What Bob Jones University Could Learn from Pensacola Christian College, Part Two
Pensacola Christian College requires almost all students to attend the “Campus Church.” While touring the magnificent auditorium, I asked the tour guide if students were required to be members of the Campus Church. My question earned me a kick in the ankle from my wife and a smooth answer from the tour guide. The guide quickly told our group that the college would never require students to be members of the church; rather the students had the [mandated] opportunity to attend the same services and hear the same preachers in the same building that just happens to be on the school’s campus.
The guide proposed that having an “Established Church” [my words, not hers] strengthened PCC. Since all Pensacola students hear the same message on any given Sunday, they have more in common to discuss afterwards. They can share their excitement with one another in a way that would not be possible if the students attended a plurality of churches. Several of the parents of prospective students in our tour group nodded sagely in agreement. I was tempted to ask another question, but with one ankle already hobbled I couldn’t take another blow from my wife.
Pensacola’s methodological strength stems from the way they market their school’s product to concerned parents. If you want your son or daughter to be a pre-Trib, pre-Mill, independent Fundamental Baptist (by immersion of course), who is not influenced by Calvinism or Charismaticism, then send them to PCC. The school offers homogeneity among their graduates. I have no idea whether they are successful, but that is the vision proffered. This is the aspect of Pensacola that changed my understanding of how Bob Jones University should present itself.
BJU also offers a product by telling parents that their kids will one day be graduates defined by ideals like “excellence” and “balance.” Parents are assured that Bob Jones is committed to the Fundamentals of the Faith, hence the oft-repeated request for the school’s alumni to shut down the school if it compromises, but the ideal graduate is not typically defined by one particular theological position.
From its inception Bob Jones was non-denominational, an approach which encouraged theological diversity. Faculty, staff, and students during the Bob Jones College era came from a wide range of denominations. The resulting diversity mandated a big tent approach to Fundamental orthodoxy. During a time when most Fundamentalists were dispensationalists and many attended new schools being founded in the Baptist tradition, Bob Jones embraced an inclusive creed; there is no mention of eschatology or mode of baptism, just a basic list of orthodox doctrines.
Today the faculty and student body at BJ are more monolithic than they were a generation or two ago; the large majority of students come from independent Baptist churches and most probably attend Baptist churches after they graduate. Still, Bob Jones alumni are as likely to end up Presbyterian as Baptist. (One of my father’s undergraduate roommates, and a groomsman at his wedding, came to Bob Jones University from a rural eastern North Carolina home with Free Will Baptist influences but is today a BJU professor attending a Presbyterian church.)
Bob Jones is a marketplace of orthodox ideas. I know that many Bob Jones students feel stifled, but issues like mode of Baptism, polity, and church structure are open to discussion. Interaction with peers who hold to different orthodox interpretations of Scripture is valuable. Diversity may promote understanding and soften radicalism. The marketplace encourages students to evaluate their own beliefs rather than blindly following tradition. Relative diversity of opinion is the strength of Bob Jones University.
So what could Bob Jones learn by comparison to Pensacola? Rather than promoting itself as the enforcer of homogeneity, BJU could portray itself as a marketplace of orthodoxy, aiming for unity, but not uniformity. There is a concrete change that would signal such a shift. Currently, Bob Jones University requires most students, faculty, and staff to attend the morning service on Sundays in the FMA on campus. There are interesting, and tangential, historical reasons for the current system, but suffice it to say that times have changed from when Bob Jones first moved to Greenville. Today there is a robust network of several dozen Fundamentalist churches that faculty, staff, and students are encouraged to join. On any given Sunday evening thousands of students are listening to preaching in dozens of different local churches. Also, these churches often sponsor outreach ministries that give students opportunities for evangelism.
Unfortunately the current mandatory Sunday service works at cross purposes to the stated goal of vital involvement in local churches. The administration realized this at some point in the past and relaxed the requirements for faculty and staff attendance. BJU’s own promotional material says Bob Jones is “local church” minded. They could make that statement even more accurate by dropping the required attendance at the on campus Sunday morning service. A hybrid system could be adopted that continues to mandate church attendance, but does not stipulate attendance at the BJ morning service. Each Sunday morning the dorms would be cleared, students with access to transportation could go to their chosen local church, and students without transportation could attend a smaller morning service in Rodeheaver Auditorium or Stratton Hall.
Abolishing mandatory Sunday morning services at BJU would send a positive message to Greenville area churches: “We want our students to treat your church just like they treated their church back home.” Students might even find more accountability in a local church context when attending 33 to 50 percent more often. At a minimum, abolishing the half established, half local system would make the distinction between Bob Jones and Pensacola even clearer. One school is aiming for uniformity of belief, the other embraces unity in diversity.
When we drove off the campus of Pensacola after our tour, I thanked God for the ways in which He has used Pensacola Christian College, to my chagrin the first time I had ever thought to do so. The Hortons’ business acumen has allowed Pensacola to offer very affordable tuition rates, thus enabling kids to go to college who might otherwise have been unable to afford it. The school has very good relations with the community and uses its extensive recreational facilities for outreach during the summers. There are many aspects of PCC that I disagree with, and even cringe at, but God has used Pensacola to serve a segment of the body of Christ for His glory.
Those aren’t bad suggestions, but I’m skeptical about their effectiveness as marketing themes. I think most college-bound students assume that they’re going to encounter a marketplace of ideas, if they think about it at all. It’s a common part of the college experience, along with textbooks, classrooms, and dormitories. Advertising your college as having one almost sounds like protesting too much. Or worse for BJU’s market, it sounds like a euphemism for something insidious, such as relativism (like the United Methodist’s slogan, “Open Hearts, open minds, open doors,” which prima facie is good but actually means “we believe whatever is trendy.”).
Excellent conclusion. IMO, the required Sunday morning attendance at the FMA service is problematic on a number of levels. Probably the greatest of these would be the theological issues involved. If we believe that the Scripture calls LOCAL churches the “pillar and ground of the truth,” and if a church is a gathering of believers with a pastor and ruling elders, and a place where the ordinances of the Lord’s Supper and baptism are regularly practiced, then BJU’s campus church does not meet those criterion. So it cannot be called a church (which incidentally, I don’t think the admin calls it that). So then what is it? And what is it’s purpose? And why not let students attend local NT churches? Their absence on Sunday mornings (arguably the key service in any church’s life of worship) greatly hinders their level of involvement in the life of their church.
I think the last real argument that is being given (at least while I was there) is that the churches in the area can’t handle the influx of students in their morning worship services. Clearly not the case (sheer number and size of churches, arguably the same thing happens on Sun nights anyway, extension churches, etc).
Great post Paul! Thanks for the “on-the-phone preview” the other day.
Talking about the advantage of “common experience” by having an Established Church reminds me of the foolish mourning regarding the loss of the “Ed Sullivan Effect” once cable TV became popular. Because there were so many choices, it was argued, we all started watching different things and lost the joy of the common experience. This disregards any notion of revealed preference: if people valued the common experience, they would still choose the official church over the alternatives. This results in one of those lovely situations where the rule is therefore irrelevant unless it is in fact against the preferences of the students. Of course, I’ll bet it’s justified because the rulemakers purport to know best.
Also, relative diversity of opinion is an important qualification to make. I can agree with it, but it’s about as meaningful as saying the Earth is relatively cooler than the Sun. But perhaps I am just thinking on a different scale, and yours is an important and potentially valuable distinction to make for prospective students. Incredulity isn’t an argument, but as Austin mentioned, what you propose would be perceived as code for moderation and sponginess, which would be regarded by many as A Very Bad Thing. I also think students, insofar as they go to PCC or BJU by freely made choice, go to reinforce rather than question beliefs.
Gentlemen, thanks for your insights. Dave, I agree that the school could be best served by allowing students to go to local churches, but Philippi, Corinth, and the others are a bit impractical for even the wealthiest students; airfare can be pricey and with the price of gas the way it is…
From the little I know, the Sunday morning services once served an admirable purpose. When Bob Jones moved to Greenville there were very few Fundamentalist churches in the area. So with a dearth of acceptable local churches, NT or not, the University did what it could. I have also heard it proposed that the Sunday morning service was an opportunity to encourage institutional loyalty, especially in the days after the “Mercer Rebellion.” Then again, requiring people to do anything rarely inspires…begrudging obedience seems a more realistic response. In either case, times been a changin’; neither purpose seems sufficient anymore, but we shouldn’t underestimate the momentum created by tradition.
Austin, I believe your skepticism is warranted. The marketplace concept plays poorly both among prospective students, because it is a given as you noted, and among parents, for whom it may be a shibboleth. With that in mind, it makes sense to market continuity and safety. I was confusing “marketing,” or shaping how other people think about you, with personal “identity,” which I’ll define here as shaping how you think about yourself. The faculty, staff, and students who identify with Bob Jones should be proud to be part of a relatively diverse Fundamentalist institution.
Yes Jeff, my choice of “relatively diverse” was strategic. I didn’t quite get the earth/Sun illustration however. I took it to mean that I was examining two very similar things and praising one for being only slightly different. Or did the analogy refer to the fact that the core of the Earth is hot despite a surface crust that appears substantially cooler? So the diversity I was talking about at BJ is just a veneer? Excellent Ed Sullivan analogy by the way. The proof would be in the pudding if Pensacola dropped mandatory attendance and the majority of students bolted for other churches.
The example was bad. My point was that I view your comparison as being technically true but largely meaningless because the scale isn’t appropriate; from my point of view it’s meaningful in an exceedingly narrow sense to compare only the diversity of PCC and BJU. But given that your post is concerned with just the two, it’s really just a quibble.
For me the diversity of BJU has been one of its distinguishing qualities. (I still recall how surprised I was as a child to read all of the denominations that were represented at BJU in its Florida days.) More and more I realize that I have really embraced the ecumenical (eek!) philosophy represented at BJU.
While Machen had his admirable qualities, I think he was off-base in his strong Presbyterian particularlism. For the last month Gracen and I have been attending a baptist church that is generally good but makes the same mistake in its elevation of Baptist identity. Fundamentalism has some several decent baptist seminaries, but they also tend to perpetuate Baptist pride in a way I don’t care for.
I think I will probably always be in baptist and Bible churches, but I don’t relish those denominational identities. In fact, I think it’s is comical too to hear baptists talk about their baptist distinctives . . . with never a mention of the baptist confessions (perhaps because of the calvinism of the authors).
Getting back to the diversity at BJU, I think only an insider can really appreciate what you are describing. To outsiders BJU seems monolithic. Insiders realize what diversity of thought there is at BJU (e.g., women who wear headcoverings all the time, people who think religious art is wrong, people who don’t wear jewelry, calvinists, post-millenialists, Saab drivers). I think visiting preachers are sometimes brash in their comments about contemporary music or soteriology because they have assumed there is a single-mindedness on these issues in the student body.
Sorry this is rambling. We don’t have internet at home yet, so my blog reading is hurried.