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Apparent Paperwork Error Threatens Bob Jones U.'s Legal Standing in South Carolina
By David Jesse July 9, 2025
In 2017, Bob Jones University announced it would regain its tax-exempt status, more than three decades after the Internal Revenue Service had removed it over the university’s policies against interracial dating. By then, Bob Jones had nixed those policies and apologized for its historical stances on race. In order to regain the tax-exempt status, the prominent Christian university created a new nonprofit organization — BJU, Inc. — and registered it with the State of South Carolina.
But earlier this year, on May 6, the state dissolved the entity when its registered agent resigned and the university didn’t replace it, documents show. The university has continued to operate since receiving notice of the dissolution — including graduating students and running summer orientation for incoming students — even as state law mandates it should be winding down the entity. It raises questions about whether the university is in compliance with accreditation standards.
In a statement to The Chronicle, Bob Jones said it was “working with the secretary of state’s office to resolve the matter.” However, the office had not heard from Bob Jones until after The Chronicle raised questions about the filings with the university.
“Yesterday afternoon our office received a call from Courtney Montgomery, public-relations director from Bob Jones University,” Shannon A. Wiley, general counsel and public-information director for the secretary of state, said Wednesday morning. “I spoke to Ms. Montgomery and explained the outstanding issues with the administrative dissolution of BJU, Inc. and the filings needed to rectify them. I just checked the online-filing queue, and it does not look like anything has been submitted yet.”
When a college files for accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, which handles Bob Jones’s accreditation, it must supply proof that it is authorized to do work in the state in which it is located, Belle S. Wheelan, the organization’s president said. However, once approved, there is no mechanism for the accreditor to keep track of whether that changes. Wheelan said her organization would be checking Bob Jones’s filings.
Bob Jones had been using an outside company as its registered agent. However, that company, Paracorp Incorporated, sent a notice to the state on January 16 that it was resigning, effective January 31. No reason for the resignation was given in the notice. Paracorp acts as a registered agent for many companies in multiple states, according to its website.
Once dissolved, Bob Jones’s nonprofit arm would be very limited in what it can do, state law says: It “may not carry on any activities except those necessary to wind up and liquidate its affairs.”
But the secretary of state’s office only fills a “ministerial” role and doesn’t enforce what happens after the dissolution filings, Wiley said. South Carolina’s attorney-general office did not return a request from The Chronicle asking whether it was looking into the matter or would do so. The office was notified of the dissolution, state records show.
Bob Jones’s corporate structure is split into two parts. One organization, BJU Education Group, includes several auxiliary functions, including BJU Press, which is a large conservative publishing house known for its K-12 curriculum that is especially popular among homeschooling families. BJU Press contributes about $20 million a year to the university’s operations budget, financial records show. That’s about 22 percent of the university’s total revenue. The other organization is BJU, Inc., which is the corporate home of the university’s academic functions, the university told The Chronicle.
The structure was put into place in 2017 to help create BJU, Inc. as a tax-exempt organization, according to a university press release at the time.
The missing paperwork comes amidst ongoing change at the top of the organization. Steve Pettit left the university in 2023 after a fight with the board over the direction of the university. Pettit, who had served as president for nine years, was seen as a moderate, and influential board members aligned against his moves. In 2018, Pettit relaxed dress codes to allow women to wear pants and not just dresses or skirts to class.
Josh Crockett was named president after Pettit, but he resigned this spring to return to being a pastor of a South Carolina church. Bruce McAllister, who worked at Bob Jones for 42 years in various roles and received all his degrees from the university, was recently named president.
The university was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Bob Jones Sr., who was upset over what he saw as a secularization of Christian higher education. In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled the IRS was within its rights when, in 1970, it revoked the university’s tax-exempt status because the government’s effort to get rid of racial discrimination from education trumped the university’s First Amendment rights to religious free speech.
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