Seemingly out of nowhere, the notoriously racist Bob Jones University has decided to apologize for its nearly fifty-year record of refusing admission to African Americans and its even longer policy against interracial dating:
Bob Jones University has apologized for racist policies including a one-time ban on interracial dating that wasn’t lifted until nine years ago and its unwillingness to admit black students until 1971.
The private fundamentalist Christian school that was founded in 1927 said its rules on race were shaped by culture instead of the Bible, according to a statement posted Thursday on the university’s Web site.
As the statement itself makes clear, the university blames its policies on a “segregationist ethos [in] American culture” that failed to “accurately represent” the true teaching of God and the Bible:
Bob Jones University has existed since 1927 as a private Christian institution of higher learning for the purpose of helping young men and women cultivate a biblical worldview, represent Christ and His Gospel to others, and glorify God in every dimension of life.
BJU’s history has been chiefly characterized by striving to achieve those goals; but like any human institution, we have failures as well. For almost two centuries American Christianity, including BJU in its early stages, was characterized by the segregationist ethos of American culture. Consequently, for far too long, we allowed institutional policies regarding race to be shaped more directly by that ethos than by the principles and precepts of the Scriptures. We conformed to the culture rather than provide a clear Christian counterpoint to it.
In so doing, we failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandment to love others as ourselves. For these failures we are profoundly sorry. Though no known antagonism toward minorities or expressions of racism on a personal level have ever been tolerated on our campus, we allowed institutional policies to remain in place that were racially hurtful.
Apparently it was the “segregationist ethos” that was still rampant back in America in 2000 that lead Bob Jones University to forbid interracial dating because it would lead to one world government:
The one-world principle–every effort man has made, or will make, to bring the world together in unity–plays into the hand of Antichrist. This first began at the Tower of Babel, and it will culminate at Armageddon when the Lord returns to establish His rule of peace and harmony for a thousand years.
Bob Jones University opposes one world, one church, one economy, one military, one race, and unisex. God made racial differences as He made gender differences. Each race and each sex should be proud to be what God made it, and none should reproach the other.
