Last November, I presented a paper at the annual National Communication Association convention analyzing Bob Jones University’s recent statement on race based on my theory of romantic separation. I argued that rather than a standard apologia, theirs was more a code duello. My paper begins to round-out the dramatistic theory of romance. In fact, all the papers in that panel were a rounding-out of my theory of Burkean romance.

BJU’s rhetoric is more Lost Cause than we (especially Northern) 21st-century listeners might readily perceive. In their drama, God is not an active participant. He’s not even a goal that we might wish to reach someday. No, He’s he’s simply our pit bull — our vicious, Old-Testament force which will scare people back into shape for the sake of preserving that old patrician hierarchy. In sum, God god is not an actor, not an ultimate idealistic purpose, but simply the frightening and preservationist means for the socially successful.

And just this week, a new text plops into my inbox proving the same drama.

The BJU buzz this week swirled around two stories. One, Jim Berg is making a lateral move from the admin building to the seminary come July with Eric Newton taking his place as Dean of Students. Secondly, Bob Jones University finally sanctions its students to use Facebook — even on campus. The new liberty, however, comes with a set of regulations which I’ve cited below. Do you see the romantic drama that I see? Who’s the Actor in the text? What’s the Act? Where or under what conditions is s/he acting? And why? And how?

Another way of asking that is — where’s God in this? Notice that the reason for all the rules is to benefit Bob Jones University, not Christ or the Church. It all centers around BJU’s reputation and preserving that hierarchy.

Social Media Guidelines

Guidelines for Participating in Social Media

A Christian’s use of social media, like any other form of communication, can reflect positively or negatively on his Christian testimony. The guidelines below are common sense principles that will help a Christian maintain a consistent testimony when communicating with others.

• Social media are public forums; there are no private social media sites. Post only information that you are comfortable having many people, including potential future employers, read about you.
• Avoid posting personal information such as your address, phone number, etc., that could make you a target for identity theft.
• Post worthwhile information that adds value; avoid self-promotion and information of limited interest.
• Assume personal responsibility for what you post. Make sure it is accurate. Secure permission before citing another person. Respect copyright laws. Do not post proprietary information, including course syllabi, lecture notes or material on course pages. Cite references, and when you do so, acknowledge the source. Keep in mind that you are legally liable for what you post.
• Identify yourself by your real name and write in the first person. If you identify yourself as a student or faculty/staff member of BJU, be clear that you speak for yourself, not BJU. Keep in mind that what you post will reflect on BJU. As appropriate, add a disclaimer that indicates the content of your site represents your views and does not represent the opinions or positions of BJU.
• Respect your audience. Avoid abusive, slanderous, complaining, profane, irreligious, blasphemous or tale-bearing speech.
• Follow biblical principles when posting on your personal site: communications should be edifying.
• Do not post photos of children or students under 18 without prior parental permission in writing.
• Take the high ground and avoid picking fights. Do not respond to posts critical of you or the University if posting will prolong discussion. If you post information in error, be the first to correct your mistakes.
• Delay posting if you are angry or upset about an issue as this is the time when you are most likely to post information you later regret.
• If you alter a previous post, indicate that you made a modification.

Guidelines for Establishing/Maintaining a BJU Social Media Site

• BJU departments and pre-college schools wanting a social media site are to provide Internet Marketing with the goal(s) for the site, a brief three to six-month plan for how the site will be used and who will post and monitor information. Internet Marketing will launch the site, secure the handle and turn over the site to the existing department. This procedure will ensure there is a record of all “official” sites and that site names are appropriate and consistent. BJU Press departments should direct requests to Interactive Marketing.
• Official sites require time and people resources. In conjunction with setting goals, establish metrics for your site to continually measure its effectiveness. Keep in mind that effectiveness is not always measured by number of followers.
• Student groups such as the Collegian, UBA, etc., are free to establish sites as long as the faculty advisor monitors the site.
• Understand that a department site will bring negative and positive feedback; value the negative feedback and use it to improve as appropriate.
• Provide timely responses.
• In speaking on behalf of the University, be familiar with FERPA regulations and avoid disclosing personal information about a student.
• Avoid articulating positions contrary to the public position of BJU.
• Avoid using an official BJU site to endorse a cause, product or political candidate.
• Keep in mind that you may see student posts that reveal questionable activity or activity contrary to BJU student policies. Use this as an opportunity for dirtyhanded discipleship.
• Faculty and staff should limit access to personal sites during work hours to interactions with students.
• When posting photos, ensure people in the photos meet the dress code for the activity involved. Do not post photos of children or students under 18 without prior parental approval in writing.
• If a question arises you cannot answer, do not try to answer it. Find the appropriate person who can answer.
• Follow the University’s general guidelines for participating in social media.

If you’re wondering how this Greenville Syndrome works, here’s proof from a recent article, “Discipline for Discipleship,” by Greenville pastor Tony Miller from the Bob Jones University’s publication Today’s Christian Preacher, Winter 2010.

When the word discipline enters your mind, do you also think of the word disciple? These two English words come from the same Latin word: discipulus. Discipline is the process and a disciple is the intended product. Years ago in a church history class, Dr. Edward Panosian explained the threefold purpose of local church discipline. He told the seminarians that the purpose was first to remove leaven from the lump (I Corinthians 5:6-8); second, to restore the sinning brother to fellowship with God first and then to fellowship with the local church (2 Corinthians 2:5-11); and third, to teach other to fear or reverence scriptural standards (I Timothy 5:19-20). The goal of church discipline should be to bring about these three biblical objectives and produce disciples.

Our motives normally determine the manner and method in which we deal with people. In the book of Ephesians, Paul said to keep “speaking the truth in love.” Speaking truth should be done out of a motive of love and in a loving manner. Discipline requires speaking the truth. As a parent may have to discipline his or her child out of love, so the church may have to discipline a member out of love with the goal of helping that member put God first.

Undisciplined individuals are self-indulgent. The list of the fruit of the Spirit ends with ‘temperance’ or self-control. For the believer, the purpose of self-denial (by putting God first) is to become a proper disciple (Matthew 16:24).

Too many Bible-preaching churches are unwilling to obey the Lord in the steps of church discipline. However, church discipline has been ordered by the Lord for our benefit. What are these steps?

1. Private confrontation of person sin–go alone and, if necessary, repeatedly (Matthew 18:15).
2. Public confrontation of established sins, especially of church leaders (I Timothy 5:19-20). The sin, if not admitted, must be established by two or three eyewitnesses.
3. Plural collaboration–two or three witnesses (Matthew 18:16; I Timothy 5:19; 2 Corinthians 13:1).
4. Public disclosure (within the church) of personal sin if not repented. “Tell it to the church” (Matthew 18:17a).
5. Public correction (by the church) of personal or public sin if not repented. “Let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican” (Matthew 18:17).
6. Treatment of the unrepentant former church member as unsaved (Matthew 18:17b).
7. Private association forbidden with unrepentant former church members (I Corinthians 5:9-12).
8. Personal reconciliation with the disciplined brother if he repents at any stage of the process (Luke 17:1-3; Matthew 18:15; 2 Corinthians 2:5-11).
9. Public restoration of a publicly repentant former member (2 Corinthians 2).
10. Progressive restoration of the repentant church member to certain biblical ministries.

The ten steps listed above need some clarification. If the sinner repents at any stage, he should be forgiven. The church should distinguish between fellowship, membership and leadership in restoring one who is forgiven. Forgiveness should be given instantaneously because God restores fellowship with the individual who asks forgiveness. He forgives for Christ’s sake, not because the sinning brother deserves it (Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:13).

When a church has removed an unrepentant brother from membership, it usually is better to withhold membership until he cures his wrongdoing (making restitution, telling the truth to those to whom he has lied, reconciling his marriage, gaining victory over drugs, etc.). Leadership positions might never be restored. For example, a Sunday school teacher might return to teaching God’s Word after a sufficient time has lapsed for a credible testimony to be reestablished; but a pastor who becomes sexually involved with a woman other than his wife would always be doubted in biblical preaching and counseling on the family. The majority of a pastor’s counseling time deals with family needs. Therefore, the life of a pastor or a deacon must be blameless in moral issues (“the husband of one wife”) so that family counseling and preaching can be authoritative.

If the sin is private, keep it private if the person is repentant. If the sin is public, then public confession and restoration is necessary. The sin of the incestuous man of I Corinthians 5 was public and not repented; therefore, Paul publicly rebuked and asked for removal of the leaven of this unrepentant brother (v. 7).

When a Christian sins privately against another Christian, the one sinned against is told to “go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone.” The Greek for go implies continuing confrontation if necessary. Ken Sande in his book The Peacemaker says go several times alone to repent. If private confrontation does not work, two or three other church members should go with the offended brother as witnesses.

Public correction is the next step for an unrepentant church member. After repeated confrontations, unrepentant members should be removed from membership. In I Corinthians 6:1-5, Paul points out the importance of having Christians urge matters among themselves.

If the unrepentant member withdraws his membership before the church votes, a church cannot legally proceed with an official vote. However, if a second church requests from the first church a letter of release from membership for the unrepentant one, the leadership of the first church can tell the second church that the individual is not in good standing.

Paul makes it clear that we should not “keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner” (I Corinthians 5:11). Jesus said to treat an unrepentant brother who has trespassed against another Christian as a heathen man and a publican (Matthew 18:17). Obviously, though, a mate or a blood relative should relate naturally to the one who has been disciplined.

Early in one of my church pastorates, a teenage church member who admitted to immorality refused to listen to appeals calling for repentance. With brokenness we voted to remove this one from membership.

It is essential that a church have a clear constitution and that it publish clear information regarding what is required of members. Often, pastors are concerned that they will scare people away if they spell out on the front end what is expected of church members. In fact, the opposite may be true. One Sunday our church leadership asked a person in public sin to ask for forgiveness. That person stood before the church and asked for forgiveness and asserted repentance A visiting Bible student who witnessed the event came and said, “I want to become a member of this church. I have never seen this done where I come from.”

Scriptural church discipline has been ordered by the Lord for our benefit. We cannot please Him by ignoring His instruction. The steps should be followed in order and carried out in love. The desire and prayer of the church must be that the offending brother will respond positively and be restored. “If he shall hear thee, thou has gained they brother” (Matthew 18:15).

Anybody care to discern where the Bible ends and Greenville Syndrome begins? My favorite is paragraph #6.

If the 20th-century culture wars were as real as we were taught — and how many times did I leave Whirlybirds convinced that the world would collapse before I woke in the morning? — and if Bob Jones University really is the West Point of Christian Fundamentalism, then I think I finally understand this song. A little.

I was so gung-ho to lay down my whole life for a constructed fight for a pristine good and against a clear evil. . . . we all were. And when you’re fighting — especially when that fight is more about resurrecting a “good war” than anything else — it doesn’t even matter who is wrong and who is right. The fight is everything. That’s how complete the training is.

And we lost in Vietnam too.

I am presenting this paper at the annual National Communication Association Convention today. Check it out!

2009 NCA Standing Without And Within Apologia

My paper presents BJU’s apologia on race before and after November 2008 as well as the Please-Reconcile’s plea for BJU’s racial reconciliation. BJU’s statements are strange. To be quite blunt, they make no sense to a Yankee. But I’ve discovered that within the Old South ethic of the Lost Cause, the so-called apology makes perfect sense.

The best resource for understanding the Lost Cause rhetoric is an old friend to rhetoricians and a particularly familiar annoyance to Burkeans—Richard Weaver. In his 1943 LSU dissertation renamed Southern Tradition at Bay, Weaver surveys and appreciates Lost Cause literature post-Appomattox and includes a long discussion of Southern apologia.

Bob Jones University’s statements on race parallel Weaver’s Lost Cause apologia. The drama that Weaver both records and continues is a romance caught at a potentially tragic crisis point. The old rules of chivalry drive the action or rather reaction. Weaver’s hero, the southern Cavalier, moves more than acts. He is a man of leisure and good birth who simply is, until a moment of deadly crisis. When he is challenged, as if in a duel, his duty is to “serve the eternal verities” of the established order. Destruction, ruin, bankruptcy, injury are all irrelevant to preserving truth and maintaining “good form.” Guiding him is an unspoken code duello.

Even nearly one hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, the rhetorical drama of the Old South still persists in tiny provincial cultural pockets like Bob Jones University. Within the enduring rhetorical romance of sectarian religion, the code duello informs and contains conflict.  Intersecting Richard Weaver’s Old South drama with my previous description of rhetorical romance is a productive critical project. Each analysis rounds out the other and might provide a more organic explanation for the persisting romance in a micro-culture like southern fundamentalism.

Such an intersection also broadens BJU’s connection with the “segregationist ethos” of its founding family. Agrarianism, provincialism, populism, commerce, societal hierarchy, religion, nativism, and racism all goaded the Confederacy in their Romance-turned-tragedy. In our critical sweep, we, too, must avoid containing our cultural sin of racism in the South, in fundamentalism, or in Bob Jones University. The arcane mask these romantics don to distract their Other’s gaze from their own ugliness tempts us to our own form of tragedy. The Please-Reconcile effort was a comic attempt at removing their mask and correcting that sin without killing off the humanity underneath.

Further study intersecting southern fundamentalism with the Lost Cause drama would expose the salience and endurance possible (or not) in newer Lost Cause movements like Doug Wilson’s Federal Vision, southern secessionism, and identity Christianity. At the root of the problem within Southern romantic apologia is a juggling of the usual mystical purpose with the pragmatic agency. That is, by relegating the divine to the means of propping up a societal hierarchy, participants in the rhetorical drama are distracted from the essentially preservationist motive in their micro-culture. Further contrasting southern with northern fundamentalism, tracing how Weaver’s agrarianism found resonance in mid-century northern conservatism, and mapping the dramatistic similarities between the Civil War and current culture wars would productively assist scholars in deconstructing tragedy and creating a comic corrective.

A revealing moment in this interaction was the P-R’s admittance that they were shocked at their alma mater’s pervasively racist reputation. They offer one explanation that BJU is really not as racist as it seems, giving their alma mater a face-saving “out.” Another possible explanation is that the legal confrontation of BJU’s interracial dating prohibition sent the “segregationist ethos” far underground. The presumed inequality of the races remained in behind-closed-doors meetings. The students from both the North and the South who attended and graduated after 1983 Supreme Court case—which includes every member of the Please-Reconcile team—were witless about the racist foundation. They had been raised in the prevailing notion of “color-blindness” which made them deaf to the coded racism. They were literal-minded, morally earnest, personally outspoken, and driven to “do right.” Perhaps, by shedding the Old South rhetoric that was so prominent in BJU’s pre-1964 days and by generalizing for a larger audience, BJU was forging the tools for its own first homegrown public confrontation.

This intersection of the North with the Old South, of integrationist with separatist, of post-1983 students with pre-1964 administrators, of a second-generation Pollack with an Old South morality play — by putting together these two disparate “terms” we have our last place of freedom, Burke would say. In the end, such perspective by incongruity is our best source of comic correction keeping us from being too hopelessly ourselves.

When the Old South brushes up against this 2^nd-generation Pollack like that, I can’t ignore it. It’s what Burke would call Perspective by Incongruity — two dissimilar “terms” shoved together that each change the other simply by proximity. And that’s what happened a year ago when Bob Jones University produced a “Statement on Race” to say it was “profoundly sorry” for past racist policies.

I’m no stranger to Bob Jones University and so-called fundamentalism. Not only have I studied the rhetoric of American religious separatism formally, I’ve lived it. Having spent 20 years at BJU as a student, grad student, and faculty member, I am especially sensitive to their public discourse. Now that they fired me for being more scholarly than separatist, I’m looking anew at their public texts. While I was still inside the movement, I described their frame of acceptance as less tragic or comic and more romantic. My purpose then was descriptive as well as prescriptive—to explain to them, as an insider, how best to craft their message.

We all see how that turned out. So I am honing a new critical voice—one that’s still within a Burkean comic corrective, but without the apologist bent. I no longer need to prescribe to fundamentalists. And I’ve never sensed more strongly how incongruous it is to be a 2^nd-generation Pollack stuck in an Old South morality play.

The most recent example of a public text from Bob Jones University is this “Statement on Race.” BJU is infamous for its 1983 Supreme Court battle to maintain its policy forbidding “interracial dating.” The problems with their policy are so numerous and complex that we’d be here for weeks discussing them. Not only is their definition of “race” problematic—they limited their scope to only three races—but the definition of a “date” comes into play too. They lost that fight with the IRS, lost their tax-exemption status, but maintained this unseemly remnant of the Old South.

And not until Campaign 2000 did BJU’s racism rise again into public view. George W. Bush’s rather routine visit to an old Republican haunt in South Carolina didn’t seem too interesting until John McCain made it interesting. The media firestorm was so intense that BJU’s president went on Larry King Live to lift the interracial dating ban.

Alumni who had attended the school since 1983, however, didn’t think that was sufficient. One particular 1998 alum, Jon Henry, was so irritated by the continuing defense of racism among BJU constituency that he started, of all things, a Facebook group to force BJU to apologize for past racism. That on-a-whim action snowballed into a full-fledged alumni effort garnering 506 signatures attempting to move Bob Jones University one step closer to reconciliation and culminating in BJU’s 2008 “Statement on Race.”

Mercer included an “Additional Statement” with his first to the BJU Board of Trustees.

1953(2)MercerAdditionalStatement

He mentions several people most of whom resigned just before or after his firing. For the record, I’ll list them here with a summary of Mercer’s (alleged, for you legal types) description and any additional information I’ve found:

• Bronkema had been kicked out of Princeton for being too fundamentalist. He taught Bible at BJU and had annoyed BJSr. to the point that he asked Mercer to find something bad on him to use against him.
• Karl Keefer, Dean of Fine Arts, resigned and Dwight Gustafson replaced him. The Sword of the Lord in 7 October 1955 (4) lists him as dean at Washington Bible Institute.
• Robert Schaper was a popular Bible teacher, former Dean of Men, former Director of Religious Activities (extension). He was the Dean of the School of Religion when he resigned, Gilbert Stenholm took his place. Schaper has written several books since.
• Grace Haight, after whom the current BJU Nursing building is named, had angered the Joneses for speaking up about their treatment of Mary Gaston’s elderly aunt. BJSr. “had set out to find something against Dr. Haight so that he could punish her.” Jones wanted her to stop teaching. No one had the heart to do it — not even BJSr.! — because she was so well-loved. She finally agreed to edit the periodical Fellowship News instead.
• Ernest Qvarnstrom was the BJU’s Maintenance Engineer and was fired for “inefficiency” even though the Joneses had a publicly-and-frequently-stated policy that “no one who is loyal is dismissed for inefficiency” (6). Mercer claims that Qvarnstrom’s firing was the beginning of the then-recent faculty “unhappiness.”
• Dr. [Leila R. ??] Custard earned $200/month. Mr. Hitchcock earned $150/month. Mercer and his wife got $160/month.
• R. K. “Lefty” Johnson, long-time business manager and current BJU CFO’s grandfather, enjoyed the unfortunate position of being both a Jones sycophant and a Jones irritant. BJSr. described him as not “mind[ing] telling a lie.” He was known to “pad” the numbers for salaries and educational expenditures (14).
• Attending Virginia Hendrickson’s funeral in Spartanburg in 1951 was a sore-spot for the Joneses.
• John R. Robinson, M.D. was an OB in Greenville who refused to care for his maternity patients at Barge because of its inadequate facilities.
• Morton Brown taught History and resigned because he objected to the Jones’s treatment of Dr. Robinson. He submitted his resignation before the April 1 deadline, but the Joneses fired him immediately. Due to this unusual timing, Brown wrote his students explaining his resignation. BJSr. was angered at this and corrected Brown’s statements in a closed-door meeting with his students
• Fred Holmes “was exhumed” in that meeting. He had objected to the faculty salaries and was fired. Fred Holmes and his wife (who taught piano) received $160/month even though BJSr. claimed it was $300/month to the students in the Brown meeting.
• Leo Patterson took the BJSr. at his word when he claimed that anyone who wanted “[Southern] Association” salary could get it if he just asked. Patterson asked. He, too, was fired in the middle of the Spring semester.
• Van Laar sympathized with Patterson and didn’t stand in one of the frequent “loyalty meetings” and so was fired.
• Hal Carruth, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, resigned.
• Ciliberto taught in the School of Commerce.
• Stout, head of the science dept, called its facilities “primitive” and was nearly fired. The Science building did get an update following, however.
• Students attending John Dunlap’s church in Norfolk had to affirm a loyalty statement in April 1953.
• Laird Lewis, Dean of School of Education, resigned some time before this, I gather, and had died by the time of Mercer’s statement.

Other statistics:

• Registrations were 2724 in the 1952 Fall semester despite what is reported in The Sword.
• The salary system is to pay “according to his ‘need’” with a strategy to keep the prospective employee “on the defensive” (7).
• 70 full-time faculty members had left at the end of the 1951-1952 school year.
• Mercer was one of the top salaries at $3600/year. College professors in 1953 got $6384, and the average wage nationally was $4K/year. Dr. Jones kept padding the salaries by about 40% (16).
• Dr. Jones (Sr)’s arguments against accreditation are “something of a joke” outside BJU’s constituency (10).
• On faculty loads, “Dr. Jones Sr. has always insisted should be heavy, his philosophy being ‘work them so hard when they go home at night they’ll be too tired to complain about anything’” (12).

Read Mercer’s description of faculty salaries and treatment, the Joneses’ attitude toward accreditation, their capricious and egocentric rule, their tendency for hyperbole, and their habit of playing good-cop-bad-cop with the younger Jones vs. the elder Jones. Just change the dates and the people or the suffix on the end of the administrator’s name. The lack of difference is startling.

For the record (and for the search engines), here are the quotations of note:

It is only fair to say also that I have been urged by some of the finest people I know to let the entire matter drop. Having weight the situation and considered all the advice pro and con, I have decided to release this report (2).

It was our system of living and our salary system which made it difficult to get faculty (3).

I told him frankly that I made it a practice never to ask both of them about the same matter (4).

It was evident Dr. Jones liked anyone who didn’t want much money; but anyone who asked more than usual had many things wrong with him–his appearance, his religious background, his having moved about before, etc. (7).

Many of them left, however, to escape the unhappy and unsatisfactory conditions prevailing in the University and some left because their friends were either being fired or were resigning. . . . For many days in this period, Dr. Jones conducted a series of conferences large and small of faculty and staff demanding to know who had been heard to complain about housing, salary, the firings, etc. These inquisitorial meetings seemed for the first time to open the eyes of many of the faculty (9).

Needless to say, all these events produced a terrible mental and emotional climate on the campus. Dr. Jones saw to it that all was glossed over by chapel announcement and sermon, those who were fired being denominated ‘crooks’ and instruments of the devil and those who were leaving by resignation being slurred in one way or another (9).

I came to see that the stated reasons were a thin tissue of fabrication and that the real reason was two-fold: first, to be accredited by any regional or national govt, the business setup of the University as it relates to faculty and staff would have to be changed; and second, Dr. Jones could not run the school in the same ironhanded manner if the University were in an association, to wit, he could not fire summarily an employee, and any dismissed employee would be entitled to a hearing before an impartial group. Now Dr. Jones made clear to me these real reasons gradually and he emphasized to me that these reasons could not be divulged publicly but that we must keep it on the basis of an administrative polity that to join an association would destroy us spiritually. In effect and in practically these words, Dr. Jones said, ‘When they want you to do something that you don’t want to do, tell them you can’t do it because of your religious convictions; and then if they put pressure on you to do it, cry “religious persecution” and they’ll leave you alone. People in this country are scared of religious persecution.’ Dr. Jones did not confine his indoctrination to me alone, for Mr. Laird Lewis, late Dean of Education before he resigned, came to me in open-mouthed astonishment and told me, asking me if I knew it. This practice of having one reason for doing something, yet publicly announcing another, is a characteristic of Dr. Jones’s policy of dealing with people as well as situations (10-11).

All the [accreditation] committees (including the one from the University of South Carolina) commended Dr. Jones on the spiritual and religious contribution of the school, the attractiveness of its physical plant, its cultural emphasis, etc., but at the same time the committees did not find corresponding strength in the matter of faculty stability, training and degrees of the faculty, faculty loads, certain aspects of the instructional program including parts of the library collection, and the science setup as regards space, equipment, etc. They all seemed to feel the ‘Show Window’ was most inviting but that educationally, by prevailing standard of measure, there were notable weaknesses and gaps (12).

Although on the administrative level and in chapel with the students, Dr. Jones emphasizes vigilance in preserving orthodoxy and evangelism, in preserving discipline, and in getting students[,] and urges that nothing be taken for granted in these matters; yet he repeatedly says to the faculty that it is taken for granted that they are doing a good job of teaching and that we have high academic standards. No real effort is made to secure and keep faculty members. If BJU took toward students the same attitude it takes toward faculty, its enrollment would be greatly curtailed in a very short time (19).

The construction of the handsome museum and art building and the talk of a multi-million dollar hospital sit heavily on the minds of those who know the inadequacy of faculty housing, no only in number of units but also in part in quality of housing (20).

It is to be regretted that a school with such a far-flung Christian testimony and with such an impact on its students in the art of Christian living is sadly lacking in Christ-like management. All who disagree in any matter, institutional or personal, are ‘crooks’ or part of a Satanic attack against the school. Those who get in the limelight meet with disfavor whether they be in the evangelistic world — Billy Graham, for example, about whom to the University administrators it was said that he was shallow, superficial, and not having real revival, won’t last — or in Bob Jones University’s world — Dr. Schaper, for example, who was the object of disapproval because the students requested him as a speaker for the Washington, D.C., and Jackson, Mississippi, banquets in 1951, because students asked him to perform their wedding ceremonies, and students made frequent request for him to preach on the campus. It is also to be regretted that in a school where the first rule for students is ‘Griping not tolerated’ that criticism of others (intimate friends not excluded) is freely meted out, that where the students are told ‘It is never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to do right’ those in authority who any means necessary to accomplish their end, including character assassination of those whom they oppose (21).

Since my statements were prepared, there have been other developments which presage the future relative to these matters. An organization which was considering employing me was served an ultimatum that it would be boycotted and blacklisted openly if it did so. Two secretaries at the University have written me letters, one denying the compliment paid the Records Office which Miss Luetgens told me, and the other, raising a question as to whether I did not carry off certain letters and reports belonging to the University. I recall when Dr. Jones was seeking something against Dr. Bronkema some years ago and I responded I knew nothing against him, Dr. Jones responded, ‘Well, go find something on him!” (24).

1953(1)MercerStatementConcerningDismissal

Mercer sent this “Statement Concerning my Dismissal from Bob Jones University” to BJU Board of Trustees after his firing on June 15, 1953.

For those of you unfamiliar with BJU, the statement is a snoozer, so you can head over here. For those of you currently associated with BJU, you’ll dismiss it as some crackpot with an agenda who just needs to “shut up.” He even mentions that — that people wanted him to “crawl off into a hole after being fired.” So you can mosey over here.

But if you’ve ever found yourself on the other side of a BJU administrator’s desk feeling the ax hovering above your neck, the statement reads eerily prophetic.

The litany of accusations against him are mostly familiar. We’ve all been called the same whether in front of or behind our backs — “avowed enemy of the school,” unfaithful, inefficient, deceitful, “one of the greatest crooks in the history of the school,” demon-possessed, “the devil.” Mercer euphemizes the most intense accusation of homosexuality under the term “my moral character” — an accusation that still lingers in contemporary BJU histories (more on that later).

You’ll want to look at the list of BJU Board Members near the end. It’s at the very least intriguing. There’s Homer Rodeheaver and Jack Wyrtzen. There’s Mordecai Ham and Ernest Reveal. And you see some familiar fathers there. Look. There’s Ted Mercer’s dad, Jim. And John MacArthur, Sr. (father of the John MacArthur, Jr.). and William Piper (father of John Piper).

BJU apparently was undergoing an enormous faculty turnover in the 1952-53 school year — a movement that would only continue into the years to come. Mercer includes one letter of resignation in the end of his pamphlet from Karl E. Keefer. We who have been associated with BJU since 1952 don’t know Dr. Keefer. We do know his replacement very well — a 24-year-old Dwight Gustafson.

I’ve had a blog post about 1952-53 in my drafts folder for about a year. Really. I’ve been trying to get a bead on that time period for awhile. That same anxiety that we’re all feeling in the air right now in the US, I think people were feeling back then too. And the seeds of our own undoing were planted then. Here are some facts I’ve gathered:

• Thomas Nelson released its second edition of the Revised Standard Version in 1952, this time including the Old Testament. To religious conservatives, the translators were pretty sloppy, seeming to highlight contradictions between the Old and New Testaments.
• The first conservative evangelical Christian school started in 1952 down in Florida — Keswick Christian School. One of its alumni wrote about her experience in My Fundamentalist Education.
• In 1952 and 1953, the U.S. experienced an outbreak of 58,000 and 35,000 polio cases, respectively, up from a typical number of some 20,000 cases a year.
• President Eisenhower started the “Back to God” campaign.
• The Army-McCarthy hearings were just starting in 1953.
• The babies were still booming.
• I Love Lucy was in its second season.
• The Korean War continued as a hotter part of the ongoing Cold War.
• “Under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance, thanks to the efforts of the Knights of Columbus, appealing to a newly-baptized Eisenhower.
• The Supreme Court heard Zorach v. Clauson, and released-time religious instruction diminished after that.
• Dr. Spock dominated the parenting-advice market.

And that’s the way it was . . . back in those blissful 1950s. When television couples slept in separate beds and the “coloreds” drank from separate drinking fountains and “fundamentalism” was not-yet-separated from “evangelicalism.”

This is the world in which Ted Mercer was writing.

They didn’t have blogs back in the day. They had speeches. They had theses. They had pamphlets. They had tracts. They had samizdat. To get to a lot of those documents you either have to choose a famous one — like I just did in that listing — or know how to operate a microfiche machine or just hang out in library archives. If you’re lucky, they are permanent — somewhere.

Blogs are more fleeting. There are more spelling errors, more goofy lolcat pictures, more viral videos. But they are more . . . present than any of the others. And more dangerous.

You probably don’t know who Ted Mercer is. The first time I heard about him was ~1993 when I was listening to my first graduate audition in the Division of Speech. A young man from Bryan College was applying for a graduate assistantship. And one of the senior, hoary-headed members of our faculty said to us all (something like), “Are we sure we should let him in? He is, after all, from Bryan.” Her words were pregnant with a mysterious and sinister meaning.

Now I was the youngest faculty member in this group. And . . . I’m a little bit clueless as I’ve said before. So, in typical fashion, I just asked earnestly, “What do you mean? What’s wrong with Bryan?” Another less-junior-than-I colleague nodded and agreed, “Yeah, I’d like to know too! I have no idea.” And the senior member just sighed and shook her head, disappointed with these children these days about how they know nothing of the past. . . . I think. I don’t know why she was sighing. But I never heard the details that day.

So I’m going to tell you the story. With the actual documents themselves. A friend just passed them along to me last night, and I stayed up too late reading them.

If Ted were alive today and had been fired from Bob Jones University, he’d have his own blog where he’d publish such things. But in 1953, all he had was a mimeograph machine and an address book. So let’s take a look. . . .