#makepettitprezagain

The FBFI board continues, and this is revealing.

The lack of enforcement of the campus dress and appearance standards has allowed for a campus look that is increasingly like the world. While very conservative dress standards can become a form of legalism, the alarming absence of the historical dress expectations of BJU has created an environment where enforcing reasonable modesty is nearly impossible.

WutBJU has covered this for years. BJU states rules that it does not enforce. And the problem is that having rules that are not enforced means that they will be enforced on a whim -- that is, abusively.

And then... the Fashion Show.

I mean, come on, BJU peeps. Are you at all surprised that this was noticed?

The FBFI folks said:

We have grave concerns about cultural accommodation regarding music and in the fine arts department. The fashion show in December brought some of these issues to a head. We are grateful for the public response by the BJU leadership regarding this event. However, it seems that a true Christian philosophy of the fine arts and their biblical place in the world is lacking. There seems to be a lack of holding leaders accountable up and down the chain of command that leaves students without effective biblical leadership.

What’s so hilarious about this is that there are as many statements of “Christian philosophy of the fine arts” at BJU as there are warning stickers inside of library books. They’ve said it and they’ve said it in every imaginable way. Of course, it’s untenable.

But there’s that dig into the leadership again: “There seems to be a lack of holding leaders accountable up and down the chain of command.”

Remember that Darren Lawson the Dean of the School of Fine Arts was the MOST defensive about that fashion show.

After the “campus speaker” concern, we get to the next most obvious complaint:

We have deep concerns about the church attendance policies for students and faculty members that allow students to attend SBC churches and churches that are attractional in worship style.

Is anybody surprised that this group of FUNDAMENTALIST Baptists who have graduated from BJU does not like that BJU employees are pastoring and attending Southern Baptist churches?

I mean, come on, BJU folks. Lonnie Polson and Jeff Stegall are at White Oak. That’s just a few yards from the front gate. Did you think that after 100 years of Bob Jones Sr. and Jr. and III railing about anything not-BJU that people would just drop it?

The term “attractional in worship style” is odd and could be a fundamentalist trademark. Steve Pettit talked about it in a BJU Faculty Meeting in 2019:

He stated that he wanted the students to learn “how to identify a church that is committed to a biblical doxological approach to worship in contrast to an attractional model with a whole different motivation.”

First of all, the FBFI folks don’t like the speakers on campus.

We have a concern about the ecclesiastical associations of Bob Jones University as demonstrated by various campus speakers. University leadership has repeatedly invited speakers or allowed others to invite speakers who would not be representative of biblical fundamentalism. The explanation for having the speakers has been that they were invited because of their academic specializations. Sometimes, leaders have candidly told us that the motivation is about having speakers with broader appeal. Other times, leadership has said that it was a mistake to have invited certain speakers, or that the invitations were made at lower levels than the executive leadership. Regardless of the reason, this practice is at best unwise, unhelpful, and often damaging.

Now they don’t name anyone. We don’t know if these are chapel speakers or classroom guests or what.

The most intriguing part of this statement, however, is that the administrators are throwing the middle managers under the bus.

So in the +++Positive+++ universe, the first documentation of trouble is from the February 15, 2022 when the FBFI sent a letter to John Lewis of the BJU Board of Trustees about a year ago. The letter starts:

At the Winter Board meeting of the FBFI the board as a whole has wished to express our great concern to the BJU Board about the change in direction of Bob Jones University over the past several years. None of these things are items that have not been mentioned in private conversations of FBFI board members with university leadership. We believe it is necessary to speak as a board on this matter and go on record from our board to yours regarding how serious we believe this matter is. This is private correspondence between our two boards. We do not intend to publish it. We write this letter not to burn bridges but in the hope of a better and more effective future for all of us. The following are some of our concerns.

Emphasis added.

The FBFI board is being very deliberate with this process. They want this documented. They are concerned. They are speaking with one voice, but they are speaking privately.

So the +++Positives+++ have shown us all their cards now. And it’s rather irresistible to this historian. I will very slowly comb through every document they shared in a chronological order because that’s how I organize these things.