76 thoughts on “Commandments Concerning The Start of A Bible College”

1. not trying hard enough to be first.

2. Ok, I didn’t want to be disappointed. Fessing up. As far as the post, I’m finding more and more reasons that I’d never subject my own kid to a Fundy U. With that in mind, Darrell did you tweet yours is in a SB pre-school? That’s prob actually closer to normal school though.

   1. Not all Baptist schools are created equal.

      We spent time looking at this school and talking to other parents before we made our decision.

      My daughter loves it. She gets upset when there are holidays and she can’t go.

      1. That’s awesome you found one that she enjoys and that you like. It’s nice not to dread mornings ; )

         For whatever the reason your chose it; I have no doubt that you and your wife would be the most cautious and weigh options carefully.

         Most of all your choice shows, to me, that even bad religion didn’t snuff out Gospel hope.

3. A founder of an institution of higher learning naming it after himself should raise a whole bunch of red flags. But… if we worship the man we won’t see anything wrong with that.

   1. Oh, you *know* HE would NEVER dream of naming it after himself, but the *investors* absolutely INSISTED and, well, the people have spoken. {smiles with that phoney what-are-ya-gonna-do? smile}

      1. … considering that the “investors” all 🙄 got THEIR names on it, too. Hyles ANDERSON, BEILER auditorium, etc.

4. Fourth!

5. Yea, verily.
   It shall also bestocked with cassettes of sermons so that your young preacher boys can memorize your sermons and be able to get on it hard just like you do. Thou shalt have copies of other sermons from Men-O-gid whom thou has had in to fill your pulpit for Sheeple training/ advanced indoctrination commonly called Bible conferences, Missions conferences and Revivals.

   1. is that like when someone tells the mannagawd to “pitch a tent there brother”

   2. Are we going there again? Cause I am up for it. 😉
      Oh… Disappointment, I thought it said “Get it on HARD” not “Get on it hard” Oh wait, it is bad either way… heh heh

      1. … what is to be done, I ask myself… where will it all end? Sigh of judgmental regret at Don and Sims. 😉

   3. Actually that is a direct reference to a conversation I overheard before I left the IFB. The Pastor we had at the time was gently steering the church towards Expositional preaching. You know, actually looking at scripture, in context, and seeing what it was really saying, to who it was saying it and what application we can make today. Real, radical stuff for a Fundie bunker where they were used to having small doses of pseudo-bible stuff pre-chewed and regurgitated on them. In other words, Spiritual bottle feeding… when there was any food in the bottle at all.

      So the conversation was between one of the alpha-females and her cadre of “yeah, yeah sisters.” They were complaining about how they missed “good, hard preaching” like it used to be when they felt the spirit of god move. You know, the emotional, spiritual manipulative type preaching that produces a “meaningful church experience. They really missed the altar calls, having their “toes stepped on“, and being manipulated into a good old paths dose of guilt based performance churchianity.

      1. Oh, yes, I know about those women. 🙄 Every IFB is afflicted with them.

         1. They’re pretty easy to spot, too. They all have the same “church lady” hair, all wear those fashionable mid-calf skirts/floral blouse combos or floral dresses with retrofitted modesty panels. The shoes are always the sensible, 1 1/2in- thick, chunky heel (no matter what’s in fashion). If she’s younger, the hair will be long-ish, put into a sensible ponytail with a scrunchie.

      2. well, every sadist needs a few masochists…

         1. 😆 😆 😆 😯 😉

         2. Old joke:

            Masochist to sadist: Hurt me.
            Sadist to masochist: No!

6. I often wonder how many of these institutions are able to survive? I am also curious about the degrees many of these “teachers” have. Most of the degrees of faculty are honorary or non existent, right?

   1. In my opinion they survive because they have IFB churches guilting and brainwashing the young people and their parents that these “colleges” are the only place that they should go, thusly feeding a steady stream of people into them. Then, when the students, upon reaching the time of graduation figure out they have not met a marriage partner yet or don’t have a “ministry” to go into, they decide to stay longer and go for their masters.

7. “But thou shalt need to decide quickly because most of the good ones are already taken.” Genius. 😀

   And it also reminded me of part of this: http://www.theonion.com/articles/kim-jongun-privately-doubting-hes-crazy-enough-to,18374/

8. “fertilized it with such manure as is meet”

   “And the naming of thy college shall be a simple taks for thou shalt simply name it for thyself. […] So shall thine heritage never depart from the earth as it is written ‘how majestic is your name.’ And so it is.”

   ^^^Favorite lines.^^^

   Does anyone else hear Charlton Heston’s voice narrating the excerpts from the IBBoERaR? No? Alrighty, then… 😛

   1. I imagine one of my professors reading it aloud. He is Welsh and has a mesmerizing voice.

      1. The kids’ series “Fireman Sam” has ruined the Welsh accent for me. If you know an antidote, I’d be happy to give it a shot. 😉

         1. What you need to hear is a real proper Welsh Presbyterian preacher, preferably on something cheering like the grace of God. The better they preach, the stronger the accent gets.

         2. The movie “How Green Was My Valley”.

   2. I loved “and so it is” too! lol

   3. Those were my favorite lines too. The manure line was priceless!

9. Every now and again I start to feel guilty for mocking fundies so much. Then I remember that not only did they charge me thousands of dollars for a worthless FU degree, they are still in the scamming business. Naive, idealistic homeschool and Christian school graduates are being told that accreditation is evil and are being fleeced. These kids are put to work for free to build the Mog’s kingdom, in fact they pay dearly for the privilege both in money and Christian liberty. When I remember that, I don’t feel so bad about mocking them.

   1. I never feel bad about mocking them. You have a kinder, gentler spirit than I, I am afraid! I get FURIOUS at what they have been doing to innocent people for decades, and they have learned nothing from the scandals that have erupted, these fundy managawds. They are STILL fleecing the sheep, and misleading, and building kingdoms to themselves. It is infuriating. 👿

   2. Just to clarify a common theme … not all home schoolers are created equally. I am a progressive, largely secular home schooling mom, and there are many, many more just like me. We are crunchy and liberal and wear Birks (OK, well, I don’t, but my friend looks really cute in hers along with her white chick dreads), and we HS for a WHOLE host of different reason than to keep our little angels pure.

      But anyway, plenty of home schoolers aren’t hyper religious fundamentalists. Not where I live, anyway. 🙂

      1. You know, I read an article about that recently. I think it was on Slate but I am not sure. Anyway, I shouldn’t have generalized based purely on my own experience. You are right. Plenty of people homeschool for a wide variety of reasons.
         I was thinking of the many homeschooled kids I met at Fundy U when I wrote that.

         (Your Honor, I plan to pursue a pre-coffee defense)

      2. Great point. I home-schooled mine for eight years, and refused to become part of the hyper-fundy-hyper-conservative-let-us-seclude-our-children crap. We had neighborhood kids in and out all the time after school hours, and all three of my now-adult children are productive, social, fairly well-rounded adults. Not one of them is a fundy, though one is a minister. All three are attending or have graduated from secular colleges, (the minister is finishing his master’s degree in a non-fundy seminary, OKAY! 😉 )and all three had great scholarship money for the ride, too. I was blessed to have two different people say, at the outset of our home school adventure, to please not turn my kids into weirdos. I never forgot that! 🙂 Though they are not perfect, I am thankful for our home school years. We had recently lost my husband, when we began, and it really became a time of great healing for the four of us, as well as a time of education, for all of us, too.
         Even in my daily work, I see both types of home school families. There are those who seem to have rather disturbing reasons and results, and those whose families are a delight to behold. Just like any other method of education, I guess. 😐

         1. We homeschooled our two kids, for both religious and academic reasons. My husband, a PhD and ex-teacher, was the primary instructor. He gave the kids a rigorous classical education, including Latin and Greek. I am the breadwinner. We have a very unconventional home, but it works for us.

            Older son is now attending the University of Alabama on a National Merit scholarship (covers nearly everything). He’s double-majoring in History and Classics. He loves it.

            Younger son is prepping for the PSAT and SAT. We hope he’ll be able to join older son at Bama. Roll Tide!

         2. Seen Enough, so sorry for your loss. And congrats on raising well-adjusted kids!

         3. NLLC – war eagle?

            *runs and hides behind Don* 😆

         4. No Longer Lurking, thank you! We are doing great, and we are four pretty funny people. Yeah, funny=weird, but funny=stand-up, too. My kids can make me laugh so hard it is almost embarrassing. 🙂

   3. It is infuriating, but I believe there is a judgment day. Someday they will have to answer to God for all the things they have done supposedly in His name. 🙁

   4. Don’t worry about that. The Lord was hardest on the Pharisees and most fundies are just modern-day pharisees.

10. As has been said, not all schools are alike. However, in looking at the picture and the description, I would assume that the leadership thinks that education is simply sitting students on a log and then pouring the information in. Schools like this believe in the “banking principle.” That means that they dole out the information, students memorize it, and they spit it back on tests. They like to talk about critical thinking skills, but in reality, they don’t know what the term means. If students were to critically think, they would evaluate what they’re taught, and they would toss out the bad.

    This type of school also believes that teachers should be able to teach everything. This is true somewhat in any smaller institution, but at Maranatha, except for me, the other four “professors” didn’t have degrees in English. One had a BA in Greek, and the other three had BA degrees in elementary education. Not an MA or any type of graduate education. I was the only one at first who taught literature, and I had to be very careful not to teach any works that were controversial. I even ran into trouble teaching **Pilgrim’s Progress**. It seems that the version taught in a lot of Christian schools censor out the annoying parts that show that Bunyan was an Arminian and believed that one could lose his/her salvation.

    On the positive side, the students were delightful. On the negative, the entire school was a police state. One could be reported for any infraction at any time, and the justice was inquisitorial; one was guilty before s/he could prove innocence.

    1. 😯 Bob, I was completely unaware I’d read only edited versions of Pilgrim’s Progress! *mutter, rant* I must remedy this by getting a copy from the public library posthaste.

       1. Kerine,

          When you get the copy of **Pilgrim’s Progress** from the public library, look at the very last chapter. The edited versions remove the paragraph that states that once across the Jordan River and is in Celestial City, he realizes that the gateway to hell is right by that of heaven. I’m messing things up here, but the passage clearly implicates that one can lose his salvation at any time and that people who think that they’re saved will still go to hell. There is another expergated passage earlier on, I believe, where Pilgrim has a discussion with the Calventistic character, whom I believe jumps over a wall.

          I used to cover the work every time I taught British Masterpieces, but the last time I went through it was when I took doctoral comps in 1990. From that time on, I put that stuff to bed and focused on directing a freshman writing program, teaching professional writing courses and young adult literature for our education majors. I could get into a rant about how publishers, rather than the interest of teens, dictates what people read today. A lot of stuff is, frankly, depressing.

          1. Fishsticks,

             What years were you at Maranatha?

          2. Just recently. I want to Pillsbury, as well. If you PM me, I think we might know some of the same people.

          3. Fishsticks,

             I tried navigating this web page a bit, but I couldn’t find out how to PM you. Probably the only ones I would know now are the Prices and Curt Malmanger. All three were at Pills before they came over to Maranatha. It has been a long, long time. As with other fundy schools, Maranatha is a revolving door. A lot of faculty don’t stay around long.

          4. Bob, if you click on the word “Forum” at the top of the page, then look to the top right of what comes up you should see an opportunity to send (or recieve) a private message. That is literally all I know about that subject.

    2. Maranatha’s a lot different now than it used to be. A lot better in terms of appropriately educated faculty and much less of a focus on the Fundy image (standards). It’s still Fundy, but Fundy-lite as compared with most Fundy schools. I think the regional accreditation has had a lot to do with that.

       1. Yeah, speaking of “The Issue” that was where Maranatha showed their lack of real fundy cred…never became rabidly KJVO, never preached against accreditation and actually embraced it before any of their peer institutions even considered it, and really were inconsistent in their pursuit of fundy standards – they adopted some of them merely to pander to their constituencies. Board run school too, so no single church is in control, and the president isn’t alone at the helm, something that led to the disastrous end of Phelps’ tenure when he realized it didn’t work that way and seemingly couldn’t adapt to having to cooperate with other men in leadership when he was so used to being a Mog.

          1. I was at Maranatha the last two years of Cedarholm’s presidency and the first three years of Weniger’s. I remember that the Dean Burgon (sp?) Society met on campus during Cedarhom’s tenure but got the boot when Weniger came on campus. I didn’t pay much attention to that stuff except that the Hollowoods, among my close friends, were very upset about the new direction.

             Concerning the Board-run aspect, I think that Cedarholm and Weniger were very much in charge. All I can remember is that the Board met only once a year. I could be very wrong on this, but some of the top folks were on a smaller board.

             When Weniger came on campus, everything was literlly turned on its head. All the sacred cows seemed to be overturned, and new ones were set up. Old timers disappeared one after another.

             After I left, I did keep up a relationship with the Cedarholms until both passed away. One factor that helped was that neither were judgmental when I basically jettisoned a lot of old baggage.

          2. In my last year at Maranatha, I took Renaissance Literature and for a few class periods we read Bunyon’s autobiography, which is full of his searching and questions as to whether he had lost his salvation or not, I think it took up the entire book.

11. My favorite part was “The Issue”.
    I never realized how true that was until now. Darrell, you need to seriously put all these into a book or something! 😆

    1. when you don’t adopt “the Issue” you will be fired at from all sides, gotta make sure you have some big guns on your side at least while you are getting going before you have your own following

12. “fertilized it with such manure as is meet”

    I had to stop right there, without finishing yet, to comment on this phrase. Freaking awesome. I am ROFL!!! 😆 😆

    Okay, back to the lesson for today….

13. When SFL popped up this morning, I could see the title and the acoustic tiles of a basement.

    Too bad the m-o-g can’t run his empire, um, I mean ministry like a pyramid scheme where he gets a cut of everyone’s sales. He only gets the glory, which doesn’t make payments on that new Lexus.

    1. At first I thought you said “When SFL pooped up this morning.” 😯

14. If all of the good Issues™ are taken then it falls to the Founder of the Basement Bible College to invent a new one to build his reputation. Alternatively, he can preempt some other Mog’s Issue™ by claiming that the other fellow is a compromiser and not following in the Old Paths™.
    The second method is useful since it has built-in controversy. This controversy will, of course, be great sermon fodder. He can preach about “What the Bible really says about Issue X” or “Sin in the Camp” or “Who is on the Lord’s Side?”. It will make for a good line-in-the-sand moment, if you happen to need one.
    A favorite Issue™ to preempt is the KJV. “You believe the KJV is inspired? Well then, you sir are a hell-bound deceiver! I believe the KJV is doubly inspired!” etc etc etc.

15. “the naming of thy college shall be a simple taks”

    And it might also be a simple task. 😀

    1. That’s just George, who apparently learned NUTHING fum YESTIDDY. 👿

16. Yea, verily.
    The pastor, whilst standing in the basement/fellowship hall, didst have a vision of folding chairs facing a chalk board, a podium, a desk and an overhead projector (which illuminated a white sheet). And a still small voice didst say, “build it, and he will come…“

    1. “He” as opposed to “they”! HILARIOUS! 😀

       1. Where there are one or two gathered in the pastor’s name… 😯

          1. And THAT makes me wish that had been Jack Hyles’ experience. Sigh. Oh, the pain that could have been spared to so. Many. People. SMH. I could not even attempt to number the lives hurt.

          2. Not only 1st hand pain, lies, and bogus religiosity but as they went forth the error and false teaching grew exponentially to the 5th, 6th, and 7th degree. 🙁

17. You forgot the most important command for a fundy bible college.

    “Thou shalt make a handbook for thy victims (students) no shorter than the bible itself. You will add to all God’s commands your own rules making sure to rant, rave, and threaten those who commit the sin you yourself are secretly doing. Be sure to make most of the rules in your handbook about this particular sin so nobody whill suspect you, and so God will overlook your transgression since you so loudly told olthers to avoid it.”

18. Look up the word accreditation. Be prepared to answer why it is not only unnecessary, but actually repugnant and of the devil. Some savvy parent is sure to ask about it.

19. I have a friend who is an assistant Pastor at a church more fundy than he is. He has begun work on a Masters degree in ministry. He was also asked to teach a class at a Basement Bible College in the area. He hasn’t been asked to teach another class, because he was too hard. He said most of the classes were maybe high school level, definitely not college level. They have asked him about the progress of his degree. They want to “bestow” a degree to him for some things he has done. He doesn’t want it. He would rather earn a real degree. That proves he isn’t fundy.

20. “And so it is.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! This one made me laugh.

21. Or if you’re a pastor who doesn’t want to start a Bible college, you can prove how much more spiritual you are than all the others by proving why Bible colleges are unbiblical and wrong. Then you can wow everybody with your superior understanding of the Bible by preaching a sermon about pissing against the wall. 😯

    1. Ahhh, the Acts 4:13a requirement for being Called™ to mount the pulpit. (Acts 4:13a is all that is needed, fundies always skip the “b” side anyways) Combine that with Acts 26:24 and you have a p’werful argument for staying away from all that unnecessary larnin’ and knowledge that puffs you up! 🙄

22. Here is a church from back home that has a school and college. http://lighthousebaptistchurchonline.com/default.aspx

    The website doesn’t have any info about the college, but a church started by the pastors son mentions it: http://www.experience-liberty.com/lbc3_002.htm

23. When we first became fundies, one of the deacons and his wife invited my family over for dinner. After the meal, we were sitting in their living room and I noticed his framed diploma from Bob Jones University on the wall. I thought it was fake, like a novelty gift or something. I mean, come on, “Bob Jones?” That’s the most generic-sounding name ever. If it was a real place, they’d at least call it “Robert Jones University,” right?

    A few years later, I was secretly reading one of my dad’s George Carlin books (my dad is a terrible fundy!), and came across this priceless one-liner: “Attending college at a place called Bob Jones University is like putting your money in Nick & Tony’s Bank.”

24. Google Foundations Bible College in Dunn, NC. *cough*cough*cult*cough* … Major founder worship. Anybody else here familiar with it? Or what about Indiana Baptist College, formerly Heritage Baptist University in Greenwood, IN?

    1. I went to Foundations for one semester (it was all I could stomach). Definitely a cult and I wish more people would call them out. They’ve damaged a lot of people!

    2. I am not familiar with Dr. Foundation or Rev. Heritage.

25. “Google Foundations Bible College in Dunn, NC. *cough*cough*cult*cough* … Major founder worship. Anybody else here familiar with it?”

    VERY familiar, sorry to say. I almost went there myself because of some family recommendations. Happily, I realized what they were and opted for Southern. Anyway, now I’m apostate with a sister and her family having formally separated from me (calling out the founder’s son probably didn’t help matters). Try to reason with any of them, and you’re being crafty like the devil. Rail at them, and they’re martyrs for the truth. No winning either. They are controlled by a stockade mentality and superstitious fear. They are spiritually blind and intellectually inbred, unable and unfit to do anything in academia beyond the property line of the campus. Certainly, they are not equipped to help a sin-sick soul with the Gospel. Wanna have some fun? Ask them why they study Greek and Hebrew if the KJV is the only inspired and acceptable translation! Then stand back and observe the “deer in the headlights” expressions. Not trying to be mean here. But, I do mean to make the point.

26. Foundations is a very dangerous place. As a student there were perhaps many good things that I enjoyed while there. It is time for those that have seen the truth to proclaim the truth and to no longer stand in fear and hold back due to any retaliation that takes place. The indoctrination and twisting of Scripture to fit what they believe happens on a daily basis. It is time to name this place what it is. It is a cult. It is time to unite, and pull those out of the fire that remain there

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