Bob Jones University
with Dr. David Fisher & host Nick Walters
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Born on October 30, 1883, in Skipperville, Alabama, Bob Jones Sr. became one of the most recognizable evangelists in twentieth-century American Protestantism. He also founded a Christian college built around a conviction that shaped his life’s work: higher education should reinforce a student’s Christian faith rather than undermine it. That institution, established in Florida in 1927, eventually became Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.
Robert Reynolds Jones began preaching as a teenager and developed a national reputation through revival meetings and evangelistic campaigns. He feared that students attending colleges influenced by theological liberalism might abandon the beliefs they had learned at home.
The fundamentalist-modernist controversy provided the larger setting for Jones’s work. Fundamentalists defended teachings they regarded as essential to Christianity, including the authority of Scripture, the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, and his bodily resurrection. Modernists sought ways to engage Christian theology with contemporary scholarship and intellectual developments. These disputes prompted conservative Protestants to establish independent institutions.
Jones believed the answer was not to reject education but to establish a different kind of college. Bob Jones College opened in 1927 in Bay County, Florida, with approximately 88 students. It offered liberal arts instruction alongside religious education, chapel services, and expectations for student conduct. Jones wanted Christian convictions to shape the campus as a whole, not simply a handful of theology classes.
The college’s beginning was difficult. The Great Depression intensified financial pressures, and in 1933 the school moved to Cleveland, Tennessee. In 1947 it relocated again, this time to Greenville, South Carolina, where it adopted the name Bob Jones University. That year Bob Jones Jr. succeeded his father as president. The university became an important center for independent fundamentalist education, preparing graduates for ministry, teaching, music, business, and other fields.
The institution’s history, however, cannot be separated from its racial policies. For decades Bob Jones University excluded Black applicants, and later admissions practices remained restrictive. The university also prohibited interracial dating until 2000. Those policies became a major source of public criticism and legal conflict. In Bob Jones University v. United States (1983), the Supreme Court upheld the federal government’s denial of tax-exempt status to religious schools practicing racial discrimination contrary to fundamental public policy. The university subsequently acknowledged and repudiated its earlier racial positions.
Bob Jones Sr. died on January 16, 1968, before that Supreme Court ruling and many later institutional changes. His legacy therefore calls for careful historical consideration. He was an evangelist who helped create a durable model of conservative Christian higher education, while the university he founded also became part of a national debate over religious autonomy, civil rights, and the responsibilities of educational institutions.
For our Deep Dive, host Nick Walters is joined by Dr. David Fisher to examine the convictions that led Jones to establish his college, the fundamentalist-modernist conflict that shaped his generation, and the wider consequences of building an explicitly conservative Protestant university.
Our first historical highlight takes us to Anglo-Saxon England. King Alfred the Great ruled Wessex from 871 to 899, defending his kingdom against Viking attacks while encouraging a renewal of Christian learning. Alfred supported the translation of important Latin writings into Old English and sought to strengthen education among clergy and others who could read. His efforts connected political leadership with the preservation of religious scholarship at a time when warfare had disrupted monasteries and centers of learning.
Our second highlight takes us to the first Lithuanian church in America, a chapter in the effort of immigrants to sustain their faith and cultural identity in a new country. Lithuanian Catholics arriving in the United States formed religious communities that provided worship, education, mutual support, and continuity with traditions brought from Europe. The story illustrates the role immigrant churches played in shaping America’s diverse religious landscape.
This Week in Christian History is produced by the Center for Christian History and hosted by Nick Walters.