education

SFL Back To School Day 4: College Daze

126 Comments

Fundamentalists will tell you that where you go to college will be one of the most important decisions you make in your life. Of course, other people outside of fundyland may say the same sort of thing but what they mean by it is rarely the same. For in fundamentalism your choice of a college determines your fundy pedigree, you opportunities for employment within fundamentalism, and often the caliber of fundy that your spouse is likely to be as well. For example, there are Hyles men and PCC men and Bob Jones men and rarely the three will meet (except in the occasional conference). Choose wisely.

And it’s no wonder that the various graduates of the big (a very relative term) Fundy U schools (an even more relative term) don’t generally associate with each other. The education received at a Fundy U could more accurately be called “indoctrination.” For if a strong voice speaks with apparently authority for long enough it will eventually be accepted as the voice of truth. The trick to getting students to listen is three-fold:

1) Isolate. Get them away from everything else so they can only hear you. Tell them that their college has more authority in their lives than any other person. Make them depend on you for the totality of their social existence, their physical needs, and spiritual nourishment and then…

2) Condition. Create a Pavlovian response to specific verbal stimuli. When someone say “KJV” everybody cheers. When someone says “NIV” everybody boos and jeers. Then do the same with terms like “liberal” and “biblical” and “compromiser.” Make the instruction exist on a level well away from rational thought and then…

3) Reinforce. Now that you’ve got them conditioned to agree with every word that comes out of your mouth, simply use that power to reinforce your dominance at every turn. Use praise and ridicule. Use demerits and compliments. Use the ever present threat of failure and the ever present promise of someday being “one of us” to mold and shape people into your own image.

And once the Fundy U has filled its students heads with dogma and filled their hearts with a lust for the praise of men then it releases them into the world where they will spend most of their time trying to avoid actually having to defend their indefensible ideas. In each Fundy U this dogma also has just enough variety to keep the fundies at odds with each other. Trust me, you don’t want to be around KJV-Only people if you’re only a TR-Only guy and being a Ok-with-the-“critical”-text-sometimes guy would be very awkward indeed. It’s better to stay with your own kind.

To be fair, the worst of the indoctrination practices are often reserved for those in ministerial classes but with daily chapel, mandatory church, required Bible classes, and non-optional prayer group it’s all but impossible to graduate with any sort of degree completely unscathed. And it has been my experience that if a person does not begin to put up a mental resistance to the onslaught of indoctrination by the time they reach their Junior year, that their trip out of fundyland will likely be delayed by at least a long, painful decade or two.

It would seem the education at Fundy U would oftentimes seem more at home in a reeducation camp than an actual institution of higher learning.

126 thoughts on “SFL Back To School Day 4: College Daze”

  3. “Mandatory church” – especially if that church is located right on your campus, which further contributes to the isolationism. Of course, it can be argued if it is then a true biblical church, but I guess that’s a discussion for another time.

  4. You make it sound like the “reeducation camps” that one hears about in communist nations. Wow.

  5. Does anyone remember Wendell Evans calling all accredited colleges “Devil State” and “Satan U.”? Hilarious. Think of the life-saving research coming out of those “satanic” places. My own on, now 25, a minister– but not a fundy!–has leukemia that is in full remission, thanks to the work done at the diabolical OHSU. I could get angry here and call names, but then I have sunk to Wendell Evans’ level. But I did THINK the naughty term, “dick head.”. But I decided not to say it. 😉

      1. Oh, I do, Green, I do! Nearly daily. My heroes are not fundy hotshots, but the humble men and women who painstakingly do lifesaving, intense, minute research, to save lives.

    2. At the IFB college I went to wanted to be called a college, look like a college, offer degrees like a college, have dorms like a college, use the same grading scale as a college, give diplomias like a college, dress in a cap and gown like a college, but when you say “accreditation” they say “We are a ministry of the local church! No worldly accreditation for us!”

      1. But somehow, with that degree from an unaccredited “college,” you had better be able to find a job which will support you and yours, and enable you to write that tithe check every pay period to your local fundy institution. 👿

  6. “And once the Fundy U has filled its students heads with dogma and filled their hearts with a lust for the praise of men then it releases them into the world where they will spend most of their time trying to avoid actually having to defend their indefensible ideas. ”
    Absolutely, a brilliant piece of opposition, in it’s truth and clarity.

      1. Should read “sigh,” and “its,” thank you for never working unless it is where you are not needed, auto-correct, and I will never post first, because I am too idiotic in the early morning…. 😕

  7. Ouch! I guess I’m glad I never went to such a school.

    “…with daily chapel, mandatory church, required Bible classes, and non-optional prayer group…”

    You left out soul-winning and forced work in the bus ministry.

    At the some time, I prefer someone who thinks that church is important enough to make an effort to attend to someone who thinks he is doing God a favor by attending.

    1. You left out soul-winning and forced work in the bus ministry.

      those things weren’t mandatory for everybody at my Fundy U.

      1. When I was at NBBC, we had mandatory early morning devotions. We had to go to a designated area, sign in, and have devos. I think it was at 6:15 or some ungodly hour like that. Seniors could have their devos on their own, but had to turn in devo summaries each week. 🙄

        1. At my fundy HS my senior year our principal who was also our Bible class teacher required daily devos with a daily log book that was to be turned in every couple of weeks for grading. I met with him right after the first class and told him that I would not be doing either. He told me that I could get no better than a C in the class if I didn’t do the assignment and then asked me why I was refusing to do it. I told him that I simply didn’t have devos every day and when I did have them that there is a reason they are called personal. Whatever I learned in them were between me and God not me, God, and my principal. I got a C in the class and a clean conscience. My classmates got A’s and B’s. Now, 20 years later, I have talked with some of them who were the perfect little fundy students in HS and they all admit that they lied and made up the majority of their daily devo log. Just one of the first things that pushed me closer to the exit of fundydom.

        2. So sad! Fundy schools so often seem set up to make liars and hypocrites out of their students.

          After years of seeing outward conformity encouraged instead of inward transformation, I fell in love with Matthew West’s song “Motions”: “This might hurt; it’s not safe; but I know that I’ve gotta make a change . . . I don’t want to go through the motions.”

      2. They were at mine! Unless you were one of the “elite” that was involved in music “ministry” and therefore not available for soul-winning and bus ministry.

      3. West Coast students have a soul-winning quota to meet each week (number of doors in crime-ridden neighborhoods 😯 ). They have to turn in an activity report each week.

        1. Heck, even members who volunteer to help in any ministry are REQUIRED to go soul-winning. Sunday school teachers and helpers also have to turn in activity sheets each week too.

  8. I suppose it also helps to have a (relatively) large campus spread out in a (relatively) remote location, so that ‘going to town’ involves a car, and permissions, and chaperones and is generally more hassle than it is worth. OTOH, my alma mater was a small campus in a large urban area (Moody in Chicago).

  9. In order for females to go off bsse, they had to be in groups of three. One of the three had to be an ‘approved girl’. Guys didn’t have the same restrictions.

    HAC also controlled where females worked, which is why I spent 3.5 years as a telemarketer. In order to work anywhere else you had to jump through hoops and get special permission. Again, guys didn’t have the same restrictions.

      1. Probably because it was a “base”… just like the military, only with even stupider rules and regulations for no reason at all!!!! AND no career at the end of it. Just debt and a waste of four years of life.

    3. Okay, why three? What was wrong with two? Especially if one was one of the approved girls?

      1. I asked that same question, when I became an approved girl. I was told that the Lord Himself prescribed two witnesses at the least. So, this way, according to HAC thinking, should one of the three suddenly become flagrantly promiscuous, the other two could faithfully record what happened. Also, I was told, if it were only TWO girls, they could make a pact to do some egregious act, then LIE about it. Much less likely with three, or so the thinking went…. 🙄

        1. So if only the one girl is promiscious, and the other 2 watch and record, does the guy get a 3 for 1 discount?

        2. Okay, Boymom, I nearly had a deadly accident involving coffee shooting out my nose when i read yours down there, but there is no “reply” button ,so it is up here… sigh. Still laughing 😆 and wiping eyes…

        4. At Clown College the rules were similar. Women had to be in groups of three. Men could leave alone. I never understood that since guys are, in my opinion, more likely to get into trouble.

        5. Renee – if you are so discombobulated most of the time, here’s a tip:

          You should be putting a LITTLE Bailey’s in the coffee, not a little coffe in the Bailey’s.

          Got it?

        6. LOL! I need the exact ratio please, of Bailey’s to coffee, and does five A.M. Count the same as five P.M. To start? 😉

  10. I met my husband at fundy U. Got married and then promptly left. :mrgreen:

    Looking back it seems so surreal.

    Yes there were good things and looking back I can’t help but think it could have been so much more. The artists series,the theater, the classical music…the art gallery. All good. It could have been a real showcase of Christian thought and expression and growth but instead became a place where continual guilt was spread about, there was rampant hypocrisy and a ratting system.

    Christianity became a burden to me and not a joy. The same themes were gone over time and time again in chapel and in class and there was no letting people move forward in their Christian walk.

    This is from a person who did NOT rebel, who followed the rules. I think I might have gotten ten demerits the whole time I was there. No one ‘did’ anything to me. I can honestly say there was no ‘injustice’ done to me on my part. There is no reason to throw the ‘bitter’ card at me or say I’m just whining because I couldn’t follow the rules. I COULD follow the rules but I could see no results from the ‘rules’. There was no growth and no growing closer to Christ. What was happening was me becoming more judgmental and blind to the plight of others. I was becoming a robot to the party line and somehow deep down I decided that I did not want to be that kind of Christian.

    I wish I had left earlier and enrolled somewhere else, even a more ‘liberal’ accredited Bible college would have been better than there.

  11. “Now that you’ve got them conditioned to agree with every word that comes out of your mouth, simply use that power to reinforce your dominance at every turn. Use praise and ridicule. Use demerits and compliments. Use the ever present threat of failure and the ever present promise of someday being “one of us” to mold and shape people into your own image.”

    Bingo! It works 98% of the time on 99% of the students.

    “And it has been my experience that if a person does not begin to put up a mental resistance to the onslaught of indoctrination by the time they reach their Junior year, that their trip out of fundyland will likely be delayed by at least a long, painful decade or two.”

    Exactly my experience…. not that I didn’t THINK resistant thoughts, just wasn’t permitted any freedom to express them or act on them. 👿

  12. Wow! Given all of that conditioning, how does one who has experienced it ever escape? Obviously some of you have because you’re writing about it here. But I’m curious – what are the factors that motivated someone who has been thoroughly indoctrinated to break out to freedom?

    1. What worked for me was the following:
      Getting away. I graduated, and went far away from there to teach. I was blissfully happy as a teacher, even in a church school. I was fortunate, because the one in which I taught was very large, and NOT HAC-brainwashed. Academic excellence WAS a priority, and that was largely due to the men who served as the school board there. They were all professionals, and college-educated, and wanted an academic bang for their buck, thank God.
      Staying away long enough to actually process what I had been exposed to for four years, and the reality of life on the “outside.” Again, I thank God the church where I was, post-HAC, was NOT HAC-orientd.
      WHEN I RETURNED TO HAC as a faculty member (oh, yes!), after years away, the depression and oppression I felt, within an hour of being back, was a huge red flag to me. However, I had agreed to return, agreed to be a dorm supervisor in addition to my teaching responsibilities, and so I determined to make the best of it. I did meet the man who would become my (now sadly late) husband, and that was a great good thing. We got out, after two more years for me, and never looked back. During our time there, those last two years, scandal after scandal broke, and we were able to see through the subterfuges used to cover them up. Also, while I had at first scoffed at the idea that classrooms and offices were electronically monitored, I came to firmly believe it, after being in a faculty member’s office one day. She had been telling me that I needed to believe the scandals, because they were true, and that she and her family were getting out. Within ten minutes of leaving her office, I was called to the president’s office, and got there to find him, and the academic dean, waiting to ask me what had just transpired in that other office.
      I tell that story to point out: the last thing that nailed the coffin shut, on my being delivered from their brainwashing, was their own behavior.
      Still, those who never left, but remained on staff or faculty? I give them little or no chance of ever seeing the light. That 24/7 indoctrination is stultifying. 🙄

      2. I have become convinced that offices and small meeting areas in my former fundy church are monitored also.

    2. God is gracious and good; He can work in all things. For me, I was in the Scriptures and began to see the differences between what the Scriptures said and what I was seeing produced in the lives of those around me.

      Other events occurred that God in His marvelous kindness used to “wake me up”; I don’t wish to share the events at this time.

      If you are in such a church, then spend time in the Bible – as much as you can. If a friend is stuck in such a place, encourage them to be in the Word of God.

      1. Yes. How did I leave out the Word? It was the washing by the Word that did me the most good. And still does. Excellent post, GR.

  13. Those chairs in the pic look just like the ones in one classroom at BJU – possibly Lecture Room B in the Alumni Building. The letters on the chairs were different, but we had those old-fashioned, hard wooden seats with the tiny side desk.

    2. They still have those in Lecture hall A – at least when I was there visiting about a year ago, they did. Incredibly uncomfortable.

    3. Lecture A… I’d always get the broken desk… and it was unfortunate because it was simply against the rules to not sit in your assigned seat.

  15. Duke McCall, the former president of Southern Baptist Seminary, famously told a story once about a guy who was raised in a strict Christian home, went to Christian school, Christian college, then — of course — “felt the call” and went on to seminary, then proceeded to do doctoral work. While at seminary he served as a proctor. Upon graduation, he was appointed as an assistant professor. He later became an associate professor, then was tenured as a full professor, and eventually was appointed seminary president. Then he died, and went to hell — only to find, when he arrived there, that he didn’t recognize the place because the transition had been so gradual.

    You can apply, or paraphrase, that however you like.
    Seems applicable to any number of fundy careers.

  17. Morning wake up at 0545
    breakfast at like 6:30
    5 days a week
    chapel 5 days a week

    my first week it didn’t kick in, later I said, YALL TRYING TO PROGRAM ME, THANK YOU PSYCHOLOGY CLASS FROM COMMUNITY COLLEGE. What am I kidding, I may go back to find a wife, more prepared and sarcastic than before. 😈

    1. Yep… that one thing a cult does. Keeps its members tired enough so that they can’t think and just go along with whatever is being said without arguing.

  18. IDK, i was probably in the epicenter of some of that “indoctrination” and most of us just smirked. or appreciated it as odd enthusiasm. Idk of very many students (maybe 10%) who really bought into the hype.

    1. Exactly! My fundy street cred is legite – flagship fundy school, Dad a kjv-only fundy pastor, went to BJU, and spent 2 summers in high school working at the BRR and another 2 summers working there in college (great place to meet girls. Especially if you are friends with whoever is doing nightpatrol, even better if you’re nightpatrol.) – but the majority of kids from my school(s), and youthgroup recognized fundyism for the bullshit it is. I’m still trying to determine where all these kids who bought into it were hiding, and more importantly, why they bought into it.

      2. Yes, George gets us all!

        Trying to decide what’s worse: the true believers (I can respect their dedication and honesty) or the fakers who sit there on Sunday morning and nod but go home and live however they want because they’re apathetic. They don’t really support the teachings of the church nor do they personally live by it, but when you try to change things, they defend the church’s traditionalism to the bitter end. (For example, they get rabidly defensive if the pastor decides to use a different version than the KJV from the pulpit but admit that they rarely if ever read the Bible at home.)

        1. Wow, PW, tough call. Both sets of people are sadly deluded, is the best I can come up with. But the second group does seem to smell worse… 🙁

        2. I understand your point, pastor’s wife, but I’m not sure if the kids I grew up with can be labeled fakers. Survivalists, yes, but not fakers. We did what we had to do to fly under the radar. I’m sure the same can be said for many children who have been, or are currently being brought up in a fundy home.

        3. You’re right, John! I left out a third group – the powerless. They are forced to be there; they may not agree with the teachings of their church, but they are made to attend. (Most high schoolers and even college age students are in this position.) Often you can tell their attitude by how they treat people who leave. If they scorn ex-IFBers, they’re probably in groups 1 or 2. If they can respect ex-IFBers even if they don’t agree or follow the same path themselves, then they’re not in groups 1 or 2.

        4. I’m letting my own experiences color things. My husband tried to lead our church away from legalism and traditions into grace and community, and nearly everyone rejected us, both the old deacon who was offended when we let the college student sing on the platform despite her having a diamond stud in her nose, but also the parents of the college student and the college student too. They all went to an IFB church a couple miles away where they talk about how sinful and ungodly we are.

      3. You call that fundy street cred? Same story for me kjv dad pastor, only BJU PCC AND HAC were way too liberal! The only option was FBC- Peoria. In fact they would rather I not attend college at all if not for FELLOWSHIP BAPTIST COLLEGE.

  19. Make it four-fold and add extreme fatigue if you are a 3rd shift working student.

    How is this different from a fundy child living in a fundy home? How is this different from a fundy church if you are an off campus student? The three-fold plan still applies.

      1. Seriously still waiting for someone to invent a sarcasm font, though natalie’s reply doesn’t need it.

        3. The sarcasm face takes many forms. It’s too hard to pin down. Sometimes it would be nice to have an emoticon for it, though.

  21. I know that skipping morning and evening church and all of the days of prayer during my senior year was one of the best tonics I had while at bible college.

  22. The former pastor at my church tiold me that he had to get permission & take an approved double date couple in order to date his future wife. He didn’t hold his wife’s hand until they were engaged & didn’t kiss her until much later than that. Can you believe that grown people would allow themselves to be controlled like that? That is pathetic.

  23. I learned so much from my Fundy U experience! One of the first things I did was go home and tell my younger siblings not to go anywhere near a Christian “college”. One is now a doctor, and one is now a Milton scholar. See how God works?

    3. While it was sad you had to find out the hard way, you certainly helped your siblings out.

    4. Love this post! I have a child in a state school and they are thriving while friends in Fundy U are conforming.

  24. From the 2011-12 BJU Student Handbook: “Local Church Attendance
    Each residence hall and day student is to attend a minimum of two church services each week. Each student may have up to six absences each semester
    for illness, travel or other situations. In addition to the Sunday morning worship service on campus, morning and evening services, midweek service,
    prayer meeting, and group Bible study at a local church fulfill the attendance requirement. Note: society prayer meeting does not fulfill the requirement.
    While enrolled as a student, residence hall and day students who attend churches in the community are to attend a fundamental church. A list of area churches meeting this description is available on e-pass. Before attending any church not on this list, residence hall students and day students not
    living with their parents are to check with the director of Outreach and Ministerial Training.
    Residence hall students are to report church attendance on a card which they submit to their group leader biweekly. Day students report attendance biweekly using the event reporting feature in Avenue.
    Students requesting passes for activities taking place after 6 p.m. on a Sunday are to attend a church service that evening.”

    1. Yeah, I was livid about that last year when they snuck that in at the beginning of the school year. My sister was there at the time, and we had a good long talk about how that little metric didn’t measure anything and God still loved her even if she skipped a Sunday evening church service. SO GLAD she didn’t go back this year.

    2. Wow, they’ve changed it then even since 2010 (when I graduated.) If I was still there…yeah, I’d be hopping in my car and finding the nearest Church of God to campus. That’s just…wow.

      So much to remember about that place…I’m thankful I went, because I’m fairly certain I would still be a fundy prude if I hadn’t been exposed so much to it (and even the prudishness was wearing off in high school.) I did make some great friends there (we’re still close) and I met my fiance (who’s an awesome guy and not deep in to the crap). That I can’t complain about. I also loved my classes, as I was a history major with a minor in creative writing. I learned to think more critically and be a stronger writer, so that was valuable. Also, ironically enough, being a history major made me look at things with a more skeptical eye, and ask more questions. The textbooks from BJU always had inaccuracies, but the professors who wrote them weren’t the same way. Go figure.

      Prayer group…wow. I remember my junior year, my senior roommate was engaged to this guy who was in a doctorate program at the seminary. She was one of those people who was “nice-Bojey” as we called it (liked the rules and really sheltered, but not out to get you) and very likeable. Her fiance controlled her and wouldn’t let her speak to other guys, even the fiance of my best friend (they all knew each other from classes and stuff.) Also that year, my PC (ugh, terrible title…the whole captain thing was dumb) was after me. I think it had something to do with mentioning the praise band my brother played in? Well, I remember one night before PG, I had my PJs on, the top of which was like a cami or tank…cotton and not tight or anything. I greeted my PC because I like to think I’m a nice person. She coldly said “You need to change into a t-shirt.” That made me so mad. She was like that with everyone. She even accused my best friend of the prank where all the stall doors in the bathrooms were closed from the outside and all the showers were turned on full blast. Her attitude as an RA (yes, she got paid to be like that) was generally nasty and she was fired at the end of the year.

      Sophomore year, my roommates had a talk with the GA on the hall about me supposedly being “possessed” because my top sheet had come out from under the mattress (pet peeve) and I was putting it back late one night while the A/C was on.

      And if you’re wondering, there was no pressure from my church or family to go there. My parents would have been cool with anywhere I’d chosen. BJU and all their advertising and promotions and traveling groups wasn’t the reason either. God called me to that college. I made great friends and met a wonderful man, and I learned to think about everything that had attempted being hammered into my brain. I’m grateful, but quick to remind people that nothing man ever said or did made me go there.

    3. Wow, I don’t remember that requirement when I was there and that was only a year and a half ago. I would have been in so much trouble. The semester I took 20 credits, I was never at church Sunday evening.

      What a ridiculous rule change.

      1. I remember this being one of the reasons some folks dogged on BJU, they “didn’t make kids go to church” and of course, they were “not Baptist” so you might marry a presbyterian. The first singing group from BJU I saw, I leaned over and said to my wife…”They don’t look like Presbyterians to me” – just more evidence of how well I fit into the demographic of SFL

    4. I stepped foot on the BJU campus once, when I was a teenager. I was struck with a sense of fakeness all around me that I haven’t forgotten.

  25. This post made me cry a little inside 😥 The thoughts of this happening over and over again make wretch. Amazingly, I echo the sentiments of so many others who find that those people that I find who went to my same school did not come out as indoctrinated as the university might hope.

    I meet more and more people who make their own decisions and don’t require a school, a pastor’s or a parent’s approval. Amazing!

  26. After reading this post this morning, I do have to say that I had a twinge of sympathy as I drove past the local fundy U and saw all of the students walking to class. Little plastic people in skirts and ties thinking they know everything and they don’t have a clue what is actually happening to them.

    1. A part of me (that evil part that takes over large portions of my brain) wants to hand them porn just to see what happens. 😉

        3. I just want them to see what real grace is. So far all they have ever experienced is radio grace; you always hear about it, but never see it.

        4. Amen, Eric. I’d love to give them a Casting Crowns or Chris Tomlin CD and say, “You’ve been lied to. It’s not shallow worldliness; it’s soaked in grace and Gospel truth. Enjoy your freedom in Christ.”

        5. I am shocked at your suggestion PW, that is worse than porn, that is truth mixed with error, Amen?

        6. The Truth of the gospel… mixed with the evil Africanized music. You know that the Devil is stronger than you are. So if you use anything other than hymns to sing the gospel you are giving Satan a stronghold. Give Satan an inch and he will become a ruler, hey-men?! Mixing Gospel with the devils music cheapens the gospel and makes it ineffective. That is why we have to keep to the pure ways of the Old Paths, hey-men?! Keep our selves prayed up and pure, HEY-men! Keep our men’s hair short and our accounts with God even shorter, now that’ll preach, bless God!

          I see a lot of women talking on here, and they are bringing up these worldly subjects of so called Contemporary Christian Music. Don’t sound like no Fanny Crosby to me, amen?! Why bring that corrupted jungle music into the Lord’s house? I have a little 5 year old son, and I could bring him in here and let him listen to that music and even he knows that music that sounds like that is wrong, AMEN, now I’m preaching!

          Don’t you look at me in that tone of voice! You know I’m right. Bless gawd, I’ll never let the Devil’s music corrupt the House of Gawd as long as I’m pastor here!

          The only music we will use is wholesome, God honoring, Biblical, Soul winning, Old Time Christian music that you can understand, AMEN? God’s not the author of noise and confusion, amen?! That’s right. I want to hear those old God honoring songs like, “In the Garden”, and “I’m on the Winning Side” and “He Touched Me!” AMEN! Glory! I’m about to get started preaching, that was just my Introduction. Somebody hold my mule!

          Open your precious, inspired, infalliable, perfect, preserved, 1611, King James, Scofield Bibles and turn with me to Isaiah 19:14. I’ll be preaching from this one verse: The LORD hath mingled a perverse spirit in the midst thereof: and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit.
          My sermon tonight is on “Mingling in vomit with the perverse world!” 😈

        8. @Greeneggsandham … Yeah, they would need to be Jack Chickish. You know, give them a cartoon visual aid.

          :mrgreen:

      2. Ha! Funny story. Back in the day there was a Lutheran Seminary in the same town as the local fundy U. The colleges played each other for sports. At one of the basketball games at their place a few of the fundy preacher boys decided to hand out tracts to those who were walking in to watch the game. This of course prompted a phone call from the Lutheran college president were he told the fundy president that the preacher boys might be better off trying to reach the lost rather than God’s elect. 😆

  27. Someone mentioned “radio grace”…that’s a perfect phrase to describe BJU. Honestly, it was heartbreaking to look around at the other students with all the stuff they were “doing right” and wonder to myself “Do any of yall actually believe the things you say?”

    1. I realize I am confessing myself as a pervert with a really filthy mind, but, I must ask.
      Amanda, What, exactly, does BJU stand for?

        2. Eric, that is nothing short of mind boggling. Yet another entry in the “Weird enough to be real” sweepstakes. I appreciate your “Enquiring minds want to know” attitude and determination to aid the search for truth!

  28. Hey, sounds just like state school I attended, excpet it was left wing liberal indoctrination and a immoral lifestyle legalism that you HAD to drink & party.

    1. so I have heard! got a friend who is there now, and loving it.

      Plus, Princeton review rated them “best foodservice” among colleges and universities. Sounds like a great place to put on the Freshman 15

  30. SO GLAD i went to public school ALL my life. I remember being at a missionary home meeting once and overhearing the pastor’s wife nagging at this lady who recently started going out to church. She kept preaching at her about WHY she needs to put her children in a Christian school. Apparently public schools teach about homosexuality and evolution. OH NO!!! She spoke with such fervor and made it seem that evolution was the worst thing someone can come across – worse than war, poverty, disease! STUPID WOMAN!

  31. If the picture is Bob Jones, then I’m pretty sure it is the Science Building lecture room that was used as study hall at night. Sure looks familiar.

  32. I wasted five years of my life at Clown College in Knoxville. Seeing kids i know post pictures from the preliminaries – indoctrination sessions – brings it all back. The shame, the guilt, the unending browbeating and manipulation…

    Glad my younger brothers aren’t going there.

  33. I really enjoyed most of my experiences at Fundy U, one that hasn’t been mentioned above yet and is accredited. The professors and staff are some of the most genuine, God-loving people I’ve met and I have a lot of respect for them. They use the KJV primarily but are anti KJV-only. Still, there are some things I can relate to that are across the board in Fundy schools, like the rules!
    I deserved to get written up waaay more than I did, but it always made me mad when the RAs were trying to enforce “rules” that weren’t even in the book. They were the real MOGs at my school and the ones who really drank the kool-aid.

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