocked to see girls wearing sleeveless shirts.” Jeff said that he hardly ever leaves campus, because he feels no need to leave the community. In many senses, being a student at Bob Jones removes a young person from the surrounding world and creates an explicitly Christian environment for them in which to live and learn. Both Jeff and Martha felt that being expected to live by a biblical standard has created a safe and nurturing environment for them, which they cherish.

Perhaps the most interesting thing that I found talking to Jeff was the attitude with which he approaches his religion classes. Every student at Bob Jones takes a Bible course each semester, and I asked Jeff if they studied the text from a purely theological point of view or if they also studied it from an academic, critical perspective. He avidly told me that they study history along with the bible and that they observe how the Bible lines up correctly with history in every instance. I then asked him if they studied the Bible in a historical context for the purpose of validating the text instead of critically engaging the text, and he stumbled over his response. He seemed uncomfortable with the fact that I wanted to know if they studied the Bible for any reason other than gleaning truth from it. He told me about an apologetics class he took in which they read the text critically and assured me that the professor always presents the information and then encourages the students to make up their own minds. It seems to me, however, that at a school where every professor refers to the Bible as a source of truth on a daily basis during class, a student might not feel inclined to think of the Bible as anything other than absolute truth. Marsden points out that “although fundamentalist preaching sometimes stresses making up one’s own mind, in fact the movement displays some remarkable uniformities in details of doctrine and practice that suggest anything but real individualism in thought (115).” It seems to me that this is exactly what happens with BJU students. They are verbally encouraged to make up their own minds about the authority of the Bible, but they are encouraged in every other fashion to accept it as absolute truth.

Bob Jones University is a fundamentalist Christian community that has taken every measure possible to create a parallel culture; an alternate environment in which young men and women can live life as they believe it should be lived. They are more than happy to invite visitors into their community, with the intention that the visitor should hear the gospel and be saved. They also actively send members of their community out into the world around them to spread the gospel they believe. Bob Jones University is not just a college where the school newspaper features articles on prayer and professors consult the Bible in the classroom; it is an institution with an explicit mission to cultivate young men and women with a Christian education who will go out into the world and live Christian lives, teaching others to do so along the way.