BJU Presidential Profile: A Choice Between "Respect for" and Returning to the "Vision of Its Founder," or the Status Quo
Today let's consider and react to the BJU Presidential Profile (see link below). The BJU Board has called for input toward their search for a new president. Within the Profile the following appears.
"The Board of Trustees invites BJU administrators, faculty, staff, students, alumni and friends of the University to review the current Presidential Profile and join the Board in suggesting additions, deletions, and/or revisions to the Profile."Following are suggestions we have submitted for Board consideration.2
Ministry Qualifications
*Committed to the whole counsel of God including the biblical mandates for separation from unbelievers, disobedient brethren, ecumenical compromise and expressions of the world's anti-God culture in fine arts productions, the curriculum, and classroom instruction. See-
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| Image from BJU Production |
*Committed to closing the campus to persons and organizations affiliated with apostate churches and new evangelicalism. See-
"Over a mere two weeks [April 2020] BJU gave its Bible Conference offering to an ecumenical organization headed by a new evangelical, and rented the university [auditorium] for a Roman Catholic to take the platform. Looking at...these, as well as similar BJU sponsored events or affiliations (Tim Tebow, Ken Ham, Billy Kim, Cantus, BJGrass, the SBC, the Presbyterian Church of America...a conclusion can be fairly drawn. Evidence from on campus shows that the university is turning ecumenical."
*Rejects CCM in all its forms including Getty Music, Bill & Gloria Gaither and Sovereign Grace Music.
*Rejects the modern-day Charismatic movement (popularized by John Piper).
*Committed to a Dispensational hermeneutic, rejecting Covenant theology. See-
"Many people do not know what dispensationalism really is or how it affects the beliefs we hold. The purpose of this [brief] article is to explain dispensationalism by looking at some of our major beliefs."Leadership Qualities
In part it states,
"...with a personal awareness and respect for the history of BJU and a strong personal commitment to provide continuity in the advancement of its mission and the vision of its founder."Does the Board mean to say that the next president must "respect" and restore the university to the fundamentalist, separatist "vision of its founder" or only certain, some other, elements while maintaining the status quo?
Steve Pettit, the Executive Cabinet and Administration set out to erase and replace much of "the vision of its founder." A mission that continues to this day as we have just shown in BJU Partners With Tim Challies. While the process of identifying candidates for the presidency of BJU current leadership continues transforming the school into what many believe will become the first cousin of Liberty University and Cedarville.
One pastor (BJU alum), having read the Presidential Profile commented, "As written John Piper, Al Mohler and Tim Challies could be viewed as qualified candidates."
Based on the current profile, and current leadership continues executing Pettit’s transformation of the school, we believe it's possible, even likely, that the next president of BJU will be a compromising evangelical who will not fully "respect [nor restore] the vision of its founder."
LM
Site Publisher's Correction: On 8/27 I posted a reply in the thread below to an anonymous person whose comment I accidentally deleted rather than publish. Yesterday I discovered that a portion of my comments about BJU's invitation to the male vocal group Cantus was in error. An employee of BJU informed me the portion in error was the following, "Cantus was invited with the foreknowledge of the group's homosexual members."
My source, having read that portion, sent an email to the person who invites and signs contracts with all the performers at BJU and has done it for the last 20 years. He asked him about what I alleged, that BJU had invited Cantus with the "foreknowledge of the group's homosexuals members." That man replied emphatically, "We had no idea when we signed the contract with Cantus that they had homosexuals in the group. These groups change members all the time."
I have no reason to doubt the veracity of that first hand account and have therefore deleted the original comment and reposted a corrected version in the thread below. I offer my apology for the misinformation originally uploaded.
This phrase cries out for clarification, ",,,strong personal commitment to provide continuity in the advancement of its mission and the vision of its founder." Consider that statement in light of these questions:
- What is, define specifically, the mission(s) and vision(s) you require an individual to have a personal awareness of, respect for and a strong personal commitment?
- Are you suggesting the mission and vision solely of its founder Bob Jones, Sr?
- Or the mission of Steve Pettit, the Executive Cabinet to transform the school, but the vision of Bob Jones, Sr.?
1) The partnership with Challies demonstrates the BJU Executive Cabinet and Administration's on-going commitment to Steve Pettit’s agenda for erasing the university's fundamentalist, separatist legacy, embracing so-called "conservative" evangelicals and the proliferation of Reformed and Covenant theology.
Related Reading:
FACTS: An Enlarged Discussion by Dr. David Beale
“After being the premier fundamentalist academic institution for eighty-seven years, BJU elected Dr. Steve Pettit in 2014, as the president who steered the University out of separatist Fundamentalism into the inclusive, Broad Evangelical movement,” David Beale, Christian Fundamentalism in America (Maitland, FL: Xulon, 2021), 179, 530.
"I shared with him [Pettit], in all honesty, 'you need to know, I need to say, what I feel I have to tell people now.' I've never told people not to go to Bob Jones University. In most cases I usually end up saying, 'I hope that you're able to do that and if you can I want to encourage you.' But I had to tell Dr. Pettit that, 'parents are going to have to be far more vigilant, they're not going to receive the same kind of reinforcement if they've come from conservative homes, the same kind of reinforcement in many, many of the situations'."
An Analysis of BJU's Position Paper on Calvinism, Arminianism & Reformed Theology
Steve Pettit's Break with the Conservative Base
"I cannot recall any of the main talking points other than that Steve was constantly saying, 'Millennials this and millennials that'.”
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