Discover Top Posts Tagged with #david beale

So while Steve Pettit is bragging that he visited Yale University, with fashion shows and weird podcasts, with "unforeseen circumstances" causing BJU to cancel Trevor Lawrence and Steve Pettit bragging about his engagement story, BJU critic and graduate (Class of 2011) and KJVO apologist Ken Willis is continuing his criticism of BJU's straying from the fundy fold. He brings in BJU Bible faculty member, David Beale's recent self-published book, Christian Fundamentalism in America. This book is making the rounds, and I haven't had a chance to read it myself. All in good time.

But Willis' describes Beale's critique at length.

Fundamentalist church historian David Beale has recently written a book in which he states that Bob Jones University has left Fundamentalism.

“After being the premier Fundamentalist academic institution for eighty-seven years, BJU elected Dr. Steve Pettit in 2014, as the president who steered the University out of separatist Fundamentalism into the inclusive, broad Evangelical movement”

– From “Christian Fundamentalism in America,” p. 179

Dr. David Beale was one of if not BJU’s leading Church Historians and Church History faculty members for some time. In his new book, Christian Fundamentalism In America, Beale has drawn attention from Seminary professors across the nation for his assessment of the new direction BJU has been taken under President Steve Pettit.

For years now Dr. Pettit’s leadership decisions and general shift towards ecumenicism at BJU have raised eyebrows within the Fundamentalist churches, but now one of BJU’s own, and a renowned Church Historian and author at that, has delivered an assessment that clearly BJU would have loved not to have had rendered. Beale asserts that Pettit has taken the once Fundamentalist stronghold into an open embrace of New Evangelicalism. In the recent years, Pettit has openly embraced New Evangelicals, invited them to speak in Bible Conference and to teach in the Seminary. The standards on campus have been lowered to appeal to a New Evangelical base and Calvinism has surged in the Seminary and University classrooms. Also embraced by Pettit is the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastors and churches across the nation have lamented seeing their Fundamentalist-raised youth shipped off to a seemingly Fundamentalist institution only to emerge having forsaken their Fundamentalist upbringing and welcoming a disdain for the KJV, New Evangelicalism, ecumenicism, Calvinism, CCM and more liberal standards and beliefs.

BJU and Steve Pettit have much to answer for; this is undeniable, yet I find the deeper blame to rest not on BJU but on the churches from which the students come. Why is it that churches feel the need for a liberal arts university to accomplish in four years in the life of a student what that same church could not accomplish in the last 18 years? That is right. What on earth has that church been doing to give that young person a doctrinal foundation over the last 18 years? This is rhetorical in that I can very likely guess exactly what. Allow me to paint a picture of what the normal Fundamentalist high school graduate’s spiritual education looks like when they arrive at college.

From the nursery to 6th grade, the child has learned to color very well and has a basic knowledge of some Bible characters and famous stories from the Old & New Testament. They may even be able to locate most books of the Bible. From 7th to 8th grade, the student is introduced to lower level doctrines and by the time they finish 12th grade, some of them will still struggle with their salvation because no one has ever given them a Biblical class on exactly how Scripture defines salvation, its evidences and they will continue to struggle until someone does. The high school graduate will have little to no concept of Bible versions other than how important it is to only use their KJV. But when they encounter an educated professor using big words and terms, they will fold like an accordion to the display of academic assault for which they were never prepared. Bible doctrine is a thing almost unheard of in most pulpits. And the college classroom will fill the void without mercy. Whatever conception of Bible doctrine a student forms will happen in the classroom, not from the pulpit. Expository preaching, or what passes for it, has not prepared our youth for academia, and we will pay dearly for it. So what am I saying? The burden of doctrinal training must fall on our Pastors and Churches! Our young people should be so firmly grounded in sound, comprehensive Bible doctrine that no slick talking professor could shake it from them! Our churches need doctrine-based preaching, not story telling. They need doctrine-centered youth groups, not entertainment. They need church classes on doctrines such as Theology, Christology, Pneumatology, Soteriology, Eschatology, Church History, Creationism, Hermeneutics, Bibliology, Bible Translations and more. If we as preachers, pastors and church leaders neglect these things, we have no right to complain when the colleges do our job for us and yet poison minds in the process. It is we who failed these students! “But that would be a lot of work.” So what? So is trying to fix a broken mind poisoned from false teaching and liberal doctrine. Our youth should march out from our doors as fully equipped elite soldiers of Jesus Christ, not a ragtag militia armed with pitchforks of storytelling, personal opinion and loud “Amens” only. The apostasy of our day is of Satanic design, but I submit that we make his battle too easy by our shameful neglect of Bible doctrine. Our youth should be warriors armed to the teeth. Sadly today, they are harmless sheep marching to the slaughter that awaits in the halls of academia.

Well, well, well. . . . So BJU is now the one shipwrecking co-eds.

#Bob Jones University #David Beale #Ken Willis #KJVO #Class of 2011