Tweet
Advance warning: this post is a semi-coherent rant. With that aside, let's begin.
Holy ****.
So, I assumed that this was one of those schools with retarded diploma mill degrees that people went to because they furiously want to believe that the earth is 6000 years old, and no self-respecting biologist, linguist, geologist, physicist, or astronomer will say so. I was right, of course--more on that later. I've been dimly aware of its existence for a while, but yesterday I ran across someone who went there. This inspired me to research it a little further.
First of all, holy goddamn ****. I have never seen a more hateful institution of higher education. Like, hating homosexuals seems kind of ordinary to me. That's normal among super-conservative churches. However, BJU (hehehe) kicks the bigotry up several notches in every dimension, including racism. Interracial dating was prohibited until the year of our lord 2000. Yes, 2000. They got rid of it because of a media hoopla about the policy after George W. Bush gave a stump speech there on the campaign trail. It hardly matters though because there are, to a first order approximation, no black people there anyway.
In addition, they hate Catholics and Mormons. Mormons, like gays, are passe, but Catholics? The second chancellor of the school (until recently a hereditary position in the Jones family) referred to Catholicism as "not another Christian denomination. It is a satanic counterfeit, an ecclesiastic tyranny over the souls of men....It is the old harlot of the book of the Revelation—'the Mother of Harlots.'" Never mind that the catholic church (lowercase c) WROTE THE ****ING BIBLE. He referred to all popes as "demon possessed." **** you, dude. JP2 hid Jews from the Nazis in his basement. Come to think of it though, Mr. Jones Jr. was probably cool with the holocaust, so I guess that isn't points in his favor.
Speaking of Mormons, fundamentalist criticisms of the LDS church have always rung really hollow to me. I have traveled from the "holy land" to North America, on an El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Newark, New Jersey. Therefore I find the notion that Jesus could travel to the Americas eminently more reasonable than turning water into wine. But I digress.
Going back to the point about the diploma mill. I suspect in normal subjects like math, English, or even philosophy, the education is as good as any third-rate university. That in mind, the faculty appears to be deeply intellectually inbred. Professors are often former students, and those that aren't tend to be from one of the handful of other fundamentalist baptist colleges. Accreditation is dubious. It's accredited by TRACS, the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, which itself has Department of Education certification. So students are eligible for federal loans and so forth. But very few states do, including ones you might expect to be inclined to support religious education, like Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Note that there are other religious accreditation agencies which are accepted across all 50 states, like ABHE (Christian) and AARTS (Jewish).
In spite of this, the school has had two presidents speak at it, more than my school, and has in the past been deeply influential in the South Carolina Republican Party. Its graduates have wound up in prominent positions in clergy, politics, law, and media. And picketing funerals. Fred Phelps went there. I'm not even surprised.
Student policies at BJU (I still can't read that without giggling) are even more restrictive than at West Point or even the Citadel. Which, I should point out, are both real schools that grant degrees that real people care about, unlike BJU. Freshmen have to sign in and out of campus. Dorms are separate, male and female, and women are not allowed in the mens' dorms and vice versa. There's no uniform but there is a strict dress code. You can be expelled for extramarital sex, possessing pornography, or listening to "contemporary music." Contemporary music includes Christian rock music and jazz. No headphones are allowed, so that they can hear what kind of music you're listening to. You can watch PG-13 movies in the presence of faculty only.
Oh yeah, and students are allowed to date each other...so long as a chaperone is present.
I mean, I'm okay with the fact that this school exists--freedom of speech and thought and all that--but what would possess anyone to go to a school which issues a nearly worthless diploma and controls your life like you're a ****ing convict? The students there are adults. If you believe that sex outside of marriage is wrong, and that you shouldn't dress provocatively, that rock music is bad etc. etc. then surely you are capable at the ages of 18-22 of just...not doing those things? Without being told?
Holy ****.
So, I assumed that this was one of those schools with retarded diploma mill degrees that people went to because they furiously want to believe that the earth is 6000 years old, and no self-respecting biologist, linguist, geologist, physicist, or astronomer will say so. I was right, of course--more on that later. I've been dimly aware of its existence for a while, but yesterday I ran across someone who went there. This inspired me to research it a little further.
First of all, holy goddamn ****. I have never seen a more hateful institution of higher education. Like, hating homosexuals seems kind of ordinary to me. That's normal among super-conservative churches. However, BJU (hehehe) kicks the bigotry up several notches in every dimension, including racism. Interracial dating was prohibited until the year of our lord 2000. Yes, 2000. They got rid of it because of a media hoopla about the policy after George W. Bush gave a stump speech there on the campaign trail. It hardly matters though because there are, to a first order approximation, no black people there anyway.
In addition, they hate Catholics and Mormons. Mormons, like gays, are passe, but Catholics? The second chancellor of the school (until recently a hereditary position in the Jones family) referred to Catholicism as "not another Christian denomination. It is a satanic counterfeit, an ecclesiastic tyranny over the souls of men....It is the old harlot of the book of the Revelation—'the Mother of Harlots.'" Never mind that the catholic church (lowercase c) WROTE THE ****ING BIBLE. He referred to all popes as "demon possessed." **** you, dude. JP2 hid Jews from the Nazis in his basement. Come to think of it though, Mr. Jones Jr. was probably cool with the holocaust, so I guess that isn't points in his favor.
Speaking of Mormons, fundamentalist criticisms of the LDS church have always rung really hollow to me. I have traveled from the "holy land" to North America, on an El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Newark, New Jersey. Therefore I find the notion that Jesus could travel to the Americas eminently more reasonable than turning water into wine. But I digress.
Going back to the point about the diploma mill. I suspect in normal subjects like math, English, or even philosophy, the education is as good as any third-rate university. That in mind, the faculty appears to be deeply intellectually inbred. Professors are often former students, and those that aren't tend to be from one of the handful of other fundamentalist baptist colleges. Accreditation is dubious. It's accredited by TRACS, the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, which itself has Department of Education certification. So students are eligible for federal loans and so forth. But very few states do, including ones you might expect to be inclined to support religious education, like Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Note that there are other religious accreditation agencies which are accepted across all 50 states, like ABHE (Christian) and AARTS (Jewish).
In spite of this, the school has had two presidents speak at it, more than my school, and has in the past been deeply influential in the South Carolina Republican Party. Its graduates have wound up in prominent positions in clergy, politics, law, and media. And picketing funerals. Fred Phelps went there. I'm not even surprised.
Student policies at BJU (I still can't read that without giggling) are even more restrictive than at West Point or even the Citadel. Which, I should point out, are both real schools that grant degrees that real people care about, unlike BJU. Freshmen have to sign in and out of campus. Dorms are separate, male and female, and women are not allowed in the mens' dorms and vice versa. There's no uniform but there is a strict dress code. You can be expelled for extramarital sex, possessing pornography, or listening to "contemporary music." Contemporary music includes Christian rock music and jazz. No headphones are allowed, so that they can hear what kind of music you're listening to. You can watch PG-13 movies in the presence of faculty only.
Oh yeah, and students are allowed to date each other...so long as a chaperone is present.
I mean, I'm okay with the fact that this school exists--freedom of speech and thought and all that--but what would possess anyone to go to a school which issues a nearly worthless diploma and controls your life like you're a ****ing convict? The students there are adults. If you believe that sex outside of marriage is wrong, and that you shouldn't dress provocatively, that rock music is bad etc. etc. then surely you are capable at the ages of 18-22 of just...not doing those things? Without being told?
Comment