Is Bob Jones University Moving Closer to “Pseudo-Fundamentalism?”

Today we are looking at Bob Jones University’s 2020 Bible Conference, The God of All Comfort. We’re grateful for the university’s long tradition of setting a few days aside to focus hearts and minds on the Word of God. Is it possible that the conference could somehow be controversial? The Bob Jones University (BJU) Conference site states,

“This year’s offering will support Save the Storks—a pro-life organization that supports crisis pregnancy centers as they assist expectant mothers through pregnancy and the birth of their child. They also provide valuable resources to centers by dispatching Storks mobile medical units, providing training services and offering marketing assistance to crisis pregnancy centers.”1

Herb McCarthy

Save the Storks board chair is Herb McCarthy. For 16 years Herb McCarthy was VP of Crusades for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.2 Save the Storks is ecumenical3 in its associations.

We are abhorred at abortion, and pray for an end to the insidious practice. Must BJU collaborate with an ecumenical organization to financially support pro-life efforts?

We see the BJU Bible Conference offering to Save the Storks as a mark of social activism and financially supporting ecumenical compromisers. We can’t imagine such a thing happening, prior to the coming of Steve Pettit and Sam Horn, when Dr. Bob Sr., Jr. or III occupied the president’s office.

The Bible Conference offering might have been sent to where it could do the most good for the cause of Christ. If not invest the Bible Conference offering back into the university surely there are ministries that would make worthy recipients of the offering. Ministries such as: foreign itinerant church planting missionaries or domestic Christian camps that are reaching lost kids for Christ and edifying our youth?

One of The Gospel Coalition (TGC) leaders, Thabiti Anyabwile on ecumenism in the civil rights movement said, “…the civil rights movement becomes a fairly ecumenical movement. The question I ask is, ‘Is that a net positive thing, a good thing, or a net negative, a bad thing?’  I think in many respects it is an indifferent thing. I’m not sure it affects the church negatively.” Anyabwile went on to support, “collaboration of co-belligerency of alliance forming for an obvious positive social good.”4

Last semester Andy Naselli, a member of TGC, was invited to BJU as a special speaker. (See below, This is Not Your Father’s BJU, a Continuation) BJU collaborating with and financially supporting Save the Storks for a “positive social good” is not an “indifferent thing.” We see BJU adopting methods that have more in common with The Gospel Coalition’s ecumenical movement than with the separatist, fundamental university it once was.

There was a time when things were happening at the schools and Fundamentalists had spoken out. From 1994 for example,

The FBF [Fundamental Baptist Fellowship] in the late 1970s termed the direction taken by Jerry Falwell as “pseudo-fundamentalism,” which was defined as New Evangelicalism in embryonic form. We believe that this observation was correct as subsequent events have shown…. Fundamentalists repudiated Falwell’s brand of compromise while he claimed to be a Fundamentalist. His refusal to be governed by Scriptural commands of separation is evidenced today in Falwell’s participation in Tim Lee’s CORE conferences, in the convention speakers on the platform of Liberty University, and the appearance of Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son and heir apparent, on Falwell’s platform recently (bold added).5

You might say, “Ohh, BJU would never become what Liberty did.” In light of BJU hosting Tim Tebow, Ken Ham, Billy Kim, Cantus, Andy Naselli and collaborating with known a New Evangelical Herb McCarthy consider these questions,

1. Over the past five years has BJU moved closer to or further from “pseudo-fundamentalism?
2. Over the past five years has BJU moved closer to or further from fellowship with and the practices of so-called “conservative” evangelicals?
3. Over the past five years has BJU moved closer to or further from its stand for the “Scriptural commands of separation?”

In recent years enough has come to light (see related reading below) that leads us to believe BJU is morphing into a kind of “pseudo-fundamentalism.”


LM

Related Reading:

This is Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile and Neither is BJU

This is Not Your Father’s BJU, a Continuation

Analysis of BJU’s Position Paper on Calvinism…Reformed Theology

BJU’s Rejection of Ecclesiastical Separation: Is This Northland All Over Again?

BJU’s Soteriology: “Turn From Their Sins,” for Salvation

Footnotes:

1) The God of All Comfort

2) Save the Storks

3) Generally speaking, ecumenism is a movement that seeks to bring various denominations together for mutual cooperation. The mixing of denominations can compromise core Bible teachings.

4) Thabiti Anyabwile on Ecumenism of the Civil Rights Movement (Jan. 24, 2019)

5) FBFI Resolution 1994.03 Regarding the Jerry Falwell Ministries.