Thursday, November 11, 2004

C'mon, Feel the Love

Reading the comments on that BJU post over at Kevin Drum's site, and especially this one, I was reminded of a couple of incidents I witnessed at Bob Jones, which offer great insight into the school's disdain for other religious people--other Christians, that is.

DJ Adequate wrote: I wish more people realized that the likes of Bob Jones do not consider Catholics or Mormons to be Christians.

Yep. When I attended BJU, Ian Paisley came to speak in Bible Conference (and agonizing week in Spring of no classes but lots of sermons) nearly every year. He would often rail against the pope, bragging once that he had driven past the pope's motorcade, rolled down his window and yelled, "Antichrist!!!" This got a good laugh from the audience.*

BJU's disdain isn't limited to Catholics and Mormons though, they're quite happy to condemn their fellow Baptists (BJU claims to be nondenominational, but is clearly fundamentalist Baptist in theology). Pressed for a quotation by Time or Newsweek (I can't remember which) for a quote about Billy Graham on that man's 70th (I think) birthday, he said (and I remember this almost verbatim): "Billy Graham has done more to harm the cause of Christianity than any other person in the 20th century."

Yes, you see, Graham is way too liberal for BJU. This comment, however, did disturb quite a few people at the school (I was in grad school there at the time), though they were pretty quiet about it - "griping is not tolerated" at Bob Jones, neither is criticism of the administration. (The student newspaper is basically an exercise in propaganda for the school.) So, "Dr. Bob" devoted an entire chapel services (chapel meets four days a week, during the school week) to explaining why he was right to condemn Graham in the national media.

I spoke with many of my fellow students and teachers at the time who were bothered by his remarks. Many of these extremely conservative people, you see, recognize arrogance and a poor Christian spirit when they see it.

*Over at Wikipedia, we learn the following:
During a visit from the Pope, Ian Paisley yelled "I denounce you. Anti-Christ" several times at the European Parliament. The whole affair can be heard on sermonaudio.com.

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