For some reason, I thought about Bob Jones University today and their controversial policy prohibiting interracial dating. And I realized I never heard why they enacted this policy. I realize one theory would be “because they’re racist reactionaries” but I assume they offered other reasons. Did the university offer a biblical cite to justify this policy or was it a social one?
Never heard about this. Appears it has gone now, though…
Does BJU even have any non-white students?
I don’t know that they offered a cite, but they did say they believed it was God’s will that people stuck with their own kind, I believe. We’ve discussed it on this forum before if you feel like doing a search.
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Al Franken gave a very humorous account of his visit to BJU in his “Liars” book. In the chapter “I’m a Bad Liar” he tells the time he posed as a family advisor helping the young man he was with in choosing a college.
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A couple of earlier threads about BJU, one from a month ago and one from 2002. The one from 2002 has a post from astro, which cites this letter from 1998, explaining their policy then.
astro’s post has the complete letter and the cite noted above.
Wow. That reasoning is just astounding. God erected barriers between the races. So, why not rule against using human technology (boats, domestication of horses) that allowed us to break those barriers? And if God didn’t want us to interbreed, all He had to do was tweak the DNA so it wouldn’t work.
I wonder what they teach in their Biology courses…
I understand that they still require students to get parental permission before they date anyone, though. Which leaves a nice backdoor for a school official to call up a student’s parent and saying “did you know that Chastity has been dating a Negro? No? Well, then I guess we’ll have to discipline her for unauthorized socialization.”
Bob Jones University statement on biology.
Yes, BJU has non-white students & has for quite a while (I think there was a time they had seperate classes & rooming for them)- and I have read somewhere that the interracial dating ban really started when a wealthy Asian contributor whose child was attending there was horrified that his child was dating a white.
I not making this up- I think I read it at the beliefnet site, tho I’m not sure.
Then BJU came up with the Biblical justification that interbreeding leads to internationalism leads to AntiChrist World Gov’t.
Isn’t it kind of arrogant for them to presume to know what God’s plan is if it isn’t explicitly stated in the Bible? It seems to me that if you accept the literal truth of the Bible–like these people do–you can’t go around interpreting stuff willy-nilly.
Seems to me that if interracial relationships had such dire consequences, it would would have been mentioned somewhere in the Bible.
God has separated people for His own purpose. He has erected barriers between the nations, not only land and sea barriers, but also ethnic, cultural, and language barriers. . . .
Pfft.
They need to read about Boaz, a rich Jewish man who married Ruth, a woman from another country and used to be a pagan.
Or Isaac, whose father sent a scout to another country to find his son a suitable wife. And then turned around and told his grown son, Jacob, to do the same thing.
Moses married a foreign woman, too. Solomon married all sorts of foreign women (although admittedly most of those marriages were just political alliances and not conventional marriages).
The book says there is no Greek or Jew, male or female, slave or free, but that Christians are one in Christ. It makes God absolutely no friggin’ difference if a black person and a white person marry, provided they are following the (few) rules that have been set forth for Christian marriage.
Didn’t Jesus say something like 'Love thy neighbor, but be sure you don’t let your daughter date a negro."?
The interracial dating ban is far from the only restriction BJU puts on its students, and I gather it’s not even the most outrageous. I think they’re being unfairly singled out; how much interracial dating goes on at Yeshiva? Yeah, not a lot of black Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, I know, but the bottom-line result is the same.
Having known some people who attend bible colleges, my impression is this:
Most of the students there are from extremely conservative protestant families who, but for the extremely restrictive nature of these campuses, probably would never let their kids–daughters especially–attend colleges, for fear they’d be force-fed lots of liberal claptrap contrary to the faith they’d been raised in.
I used to live down the street from Columbia Union College, a Seventh Day Adventist college in Takoma Park (and home to one of the best hospitals in the area). They were at least as restrictive as BJU (although I don’t think they had an interracial dating ban, and they had plenty of black students), and the thing astonished me was that those kids wanted to be there, they loved it there, they were in their element. BJU doesn’t attract many Eminem or James Dean wannabes, and the kids who go there really want to be there.
I was raised Baptist, and told that God separated the races when that Tower of Babel thing came up because if everyone was cooperating and working together they were too powerful. (Me: “So you think if everyone worked together we could really build a tower up to heaven?” Sunday School teacher: “Let’s have a snack!”)
I believe BJU will let in non-white students if they’ll simply recognize their inherently inferior status in God’s grand scheme. 
Just remember, Bob Jones University is non-accredited, which means a diploma from BJU has as much value as a diploma from Vinnie the Shoeshine Boy in 5th and Main.
Which is why it drives me up the frigging wall when people refer to “Dr. Ian Paisley”. His “doctorate” is an honorary one from Bob Jones University, FFS, he’s no more a “doctor” than Lucy Van Pelt.
BJU apparently believes the University is very progressive in its racial policy. I deduced this from just visiting its website, and seeing in large print near a top of a question and answer page the following:
“How long has the Minority Scholarship Fund been in existence?”
The MSF is over one year old.
I remember that as well, though I can’t recall exactly where the article was. That happened back in the thirties, and the policy was never really contested until it was brought up following George W Bush’s visit during the 2000 campaign.
rjung:
Less, actually. Particularly since Vinnie has attended the school of hard knocks and can do that entire dance from Annie including the complex bucket and mop steps.
Waste