The Greenville News editorial page editor, Beth Padgett, felt compelled to summarize all the warm-fuzzies BJU was getting from locals during Campaign 2000.
This is just that same-old BJU Aura of Goodness™.
One of the things Bob Jones University should have learned last week is that the World's Most Unusual University has many Greenville friends in low places, so to speak. With the outside world piling on and trying to turn Bob Jones into code words for racial and religious intolerance, many in the Greenville community have surprised themselves by defending the school.
I had a couple dozen letters, e-mails and phone calls last week that were a variation of: "I'm not associated with Bob Jones University, I don't like many of its policies … but what's going on is so unfair. The school is a good citizen, and it has good students."
Such as this e-mail, from a woman who wrote:
"I am not associated with the school, but I have been impressed with students I have met, and I have received excellent care from some of their nursing students while a patient at St. Francis Hospital."
Or this one from man who said he wasn't a Bob Jones graduate and not even a Baptist: "As an employer, we have had a number of Bob Jones graduates over the years. One thing you can always count on is a fair day's work for a fair day's pay for each and every one of them. If their resume reflects an education at Bob Jones, it always gets my attention, because I know the moral and ethical standards of their graduates, and their loyalty to an employer."
Or this one from another woman: "BJU graduates have made good citizens in our community. I see inconsistencies in what they say and what they sometimes do, but that is true of all of us."
I've heard charitable comments about Bob Jones University from mainstream Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, and even a few Episcopalians and Jews. I've also heard a spirited defense of BJU from people who've been scolded by the school's leader for liking Janet Jackson and Elton John.
So, what's going on here, short of a miracle?
I've done several background interviews for national reporters who've descended on Greenville to try to figure out just what Bob Jones University is (and implicit in many questions, how bad it is). One point I made repeatedly is that the school is a part of this community.
It's hard to have a stay in the hospital, or make it through 12 years of public school, or work in a major accounting firm, or serve in many nonprofit organizations, without rubbing elbows with a Bob Jones grad. The experiences teach us to respect each other as individuals, even when we disagree strongly with each other's beliefs.
The school, especially through its students and alumni, does a lot of good in the community.
It helps feed the hungry, care for the homeless, comfort the sick and take care of the elderly. So, it is difficult to categorically condemn an institution that follows through, so faithfully, on its Matthew 25 responsibility to care for "the least of these."
And finally, many of us in this community, even those who've crossed swords on occasion with BJU, realize how fundamentally unfair this blitzkrieg is. BJU is under such intense attack because this is politically expedient. Arizona Sen. John McCain realized he could significantly damage George W. Bush by using the Texas governor's campus visit as a political weapon.
It was implied that Bush was anti-Catholic, be cause he spoke at BJU without fussing at them-for their sharp doctrinal differences (sometimes expressed intemperately) with Catholicism. The even weaker association was made about racism because of the school's ban (lifted Friday) on interracial dating.
All of this assumes, of course, that every political candidate precisely shares every belief with every group to which he or she delivers a campaign speech. And it raises the unrealistic expectation that candidates will strongly, perhaps even rudely, make known those philosophical differences, and while the cameras are still rolling.
Many people in Greenville, including some people associated BJU, have long hoped the school would drop the interracial dating ban and lighten up on the excessive rhetoric about other groups. But many of us also realize that, like it or not, this bastion of fundamentalism is in Greenville, it's a part of this community, and it is being picked on unfairly.
