Andy Naselli

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Rick Phillips on Bob Jones Academy and Fundamentalism

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Update: See Rick Phillips’s gracious reply below (comment #2) and clarification on his blog entitled “More on Bob Jones.” He’s a gentleman.

Rick Phillips, who recently became a PCA pastor at Second Presbyterian Church just a few minutes down the road from Bob Jones University, shares his evolving thoughts on fundamentalists after deciding to enroll his children at Bob Jones Elementary School. See his blog post “Fundamentalism, Christian Schooling, and the Antithesis.” (Cf. his follow-up post “The Price Is Not Right.”)

A few thoughts in reply:

  1. I’m delighted to hear Phillips’s thoughts. BJ often gets an unnecessarily bad rap. Phillips is right that (1) BJ is culturally conservative and upholds some relatively strict rules and (2) BJ is straight on what matters most: the gospel.
  2. For what it’s worth, I’d like to point out that BJ is not an Arminian institution. I can see how someone might get this impression based on some of their history (e.g., Bob Jones Sr. was a Methodist), methodology, chapel speakers, and administrators over the years, but I’m not aware of a single Arminian professor who currently teaches on the their undergraduate or graduate Bible faculty; most (or at least many) of the Bible professors are Calvinists of the Amyraldian variety. (I don’t pretend to be an official spokesperson for BJU, but both my wife and I are somewhat familiar with the BJ system. We both earned degrees at BJU, and my wife also attended BJ through seventh grade. For the first two years of our marriage, we lived right next to BJES and passed it nearly every day either in a car or on foot. We each have many friends and family members who have attended BJ ranging from nursery-age up through Ph.D. studies, and I still keep in touch with several of the professors.)
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  1. Andy,

    Thanks for the post. I appreciate your response to Rick Phillips, as well as his post on his experience. As one raised in fundamentalism (independent Baptist), and now a reformed Baptist, I can identify with both his fears and his appreciation of fundamentalists, and for the very reasons he gives.

    Thanks for your “inside view” of BJU, especially in regard to them not being totally anti-Calvinistic. That’s heartening to hear, as the impressions I always got of them was that they were largely Arminian (as the churches I came out of were).

    Scott W. Kay

  2. Thanks for the correction to my post. I am delighted to hear that BJU does not espouse an Arminian position. Once again, we see the danger of assumptions. I knew that there was a pretty strong Reformed influence there, but I thought the official position was Arminian. May the Lord bless you.

    Rick Phillips

  3. I found Rick’s post very interesting as well. Since some evangelicals have more in common with fundamentalists than with other evangelicals and some fundamentalists have more in common with evangelicals than with other fundamentalists, it’s odd (and unfortunate) that the lines of separation remain fixed and are more about labels than substantive agreements and disagreements. Perhaps this will change.

    Phil

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