For New Life Church’s The Thorn, the Passion is not only about the violence of crucifixion. It’s about spiritual violence: the larger story of the forces of good vs. the forces of evil. Like some early medieval Passion plays, according to Columbia University’s James Shapiro, The Thorn captures the whole sweep of the Bible, seasoned with Paradise Lost—we see the fall of Lucifer, the creation, the fall of man, even a bit of the plagues in Egypt and the exodus of the Hebrews. Then baby Jesus arrives and is presented like Simba into the Circle of Life. Satan and his demons hang around the edges of the production and fill the stage at key moments of the story, especially the betrayal of Jesus (when, according to the Gospel accounts of Luke and John, “Satan entered Judas”) and the anguished prayer of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Muscular angels and demons clash on the margins of center stage, and the outcome of Jesus’ journey seems to hang in the balance.

At moments, the experience rivals Cirque du Soleil: Everywhere you look, there are flaming swords, pyrotechnics, and barrel-chested bodies dancing, leaping, flipping across the stage, and swirling down from the rafters. The scale is epic. And with its scenes of the creation of the universe and the fall of Lucifer, so is the story.

In the article Patton Dodd asked, “is the Gospel narrative truly an epic tale?”

If some church Passion plays suggest so, their creators might have mingled their beloved Scriptures with their beloved stories. Christians cherish a lot of contemporary epics because they are Christ-type stories. On some level(s), The Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia, and even The Matrix and grand historical dramas like Braveheart say something about what the story of Jesus means. The epic and its basic components—good battling evil, foes of near-equal strength, the whole world at stake—resonate naturally with biblical themes. Many a Sunday sermon has been illustrated with an epic-movie clip.

New Life Church’s The Thorn

But it’s one thing for an epic to evoke the Jesus story. It’s another altogether to make the Jesus story an epic. Epics are audaciously bigger than life, but does any reader of the Gospels get that epic feeling? The Gospel of Mark is no Lawrence of Arabia, much less The Illiad. (Literary critic Erich Auerbach famously contrasted the “realistic” writing of the Bible with the highly stylized forms of the Greek epic poem.) The elliptical, talky New Testament doesn’t present itself in that way—if it did, there might be less discussion about whether its events actually occurred. If, as Christians believe, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were historians, then perhaps plays based on the Gospels should be realistic about more than just blood. Why aim for verisimilitude in violence but not in other historical points? The typical Passion-play Jesus, grinning warmly in his bright white robe, doesn’t tell us much about the first-century Jewish itinerant whose bold, sometimes bewildering stories and proclamations led him to the Passion path.

Churches should also consider other approaches to storytelling. Their ur-story should be not just epic but multiform. To quote writer and preacher Frederick Buechner, the Gospel is “tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale”—it happens on scales that are grand as well as domestic, historic, comic, mythic, realistic.

I think a hearty amen is appropriate! Christ’s resurrection is the epic fulfillment of the promise of the gospel, the climax of the crucifixion crisis. Yet Christ’s triumph over death is perhaps the dominant frame for the resurrection. We believers today look back with the benefit of hindsight and Scriptural revelation, but the resurrection was a part of other narrative threads: the story of how a woman saw her son come to life, the tale of a group of disheartened disciples confronted by a returned mentor, and the fulfillment of the promise of a heavenly Father to an incarnate Son. These stories may not be epic, but provide us with equally important glimpses at our beautiful Savior.

Admittedly I am hardly non-partisan, but I took great pleasure in calling J. over to read the article so that we could compare Dodd’s experience of passion plays with what I remember from attending the Living Gallery series at Bob Jones University. Living Gallery is the name for a series of Easter passion plays performed by the students and staff of Bob Jones. A full orchestra and choir performs sacred musical pieces while representations of Baroque paintings are portrayed on stage; these representations incorporate live actors into the paintings and sculptures, making the pieces come to life. There is typically a frame tale that ties the vocal, visual, and theatrical elements together. One year it was the story of a modern day father telling his son about his departed grandfather who was a carpenter. Several of the plays have told the story of the resurrection from the perspectives of various characters in the gospel account.

This use of multiple perspectives on the meaning of the resurrection encourages the members of the audience to reflect on what the resurrection means for them personally. Christ is not portrayed as “the Savior” so much as “my Savior.” But most significantly in light of Dodd’s article, the artwork chosen for reenactment is a mix of the domestic, public, grand, and intimate. Much of the chosen artwork comes from the Museum and Gallery, a collection of sacred art affiliated with Bob Jones University. Here are several of my favorite pieces of art from either the M&G or that have been used in Living Gallery.

Easter is over, but we can still rejoice that our Redeemer lives!

After watching the clip I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I feel like applauding Starbucks for cleverly branding itself. The fact that Starbucks has found a way to insinuite itself into so many peoples’ lives speaks highly of the company’s ability to fill a demand (and even create a demand when none existed prior). I’m a confirmed capitalist and am loathe to condemn a company that has been so creative in developing a market. Indeed, I rather wish that all companies had the ability to predict what I want when even I don’t know what I want…it would certainly making shopping less of a chore!

On the other hand, I feel slightly embarrassed at how easily we consumers have been played. The idea that we unconciously bow to corporate propaganda is somehow distasteful. Indeed, none of the reasons for buying expensive Starbucks coffee listed by Simon are motives that I would be proud to embrace: 1) nicotine addiction, 2) discovering a communal identity or sense of belonging, and 3) expressing trendiness. Aren’t we then unthinking fools who mindlessly do what we are manipulated to do?

I doubt there is a facile answer.

On another note for all you fellow BJU-ans, about 12 minutes into the clip when Simon shows the image of quote #43 on the side of a Starbucks coffee cup dig around in the recesses of your memory and recall a 2006 chapel statement from the newly annointed President Stephen Jones. (For those of you unfamiliar with the incident Stephen Jones announced that Bob Jones would no longer serve Starbucks coffee because of the same offending quotation.) Simon mentions Baylor University’s protest over the pro-homosexual sentiment in the quotation. He used Starbucks acquiescence to Baylor on the matter as proof that Baylor wants to portray a edgy intellectual image without actually alienating consumers by being overly controversial (Starbucks is a for profit company, not an advocacy group). I wonder why Starbucks then reacted in the opposite manner when Bob Jones asked for the same consideration the following year.

I suspect that there may be a significant difference between what Baylor and Bob Jones demanded. Baylor simply wanted Starbucks to pull the offending corrugated cup from the Baylor Starbucks. It appears that Bob Jones University wanted Starbucks to pull the cup entirely. Starbucks may have attempted to appease evangelicals (they certainly don’t want to anger a third of the potential coffee drinkers in the country!) by putting a quotation by Rick Warren on their cups in 2006 (quote #43 came out in 2005). Apparently the company felt that the counter-balance should off-set evangelical concerns. I hypothesize that Starbucks was willing to assuage Baylor’s limited concerns, but was willing to cut its losses when it came to Bob Jones’ broader demand; this proves a logical decision when considered in light of the philosophy outlined by Bryant Simon.

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.

Growing up as a faculty/staff child at BJU, Pensacola was equal parts bogeyman and comic relief, the bastion of all things King James Only (capitalization not optional). I was a teenager when PCC distributed a video attacking Bob Jones as “the leaven of Fundamentalism” because the BJ Bible faculty promoted versions of the Bible not based exclusively on the same manuscripts as the King James Version. Indeed, my childhood pastor, Dr. Stewart Custer, was the epicenter of that woe-begotten lump. PCC did prove useful for a typical conversational gambit: “Sure, Bob Jones is strict/hard/etc…, but compared to PCC…[meaningful pause accompanied by weighty glance].”

As we drove on to the campus, Jes sternly forbade me from asking any provocative questions. I obeyed, kinda. I’ll provide several general impressions of the school and finish at a later date with my conclusion about what Bob Jones could learn from PCC.

The tour took several hours and highlighted all the major facilities, including the library, gym, classroom buildings, dormitories, fine arts center, and church. Of course the tour guide, a former PCC ministry team leader, took pains to show us the nicest dorm rooms and finest classrooms on campus. Frankly, the facilities were awesome; all the money that poured in from selling home-schooling curriculum was well spent. In thirty years the school’s facilities went from almost nothing to a campus infrastructure that often surpasses the “World’s Most Unusual University.”

From historical plaques around campus I gather that Pensacola initially received cues from Bob Jones, not surprising considering the ties between the Hortons, who founded PCC, and BJU. PCC had an annual Turkey Bowl, a Mission Prayer Band, and Greek letter societies. But today it seems that the situation is reversed with Bob Jones playing catch up. Pensacola builds a new gym in the mid 90s and Bob Jones does the same a decade later. Pensacola cashes in on paperback textbooks, so Bob Jones bets on HomeSat. I don’t find this unhealthy; competition encourages innovation.

Pensacola and Bob Jones do have cultural differences. Compare and contrast the Pensacola and Bob Jones promotional videos. Bob Jones spends far more time highlighting the fine arts, such as opera productions and Shakespearian plays, than does Pensacola. The music produced at PCC has much in common with good ol’ Southern Gospel, while Bob Jones prefers high-church compositions. Bob Jones just built a downtown satellite for their art gallery, the largest collection of Baroque religious art in the Western Hemisphere. Pensacola is spending millions constructing Fundamentalism’s largest wave pool.

[Allow me to take a moment to say that I do not believe that God distinguishes between high and low culture when deciding what pleases Him.]

The historical displays in both schools’ libraries symbolize the contrast between high and low culture. On one of the upper floors at Pensacola is a sentimental mockup of a one-room schoolhouse, complete with bell and 19th century books. On the first floor of Mack Library at Bob Jones is a replica of the room inside Westminster Abbey where translators worked on an updated English version of the Bible in 1611.

The multi-image presentation was interesting because a large portion (if memory serves me it was about a third) of the film was dedicated to the recitation of the central beliefs of Pensacola Christian College. In contrast to the creed of Bob Jones University, the Pensacola affirmation is more specific and includes a number of denominational distinctives. Significantly, any talk of the King James Version was omitted in the presentation. Actually at no point in the tour was the KJV mentioned. The website does say “it is our practice to use only the Authorized Version (KJV) in the pulpit and in classroom instruction. We believe the Textus Receptus is a superior text, and it is used for Greek instruction.” But this is a far cry from denouncing fellow Fundamentalists for heresy.

This post is long enough already, so I’ll hold my conclusions for part two.

My role in Aida, a Romeo-Juliet retake set in pharaonic Egypt and written in the 19th century for the opening of the Suez Canal, was that of a ceremonial soldier for the Egyptian court. Apparently archeologists had recently discovered that Egyptian fashion sense dictated rainbow colored headgear and the equivalent of ancient miniskirts for the army. This outfit may have been sensible in a desert climate, but required substantial amounts of makeup to cover the pasty white legs and arms of a legion of pants wearing BJU-ans.

Some poor chump had to spend hours before every dress rehearsal and performance spraying dozens of extras with brown makup. Understandably a volunteer was hard to find. But when the time came for our makeup, there stood Stephen Jones, ready to serve us. After hours spraying us down he would take extra time to chat with us and impress us with his awesome Uno skills.

His willingness to do something unnoticed and clearly unpleasant made a strong impression on me. One of Dr. Bob Sr’s quotes comes to mind: “The most important light in the house is not the chandelier in the parlor. It’s that little back hall light that keeps you from breaking your neck when you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.”

A single impression of another is insufficient to judge that person’s character. But every time I observed Stephen Jones, from the first time I met him in 7th grade until the day I graduated from college, confirmed a humble spirit often lacking in leadership. We as Americans typically elect, appoint, promote, or prefer leaders who get results, tell us what to do, and whom often have Type A personalities. Stephen Jones is not a Type A leader. Thankfully the Bob Jones hereditary monarchy has served the school well by allowing relatively stable transitions from one President to the next and some level of continuity. Stephen probably wouldn’t be President but for his last name, but I for one am glad God chose him to be a Jones.

Stephen does not seem to be the most outgoing person by nature, yet he constantly attempted to be a blessing to the students and staff he came in contact with, even going out of his way to speak at society prayer meetings and studentbody functions. Once again, that attitude indicates a man willing to set aside his personal preferences for the sake of others, an admirable leadership quality in any book.

Stephen’s humble spirit showed up in his preaching emphasis and style. Without dampening the fervor of his convictions, he typically avoided an “in your face” rhetoric. I was most impressed by Stephen’s committment to ardent orthodoxy and a humble tone during the weeks leading up to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Soulforce demonstration in Greenville. The week prior to the arrival of Soulforce, Stephen preached a series of messages in chapel discussing a Biblical approach to homosexuality in general and Soulforce specifically. Rather than simply blasting homosexuals with fire and brimstone, Stephen clearly laid out the Biblical case for monogamy and heterosexuality (his debate training in high school was apparent). He didn’t conclude by condemning their sin. His message was one of hope, that they would find Christ. He assigned each prayer group in the dorms a name and bio of a Soulforce member and instructions to pray nightly that Christ would show them their sin and need of a Savior. I also appreciated when Stephen emphasized that homosexuality should not be treated as some sort of special sin less deserving of forgiveness than any other “socially acceptable” sin (another post specifically on this topic is deserved). There was even a call for personal examination. Why should we be so quick to self-righteously condemn their sins while ignoring our own designer sins?

Another series of chapel messages by Stephen also hit home. He spent time in chapel outlining a major shift in the disciplinary system at Bob Jones. The difference was more one of changed emphasis rather than any change in outright belief. Simply put, the disciplinary system at BJU started to shift from a retributive toward a restorative philosophy. Rather than punishing someone for doing something wrong, a retributive concept, the Dean of Men and Women became more restoration focused.

For example, in the past many guys, including myself, were very afraid of getting in trouble for their struggles with lust. The impression, right or wrong, was that even guys who turned themselves in and asked for help would be in trouble and expelled. Stephen emphasized in his messages that the point of the disciplinary system at BJU was to encourage Christlike growth. If a student was willing to come for help with any sin problem than the Dean of Men would counsel, not cudgel. Stephen said that students would no longer be “in trouble” for asking for help. The rubber met the road when a close personal friend confessed his struggles with lust and pornography to the Dean of Men and he was given not a demerit slip, but an invitation for one-on-one weekly counseling with the Dean himself. Stephen Jones deserves at least some credit for that change in emphasis, perhaps a result of his years as a student in the dorms and also as a Dorm Supervisor.

In short, Stephen Jones is a credit to my alma mater and more significantly a credit to the cause of Christ. Stephen is no longer a “little back hall light,” but his humble spirit may make him a glorious chandelier.

PS – This little ode to Stephen that I have written is rather hagiographic…I’ve practically beatified the man. But before you request canonization and start veneration let me assure you that Stephen will probably make plenty of odious mistakes during his tenure at BJ. No one is perfect, not even a direct descendant of the Founder!

PPS – Here is the link to the sermons Stephen preached before the Soulforce protest: http://www.sermonaudio.com/search.asp?currPage=2&keyword=Dr%2E%5EStephen%5EJones&SpeakerOnly=true&currSection=sermonsspeaker&AudioOnly=false&SortBy=added